Acbagel said:
You could try just using Fiona Shaw’s delivery of the line where she says “F*** the Empire” in an interview with Variety. I’ve had it saved on my computer forever. Not sure if the tone of her delivery would work, but it’s worth trying since it’s an authentic delivery. Here ya go!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FDEE0U0ZL9hYIRSO032Jhdt3HGKuMmU6/view?usp=sharing
That probably won’t work because she’s very smooth/low-key about it, LOL.
There has GOT to be a line reading of her saying “fuck” somewhere in her long career where she’s basically hissing/spitting that one syllable out in a way that can be mixed/cut in seamlessly (especially with the amount of radio static and audio processing that would need to be applied) but she has acted for so long and been in so many things that I’d imagine the thing that’s prevented this from being discovered is… precisely that! She’s been such a successful actress that you’d have to comb through just a TON of work to find that one syllable.
That said, I do think it’d be a pretty satisfying hunt, because in all of season one, this is the sole fight Gilroy lost, and I would love for that bit to be restored, if only because it is more than clear he is not just building that speech to culminate in that shout, but that speech is the culmination of the whole SEASON. He is building the whole series up to Maarva shouting “Fuck the Empire” as the fuse reaching the bomb and exploding. “Fuck the Empire” is what literally sparks The Rebellion (capital T, capital R) into existence.
I see the “call to action” argument upthread and I know it’s been popularized in the meantime but that’s also kind of a misunderstanding of how “call to action” as a literary idea works, really. The whole speech is the call to action, dramatically. It’s not a description of the final line at all, it’s not describing the LITERAL sentence or line in the text that tells someone to go perform an action.
But anyway: Tony Gilroy knew what he was doing when he built the whole of the series, thematically, to arrive at that speech, and when he built that speech to culminate in that exhortation. And when Lucasfilm said “we’re censoring that” he fought it really hard (and refused to reshoot, resulting in that not-great overdub) which says that artistically - “Fuck the empire” is the better choice.
I don’t know - maybe if/when “Andor: The Complete Series” hits 4K in some special edition steelbook they’ll quietly have reverted the overdub.
