Andor: The Movie Omnibus (Four Movies; Nothing Removed) [4/4 Season One Workprints Available!]

HOW DO I GET THIS?

Please send me a PM for links.

WHAT’S THE CURRENT STATUS?

Movies 1, 2, and 4 are complete. Movie 3 is available as a polished workprint, and should be perfectly watchable. I’d appreciate any feedback you have, especially on 3 and 4 which have the most rearranged content.

WHAT IS THIS AND WHO IS IT FOR?

This is for people who think “Please don’t edit Andor, it’s already perfect… I’d take it as movies though.”

This is Andor season one, rearranged into four movies of roughly the same length, removing no content whatsoever, just focused on each of the four main arcs and rearranging some scenes to keep as much relevant content as possible contained to those arcs’ movies, for slightly easier focus and consumption.

If you do want more of a traditionally trimmed version, I’ve got links to other community members’ edits further down.

WHY DO THIS / WHY SHOULD I BE INTERESTED?

• Andor suits movies. Firstly, it all leads into Rogue One, which we know is a 2hr movie. Secondly, it’s almost entirely broken down into ~2h arcs.
• We know that the upcoming season two (coming 2024) is going to be another twelve episodes, cut into four arcs of three episodes each. Each three-episode arc will cover a year of the rebellion, so while they’ll have connective threads, each arc will work as a self-contained block - perfect for a movie structure.
• Season one was nearly four blocks of three. It was released as three three-episode arcs, one two-episode arc, and a standalone episode (released in this order: 3/3/1/3/2). Some people have cut that into three movies, but that feels just a little inelegant to me (mainly because it’s required some compression of storylines). Eight movies for eight (major) arcs, followed by Rogue One, feels right.
• Movies, as opposed to episodes, make the promise that in a single unit of media you get a full end-to-end story, where the majority of relevant context is given within that unit. That promise makes the content more accessible, and easier to pick up and put down, and thus more digestible. We don’t need to worry about the pacing here (the original show didn’t) but we can have it so that most of the side storylines begin and end within a single movie (ideally the one in which they pay off), making them easier to follow.
• I don’t want to remove a single scene or shot. Some people have had issues with this show’s pacing, but I was gripped the whole time. Unlike some of the other more recent Disney Star Wars shows, I really don’t feel like any trimming is necessary. This show was written and directed with an absolute strength of vision, and the ‘slower’ content I still feel is absolutely worthwhile.

So you’re not cutting ANYTHING?

I’ve managed to preserve almost every last frame and beat. I’m only trimming anything at all in order to smooth audio flow across transitions, or to enable me to find appropriate new homes for montage scenes which needed to shift. To illustrate how little I’ve had to change beyond rearranging scenes and making the audio work, here’s the full list:

• Lightly changed one dialogue scene to allow Vel to visit Cinta on Ferrix before she’s given the explicit order to kill Andor by Kleya. This ordering allows movies 3 and 4 to stay focused on only their key plots. All that’s changed is the removal of a couple of lines, to imply that Vel probably already knew that the rebels wanted Andor dead when she was on Ferrix with Cinta - but that now Kleya’s really insisting that Vel gets involved.
• Cut one regular line (“It’s blue”), one instance of Syril’s mother addressing him by name from offscreen, one redundant word out of another line (“it’s both X and Y”), one background line (“form up” from offscreen as people march), and a little of the background chanting done by Mon’s daughter and friends.
• Cut only one full shot, of flashback Andor leaving his hut, in order to avoid a teleport when smoothly blending two scenes which needed to merge.
• Trimmed a few seconds of Bik’s prison window, and zoomed a little onto Bik’s face to hold the camera in place, both to support a nice smooth enhancement to an existing montage which avoids leaving a short scene orphaned.
• Across six minor establishing shots, removed a total of about 56 frames (less than three seconds).
• Flipped a single shot to align it with a slightly extended Syril montage, again to avoid having to orphan a small scene.
• Added a single flip-reversed establishing shot to flow audio from the opening credits to a new first scene.
• Added a TIE fighter SFX to the shot of Cassian and Melchi running away from Narkina prison, since I’ve moved that scene later so it’s feasible there would have been a search active by then.

What’s the breakdown?

The movies play out as follows:

• s01e01 - RECKONING v1.1 (1h43m) is the first three episodes, just smoothed together. I didn’t shift the flashbacks since they’re well integrated into the story, and moving them would have been unnecessary and beyond the original vision. Only the most minor reordering has been done here to ensure smooth blends between episodes.
• s01e02 - ANNOUNCEMENT (2h02m) is the full Aldhani heist, with only very light rearranging to enable the smoothing. Luthen introduces the audience to Mon Mothma, and we follow her personal issues only (husband and daughter) up until the ending where we see how unsatisfied she is with Imperial bureaucracy and disinterest. Syril is only used in one scene to introduce us to Blevin, and we then follow Dedra’s story within the ISB and her conflict with Blevin in particular. We see no more of Syril, and only one scene of Ferrix that ties to the Blevin/Dedra plot. I added two brief scenes from the orphaned episode seven into the ending, of Cinta seeing the Empire arrive on Aldhani, as part of this movie’s wrap-up scenes.
• s01e03 - PRISONERS (2h10m) contains a lot of restructuring, but shouldn’t feel like it. It begins in the immediate aftermath of Aldhani, showing the reactions of the ISB, Luthen, and Mon. We see the tension felt on Ferrix by the locals and Maarva when Andor visits. (There are a few small implicit time jumps in this section, but I don’t think we need to care.) The initial Dedra plot focuses just on the Imperial reaction to Aldhani (including increased prison sentences) which gets Andor captured fairly early. During this early period, Syril re-enters the story (having functionally skipped the last movie), arriving at Coruscant, spending time with his mother, and getting the intelligence job. He comes to the attention of Dedra while Andor’s getting acquainted with Narkina 5. Then there’s a small time jump (Andor spends ‘30 shifts’ in prison), after which we follow Mon becoming more rebellious via her interactions with Tay Kolma and Vel (now revealed as her cousin). Near the end of the episode we find that Syril has been stalking Dedra, and the full prison escape plays out. We don’t see Andor making landfall, cutting instead from the water escape to the Death Star being built to close out the episode. This one took a HUGE amount of work to replace all the non-Narkina content that I’d moved to movie four (so that it wasn’t just a torrent of prison scenes in the second half), but it really works.
• s01e04 - SACRIFICES (2h16m) also contains masses of restructuring, pulling into it everything to set up the final duology of episodes and playing out the full Saw Gerrera/Kreegyr plot in this one movie. It begins with Maarva’s sickness, which kicks off many storylines. Vel and Cinta meet on Ferrix and struggle to make their relationship work, but Vel leaves while Cinta stays to spy. Bix tries to contact Andor about his mother, which makes Luthen try to get Saw Gerrera and Anto Kreegyr working together. Dedra has Bix captured, and tortures her for information on Andor and Kreegyr, while a frustrated Kleya meets Vel on Coruscant to put the kill order on Andor (so that threat overhangs his return). Tay Kolma sets Mon Mothma up with Davos, and we follow the ‘pimp my daughter’ storyline throughout. Dedra returns to Coruscant and continues to follow Andor and Kreegyr, and as Kreegyr gets compromised, Lonnie (the ISB spy) reports that to Luthen, prompting Luthen’s amazing monologue. He concludes that with “I need all the heroes I can get”, after which we finally smash-cut to Andor on the run on Narkina 5 (I might add TIE fighter SFX to this shot). Maarva dies, turning all eyes to Ferrix. Luthen and Saw agree to sell out Kreegyr, and the funeral occurs, drawing everything together into the season’s major conflict. Mon realises she’s in deep, and Andor convinces Luthen to hire him instead.

Future Plans

• I’ll polish these further based on feedback, then do a proper release.
• Presumably I’ll eventually do s02e01-s02e04 for season two, though I expect that to be easy aggregation/smoothing rather than anything as radical as reordering.
• I’d also probably release Rogue One as s03e01, possibly using another popular fanedit for that if there’s good consensus, and just lightly dressing it up as if it’s the ninth movie of Andor.

Looking for something else?

No worries! Friends over on originaltrilogy forums have released other Andor cuts which might be more to your tastes:

• Crossvader’s movie trilogy
• Smudger9’s movie duology part 1 and part 2
• MoviesRemastered’s first movie of three planned
• WitchDR’s seven episode cut

Id be very interested in this if persued!

I’ve just gone through to check the feasability of this, using the always-excellent technique of editing/planning from back to front. You start with the end, then you work out the pieces that support all the payoff you get there.

So with that, movie 4 opens with Andor and Melchi on Narkina 5 (having escaped the prison), slowly making their way back to Niamos. Vel (on Luthen’s behalf) puts the hit out on Andor, increasing the threat for him and throwing more shade on Luthen’s character, which we’ll explore this arc.) While that’s happening, Maarva has fallen ill, and is being looked after by Bix, and Luthen is notified. He goes to meet Saw, kicking off the cat-and-mouse with the Imperials regarding the Kreegyr storyline (including Luthen’s fantastic speech), which compels Dedra to capture and interrogate Bix. Mon Mothma has her side story about pimping out her daughter. Maarva dies, which then draws many characters to Ferrix in hopes of capturing Andor, leading to the conclusions. I can envision that as one nice coherent content chunk.

Movie 3 then is as above, but without the elements mentioned here.

As a huge Andor lover myself, an edit like this keeping everything intact is the only kind I’d ever watch! So mark me down as interested.

Making 8 movies out of Andor’s two seasons would also make for a nice round nine-ilogy? ennealogy (I had to look that one up) when paired with Rogue One… just an idea, in case you’re a fan of satisfying numbers.

Exactly! It just feels natural, right? But I don’t want to cut a frame, since that show knows exactly what it’s doing.

I’m happy to do all the planning for this if someone else fancied doing the execution (which might feature mainly audio editing, which I’m weaker with). I could produce a very clear spreadsheet to make the execution straightforward.

OK, well I’ll give this a little crack then. I don’t know how well I’ll do with the audio, but I’ll try to produce at least a couple of workprints this weekend to see if this is feasible. Hinventon, I might get in touch if I struggle!

I’ve had a massively successful day, and it looks like this definitely works, so I’ll have it released very soon.

I’ve completed the work to move all of the scenes around to make all of the storylines work within contained movies, and I haven’t had to cut a single frame so far. I’ve cut one minor background line, and literally one redundant word from one line of dialogue, just to ensure I could use every shot and scene. I must have moved perhaps sixty scenes, but you’d never notice because it doesn’t interrupt the plot (generally cutaways just replace other cutaways). I avoided cutting particularly smooth transitions between unrelated scenes, to maintain as much of the show’s original flow as possible.

All I need to do now is spend time on the smoothing out the audio between shots, which has proven far easier than expected, since the scenes are usually so long that they have plenty of padding before dialogue and major SFX. There might be the odd difficult transition which necessitates minor trims, but I’ll keep them to an absolute minimum. I want this edit to be invisible, and keep absolutely as much of the original as possible.

I’ve managed to execute the full plan as outlined above:

• The first movie (1h40) is the first three episodes, just smoothed together. I didn’t touch the flashbacks since they’re well integrated into the story, and moving them would have been unnecessary and beyond the original vision.
• The second movie (2h) is the full Aldhani heist, with only very light rearranging to enable the smoothing. Luthen introduces the audience to Mon Mothma, and we follow her personal issues only (husband and daughter) up until the ending where we see how unsatisfied she is with how the Empire operates. Syril is only used in one scene to introduce us to Blevin, and we then follow Dedra’s story within the ISB and her conflict with Blevin in particular. We see no more of Syril, and none of Ferrix. I added two brief scenes from the orphaned episode seven into the ending, of Cinta seeing the Empire arrive on Aldhani, as part of this movie’s wrap-up scenes.
• The third movie (2h5m) contains a lot of restructuring. It begins in the immediate aftermath of Aldhani, showing the reactions of the ISB, Luthen, and Mon. Blevin establishes the Ferrix base, which sets up the tensions felt there by the locals and Maarva when Andor visits. The initial Dedra plot focuses just on the Imperial reaction to Aldhani (including increased prison sentences) which gets Andor captured fairly early. During this early period, Syril re-enters the story (having functionally skipped the last movie), arriving at Coruscant, meeting his mother, and getting the intelligence job. He comes to the attention of Dedra while Andor’s getting acquainted with Narkina 5. Then there’s a small time jump (Andor spends ‘30 shifts’ in prison), after which we follow Mon becoming more rebellious via her interactions with Tay Kolma and her cousin Vel. Near the end of the episode we find that Syril has been stalking Dedra, and the full prison escape plays out. We don’t see Andor making landfall, cutting instead from the water escape to the Death Star being built to close out the episode. This one took a HUGE amount of work to replace all the non-Narkina content that I’d moved to movie four (so that it wasn’t just a torrent of prison scenes in the second half), but it really works.
• The fourth movie (2h10m) also contains masses of restructuring. It begins with Maarva’s sickness, which kicks off many plots. Vel and Cinta meet on Ferrix and struggle to make their relationship work, but Vel leaves while Cinta stays to spy. Bek tries to contact Andor about his mother, which makes Luthen try to get Saw and Anto Kreegyr working together. Dedra has Bek captured, and tortures her for information on Andor and Kreegyr, while a frustrated Kleya meets Vel on Coruscant to put the kill order on Andor (so that threat overhangs his return). Tay Kolma sets Mon Mothma up with Davos, and we follow the ‘pimp my daughter’ storyline throughout. Dedra returns to Coruscant and continues to follow Andor and Kreegyr, and as she closes in on Kreegyr, Lonnie (the ISB spy) reports that to Luthen, prompting Luthen’s amazing monologue. He concludes that with “I need all the heroes I can get”, after which we finally smash-cut to Andor on the run on Narkina 5 (I might add TIE fighter SFX to this shot). Maarva dies, turning all eyes to Ferrix. Luthen and Saw agree to sell out Kreegyr, and the funeral occurs, drawing everything together into the season’s major conflict. Mon realises she’s in deep, and Andor convinces Luthen to hire him instead.

I’m really happy with this structure. Just gotta smooth it all out and we’ll be golden!

Movie one is available now. It’s barely an edit, but it’s a necessary first step!

Movie two is rendering while I move on to smoothing movie three!

Movie two is uploading. Movie three is taking a bit longer to smooth since it has so many transitions. I’ve done about a third, but I’m very happy with the quality of all of them so far - I’ve been able to emulate a lot of the long drawn-out musical pieces across multiple scenes that the original did. I definitely feel like I’m capturing the spirit of this. Coming soon!

That’s movie 2 uploaded too, and I’ve only got five more transitions to polish for movie three, so that’ll be rendering soon. I won’t get to movie 4 today but I’ll be on it ASAP. Still, three movies in one day isn’t bad! Sending links to those requesting!

By the way, I’m not doing anything special to ‘moviefy’ the format of these. It’s the standard TV Lucasfilm and Star Wars franchise logos, then the Andor logo, straight into the episodes, and regular end credits. Once season two comes out I’ll probably just stitch those into movies using the same format. So you’ll basically have eight movie-length episodes, then Rogue One. But if anyone has any ideas/VFX skills for sprucing these up a bit so they can all be packaged as an ennealogy (thanks ildiem) of more movie-like movies I’d happily present these all as a single nine-film subfranchise.

I’d love a link as well!

Coming your way bud.

If anyone has any ideas for a name for this subfranchise, let me know. And any simple poster art would be welcomed.

I could just call it ‘Andor: Refocused’, to keep it on brand, but I don’t really have a strong feeling. ‘Andor: Four Movies, Nothing Removed’ could also be useful to illustrate what it is. My current project working title is simply AndorByFour, but at the end of the day this’ll be nine things.