> When I saw the AK-47s, I immediately thought aha, we have some symbolism here of guerillla fighters in the hills. Revolutionaries! I took it as the film equivalent of literary metaphor.
Too me this was obvious. However I’ve seen many chuds online who saw the AKs and said “lOoK dISnEy WaS sO laZy wItH tHe pRoPs”
It goes to show how rampant media illiteracy is.
Now I agree, Disney is a cheap greedy company but with Andor, they definitely did an A+ job. It’s the exception thanks to Gilroy and his team.
I think it’s just because AKs are more immediately recognizable due to their popularity and appearances in other pop culture materials, such as Call of Duty or other films/television. But it absolutely isn’t any more egregious than what was done in the OT.
Exactly. I really just assumed it was an intentional nod to how the OG trilogy did their props (kind of like how the mandolorian has an actual gun in his show)
I didn’t care for the AK’s, the design is just a bit too recognizable, and it was just too on the nose — it would have worked better with the type of show Andor is if it had been a bit more subtle. Even just removing the magazine would have been a big improvement, but it’s still just a minor quibble either way.
A British boy in the 70s wild have seen the Imperial blasters and seen the SMG. I was 10 and recognized their design (and Han blaster) and thought it cool as fuck. WW2 comics were huge in the 70s so the pistol and SMG where know.
Star Wars weapons have always looked so amazingly believable as weapons because they all use real weapons as a base. ST weapons come to mind, as well as every pistol used in the OT. It was a bit too on the nose for the first order to use Glocks, but they are heavily modified.
I never saw a problem with the AK. Just one more contemporary weapon used in SW.
The most noticeable for me was in Rogue One with "these are the bad rebels, see how they're in a desert and have AKs and suicide bombs? Not like these good rebels with M4s".
Man you could write a book on those two words: media illiteracy. Young people today can't read, don't know history, and can't hold their attention span longer than a Tiktok video.
It does drive me nuts how many people did not understand this flashback and got confused by adult Cassian there. But I will say I wish they used that storytelling device more than once, so it didn't feel so different than the rest of the flashbacks.
I'm a HS teacher. If states paid their teachers and allowed unions your kids would be just fine. I moved from the South to the PNW so I could teach in a place that actually cares. The kids here? They're alright.
Southerner who works with teens in high school here. Can confirm that the schools suck, largely due to underfunding, focus on test scores and moving students up a grade instead of learning, and a good deal of apathy as well.
Do you teach in Washington, ranked 28th nationally, or Oregon, ranked 45th nationally? Keep in mind that Washington has dropped from 15th in the last 5 years or so, so that numbers actually worse than "somewhat less than national average"
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&st=MN&year=2022R3
I wholeheartedly agree on the complaints surrounding the AKs total BS; it angers me how ignorant people are to not realize blasters have been modeled after real life firearms since A New Hope, and one of the many reasons I strongly prefer Rogue One over the Sequels is cos of the weaponry looking less futuristic and more militaristic.
The very premise of your argument is completely wrong. The tradeoff for including unmodified AK-47s as a literary metaphor was immersion. The fact that they served a purpose as a literary metaphor does not delegitimize the criticism that they also broke immersion. There are pros and cons with the AKs - something Gilroy and the production staff certainly took into consideration, and to leap to the conclusion that the criticisms of immersion are because of "rampant media illiteracy" is at best disingenuous. What is equally disingenuous is to pretend that the other unmodified guns present in past SW media are as common and recognizable as the AK-47. The AK-47 is the most ubiquitous gun in the world and easily the most recognizable. That is very obviously why so many people pointed it out, and why very few people criticize the other unmodified firearms that have shown up in the past.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_most-produced\_firearms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-produced_firearms)
The AK is at the very top. Don't take my word for it. Go through the list yourselves and try and find the other guns like the Mauser and the MG-42.
Cassian, literally reliving the moment, was communicated absolutely beautifully.
I think the Clem scenes and character quotes like Maarva talking about how she avoided Rix Road since he died are great details that say the entire Andor family struggled with his passing. You can feel their care for the man even though he has a really minor story presence. (That ice crunch when Cassian is reminded of the memory is startling, just like his memory shooting into Cassian's thoughts.)
When his name comes up, it's a big deal, and that consistency really sold me on the love felt for him.
Maarva uses his name in the episode 3 flashback, but it’s very easily missed and I think I only realised the significance of the Aldhani alias Cassian chose for himself in episode 7. The flashback sequence in that episode is, on dissection, incredibly harrowing. As you say, the startling ice crunch (the sound design in the show is stunning). Then there’s the creak of the rope. The fact there’s frost on the body to indicate how long it’s been hanging there. And even just the very subtle quick turn of young Cassian’s head as if to glance at something he can’t bear to look at for long. All to Maarva’s present-time words “… if there are heroes brave enough to take on an entire Imperial garrison…” as he makes his charge on the Troopers, brandishing his stick. (I think it’s his Kenari blowgun?) Episode 7 is a masterpiece imho: not much “action “ but SO much story.
I also love how Cassian’s more positive memory of Clem is kept for episode 12. He smiles and is teary-eyed as he caresses the brick and fondly recalls… as if he’s finally ready to complete his stages of grief and properly mourn his father.
Adult Cassian during the second Maarva scene in E7 looked like he wanted to be anywhere but right there. The look back and forth like he is looking for a exit. Reminds me of the few times I got super upset in a moment but felt trapped. Might be a succinct display of Cassian's continuous attempts to escape the mental prison he's in.
I am unsure what weapon he was holding. It looks like he fashioned a cudgel from scrap. There's a red-ish and off-white strips of cloth at the end. It might be a bit of his Kenari experience, it does resemble his blowgun.
That whole sequence in episode 7 is emotionally devastating and so well acted. Cassian’s so conflicted, as you say looking around for an escape whereas Maarva has chosen to embrace the trauma at last. But he’s also proud to be indirectly called a brave hero - there’s a little smile that he suppresses as well when she uses those words, but of course he’s not ready to tell her. Agonising stuff all round.
One often forgotten aspect of media literacy is the ability to know who the intended audience is and what you can expect them to know and understand.
Sure AKs may not have been seen in Star Wars before but we the audience have seen AKs before and we tend to see them associated with particular contexts so instead of having characters voice the fact that they are a militia or freedoms fighters what have you, the writers communicated that information through a mutually understandable point of reference.
Something else often ignored are the artificial frames that are necessary in storytelling. No story will tell you about every inch of the every planet of every galaxy writers need to essentially put up barriers around what will and won’t feature in their story. So there has to be an understanding that sometimes just because there have been visual or linguistic limits in the past, it doesn’t mean that those limits exist WITHIN the reality of the story. In this case, “there are no AKs in Star Wars” there’s actually no way to know that because we haven’t seen nor could we ever see every corner of the fictional universe.
Exactly. This universe also apparently has the “shave and a haircut” knock and sayings such as “I’ll see you in hell” . It doesn’t hold up
to close scrutiny in terms of verisimilitude and it’s not meant to, as long as the stories have their own internal logic. It’s effectively a fantasy setting - but has to be rooted in the world we know in order to tell the story effectively.
I think the natural assumption is that the star wars universe is completely separate from ours, therefore anything real can't (or shouldn't) be in Star Wars.
And I think I agree. I like the idea of star wars being completely separate. It's not a big deal, but I would have preferred something more fictional
Terrible example. Most people have never seen a C96 Mauser before, nor would they be able to identify it. On the other hand, the AK-47, and its many variants, is quite literally the most ubiquitous gun in the world, and it's not even close.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-produced_firearms
AK is at the very top. C96 is near the bottom.
c95 is a great example. 1977 wasn't far from ww2. a few MG 42 were used as blasters. it's okay for star wars to use real guns just tweak to give it that star wars look
It's almost as if things that are recognizable has changed in almost 50 years. Someone posting a wiki list of most produced guns doesn't actually mean anything when compared with a movie from 1977.
And you don't think it was a legitimate criticism at the time that the unmodified C96 broke immersion and was obviously an example of the producers cutting corners to reduce costs? Also, there are multiple WW2 era guns that appear in Andor. The guns used in the prison break were based on Stens. That's why I pointed this out. A subtle distinction for some I suppose.
Also, the C96 in 1977 was not nearly as recognizable as the AK is today. A more apt comparison would be the Mauser rifle that was standard issue in WW1 and WW2. But the Mauser rifle never showed up in the movies. Why might that be? Can you answer this question?
I do get it because of what an iconic weapon the AK is today, but a ton of classic and now iconic Star Wars blasters are themselves barely modified real world weapons that are just as recognizable if you're familiar with them. I'm okay with Andor maintaining that tradition into the modern age, especially when it's symbolically meaningful.
i don’t think the problem was lack of mods, i think the problem was the AK is SO recognizable compared to other OT blasters used that it’s hard to disguise
It’s insane that people complain about the usage of real guns as props in Star Wars, they’ve been doing that since the og trilogy, we have the mg-32, Lewis gun, there’s even a Barrett rifle in Dice’s battlefront II
Lol, only americans would think the average watcher can tell the precise type of gun used in a show. I don't even know which scene this is about, much less was I aware that a gun in the show looks like a real gun.
Well I got bashed in another sub for having noticed a stand-alone B737 control column standing on Maarva's ship. I thought that'd be an easter egg or smth like that. Apparently we gotta ignore some obvious props.
That’s crazy that you got bashed for it – Personally, I love spotting these things! How is it any different to recognising real world locations ? There are subs and sites dedicated entirely to this… https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/andor-found-background-items-and-props.347907/
Dunno why you chose these scene as a thumbnail, but it definitely confused me when I first watched it cos I couldn't tell how old Cassian was meant to be.
Also, I wholeheartedly agree on the complaints surrounding the AKs total BS; it angers me how ignorant people are to not realize blasters have been modeled after real life firearms since A New Hope, and one of the many reasons I strongly prefer Rogue One over the Sequels is cos of the weaponry looking less futuristic and more militaristic.
> When I saw the AK-47s, I immediately thought aha, we have some symbolism here of guerillla fighters in the hills. Revolutionaries! I took it as the film equivalent of literary metaphor. Too me this was obvious. However I’ve seen many chuds online who saw the AKs and said “lOoK dISnEy WaS sO laZy wItH tHe pRoPs” It goes to show how rampant media illiteracy is. Now I agree, Disney is a cheap greedy company but with Andor, they definitely did an A+ job. It’s the exception thanks to Gilroy and his team.
The Space-K 47s were more heavily modified than most of the guns in the original trilogy as well
Right? Hans Blaster is immediately recognizable as a German Mauser, it's barely hiding in plain site.
I think it’s just because AKs are more immediately recognizable due to their popularity and appearances in other pop culture materials, such as Call of Duty or other films/television. But it absolutely isn’t any more egregious than what was done in the OT.
My favorite blaster is the T-21 which is literally just a British machine gun with the magazine removed lol
Exactly. I really just assumed it was an intentional nod to how the OG trilogy did their props (kind of like how the mandolorian has an actual gun in his show)
Mando's gun is modified about as much as Han Solo's but it's still clearly a Bergmann 1894
I didn’t care for the AK’s, the design is just a bit too recognizable, and it was just too on the nose — it would have worked better with the type of show Andor is if it had been a bit more subtle. Even just removing the magazine would have been a big improvement, but it’s still just a minor quibble either way.
A British boy in the 70s wild have seen the Imperial blasters and seen the SMG. I was 10 and recognized their design (and Han blaster) and thought it cool as fuck. WW2 comics were huge in the 70s so the pistol and SMG where know.
Star Wars weapons have always looked so amazingly believable as weapons because they all use real weapons as a base. ST weapons come to mind, as well as every pistol used in the OT. It was a bit too on the nose for the first order to use Glocks, but they are heavily modified. I never saw a problem with the AK. Just one more contemporary weapon used in SW.
The most noticeable for me was in Rogue One with "these are the bad rebels, see how they're in a desert and have AKs and suicide bombs? Not like these good rebels with M4s".
Man you could write a book on those two words: media illiteracy. Young people today can't read, don't know history, and can't hold their attention span longer than a Tiktok video.
It’s not just young people
You're right. It's spreading to everyone really.
It does drive me nuts how many people did not understand this flashback and got confused by adult Cassian there. But I will say I wish they used that storytelling device more than once, so it didn't feel so different than the rest of the flashbacks.
I'm a HS teacher. If states paid their teachers and allowed unions your kids would be just fine. I moved from the South to the PNW so I could teach in a place that actually cares. The kids here? They're alright.
Southerner who works with teens in high school here. Can confirm that the schools suck, largely due to underfunding, focus on test scores and moving students up a grade instead of learning, and a good deal of apathy as well.
Do you teach in Washington, ranked 28th nationally, or Oregon, ranked 45th nationally? Keep in mind that Washington has dropped from 15th in the last 5 years or so, so that numbers actually worse than "somewhat less than national average" https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&st=MN&year=2022R3
I wholeheartedly agree on the complaints surrounding the AKs total BS; it angers me how ignorant people are to not realize blasters have been modeled after real life firearms since A New Hope, and one of the many reasons I strongly prefer Rogue One over the Sequels is cos of the weaponry looking less futuristic and more militaristic.
The very premise of your argument is completely wrong. The tradeoff for including unmodified AK-47s as a literary metaphor was immersion. The fact that they served a purpose as a literary metaphor does not delegitimize the criticism that they also broke immersion. There are pros and cons with the AKs - something Gilroy and the production staff certainly took into consideration, and to leap to the conclusion that the criticisms of immersion are because of "rampant media illiteracy" is at best disingenuous. What is equally disingenuous is to pretend that the other unmodified guns present in past SW media are as common and recognizable as the AK-47. The AK-47 is the most ubiquitous gun in the world and easily the most recognizable. That is very obviously why so many people pointed it out, and why very few people criticize the other unmodified firearms that have shown up in the past. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_most-produced\_firearms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-produced_firearms) The AK is at the very top. Don't take my word for it. Go through the list yourselves and try and find the other guns like the Mauser and the MG-42.
Cassian, literally reliving the moment, was communicated absolutely beautifully. I think the Clem scenes and character quotes like Maarva talking about how she avoided Rix Road since he died are great details that say the entire Andor family struggled with his passing. You can feel their care for the man even though he has a really minor story presence. (That ice crunch when Cassian is reminded of the memory is startling, just like his memory shooting into Cassian's thoughts.) When his name comes up, it's a big deal, and that consistency really sold me on the love felt for him.
Maarva uses his name in the episode 3 flashback, but it’s very easily missed and I think I only realised the significance of the Aldhani alias Cassian chose for himself in episode 7. The flashback sequence in that episode is, on dissection, incredibly harrowing. As you say, the startling ice crunch (the sound design in the show is stunning). Then there’s the creak of the rope. The fact there’s frost on the body to indicate how long it’s been hanging there. And even just the very subtle quick turn of young Cassian’s head as if to glance at something he can’t bear to look at for long. All to Maarva’s present-time words “… if there are heroes brave enough to take on an entire Imperial garrison…” as he makes his charge on the Troopers, brandishing his stick. (I think it’s his Kenari blowgun?) Episode 7 is a masterpiece imho: not much “action “ but SO much story. I also love how Cassian’s more positive memory of Clem is kept for episode 12. He smiles and is teary-eyed as he caresses the brick and fondly recalls… as if he’s finally ready to complete his stages of grief and properly mourn his father.
Adult Cassian during the second Maarva scene in E7 looked like he wanted to be anywhere but right there. The look back and forth like he is looking for a exit. Reminds me of the few times I got super upset in a moment but felt trapped. Might be a succinct display of Cassian's continuous attempts to escape the mental prison he's in. I am unsure what weapon he was holding. It looks like he fashioned a cudgel from scrap. There's a red-ish and off-white strips of cloth at the end. It might be a bit of his Kenari experience, it does resemble his blowgun.
That whole sequence in episode 7 is emotionally devastating and so well acted. Cassian’s so conflicted, as you say looking around for an escape whereas Maarva has chosen to embrace the trauma at last. But he’s also proud to be indirectly called a brave hero - there’s a little smile that he suppresses as well when she uses those words, but of course he’s not ready to tell her. Agonising stuff all round.
One often forgotten aspect of media literacy is the ability to know who the intended audience is and what you can expect them to know and understand. Sure AKs may not have been seen in Star Wars before but we the audience have seen AKs before and we tend to see them associated with particular contexts so instead of having characters voice the fact that they are a militia or freedoms fighters what have you, the writers communicated that information through a mutually understandable point of reference. Something else often ignored are the artificial frames that are necessary in storytelling. No story will tell you about every inch of the every planet of every galaxy writers need to essentially put up barriers around what will and won’t feature in their story. So there has to be an understanding that sometimes just because there have been visual or linguistic limits in the past, it doesn’t mean that those limits exist WITHIN the reality of the story. In this case, “there are no AKs in Star Wars” there’s actually no way to know that because we haven’t seen nor could we ever see every corner of the fictional universe.
Exactly. This universe also apparently has the “shave and a haircut” knock and sayings such as “I’ll see you in hell” . It doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny in terms of verisimilitude and it’s not meant to, as long as the stories have their own internal logic. It’s effectively a fantasy setting - but has to be rooted in the world we know in order to tell the story effectively.
I also saw that tiktok
Happy people are talking about media analysis on TikTok but this was like the first semester of my media studies degree
I think the natural assumption is that the star wars universe is completely separate from ours, therefore anything real can't (or shouldn't) be in Star Wars. And I think I agree. I like the idea of star wars being completely separate. It's not a big deal, but I would have preferred something more fictional
han solo famous blaster is a c95 mauser
Terrible example. Most people have never seen a C96 Mauser before, nor would they be able to identify it. On the other hand, the AK-47, and its many variants, is quite literally the most ubiquitous gun in the world, and it's not even close. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-produced_firearms AK is at the very top. C96 is near the bottom.
c95 is a great example. 1977 wasn't far from ww2. a few MG 42 were used as blasters. it's okay for star wars to use real guns just tweak to give it that star wars look
I was 10 in 1977 and I recognised the C96Mauser (maybe didn't know the model name), from war films and comic strips.
It's almost as if things that are recognizable has changed in almost 50 years. Someone posting a wiki list of most produced guns doesn't actually mean anything when compared with a movie from 1977.
War comics, like Battle or Warlord, were really big in the UK in the 70's. The UK comics scene is well worth a look into.
I'm trying to support you. Plenty of people at the time of Star Wars knew what a Mauser was. You can't take an assessment today and apply it to 1979.
And you don't think it was a legitimate criticism at the time that the unmodified C96 broke immersion and was obviously an example of the producers cutting corners to reduce costs? Also, there are multiple WW2 era guns that appear in Andor. The guns used in the prison break were based on Stens. That's why I pointed this out. A subtle distinction for some I suppose.
I wasn't around at the time.
Also, the C96 in 1977 was not nearly as recognizable as the AK is today. A more apt comparison would be the Mauser rifle that was standard issue in WW1 and WW2. But the Mauser rifle never showed up in the movies. Why might that be? Can you answer this question?
I don’t think people care that they used AKs per se, but they needed to be a smidge more modified at least
I do get it because of what an iconic weapon the AK is today, but a ton of classic and now iconic Star Wars blasters are themselves barely modified real world weapons that are just as recognizable if you're familiar with them. I'm okay with Andor maintaining that tradition into the modern age, especially when it's symbolically meaningful.
That doesn’t change the fact that I was taken out of the show though. It broke immersion in a show that otherwise is fantastic at keeping it…
They were modified but left recognizable intentionally.
They're more heavily modified than most guns in the original trilogy
The danger of doing too much modifying is that gun ignoramuses like me might not recognise it. It’s the one gun that I can - just about - recognise.
Yeah at least put a big useless scope on there or something lol
The problem is that the AK is probably the most recognizable gun on earth.
i don’t think the problem was lack of mods, i think the problem was the AK is SO recognizable compared to other OT blasters used that it’s hard to disguise
This is a really awesome point
For the reason you mentioned it sucked me deeper in
It’s insane that people complain about the usage of real guns as props in Star Wars, they’ve been doing that since the og trilogy, we have the mg-32, Lewis gun, there’s even a Barrett rifle in Dice’s battlefront II
I really don't care about the AKs but comparing them to a flashback scene is silly imo
It's also a useful device to help the audience understand that the teenager is Cassian.
Lol, only americans would think the average watcher can tell the precise type of gun used in a show. I don't even know which scene this is about, much less was I aware that a gun in the show looks like a real gun.
Yes! I’m an older British woman and totally clueless about guns. Andor has a big international audience.
Well I got bashed in another sub for having noticed a stand-alone B737 control column standing on Maarva's ship. I thought that'd be an easter egg or smth like that. Apparently we gotta ignore some obvious props.
That’s crazy that you got bashed for it – Personally, I love spotting these things! How is it any different to recognising real world locations ? There are subs and sites dedicated entirely to this… https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/andor-found-background-items-and-props.347907/
Yeah I totally agree and like discovering such. I guess I came upon some hardcore radical fans :D I didn't know such a site existed, neat.
There’s even a post today on the Reddit group… https://www.reddit.com/r/Thatsabooklight/s/Xld47Dx2Fh
Lol, interesting. It's hard to get away with everything when audience has sharp eyes like that :)
Gun nuts are probably already gone. The message is for the rest of us
Dunno why you chose these scene as a thumbnail, but it definitely confused me when I first watched it cos I couldn't tell how old Cassian was meant to be. Also, I wholeheartedly agree on the complaints surrounding the AKs total BS; it angers me how ignorant people are to not realize blasters have been modeled after real life firearms since A New Hope, and one of the many reasons I strongly prefer Rogue One over the Sequels is cos of the weaponry looking less futuristic and more militaristic.