Why Andor Owes its Success to a Canceled Star Wars TV Show
Underworld never got the credit it deserved
Andor finally gave Star Wars fans the “Dark and Griddy” treatment they had been asking for since the prequels. However, way back around 2005, Lucas announced he had been working on a live-action TV show that was supposed to be much darker and grittier than the original films
Sam Nicholson, the founder and CEO of Stargate Studios, tells Vanity Fair it was a “groundbreaking test” for the company at the time. “The creative direction was to make it darker and grittier than the original film - Star Wars: Underworld—The Galactic TV Show That Almost Was
This show, for better or worse, never materialized, but its impact is still being felt today
Let’s go back to 2005! The Dark and Gritty Reboot Era
Whether or not you believe Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins had an influence on the next phase of Star Wars going for a darker theme, there’s no denying fans across several franchises wanted the “dark and gritty” reboot treatment.
From PowerRangers to Superman, making properties edgier was indeed a major vibe shift of that era, but not all of these reboots performed as well as the Dark Knight trilogy.
Fans have debated whether or not mainline Star Wars should go in that direction, but the Knights of the Older Republic video game series proved that it worked well.
Dark and Gritty was indeed the direction that Lucas wanted to go with Underworld.
(Vanity Fair) Underworld was set after the events of Revenge of the Sith, with the Empire domineering the galaxy from the capital world of Coruscant, which features prominently in the prequel films. The elite and powerful exist on the surface of what is essentially a planet-size city, but the working class, the poor, and the desperate exist in the layers below. That’s where the series would focus its attention. Hence the name: Underworld.
“It would have been like The Sopranos,” Moore says, one of the writers on Underworld.
Fans felt Lucas was out of touch with them after the Prequels, but here we had alignment between them for once. Sounds like a slam-dunk, so what went wrong?
I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About Budget
Part of the problem was everything about it would have to be created from scratch, at least, according to Kathleen Kennedy who had been a colleague of Lucas for many years. None of the set materials, or backdrops, existed. A familiar sentiment?
“I think part of the reason there was a reluctance to even ever think of Star Wars on television is we have to create everything,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy tells Vanity Fair in a new interview. “Nothing exists. We can’t walk down the street of New York City and start filming. We have to create the world. It’s constant world-building. Every ship, every speeder bike, every bit of costuming, everything has to be created. So it’s a huge expense.”
I also believe budget and other challenges brought on by TV are why the live-action shows don’t always feel very Star Wars-y. Criticize the Sequels all you want but I think we can all agree they were extremely well-produced.
Lucas also came from the Cinema world, but that didn’t stop him from thinking like a movie-maker. He wanted to go big and hit home runs.
“His mandate on the scripts were: ‘Think big. Don’t have any worries. We’ll make it. Budget is no object,’” Moore said. “So we wrote these gigantic pieces.”
It’s interesting to note that Lucas wanted to be ambitious with Underworld after the Prequels which many considered a failure. Even though fans showed up to support the movies financially, Lucas was not blind to the criticism. Was this George continuing to go with his gut in spite of backlash from fans? Or did he also get caught up in the “Dark and Gritty” wave that seemed to infect the rest of Hollywood? The prequels could definitely be dark at times, but they were anything but griddy.
The only problem with his ambition is TV could get expensive fast in a time before the technology was ready. A movie production can take years with all of the special effects and editing, re-shoots, and post-production, but TV doesn’t have that luxury with several 30-minute - 1-hour episodes in a season. It’s just not feasible.
“Imagine an hour’s episode with more digital animation and more visual effects, and more complicated in terms of set design and costume design than a two-hour movie that takes us three years to make, and we have to do that every week. And we only have $5 million to do it.” This was Rick McCallum, Lucas’s producer on the prequels.
Paving The Way
As disappointing as the cancellation was for fans, the stories George created for 40 episodes worth of content did not go to waste. The Clone Wars TV show featured the sublevels of Coruscant several times. Crimelords, the Pykes, bounty hunters, and a Boba Fett origin story all take place in the Clone Wars which were sourced from the cutting room floor of Underworld.
There is also an amazing story arc of Ahsoka escaping to the Coruscant underworld to hide from Tarkin and the clones after she is framed for murder. She goes into hiding in the sublevels, making for an awesome espionage thriller. It also exposes the problems of the Jedi and an increasingly totalitarian Republic.
Not only did Underworld inform content for The Book of Boba Fett, The Clone Wars, Solo, and The Mandalorian, but it also was responsible for the technology that made those shows possible.
It would take about another decade before ILM would develop StageCraft, the vast digital wall that essentially turns simulated backdrops into photorealistic location shoots—all without having to leave the comfort of a Manhattan Beach soundstage. Today, Bluff helps lead the VFX department on The Mandalorian, and he was one of the key people who brought that technology to life.
There also was test footage for Underworld which can help you get an idea of the production value and tone the show might have had. The scene is a bustling cityscape on Coruscant very reminiscent of the Attack of the Clones rendition. The special effects and sound effects were very Lucasian which I think is one of the main differences. I’m sure the special effects would have been pretty revolutionary for a TV show of 2009.
Conclusion
I don’t blame anyone for feeling a little salty about the cancelation of UnderWorld. The dark and gritty concept, the stories about crime syndicates, gangs, smugglers, bounty hunters, and imperial entanglements would have been very cool to see. But on the bright side, if you were someone like myself who really enjoyed watching the Clone Wars TV show, you can clearly see how the show benefited from these stories that were imported from the Underworld scripts.
And on the technology side, who knows if we ever would have gotten the Mandalorian, Obi-Wan, Boba Fett, or even Andor without Lucas and ILM trailblazing with Stagecraft that would enable those shows.