Andor Season 2

Andor is a Star Wars/Disney+ television series, set several years before the events of Episode IV: A New Hope. Starring Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, its first season came out in 2022, along with an excellent score composed by Nicholas Britell. Season 2 of Andor has a trailer which prominently features country rocker Steve Earle’s 2004 song “The Revolution Starts Now.” A series depicting the characters involved in creating the Rebel Alliance—the primary threat to the Galactic Empire during the original Star Wars films—Andor is quite literally a film about the start of the primary revolution in the Star Wars canon.

Clever song choice.

The song’s throbbing 2-note guitar riff comes in immediately as the trailer starts. A laser blast is synched to the first several downbeats of the music. All this shooting sets up the title character’s first line of dialogue at 0:07: “We’re in a war.” This is one of only three lines of dialogue in this trailer, the nearly complete absence of dialogue making this trailer feel more like a music video than a trailer.

At 0:15 drums come in, and we transition into the third verse of Earle’s song. As he sings “...the world had turned around” at 0:23, we see Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) turning around to face the camera.

At 0:32, the music cuts out after Earle delivers the title hook from his song “The Revolution Starts Now,” just as Andor triggers an explosion while calmly walking away from the blast. The musical silence continues from 0:34-0:39 in order for the audience to focus in on a wide shot of the Death Star under construction.

At 0:48 we jump to Steve Earle’s chorus and we have a nice moment at 0:58 when a room full of dancing people all raise their arms on the beat, edited to appear as though they are dancing to the same song we’re hearing. There are some great visual cuts and moments of action on screen synched to the beat of the music from 1:00-1:20. My favourite is at 1:07, when the soldier pulls down his helmet’s visor on beat with the music.

We have one more cut to musical silence at 1:22 to leave space for the third and final line of dialogue in the trailer, from Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). Then, at 1:26 over the Andor title card, we return to the intro from “The Revolution Starts Now.” This is an unusual choice, to use a musical intro to end a trailer. It allows this guitar riff to bookend the trailer nicely, but additionally, having a trailer end with music ready to begin again is a fitting choice, since television storylines are cyclical, with new journeys/challenges/adventures in each new episode.

Overall the Andor Season 2 trailer is unique in that it features very little sound design or dialogue: the music takes up nearly all the sonic space throughout most of the trailer. The song’s title is a meta reference for the story of the series, and so it works well to give the song such a prominent role.

Andor will be streaming April 22 on Disney+.

— Jack Hui Litster