Who knew that Jason Bourne and Star Wars had a lot in common? In a recent interview with Total Film, Andor series showrunner Tony Gilroy explained how the Bourne franchise inspired the upcoming television series.
Matt Damon played Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity, a highly skilled former assassin whose amnesia concealed a covert plot within the CIA. It was a great success that inspired numerous sequels and focused on going back to the fundamentals.
Gilroy stated, “I had been trying to get people to make an acoustic action movie because action movies had gotten so bombastic in the ’80s, they were just enormous. So, when Bourne came along, we went way down to nothing.”
“It was about making it real,” Gilroy explained. “Keeping someone you really understand and really care about in a place that you understand the geography of, with stakes, is much more involving than a guy on a train with 15 machine guns and a helicopter coming down. That aesthetic, that idea, does carry over to Andor because we are on the ground with these people so that everything that we do has an intimacy and an acoustic nature to it within the grandeur of Star Wars.”
The showrunner was also the brains and talent behind Rogue One: A Star Wars Story where the character Cassian Andor was first introduced. Sadly, he and his ragtag group of Rebels from all walks of life perished at the hand of the evil Galactic Empire.
The upcoming Andor series tells Cassian’s story from beginning to end. “It’s an adventure story. It’s one man’s odyssey through the center [of the story] and then all these peripheral characters surrounding him and spinning around. I mean, it’s looking to be entertaining. It’s heavy material, heavy things are happening, but it’s an adventure story, too.”
As you can see, Star Wars fans are in for a treat. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll experience some of those same thrilling chases like in the Bourne films.
