Latest news with #Ghorman
Geek Tyrant
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
ANDOR Season 2 Hid a Secret Darth Maul Easter Egg — GeekTyrant
Weeks after the final season of Andor came to an end, production designer Luke Hull dropped a fun detail from the Star Wars series over on Instagram that flew under nearly everyone's radar. In the final episodes, a good portion of the action takes place on Ghorman, a silk-producing planet known for its native arachnid species, the Ghorlectipods. As it turns out, one of those silk-spinning spiders was hiding a face you might recognize… Darth Maul's. Hull shared a mural of one of these creatures, and if you stare long enough, you'll spot the unmistakable red-and-black, tattooed snarl of the former Sith apprentice subtly embedded in the creature's design. No, this doesn't mean Maul was secretly hanging out on Ghorman. This wasn't setup for some wild crossover. It was just a cool visual nod. As Hull put it, it was 'created just for aesthetic reasons.' But even a simple Easter egg like this is still pretty cool, especially when you remember Maul's own spider-adjacent past. After Obi-Wan famously sliced him in half in The Phantom Menace , Maul survived on Lotho Minor, held together by rage and the Force, and gave himself robotic spider legs, which we saw in The Clone Wars . It's a bizarre, memorable look, and seeing a literal spider with Maul's face painted onto it in Andor is the kind of subtle fan-service. While Maul's end came in the Rebels episode 'Twin Suns' with a final duel against Obi-Wan on Tatooine, Star Wars has kept him alive in other corners of the timeline. His cameo in Solo teased more criminal dealings to come, and Clone Wars Season 7 gave us his brutal control of Mandalore. He's also getting his own animated series: Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord , which will explore the rise of his syndicate and the training of a new apprentice. So while Maul didn't make an appearance in Andor in the traditional sense, his shadow still crept in.
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How ‘Andor' Created an Entirely New Language from Scratch
Across the soundscape of Star Wars, the mosaic of alien languages is as important as John Williams's brass horns. But the Ghorman tongue heard throughout Andor season 2 is unusual, even in a galaxy far, far away. Unlike Jabba's gooey Huttese or R2-D2's whistling bleeps, Ghorman, spoken by the proud Ghor, is one of the most fleshed-out constructed languages (commonly referred to as conlangs) in all of Star Wars. For that, you can say, "Indebe"—that's Ghorman for "thank you," people—to dialect coach and conlang creator Marina Tyndall. "This conlang of Ghorman was loosely inspired by the inventory of terrestrial French," Tyndall explains to me. "It shares over 85 percent of the phonology of French." She adds that while French is the main foundation for Ghorman, the Ghor language does not contain a single word of French. "You might get a flicker of recognition; you catch a syllable that resembles a French syllable," she says. "But it's a false friend." Hailing from London, Tyndall is a dialect coach and constructed-language creator with a growing list of credits in Hollywood. She's applied her craft for movies such as Inferno (2016), Tenet (2020), Death on the Nile (2022), and TV shows like Killing Eve. Since 2016, Tyndall has contributed to the Star Wars franchise, beginning with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and more recently with Andor. In season 1, Tyndall formulated the Kenari and Aldhani languages. For season 2, which concluded in May, she created Ghorman entirely from scratch. "The starting point was that we wanted all of the Ghorman characters to sound approximately alike when speaking English," Tyndall says. It was important that the characters and their actors "share a broad, phonetic, and articulatory base with one another." Tyndall wasn't alone in her process. She's quick to credit Andor creator Tony Gilroy as well as on-set dialect coaches Naomi Todd and Marion Déprez as her biggest collaborators. Producer David Meanti, a native French speaker, also consulted to ensure no word invented for Ghorman could be misconstrued as "playground innuendo." Still, if our world had an academic expert on Ghorman, it would be Tyndall. She constructed the language over a process that began in early summer 2022 until the cameras rolled for Andor season 2 that autumn. That included teaching the language to hundreds of extras for Andor's unforgettable eighth episode, in which the Ghor sing their national anthem before a massacre by the Empire. For Tyndall, the ordeal felt like songwriting, and working with her team like a jam session. "You improvise words and melody and then you figure it out backward," she says. "If you are creating a conlang as an academic exercise, it is best approached as a science. But once you introduce actors and storytelling into the mix, it is very much an art." Tyndall's songwriting approach to Ghorman turned literal when she translated the Ghor's anthem for episode 8. The lyrics were first written in English and performed on a temp track by—who else?—Tony Gilroy, who then sent it all to Tyndall for translation. She jokingly describes the dynamic like she's Bernie Taupin writing for Gilroy's Elton John. "I am one of the privileged few who heard the English original," she brags. (She adds that Gilroy has "actually a very good voice.") "I came into the office one day to see David Meanti and other people singing it to each other," Tyndall says. "It was a very full-throated rendition. I was pleased to see the spirit of Ghorman pride had spread as far as the production office. I know a number of our production personnel could easily do it for karaoke night." While Ghorman has roots in French, it also "contains scrambles, mutations, and back formations of words" from other languages—even from dead ones. "It contains words that have been free-associated out of the semantic cloud of English," says Tyndall. "For example, if the word were ball, we might start throwing words out: throw, arc, bounce. And we make a fusion of anything we've spat out." French wasn't the only lingual flavor that was recognized by Andor's Ghorman-speaking cast. "Among our cast who played the Ghor, one of them said it reminded him of learning Hebrew," Tyndall recalls. Another actor said they sensed a little bit of Breton. "It's a really beautiful illustration of why it's so worth casting multilingual actors," Tyndall says. "If you have access to at least one other language, you've got access to a whole other system of thought and feeling. What we asked these actors to do was huge. I feel like this high-wire act we asked them to do, they did so outstandingly." As for why French is the main influence for Ghorman, those reasons elude even its creator. While she acknowledges parallels between the Ghor's revolt against the Empire and the French resistance during World War II ("It is the story of struggle," she says), Tyndall was not clued in on anything beyond her task of making the language. "The aim was that all the actors we cast had a similar speech style or accent. It could be that there are creative reasons for having landed on a French-speaking cast, but I wasn't party to those reasons." Tyndall does have thoughts on the world-building implications of Ghorman. Applying the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to Star Wars, Tyndall says the Ghorman language reveals insight to how the Ghor think, feel, and see their place in the galaxy. "It's a language of trade," she says. "It will have cross-pollinated with a number of other languages from people with whom the Ghor have traded. We hypothesize it's a rich language, one in which you're able to be quite specific. You might have more than one word for the verb to know. Depending on context, you're claiming to know you are acquainted, whether you have mastered it, and whether you know it in terms of empathy or appreciation." And there's this: The Ghor are sticklers for details, which is handy on the frontlines of a rebellion. "The Ghor are people who communicate in a very efficient but specific way. I imagine they have had to code-shift a lot," Tyndall says. "They have a number of ways of saying the same thing. Because life has been all about trade and peril. These two things have characterized their history in this galaxy—being under threat but having to conduct business at the same time." You Might Also Like Kid Cudi Is All Right 16 Best Shoe Organizers For Storing and Displaying Your Kicks
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The messier, the better': How ‘Andor' created the epic, heart-shattering Ghorman Massacre
For the heart-shattering episode of Andor titled 'Who Are You?,' which brings to screen the Rebellion-galvanizing Ghorman Massacre, editor Yan Miles' mantra was: 'The messier, the better.' What begins as a peaceful protest among the people of Ghorman turns into a slaughter incited by the Empire. Screams pierce through as flares, smoke, and death consume every chaotic, yet controlled frame. As roughly 350 extras fight for their freedom and lives, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) attempts to assassinate Imperial officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough). 'The whole thing unravels in front of him,' Miles tells Gold Derby. 'He's not there to protest. He knows these people, he knows what happened before — but now he becomes the witness. He becomes us. The plaza is a circle. You could call it a clock face. People go around, people go in and out of buildings. Cadets come out. People sing. It was always moving, but Cassian stayed centered.' More from GoldDerby 'Hope for the best, prepare for the worst': 'Overcompensating' breakout Wally Baram on making her acting debut, defiling prop toilet The case of Leslie Abramson vs. Marcia Clark: Ari Graynor and Sarah Paulson on 'defending' their characters In Pixar's 'Elio,' Easter eggs are literally written in the stars - will you be able to spot them all? Lucasfilm In the chaos, Miles creates both emotional and visual clarity — often in a matter of seconds. 'There's a nice example of it where it's less messy,' the editor said. 'There's a [shot of a] group of Ghormans coming through with the flares, going underneath the colony now; we're sort of with them. And then we cut to the guy in the café, the waiter, seeing people walking past behind the glass, all moving in the same direction. Then a profile shot of an oblivious stormtrooper, turning his head and watching the Ghormans go by. It's three shots.' Lucasfilm Another impactful sequence concludes Imperial lackey Syril Karn's (Kyle Soller) arc — all without any lines of dialogue. Amid the mayhem, Miles shifts to slow-motion, an out-of-the-ordinary but fitting stylistic flourish in the otherwise grounded Tony Gilroy-created series. 'He's witnessing it — it's gone beyond the beyond,' Miles said. 'Lasers going past, people being shot, but he's just standing there like he's bulletproof. He's lost in it all. He doesn't care anymore. Everything's just gone.' Then the question becomes for Syril: 'Who are you?' It's posed during his hand-to-hand brawl with Cassian, the man he's spent years chasing. 'In the scene with 'who are you?,' there was a lot of debate on set,' Miles shared. 'Tony wrote it, 'Who are you?' Tony, [director] Janus Metz, Diego, and the people around asked, 'Are there any other versions where Cassian does remember Syril?' We did a cut where he does remember and says, 'It's you,' and then Syril lowers the gun.' Lucasfilm That debate was quickly resolved in post-production. 'I told Tony I have the other version,' Miles said. 'He went, 'No, no, no, no, it is, 'Who are you?' Andor doesn't know this guy. This guy's a nobody. It's the worst thing that could happen to any of us, isn't it? You could be doing something for years and years and one day you wake up and you're like, 'Who the hell am I? What am I doing?' That's life itself. Tony's words were, 'Who are you?'' Gilroy joked to Miles that if he didn't use that line, then he couldn't keep the slow-motion shot of Syril. 'Tony's genius is, if you're going to do something bold — like a slow spin shot or a poetic line — you have to earn it,' Miles added. 'Otherwise, it doesn't belong in this universe.' After Syril's death, his former partner, Dedra, displays startling vulnerability. She is alone and out of control — perhaps her greatest fear. 'Denise did lots of different stuff in that scene, which I was going to show all in one shot,' Miles explained. 'But then I gravitated toward three or four shots. It starts when she raises her head — just the vulnerability to it. In the next shot, she's focused on her neck — which is Syril, what he did to her earlier, the grappling. Then I jumped to where she goes to the wall and does that thing with her hand — there's fear in it, and then she stops it. She controls it. Then I hard cut to her straightening her jacket — imperial, composed. It's the beginning of her demise.' Lucasfilm Miles continued to tell the story of 'Who Are You?' even as the credits rolled. When the Ghorman anthem is first sung, it's like angels singing in the quiet before the storm. But in the aftermath, a lone voice remains. 'We were finishing the episode,' the editor recounted, 'and I had this solo recording from one of the assistants. She sang the anthem right there in the cutting room, on a USB mic. The most amazing voice. I thought, 'Why not put her voice over the credits [as temp music]?' A year later, I watched the episode on Disney+ and there it was. I'd forgotten I'd even left it in. Gave me goosebumps.' Best of GoldDerby Adam Brody, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and the best of our Emmy Comedy Actor interviews Kristen Bell, Tina Fey, Bridget Everett, and the best of our Emmy Comedy Actress interviews 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') Click here to read the full article.
Geek Tyrant
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
ANDOR Creator Tony Gilroy Explains Why the Ghorman Massacre Had to Hit Hard — GeekTyrant
When Andor set its sights on the Ghorman Massacre in Season 2, the goal wasn't to check off a box in Star Wars lore. It was about making viewers sit in the fear, chaos, and brutality that fueled rebellion. In a recent scene breakdown for Variety, series creator Tony Gilroy explained that the Ghorman storyline wasn't treated as just another chapter in the rebellion, it was the centerpiece. 'We knew we were going to be investing very heavily in Ghorman to build a world, a planet, a city like that, at that scale, you have to really use it. We knew that it would be a centerpiece of the show. It's a centerpiece in canon. 'In the five years that I get to curate, it's a critical moment in the history of the rebellion. And yet it's very un-described. There was a mandate and a demand to do it, but there was no information about what it was, which is kind of the best thing for us.' The creative freedom allowed Gilroy and his team to imagine Ghorman as a fully realized society, with its own culture and infrastructure. The massacre unfolds in Palmo Square, a bustling, prosperous plaza built from the ground up by production designer Luke Hull. Everything here was made to serve the story. Gilroy said: 'It's not even just the architecture and the construction. It's designing a place for the story and for what the directors are going to be able to make... Luke Hull gives us this absolutely astonishing little stadium to play in. He fits it into the aesthetic of what we've already built... this is a year-long project.' The episode doesn't rely on spectacle. It's built for immersion. The camera doesn't flinch from the violence, there's no cutaway from the consequences, and it gives you someone to follow through the madness with Cassian. 'We knew that the massacre would be taking place in a town square. We also knew that we didn't want to do anything that looked or felt like anything that we had done before. We also wanted a prosperous planet. We wanted a place that was well off, politically connected, not an easy place for the Empire to take down.' For Diego Luna, that grounded brutality is part of what sets Andor apart from other Star Wars stories. The action has weight. The characters bleed sndf die, snd even something as intimate as a fistfight carries months of preparation. Luna explained: 'Just the fight with Syril was two days and a half. We worked on that fight for, I would say, months. There was many different choreographies we did before. We all agreed on one [version of the scene] that Tony was really happy about and that explained the whole story, that the fight has to tell.' And when it all comes together, Andor doesn't feel like a space opera. It feels like history, or, more accurately, like history repeating itself. 'The beauty of Andor is that you can get so deep that you might forget you're in this galaxy far, far away. You are just in a place that actually exists.' 'That's the strength of that episode, that it's a massacre that feels like personal, it's happening. You're looking at it, and you go like, 'Shit, those are people suffering. Those are people being hurt' You know, that destruction is actually happening.' Andor never wanted the Ghorman Massacre to be a reference, it wanted it to be a reckoning. One that doesn't just build the Rebellion's timeline, but earns it.
Gizmodo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Queerness Wasn't a Consideration in ‘Andor' Season 2's Most Controversial Death
When the heist on Ghorman went wrong on Andor season two, it only took one bad call for tragedy to strike. In the case of rebel leader Cinta Kaz (Varadu Sethu), her life was snuffed out in an instant when a misfire took her down. In a story about the early days of Star Wars Rebels uniting against the Empire, anyone was fair game, and it's something that show creator Tony Gilroy and writer Beau Willimon affirmed in conversation with Vulture, when discussing Cinta's death as one of the franchise's prominent queer characters. Gilroy explained that Cinta's fate was decided on early in the process of scripting Andor season two. 'I pretty much came up with an actuarial table pretty early in the sketching process of season two. There were a couple of actors who did not want to come back and people who were complicated to get back and whatever,' he said. 'I remember calling Varada and saying, 'Hey, I think that we're going to do it this way.' And I think I would really like to have friendly fire. I would like to have the stupidity of accident in the show. I would like to have something really stupid happen. This whole Ghorman thing is such a stupid cock up anyway. And I'm sorry, but you're, you know, you're the roulette. I don't have another piece. I either kill you or Vel and [I] can't kill Faye [Marsay, who played Vel]. And so it's your turn. And I'm not sure if she had Doctor Who at that point or she was in the running, I'm not sure. [But] she wasn't so depressed about it.' When it came to some of the criticisms drawn from the choice to toe the line of falling into the 'bury your gays' trope, Gilroy gave an even-keeled response. 'This fascinates me because you get all this credit and the first season, 'oh my God, you have a natural relationship 'cause, and we were like, 'well, yeah, it's just a relationship.' We're not making a big deal out of it. So then if you don't make a big deal out of it and just treat it like it's a normal thing and kill whoever you wanna kill, then that's a problem all of a sudden.' The choice was aimed at making it feel as real as possible for members of the rebellion, who no matter where they come from all choose to put their lives in the line of fire. 'I would discount the first side if I could get a little bit more on the second. I mean, what more natural way to treat it than to treat it like a real thing? I'm not gonna like start to socially engineer my characters for some chat room.' Willimon interjected, 'Honestly, our mentality was that almost everyone's gonna die. And that's broadcast everywhere in the show, almost every episode, someone's saying like, well, we're never gonna make it, we're never gonna see it.' Every Andor character is aware that they're gambling their mortality for a bigger cause—especially in a series that culminates in the events of Rogue One, where most of the key characters die. 'There needed to be something, something had to go wrong on Ghorman with that heist. We're always thinking about cost.' The importance of Cinta and Vel's relationship was not lost on them. Willimon continued, 'I mean, there is the fact that people did connect emotionally to that relationship. And there's a part of you that goes [its] just pure storyteller catnip.' he reiterated the questions asked in the writing process about losses that would impact the audience the most, 'I mean, we hurt you later with Luthen and Clea, we hurt you with Bix and Cassian–every way that you can feel the pain and the cost of sacrifice, that's what this show is about. And, you know, there were multiple versions of what that heist would be, but the friendly fire thing was quite early on.' The grim reality of Andor is that these are the people in the first wave that pave the way for the rebels we know in the original Star Wars trilogy. Their lives are given more meaning and multitudes, which is what made the show so great through the relationships it built. Willimon understood the emotional one-two punch impact of Cinta's loss shortly after her tender reconciliation with Vel, stating , 'One: you're upset after that beautiful scene that this relationship is not gonna see its way through. Two, you go, 'Damn it, friendly fire? That's the way this badass goes?'' He added more context how even the best laid plans can go awry thanks to ineptitude. 'What does Vel say to the guy who pulled the trigger at the end? 'She was a miracle. You will spend the rest of your life trying to pay for this moment, to earn your keep.' And what you realize is that it is a supremely noble death. If you're not willing to die by friendly fire or get accidentally run over, or [die] in a hail of gunfire in a big battle—they're all equal because really the choice you made from the very beginning is that I'm willing to sacrifice myself, whatever form that takes. And that's the magic trick, which is this shit is gonna happen and you don't know which way you're gonna go. You just know you are gonna go. And that noble decision was made from day one.' Gilroy added, 'But the problem with it is that everybody's going to identify with different people in the show. Everybody in this audience is gonna have their person that they climb in with and maybe it's multiple people, but there's gonna be a lot of people who climb. So if you're queer, you're gonna climb in to this character.' Gilroy pointed out, 'The biggest thing that that does [it] for me is not just the friendly fire or the surprise of it or the tragedy of it, what I really need to do is I'm really driving very much to tell the story of Luthen as a very poor human resources manager. And his failure to recognize the importance of personal relationships and his need to try to break them up is a much larger thing, and a much larger and more important issue to me than whether you think … where is the place where Cinta should die or what, I don't know. So I can't—that's a level of responsibility that comes from abundance, I suppose.'
