Obi-Wan Kenobi gives us a dreary kind of deja vu
"Part III" of the Disney Plus spinoff feels stitched together from known Star Wars tropes
TV Reviews Obi-Wan Kenobi
I had to do one thing after I finished the third episode of Disney+’s latest franchise-expanding (padding?) series Obi-Wan Kenobi. I hit play on Star Wars, the groundbreaking and Oscar-winning 1977 film that started it all. Don’t worry, I didn’t watch thew whole thing. I was just curious to replay the one moment when Obi-Wan (played then by Alec Guinness) finally comes face to face with Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones). In my head, that moment has always suggested that the elder Jedi and his once young and promising Padawan hadn’t met since a fateful fight that had finally torn them asunder, one audiences finally saw on the big screen in the fiery finale for 2005’s Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge Of The Sith.
In any case, I wanted to hear once again the line Vader spews at his old mentor: “Obi-Wan, we meet again at last,” he says. “The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but a learner. Now I am the master.” Even in that first film (“Chapter IV” in the saga), you got the sense this confrontation was decades in the making, that there was a festering sense of resentment that had grown over the years and hadn’t ever been allowed to bloom in each other’s presence. Obi-Wan Kenobi, of course, seemingly retcons this. Or merely allows Vader’s line to be slightly less constricting; I guess he could have been suggesting they’d been tracing that circle intermittently for years. Namely: they had met again after their volcanic row. Maybe in some mining planet where, by sheer chance, a kidnapped Leia was also involved.
If I got stuck on that line from the OG film while watching Obi-Wan (played now by Ewan McGregor) fighting off Darth Vader (in characteristic Frankenstein manner, played by Hayden Christensen and voiced still by James Earl Jones), it is because I felt like I was having a dreary kind of deja vu. Had we not seen these two already come head to head in similar manner? Not just in A New Hope (where Obi-Wan remained stoic but determined) but in Revenge Of The Sith (where flames played just as central a visual role). Then I remembered that, in many ways, that moment between the two, recycled and remixed and retconned (maybe) as it was, felt in keeping with the spirit of these latest Lucasfilm spinoffs. What else do they offer other than glimmers of known storylines twisted just ever so slightly so as to suggest a vast galaxy that remains, in fact, quite limited in scope?
Because, let’s face it, this episode had arguably the most quintessential Star Wars plot imaginable: How do we get off this planet?
Obi-Wan and young Leia may have been able to arrive at Mapuzo after escaping Reva (Moses Ingram, continuing to find ways to shade Third Sister’s relentless fixation on Obi-Wan into an engrossing characterization), but now they must find a way to get smuggled out by a willing pilot. This includes a scene in which Obi-Wan must confound Stormtroopers looking for him. Sound familiar? Of course it does. So much so that I worried we’d get something silly like a glimpse or a mention of a young Han Solo that would serve as nothing more than an entertaining Easter egg. Thankfully, we were spared. Instead, we got yet another story about needing to misdirect the Empire (and Darth Vader himself!) so as to guarantee safe passage elsewhere, this time with the help of an Empire defector, Imperial captain (Indira Varma).
If I’m being overly harsh on the episode’s plot, it’s because it felt stitched together from known Star Wars tropes, something I’d hoped Obi-Wan Kenobi could wisely avoid. Then again, once I saw that its central narrative was going to revolve around young Leia and involve Darth Vader, I knew any probing character study of a Jedi in exile coping with how to build a life would always be watered down. That is, I expected the sort of moments that would be in those novelized paperback stories that helped expand the Star Wars world only to feel expendable except to diehard fans who relished just living in that universe.
Which is not to say there weren’t any moments worth relishing: The quiet ones between McGregor and Blair as their characters bond over their shared sense of being orphans offered something new about the life of a Jedi that’s seldom explored—and may give us hints as to why the series opened with a scene of young Padawans needing to fend for themselves!
It makes sense that Obi-Wan Kenobi would force its central character to yet again risk losing a young child to the Dark Side. If we are to revisit him in the trappings of a Disney+ series and bring back the always magnetic McGregor, who here manages to play broken resilience with beguiling ease, we might as well twist the knife of the mistakes he knows he’s made and we know he fears he’ll make again.
Whether the show can finally let go of what was and become something if not entirely new then entirely more engrossing is yet to be determined. There’s only so many cat-and-mouse episodes we can watch before hoping we’ll be shown a story taking place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away that maybe we haven’t yet seen before.
Stray observations
- Honestly, I kind of miss Obi-Wan’s stealth outfits. Sure, his Jedi wardrobe is fine, but there was something about seeing Ewan in very stylish “I’m a lowly worker, but make it fashion” attire that intrigued me. Now we just get him in his signature cape.
- All my quibbles aside, we have to admit that Darth Vader’s breathing is one of the most iconic sound effects in late twentieth-century cinema, yes? Hearing it again, with its mix of menace and vulnerability, was a treat, even if I remain baffled by Christensen’s choice to let himself be swallowed in that costume while letting Jones mostly calibrate his performance. But maybe there’s a payoff in later episodes for that bit of (arguable) stunt casting?
- How much is the focus on Leia here a way to make up for the way Rise Of Skywalker had to jettison what was rumored to be a heavily Carrie Fisher-centric episode? (To her credit, young Vivien Lyra Blair is perfectly cast, giving you a sense of the quippy, no-nonsense “princess” Leia will grow up to become).
- “What have you become?” “I am what you made me.” Sometimes all I need is deliciously campy dialogue delivered earnestly to really feel like I’m in the middle of the Skywalker saga.
397 Comments
i liked this one best of the 3 so far. i posted this as a late comment on the last one, but i’m formally going to drop my theory that obi wan is gonna jedi mind trick leia into forgetting this adventure, clearing up any canon shenanigans.
I’m also going to drop a theory. They made a point of mentioning Obi-Wan had a brother and it’s become apparent that these shows are (in part) being used as a way to make the choices in the ST less jarring (e.g. The Bad Batch and The Mandalorian have both introduced the idea that the Empire is interested in messing around with cloning) sooooo… If (hypothetically) Obi-Wan had a niece who then went on to marry one of Palpatine’s clones and have a daughter, that combination of powerful Jedi Master and Sith Lord genes might help to explain why some random scavenger kid is so naturally attuned to the Force.
The Obi Wan brother thing was just a quick shout-out to the abandoned intention to have Owen and Obi Wan be brothers, which was eventually just changed to, “Well, Obi Wan has A brother…”
They were half-brothers, for one brief moment back in the day, when some SW trading cards (that I think came free with Wonder Bread, if memory serves) tagged Owen and Ben as such..
Oh it wasnt the wonder bread cards, it was that 90’s star wars card game..
Ha, yup.
It was a line in the original ROTJ novelization that Lucas wrote.
Also Ewan McGreggor has a brother. He flies (flew?) jets in the RAF, and his callsign is (was?) Obi-Two.
If this follows previously established rules, Jedi mind tricks only work on the weak minded, not other force sensitive beings. Leia shouldn’t be susceptible.
i mean yeah but there’s an easy ‘i need you to clear your mind and agree to this for both of our sakes’ workaround. wouldn’t be any more or less sloppy than anything else that’s happened in the last batch of star wars content.i don’t think he’s gonna just randomly pull it on her, i think they’ll make it a sad scene.
Maybe he’ll give her a ‘Superman II’ kiss, and she’ll forget.
ewww
Don’t forget random junk dealers and heads off criminal organizations are immune.
“once I saw that its central narrative was going to revolve around young Leia…”
I wish I knew this going into the show. I would have avoided it entirely.
Not too late for you to bail. We will try to get over it.
There’s another line that I wish people would remember. Return of the Jedi:
“Obi-Wan once thought as you do.”
That indicates Obi-Wan took another stab at reaching Anakin, and failed. That hasn’t happened yet.
Being too attached to headcanon is a problem. Seek help.
I am a lifelong Star Wars fan, but I have never been able to get over how linguistically awkward the phrase “When I left you I was but a learner.” is. Sometimes I really think George Lucas has never conversed with actual humans. Like…the word “student” exists. “Learner” is clumsy as shit.
“When I left you, I was but a learner. Now, I am the one that imparts information to others!”
“Only an imparter of evil, Generic!”
‘It appears the absorber of information has now become the purveyor of it!’
I spread misinformation, my master. I propagate unverifiable facts, my master.
“WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY DEFINES LEARNER AS…”
My guess is “student” sounded a bit too juvenile for Vader, but they never found a better synonym than “learner”, which I agree is awkward. “Apprentice” would have been suitable, but I don’t think they had that part of the lore worked out yet.
I think you’re onto something because Obi Wan calls Vader a former pupil as well. They were actively trying to avoid student.
George can come up with concepts and is good at world building.but writing…um no. There’s a reason both TESB and ROTJ are considered better than ANH. While George came up with the stories, he didn’t write any of the scripts alone. If only by the time of the prequels, someone said “George, write down the story and we’ll have others write the scripts.”
Harrison Ford outright said to him in the middle of shooting “You can write this shit, but you can’t say it!”
I’ve never heard people refer to ROTJ as better than ANH before now. The consensus ranking of the OT seems to be ESB, ANH, ROTJ.I’m the weirdo who prefers ANH to ESB because it’s a self-contained story, though.
I’ll accept that ranking,
I prefer ANH, as well, for that and many other reasons.
ROTJ is definitely not considered better than ANH.
I’ll concede that point.
Thanks!
Hardly anyone considers ROTJ better than A New Hope.
His ego was too big at that point. Deep down he knew that the 2nd and 3rd are considered better written and would never let that happen again.It is the same reason that he won’t release the original cut of Star Wars, that way his ex-wife’s better cut can be seen.
While I think ANH is better than ROTJ, a missing part of your point is that TESB and ROTJ were also directed by someone other than Lucas. That made a big difference.
His dialogue was horrible throughout 1-3 and 4-7. Just awful.
And sadly, they made the deliberate choice to mimic it in The Mandalorian and Boba Fett.
I mean.. the guy uses words like “younglings” so…
Just be glad we got learner. A few decades later it would have been Padawan.
Well, Anakin wasn’t a padawan for their whole relationship. He became a knight. Though that stupid counsel denied him the rank of master.
I saw a video on Youtube that defended his dialogues. While it did not change my mind enough to make me think they were good, it did gave me a bit of perspective and made me understand the method behind the madness. No, they’re not realistic, but they’re not meant to be. They’re meant to be functional, expositional, and easy to understand, even for a child. Most of it sounds clunky but a huge chunk of it is memorable and quotable.“When I left you, I was only a student” sounds more like something someone would say, but it’s also easier to forget.
Man To Man With Dean Learner was a really great follow-up to Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace — you get to see Richard Ayoade’s character in all his nasty, Trump-esque glory. The Steve Pising episode is especially hilarious XD
I mean, the prequel’s dialog kind of confirms this.
My theory is that Lucas watched a bunch of Kurosawa movies with awkwardly translated subtitles and tried to replicate that tone with his dialogue.
He was going for the weird old-timey vibe. Also he’s not good at dialogue.
The line that always jumped out at me was during the battle of Hoth, General Veers asks one of the AT-AT crew the distance to the power generator, and dude answers “something number decimal something number”. Has anyone ever said that?
There’s a comment somewhere on the ‘Making of Star Wars’ documentary from one of the three leads, “We kept threatening to tie George up and make him read his own dialog.”
Yeah, he sucks at it.
I thought he got it wrong in the article. I always thought he said “when i left you I was but to learn”
George Lucas has obviously written some bad dialogue. But I have to defend “learner” in this context, because written that way, the dialogue sounds more like a conversation between space wizards, and not regular people.
“George! You can type this shit, but you sure can’t say it! Move your mouth when you’re typing!” – Harrison Ford.
“George you can write this shit but have you ever tried to say it?”
Funny. Not that I’m disagreeing, but I work in education and for at least a decade here there has been a forced shift from referring to pupils as pupils, students or candidates towards instead calling them learners. Obviously this is long after Lucas was writing (and he was indeed terrible with dialogue).
I still giggle when I hear any dialogue including the word “younglings”.Even something like “You killed all the younglings”, “The younglings must be killed”, etc – and I should not be giggling when hearing those specific lines.
I thought these were coming out on Friday’s now
It was initially supposed to premier last Wednesday, but they pushed it to Friday not long before the premier (perhaps to take advantage of Memorial Day weekend in the US?). Then everyone assumed it would simply be a Friday show, but it appears going forward the regular release day was moved back to Wednesday.
Tarkin’s comments about Kenobi don’t make much sense now either.
“Your last encounter with him was a few years ago. Surely he must be dead by now.”
This is 10 years out from New Hope, that still counts as a few! And hey if this is the last time they run into each other it could be “Well, last time you ran into him you force dragged him over jagged flaming glass, he’s probably dead.”
I think GP added that first part for comedic effect (to highlight how dumb it is that Tarkin would assume Obi Wan is dead in ANH given what’s happening in the series now). Tarkin just says, “Surely he must be dead by now”:And yeah, maybe they’ll square that circle by having Kenobi so beat up by the end of the series that the Empire—and Tarkin, specifically—just assumes he must have died, but as of now it’s just one more thing that doesn’t make much sense.
Yes! I guess my joke wasn’t too good since it needed explaining.
I assume, and even thought it happen sooner than later with the “dragging threw flames” stuff, that Obi-Wan will get the absolute shit kicked out of him by Vader before this series is over.
So far as to perhaps explain his weathered appearance in ANH. Like, I’m expecting him to get his ass thoroughly kicked by Vader here. Dude left him as a vegetable and burning in flames. I’d be pissed too.
My guess is they’ll meet one more time in this series, and if Disney renews it again, at least one more meeting closer to the beginning of episode IV. At least Ewan is down for more in the future.
Going to just reply to you in one comment:
I don’t know if it’s still canon but in the EU it’s explained that Vader did realize Leia was Force sensitive on the Death Star when she was able to resist his interrogation techniques.
If Vader loses to Obi-Wan, I don’t think he’d run to Tarkin and say, “So he kicked my ass again.” Actually, Vader could be keeping this as closely guarded from the Emperor and his confidants as much as possible, which would explain why the Stormtroopers were told to just be on the lookout for a Jedi and not given any sort of picture.
All those random people already saw an alert going out for Kenobi last episode though. Feels like that information would already be out there by the time Vader arrives.
Those random people were specifically criminals who were a part of Flea’s network of contacts and Reva sent that alert out on her own behind the back of the rest of the Inquisitors. It’s unlikely she’s going to be pulling that shit now that Vader is involved and it’s been established that Vader and the Emperor try to keep one another out of the loop as much as possible.
Pretty sure those were bounty hunters as opposed to a tiny, hard-scrabble mining town.
Every scumbag on the planet had a picture of him within minutes but I guess the Empire doesn’t have very good technology
They kind of half covered themselves with the line something like ‘nothing gets off this planet, data is blocked’ etc. when ObiWan landed in the 2nd episode on that planet and they had locked down all flights at the end besides that ‘automated transport’ etc..
Lucasfilm , this is your damage control guy right here ^^
my understanding is Palpatine cut Vader quite a bit of slack when it came to hunting down Jedi. He kept loose tabs on things and I wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up gloating about Kenobi, but mostly it was Vader’s purview.
He and Yoda were Jedi Masters, and there did not appear to be many of those. If I wanted to look up a picture of who was Archbishop of Canterbury ten years ago, I sure could. Why doesn’t literally everyone already know what they look like (including, um, Luke)?
Quite a lot of the timeframes in ANH that were hinted at just don’t make sense with the prequels. They more hint at the Empire being around for about 40+ years rather than about 20ish.
You frankly have to just ignore it.
And of course, in just ten more years the galaxy will go from the Inquisitors openly hunting for Jedi, to everyone having forgotten they ever existed.
Yeah, the inquisitors make it even worse. Before, at least it took twenty whole years for people to forget that the Jedi had a giant government sponsored temple in the capital and were routinely sent out to do things like negotiate tax policy.
Not everyone. Luke had no idea, but Owen kept it from him. Dodonna and Tarkin knew. Han knew; just didn’t believe in it. Same with Motti.
I’ll grant that it’s clunky writing on Lucas’ part once the prequels get involved, but Filoni & co’s explanation that there were about 10,000 Jedi around Order 66 and only 100 or less survived works for me. Even at their peak of 10,000, that’s an incredibly small fraction of our OWN planet’s population (we’re talking decimals of a percent), let alone an entire galaxy with millions if not billions of inhabited systems.
People also overestimate how much information is freely passed around in the galaxy. There’s a good chance backwater planets know very little about anything. Not to mention that the empire’s propaganda machine turned the Jedi into traitors and most people bought into it. Others who lived in backwater worlds were happy to have some order for a change and likely never thought twice about it.
Exactly. Can’t recall the exact moment, but there’s a character in the first season of Mandalorian that says something like “Empire, New Republic, what’s the difference?” Depending on where you live, essentially there isn’t one. (Or even if you’re in a Core System like Alderaan, you still might not know any better, as evidenced by 10-year-old Leia’s vague belief that the Empire “is supposed to help us.”)
I’ve never met one, but I did believe that there are people called Navy Seals.
That’s a pretty good comparison— about 0.00003% of our population are Navy Seals. There are plenty of people on this planet who don’t have access to the same resources you and I do, and have never heard of Navy Seals. There also isn’t a fascist global government (knock on wood!) who slaughtered 99% of the Navy Seals decades ago, scrubbed historical records of Navy Seals, and spread a global disinformation campaign against Navy Seals. 🙂
There are people who haven’t seen Clerks?!
We forgot about Obama pretty fast after the Trump presidency, no?
Your sad devotion to that ancient politician hasn’t fixed the economy! 🙂
They are space Nazis so you have to assume their propaganda game is on point but yeah a decade to turn them into a myth is pretty far fetched. It’s just very clear that the first movies vague world building kinda doesn’t work post prequels, spin offs and everything in between
Yeah, the prequels already lined up pretty poorly with the OT. And, yes, we nitpicked that endlessly at the time.This is more of the same. The bonus is it’s at least already better than the vast majority of the PT, which makes the inconsistencies go down smoother.
I have grown far less critical of the prequels as time goes on.
I feel I always have to defend this — going solely off the information given in ANH, the Empire could only have been around for 20 years.“For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times, before the Empire.”“A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi. He betrayed and murdered your father.”Luke is 19, Luke’s father was a Jedi, Luke’s father cannot have died more than 19 years and 9 months earlier than the Battle of Yavin.The destruction of the Jedi was always tied to the rise of the Empire, which must have happened 20 years earlier. Revenge of the Sith makes this explicit — as in the Empire literally forms the same week as Luke is born — but that was always part of the Star Wars mythos.ANH is internally inconsistent when other characters talk about Force users as some ancient myth.
“You seem to bump into him like constantly! Surely he must be dead by now!”“Don’t underestimate the power of the fan service!”
That assumes that Tarkin knows.
Nobody knows . . . what that Tarkin knows . . .
They’re really going out of their way to fuck with elements established in ANH. How about this one:
“Years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars; now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire.”Not:“Years ago you rescued me when I got kidnapped. I need your help again to fight the Empire.”The show is still more coherent than Mando and Fett, but it’s rapidly become obvious that someone yet again is pushing hard for including Things You Know, at the expense of narrative integrity. Hey, it’s Darth Vader! Hey, it’s lightsabers! Hey, it’s [whatever other Things You Know they shove into parts 4-6 of this show]!They had a chance to tell a story that still had the flavor of Star Wars without being “We have a checklist of elements that have to be in all Star Wars media and we’re going to cram them in there whether they make for a good story or not.”
She’s a child, all it takes is one wave of the hand and a “too bad you’ll forget about these last two weeks” and the next time Leia talks to Obi-wan she thinks its for the first time, 10 years later
For reasons I shouldn’t have to explain, let’s hope they don’t do that, because that’s extremely stupid both for in-universe and narrative reasons.
This is why I didn’t like Rogue One. Too much “hey remember this and that? Oh shit y’all it’s Darth Vader!” With paper thin character support.
There is a chance the series ends with Kenobi doing something to make the Empire think he’s probably dead.
I wonder if they’re ever going to offer some lame explanation of why Vader never sensed anything about Leia, despite encountering her several times.
Well, Luke was a young adult. And a trained Jedi.Leia had no idea what her real name was and no memory of her family. There was nothing in her to sense. An untrained little girl with some “sensitivity” to the force was probably not uncommon.
Yeah, but she was an adult in Star Wars when he spent a ton of time screwing around with her head with the evil floating basketball droid. And it was implied that they had an encountered each other before during her time as a senator.
Well she wasn’t wearing a bra since they didn’t exist in space that could throw anybody off their game.
I think when Luke had started his training (with Yoda, I mean) Vader was aware that a “Son of Skywalker” existed.
the new canon Vader comics had him hire Boba Fett to figure out who destroyed the Death Star, and that’s how he found out Luke was a Skywalker.
Yes. Between ANH and Empire Boba Fett figures out that the pilot who blew up the Death Star is named “Skywalker” and Vader connects the dots.
So that’s what he’s doing in that pod/chamber/thing. I bet he enjoys coloring as well.
I’ve been reading comics a long time, and I can’t fathom why someone would turn them into a youtube video.
Except… yeah, kids with Force sensitivity kind of are uncommon, since the Empire is actively out hunting for them, and the resistance (the Path, or whatever) has to smuggle them to safety. That does kind of imply that there aren’t a ton of them.
“I’m a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic miss…”
“You are PART of the REBEL ALLIANCE and…hey, wait…is that Force I smell on you?”
And I am certain that Vader had come across force sensitive people, but rather than just murdering them without the infrastructure of the Jedi they are just left alone. Leia was a senator so that “kept her safe,” but with the Senate being dissolved she probably would have been killed if Luke and Han had not come and got her.
Nope. This show will only create plot holes, not fill them in.
He’s tremendously self-absorbed.
I’m baffled that Vader and Obi-Wan actually met, but that they actually crossed lightsabers too. I figured at best in this series they’d either see each other or be close enough to sense each other. Basically one day after learning Anakin is still alive Kenobi is being dragged across a fire by him.
A fire which fails to kill him after a solid 30 seconds.
I spent most of their fight wondering if Vader was there at all, because I was primed by Obi-wan’s vision of Christiansen-as-Sith earlier in the episode. “I mean, they’re not going to tell us that this hugely important meeting happened in part III of some spinoff TV show, are they?”
Yeah, I thought they were intentionally keeping them from fighting with ANH in mind. Though I guess it’s nice to think how by then Obi Wan becomes zen enough to know he’ll be more powerful dead.
Better than the second episode, but it’s still just so silly. The Stormtroopers are searching for a Jedi but their superiors never showed them a photo of said Jedi? How did they ever plan to find him? And Vader just lets Obi Wan get away because he somehow can’t figure out how to go around or through some flames on the ground? And don’t even get me started on how Indira Varma’s character turned around and went back through the secret tunnel but never ran into Reva and then somehow Reva, who is never in any sort of hurry, also made it to the other end before Baby Leia… I’m still watching because it’s Star Wars but some of these scenes are so logically inconsistent that it’s like no one ever bothered to put any thought into them at all.
My assumption is Reva figured out where the tunnel was headed and got to the end another way. Sure, why not keep following them, but in this instance I will cut them the tiniest bit of slack.More than anything, I am so tired of desert planets. So so very tired.
Sure, she could have somehow (and extremely quickly) figured out where the tunnel was headed. Or the tunnel could have had branches or whatever. But when the show doesn’t present these possibilities, I’m keen to take them at face value.
This desert planet had some foliage though!
What’s to take a face value? It’s a tunnel that goes straight to the port. Very easy to Reva to figure out the destination and get there first.
It’s a shithole mining settlement. Where is it going to go except the spaceport or the bar? The tunnel is useful to disguise that people are moving around while hidden, but once you know they are moving around it’s not hard to figure out that the fugitive child is not headed for the bar.
Semi-arid planet!
Well, this desert had scrub and trees, at least!
What, you got something against sand?
It’s pretty heavily implied that the tunnel is a direct path. Because if it wasn’t, Tala (or whatever Indira Varmer’s character name is) would probably have given the 10-year old some kind of directions.
What’s crazy is that she gave Leia zero identifying information about which pilot she was supposed to go with. I assumed that was because it was going to be yet another cameo, but no.
Exactly. It’s absolute shit writing, because it all is motivated by what they want to happen in the plot, rather than what actual, sentient beings would do in the situation.
Don’t like desert planets? Is it because sand is coarse and rough and irritating….. and it gets EVERYWHERE…..
Then it’s your lucky day, because this was our first-ever glimpse of a chapparal planet!
but this is the show that REQUIRES desert planets. You can’t hate it for that.
And they’re obviously shooting around LA, so the options are limited, but they should have avoided the Joshua Trees. They’re just too obviously from Star Trek.
Because I also scoffed at Reva I’m gonna go easy on the other two.Vader made it very clear to his Inquisitors he wanted Obi Wan to himself.It wasn’t the flames he balked at it was being reminded how he once had it better and was completely changed by the dark side.
Reva didn’t come down the tunnel. She went another way. Not hard to figure out where the tunnel was going and Reva can move fast. The tunnel also might have been a longer path in order to keep it hidden.Vader let Obi Wan get away because Vader literally LET Obi Wan get away.
Ok you’re right. I went back and watched again and Reva takes a few steps into the tunnel then stops and smirks like she figured something out. Still unclear how exactly she got to the port so quickly but that’s just nitpicking (kind of like how Vader appeared out of nowhere in front of Obi Wan.)
I’m guessing it has something to do with parkour.
Ok, Vader let Obi-Wan get away. Why?
Same reason he told the stormtrooper to “Bring him to me”, instead of just Force-pulling Obi-Wan over like he’d been doing all the rest of the episode.
Because the plot needed him to. It’s the worst reason for characters to do anything.
The show could easily have had Obi Wan barely scrambling away with his life and legitimately escaping Vader.They made this choice instead, to have Vader intentionally let him go. It wasn’t a mistake or a cheat or being forced to by the demands of the plot. It was on purpose.
Oh, I’m not saying it was a mistake. No moments that big happen by accident, even on shitty indie movies. This is a multimillion dollar per episode television show from the largest entertainment company on the planet.
That’s what makes it all the more insane that they actually went that route… because it makes no damn sense. It has zero character consistency. Vader travels across the galaxy, tortures or murders half a town to lure Kenobi out, chases him through the discount backlot sand dunes, and speechifies for five minutes of screen time about how much he wants to kill Kenobi… then just lets him go because he can’t be arsed to walk a few feet around a fire that probably can’t even hurt him anyways?
That’s why I say it was done for the plot- because letting Kenobi go sure doesn’t make any sense for the character of Vader. And because this is episode 3, and they have three more episodes and we all know Obi-Wan is going to fight Vader again in the last episode.
I disagree. I think it makes perfect sense. Vader is trying to make Kenobi suffer. And he wants to prolong that suffering. Vader thinks he’s holding all the cards so there’s no danger in letting Obi Wan get away temporarily.But by giving him a moment’s respite, he’s only dragging out Obi Wan’s fear and misery in his mind.Perfectly tracks with Vader’s MO, IMO. (even if Vader was kind of improvising as he went.)
None of that is in the text- you’re having to explain it for yourself, and it IS in direct contradiction to what Vader said he wanted only a minute or two ago. Even if we allow that it makes sense for Vader to let him go to “prolong his suffering” (I’d argue it’s a hell of a lot easier to make someone suffer when you have them in a torture chamber rather than running around doing around whatever they want), it’d be nice if the show bothered to let us know that:
Stormtrooper: Shall we chase them, Lord Vader?
Vader: No, I have a better idea.That’s cliched crap, but its still better than making the audience assume his motivation.
If Vader wanted him to suffer like he directly said he wants, why wouldn’t he take him alive and torture him? Letting him go ‘drag out his fear and misery’ just doesn’t work. You clearly really want it to work, but it doesn’t. It’s bad writing.
If you’re going to make Vader purposely let his quarry go because it would be fun (which is ridiculous for a character threatening to kill the person he puts in charge of finding him if that person fails), they need to shoot it in a less ambiguous way.Online debate over ‘This scene made no sense vs. Vader purposely let him go for shits and giggles’ is not a positive outcome for a series like this.Why would he make the decision to let him go after Kenobi’s ally creates the fire ‘barrier’?
I figured he had some kind of force vision that they would meet again someday when he was destined to defeat him, or that a part of him just didn’t want to kill his old friend, which he’d have to do if he captured him.
Right. Heck, we’d already seen Vader extinguish those flames once. I’m at this point giving the show some benefit of the doubt and thinking he allowed Obi Wan to escape for reasons yet to be revealed.
I don’t think the reasons are complex. He was just screwing with Obi Wan. It seemed like he just thought, in the moment, “fuck it, this is fun, let’s keep it going.”
Maybe he let Obi Wan get away. If that’s the case it needed a line like “No. Let him go,” or something like that. The issue with these scenes is they didn’t do a good job establishing the how and why of how the action unfolded; they were poorly directed. Regardless, it’s not immediately intuitive that Vader should let Obi Wan escape when the entire series has spent its runtime up to now firmly establishing that the hunt for the remaining Jedi, and especially Obi Wan, has been ruthless and brutally efficient and single-mindedly focused on wiping them out. Besides: if Vader really wanted to make Kenobi suffer, to torture him, capture would’ve still been a better option.
At the very least Reva should have parkoured to her destination.
Silly is best descriptor of this series. The writing is atrocious both from a narrative standpoint and the ridiculous dialogue these actors are often saddled with. For every semi-natural exchange of dialog that could elicit some emotion, there’s ten instances of ridiculous sentences that no actor could deliver, which are mostly foisted on the Empire characters, even Vader himself. There all cartoonishly evil. Vader confronts Obi for the first time since Obi cut off a bunch of his limbs and left him to die and one of the few lines he says is, “you should’ve killed me when you had the chance?” The phrase said by a million awful action movie bad guys from time immeriorium? Could they really not come up with any dialogue that would actually be compelling about these two characters’ long history of experience with each other? Not just, “I’m super evil now,” one liners?And, yeah, so many baffling scenes that stretch credulity or just seem pointless. Multiple chases where adults can’t catch a 10 year old, shot in a manner that highlights how ridiculous it is that adults can’t catch a 10 year old. Reva’s long parkour sequence, that you would think was building to an consecutional encounter, but nope. Now we have characters somehow passing each other in a tunnel and, WTF with the Vader stuff? Apparently we are to believe that a small area of fire (that Vader and every Storm Troopers’ armor shouldn’t even be touched by), that can easily be walked around in a few seconds, resulted in Vader (and his soldiers) being like, “Well, you re-started the fire that I just started so… well played. I’ll leave now, even though you’re a few yards aways from me, and fire can’t hurt me, and I literally just used the force to put the fire out a second ago, and we can all just walk around the fire and capture you, but, damn you, you got away.”
And don’t forget the laser gate that Obi Wan struggled with, when it looked like they could have easily walk around it.
Yep, that pretty much hits all my complaints about this episode.
Man, I wanted this to be good, I really did. But Disney is just being so unbelievably lazy with these series when it comes to writing and staging them. That kind of thing would be embarrassing in a fan film. In a xx-million dollar per episode legacy sequel series to arguably the biggest franchise of all time? It’s just pathetic.
So many of the action scenes are missing any sense of urgency. The bad guys just walk around and the good guys often sit and chat even when danger is imminent. It’s a prequel so we know that Vader isn’t going to kill Obi Wan, but the show makes it seem like Vader knows that too and just decides not to try all that hard. A well executed show should still make the viewer worry about the characters when they are in danger.
The whole thing is written plot first, character last. Totally backwards. It’s frustrating.
The Stormtroopers are searching for a Jedi but their superiors never
showed them a photo of said Jedi? How did they ever plan to find him?
If there’s one thing that’s pretty consistent in Star Wars, its that Stormtroopers are pretty damn shitty at their jobs.
As others have pointed out, Reva is smart enough to know they’re going to a “port” for a ship and get there the fast way.But man, the bit with the fire. Absolutely horrible. They went from Obi-Wan turning every which way to escape Vader but he’s always right there to a line of fire that he could clearly walk around (or probably through) making him stand there. Cut to robot slowly dragging Obi away. Back to Vader staring. Back to robot SLOWLY dragging Obi away. Back to Vader…STARING. Back to Obi…It was not just stupid. It was painfully stupid. I hate the way movies have cuts every half second, but this was the very time to do something like that. Boom! Fire. Vader steps back. Loader droid swoops in on a fast moving loader platform and scoops Obi up in one motion. Vader starts to move. Loader speeds away. 5 cuts in about 7 seconds. Move on.
Or at that red laser gate. I get that his Jedi powers are a little rusty, but he couldn’t “force” the guards “we are not who you are looking for” or something?And then they are trying to find out how to get through the gate, he shoots it with his blaster, but they do an aerial shot and it shows that there was space on either end of the gate, that they could have easily walked around; especially after he had already killed all the other Stormtroopers. I’m not going to criticize it too much, I keep watching it, it’s entertaining and it gives us star wars, which we need to remind ourselves, is completely fictional and made up. Could the story be better in some ways? Sure, but it’s sci-fi. It’s supposed to be a little campy and silly at times.
One of the basic tenets of being a Jedi is that you always pay your tools and you never force-jump over subway ticket machines.
I’m waiting patiently for Chewy or Hans Solo to show up as a cameo. I lost a $10 bet that Alden Ehrenreich would be the “pilot”. I still think he’s going to show up though…
I mean the better bet is when Liam Neeson shows up but sure.
They’ve hinted at it EVERY episode so far I’m stunned none of these reviews have at all mentioned it.
Yeah, the editing and construction of all of these sequences is so weird. In episode 2 where leia is still laying on the ground after falling however many stories as Obi-wan comes around the corner. How did he get down there so quick? Reva running along the rooftops makes it feel like she’s going to get there to join in the fight, but then just doesn’t? Why not just have her see the gunfire and leave the scene? It’s all like the Leia forest chase where they awkwardly chase her around only to just catch her anyway.You could easily do the same scenes or convey the same (or more) information in a way that isn’t awkward, confusing or weird, but the show seems determined to do the opposite. Sure you can assume that Obi-wan used the force to jump down(which we sort of know you can do? Jedi can jump really high and all), or that Reva guessed where the tunnel went and took a faster route, but the editing choices don’t convey that, and there’s a difference between overly holding the audience’s hand, and leaving them to guess what’s going on. They cut on Reva looking down the tunnel, that cut implies she goes down the tunnel; if you want to convey she goes a different way, show her turning away from it as the last shot instead of zooming down it. It’s that easy.
Vader can’t go aroung the same flames he EXTINGUISHED seconds earlier with the Force. I really hate how they forget or remember about the Force form one scene to another.. or in the same scene in this case.Cheers
I didn’t see any mention of the worst plot hole in the episode — the fact that the full resources available to the Empire couldn’t track down and interdict an automated cargo vessel with a predetermined schedule and destination before it lands anywhere.To make matters worse, Reva instead heads to an entirely different planet before putting out the order to send out a bunch of probe droids to various places within the destination system Obi Wan might have landed, even though any mining operation overseen by the Empire would undoubtedly know where every inbound cargo vessel was coming from.It’s just so sloppy. No imagination. It’s so sad that the Star Wars TV shows haven’t been able to replicate the success of the Marvel TV shows. I really want to enjoy this show, but like the others, it’s just meh.
SW is such a big property i’m sure the most ambitious/backstabbing/incompetent studio execs are falling over each other to be part of it and the result is a crap show.
Yes that’s certainly a plot hole. Star Wars has always played fast and loose with what kind of technology is available to the characters at any given time to suit the plot.
They can sense each other, of course.
Yeah, I don’t quite get Darth Vader’s seemingly random they-work-now- but-not-now-in-this-case abilities to creating/putting fires and force grabbing people from large/small distances.
Kind of similar to the way Kenobi forgets that he can wave his hand and ‘force’ people to think what he wants them to think, for example, “I am not the Jedi you’re looking for.”
So it’s Imperial Captain Tara, not just Imperial Captain, and also Varma’s not in that picture of the Inquisitors, she’s on the mining planet and that picture is on the Inquisitor’s silly giant skyscraper on the water planet.Oh and also also, what do you mean Christensen’s choice to let himself be swallowed by the costume? You think he was planning on turning it down? All just “No, sorry Deb, but I think Vader would walk around in a t-shirt for this scene. No helmet thanks, that was really more of a David and James thing, you know?”
Darth Vader, chilling after hours in a bathrobe.
I take it the reviewer means “Why’d Hayden take this role if he can’t be seen or heard?” So far in the context of the story, it doesn’t seem to make a difference, except as an insider thing for fans to know. But I think worrying about this is premature because I’m sure he will unmask at some point (they always do).
“Why’d Hayden take this role if he can’t be seen or heard?” $$$
And we got a brief glimpse of Hayden when Obi-Wan was hallucinating before they were picked up by Hans Moleman.
wonder who Obi’s brother will be …..Annie???, with this writing level it could be Lando.!
Anyone else see a resemblance ?
It’s crazy how “My father had two hands” actually does narrow down (quite a bit) the candidates for Papa Kenobi in the Star Wars universe.
Obi Wan’s dad was wise to hand over his baby, lest his face the wrath of the Jedi’s signature (only?) move?
“Your father’s lightsaber. An elegant weapon, from a more civilized age.”A more civilized age in which we constantly hacked off the limbs of anyone who got in our way.
“Preferably droids because that keeps things PG.”
You know, civilized in a samurai/seppuku kind of way!
A more civilized age in which we constantly hacked off the limbs of anyone who got in our way.Now, let’s go to a Mos Eisley cantina where I can hack off someone’s arm.
Eh, being a Kennedy project I was amazed that the first 2 eps were decent. I do not have high expectations.
You realize that – as the head of Lucasfilm – literally everything from the Disney era has been a Kennedy project right?
Right but without Filoni/Favreau on board it’s a Kennedy project, which means more dross like the sequel series.
You realize those Favreau/Filoni shows were also Kennedy projects, too, right?And that at least half of them (BOBF) completely fucking sucked?
Honestly, most of The Mandalorian fucking sucked too. Three, maybe four solid episodes that weren’t rehashed bullshit? And I know people laud Filoni for his storytelling chops, but god does he drag out the actual story. Two seasons + 2 episodes and I still don’t know what The Mandalorian is really about other than Baby Yoda. Presumably the reunification of Mandalore? Who knows. We get 2 minutes of dialogue per episode and 38 minutes of people walking slowly but purposefully, so we’re about 2 episodes into the actual story of a normal show.
I agree, but every time I “dare” to criticize the Mandalorian, I get no end of grief because of it. I think the show is generally “okay.” It is occasionally (but not consistently!) good. It is occasionally bad.On balance, it’s….fine. But it’s so very, very overrated. And the show really should have ended at Season 2.They stupidly walked back the emotional arc in those Boba Fett episodes. Now what’s left? Mandalorian politics? Jeeze, how boring is THAT going to be?
Mando season one has some terrible dialogue and really repetitive use of tropes. Wasn’t it like 3 of the first 4 eps had a gunshot fake out (Bang! The shooter is actually the shootee) in the climactic moment?
Sadly, even Obi Wan has gone to that well! But, yeah, Mando’s dialogue is often so bad it feels like placeholders Favreau wrote into his first draft that he forgot to go back and change.The writing is just astonishingly lazy across the board. Completely flat dialogue, barely-there characterizations and wildly simplistic storytelling. But, hey, cute puppet!
Oh right, Obi-Wan has used that too. The only installment in season 1 of Mando that I would call a good episode of television was the finale. Liked season 2 a lot more (minus the ice spiders ep), still felt like most scripts needed one more pass by the writers.
“sTAr WarS sElLs ITsElF.”
The best thing it has going for it is it’s one of the few shows we watch as a family. I know Favreau says it’s an homage to shows like Bonanza or Have Gun Will Travel, but itreminds me most of all those “family viewing” Glen A. Larson TV shows I grew up with in the 70s/80s. And those were bad too. Ha.
Ha, wow, that’s a great comparison! And I watched a lot of those shows, too (not quite all of them.) As a kid, they were great, but I tried watching a Knight Rider recently-ish for nostalgia’s sake and couldn’t make it past the five minute mark. SW has to thread a difficult needle of being for “everyone”, which, at its best, it accomplishes with flying colors. But Mando is just so….meh.
“ I think the show is generally ‘okay.’ It is occasionally (but not consistently!) good. It is occasionally bad.”Someone seems to be rewriting history here. I came late to the Star Wars shows so I watched all of them within the past couple of years and read the reviews/comments here, and Mando season 1 reviews are full of your comments saying that every episode of the show is bad.It was hilarious to read your comments as the season went on, knowing how well regarded that show (particularly the first season) was received. It was pretty obvious you thought that everyone would end up agreeing with you, and even when the show had gotten to the point where it was being praised your comments doubled-down on “the writing is bad, the acting is bad, the storytelling is bad, this is a terrible show”, etc.Come one. At least be consistent in your bad takes. Stick to your guns – be proud to go down with your sinking ship.
Hum…someone’s feeling pedantic today, aren’t they? There’s a very obvious difference between the Filoni shows and everything that he hasn’t worked on.
I really liked Book of Boba Fett so whatever, find me another show with Boba Fett riding a Rancor and Amy Sedaris getting an action scene and I’ll fucking love that too.
I’m not here to tell you what you can and can’t like. but your Kennedy comment was dumb and haven’t we had enough of the KK bashing over the past five or six years?KK is just as involved in the recent SW content you like as the content you don’t.
“I’m not here to tell you what you can and can’t like”Well you seem to be doing just that.
“haven’t we had enough of the KK bashing over the past five or six years?”Everything she’s done without Filoni or Favreau has been hot garbage, so no, not at all.“KK is just as involved in the recent SW content you like as the content you don’t.”Right but just like Lucas without Marcia and Kasden, her idea of good Star Wars is really lousy.So sorry, no, my Kennedy comment is correct and you can stop telling me what I like and don’t like, thanks!
For all Filoni knows about Star Wars, he is a supremely boring storyteller. I do think it should come as no surprise that the best episode of mando is the one directed by Taika.
Right but without Filoni/Favreau on board it’s a Kennedy project, which means more dross like the sequel series.Kennedy would’ve had as much to do with the day-to-day production of Obi-Wan as she did with The Mandalorian. Which is to say, probably not much because she’s busy running Lucasfilm.I believe Joby Harold and Deborah Chow were in charge of Obi-Wan.
And…it’s not great!
One thing I’ve definitely liked about the Disney era is that they make sure Darth Vader is the scariest, most brutal motherfucker in the room every time he shows up.
When he dragged Obi-Wan through the fire using the Force, I was like “JESUS!!!”
Indeed. God bless ‘em for that. And, though this is a Disney+ show, it’s been surprisingly brutal and violent. Probably as far as we’ll ever see the franchise go. Certainly on the small screen.
That stormtrooper who sliced his entire body in half on the laser barrier says “hi”. (Well, “AAAAAAAUG–” but also hi.)
That’s nice.
That was less graphic that the sliced-off arm in the Mos Eisley bar in ANH.
I loved how Obi Wan had to disabled the laser gate. Dude, it’s for cars, just… you know, walk around it.
Someone pointed out to me maybe he was intending on driving that vehicle through it before the reinforcements arrived. Or maybe it’s videogame rules and he can’t stray off from the main path, who knows
I think we can stop saying “for a Disney+ Show” and stop acting like it’s some purity ring family channel. It has a decent amount of violence on it already. It’s just not going to be a Tarantino Bloodbath.
Seriously. Darth Vader was presented as a scary, relentless, ruthless, unstoppable engine of malice, while Obi-Wan was pretty much pissing himself in fear. A hell of a sequence. And then the whole flaming glass Force drag torture moment really reinforced the darkness between the former friends/master & Padawan…
The Vader scenes were amazing – scary, relentless, ruthless, unstoppable engine of malice is a great way to sum it up… and then they ruined it all with ridiculous deus ex machina.
That’s actually been the WORST part for me. Vader was a foot soldier in ANH. A high ranking gestapo officer at best. Someone who got openly mocked by his peers. Yes he force choked the guy but Tarkin ordered him to stop. Vader took orders. The Prequels created this mythic version of the character, and something like Rogue One hammered the Vader-is-so-badass-omg-lightsabers-I-just-creamed-my-TPM-undies nail in the coffin. The coolest thing Vader ever did was march onto the Tantive IV, after sending in his stormtroopers to secure the the ship, and put his hands on his hips. We knew EXACTLY who he was just from that. We didn’t need this horror movie villain version of the character. So fucking boring.
That wasn’t even the most brutal thing! When he’s choking out that dad for no reason, the son runs out, and he snaps his fucking neck! WOW. ON A DISNEY SHOW TOO. Vader is literally just walking around town randomly killing people.
No evidence they’re random. My assumption was he could sense who was aiding the Path, and was targeting them to draw out Obi-Wan.
Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader kills children more than anyone else
He’s known for being an equal opportunity murderer. He goes for not just the men, but the women, and the children too.
He actually LOVES killing children, that’s his favourite thing. Hates sand tho. Fuckin HATES sand. And pepper, no wait, that’s tigers.
Now children who live in sand…
Hates them most of all.
That’s why one moment of murder (of his master) in ROTJ totally redeems him and he ends up in the light side of the force. :0)
… and just snapping necks of innocent townies just to try and draw Kenobi out of hiding.
We missed out by not having James Earl Jones saying “Kenobi! Come out and play!”
Him grabbing a rando then snapping the neck of said rando’s son when he called out for his dad was more silly than menacing.
He was still a young man low to mid 30s at this point and just angry as hell. Even Palpatine in the comics was like ‘dude just chill’. He’s alot less murdery by the time a new hope comes around.
Goes from young Sex Pistols-type punk dude to older Fugazi-type punk dude, you’re sayin?
It’s gotta partially be because his dick has been burned off right? Vader is just a nearly 7 foot tall psychic Incel with a laser sword raging across the universe
I did enjoy that final scene of Rogue One where his arrival on the Tantive IV was shot like a horror movie, rebel soldiers cowering like Leatherface was breaking down their cabin door with a chainsaw.
That’s easily my favorite sequence from all of the movies.
That’s solid payback for Obi-Wan leaving Vader in flames on Mustafar. Fair is fair.
…and then puts the fire out, because he’s going to do that shit again.
Yeah the fact that they had him straight up breaks a kids neck just a few minutes before that kinda shocked me in a good way.
Yeah, that bit was pretty intense. I’m sure they’ve explained it somewhere but… why can’t force users fly? They can lift up X-Wings etc. If I was them I’d be scooting about all over the place.Would make a bit of a mockery of the whole “higher ground” thing I suppose.
Right? If I was a Jedi, I’d be using the Force to launch me in the air and cushion my landing, like Iron Man’s repulsors.
Are people just enjoying this ironically? I’m truly baffled that anyone is enjoying this absolute steaming dog turd of a show. The fight scenes, chase scenes, and special effects are Hercules/Xena level bad, but without an ounce of charm.I was laughing so hard at any scene where young Leia is very, very slowly getting away while Obi Wan (or the baddies) chase after her like a parent pretending to lumber after a toddler for giggles. Like these MFers have the force, light sabers, and whatever insane technology is available in this universe but they can’t catch a child in a foot race? LOL.Or, hey, I’m going to do unnecessary and badly-filmed parkour down this empty alley.Christ this is some of the worst television I have ever seen in my life.It’s also just completely unnecessary. We already know how all this turns out. Of course Leia doesn’t die. Of course they don’t find Luke. What is even the point?
Star Wars has stumbled into the same issue as Star Trek, and to some extent, Doctor Who- chasing an audience via nostalgia. Having to carefully parse the new stuff so it fits into the old. Which often leaves fans thinking not so much of the story that unfolds but the quality of the retcon. Okay, Vader and Obi-wan? How does that change what seems like their first meeting since the flames of mount doom in Star Wars? So much time around Leia, how does he not sense that she- like Luke- is his child? Lines will be dropped in, bits written in. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just go forward? Vader’s toast, Snidely Emperorlash is toast, the journeys of the original trilogy heroes are over- and we have a nice stopping place for their saga. Move. On. Instead, the Mandalorian, Obi-Wan, etc- picking first the original trilogy’s bones now the prequels.Bah.
engrossing characterization? C’mon. This stuff was all super corny. Let’s not pretend there was some amazing acting going on here. There was grim, workmanlike trudging.
I am not entirely sure if you are saying “Yes, watch this!” or not.I had to google the word retcon and was unsuprised to find out it is a brand new way to say something that was probably said in ancient Greece at most any stage where ancient Greek coins were expected before the performance.I believe you might be saying you want your old Star Wars and you want it to be brand new.(um, it is)
I’m starting to suspect the entire genesis of this show was someone realizing “Vader never did finish that line, ‘I sense something, a presence I’ve not felt since…”.
Too bad, because the obvious trailoff is “since I got my ass kicked into a volcano.” He’s embarrassed! And despite his boastful attitude to Obi-Wan later, I like to think he’s a little unnerved. Why is Obi-Wan here? Why now? That also explains why their fight is so tame: Vader is unsure what’s going on and is trying to figure it out.
“a presence I’ve not felt since…that ‘80’s Night’ on Dantooine, that way out of control…”
ha. I buy it!
“Dreary Kind Of Deja Vu” Did David Crosby put out a new album?
♫ Ouuuuur Death Star/Is a very very very fine Death StarWith two droids in the hall/And sensors on the walls
Doncha know we’re flying/on the Tattooine Express/we’re taking twelve parsecs or less…all aboard!
Helplessly hoping his landspeeder hovers nearby
Repairing a droid
Gasping at glimpses of R2’s recording, he runs
Wishing he could fly
Only to meet with a weird old Jedi-iiiiii-i
There is one JediThere’s R2 bloopingThere’s C3-PO andThere’s the Fooooooorce around them
So you ask me “Ani why?”“What have you become?”So I look at you and cry,“I am what you made me!”
I’m shocked that a multi-billion dollar company can do for an epic showdown is shoot in a rock quarry during Doctor Who’s off week.
A few caveats:1) Yes, this show is breaking canon and we knew that the moment they confirmed Vader was going to appear. Leia’s appearance also would appear to break canon, as ANH implies that they are strangers or at least it renders Leia’s message puzzling since she speaks to Obi Wan only as an acquaintance of her father’s, not as the old war buddies they now are.2) Yes, the plotting is a bit circular at this point, basically two episodes of “We need to get off this planet.)That said, I thought this episode was pretty darn terrific and the confrontation with Vader and Obi Wan, while canon-breaking, was extremely well-done. As was Vader’s utter brutality and ruthlessness in the scenes leading up to it. It’s great to see Vader put back in his right spot spot as a truly terrifying villain, not the cuddly pop cultural mainstay he has become.Canon, shmanon. If the shows are this good, I honestly don’t care if they run roughshod over existing star wars lore anymore. There are far worse sins.
Leia is familiar enough with Obi-Wan to instantly get excited at Luke’s mention of Ben, sitting up and saying “Ben? Ben Kenobi!?” so I mean, it’s not a huge stretch to think the message was meant to be more diplomatic and less personal.
You don’t feel even mildly insulted that they can’t be bothered to make any of it work logically? If so, I’m actually kind of envious of you.
Define “logically”, though. On paper, I was very irked by the idea they were doing an Obi Wan/Vader confrontation, as it explicitly violates what’s established in the first film. Yeah, that’s annoying. But, on the show’s own terms, it’s working quite nicely. And it would be far from the first sequel (or prequel) in filmed history to do a little creative re-writing of history. There are worse things a show can do. On its own terms, the show is entertaining. So breaking a little continuity feels like small potatoes.Lucas had dozens of inconsistencies between the PT and the OT. Unfortunately, since the PT was mostly crap, those “errors” felt all the more glaring and annoying. Ultimately, fealty to canon shouldn’t be the overriding concern when making a show. Making a decent show should be.
I honestly don’t mind them breaking with established canon. There’s no real need for every story in a universe to be totally constrained by every story told up until that point, unless you’re relying on those other stories to serve as a narrative foundation for yours, in which case it becomes more difficult for audiences to accept, because the audience now doesn’t know what the rules are: can I use the previous story as the basis for my understanding of this world, or not?
In this show, it’s not that big a deal; they’re still using the main important events of the Skywalker saga (Order 66, the fall of the Republic, Luke/Leia’s secret childhoods, etc.) even if they’re changing things like the fact that Ben and Leia met before (there is no way she wouldn’t remember being abducted and travelling to multiple planets, unless they introduce some Force mind-wipe bullshit), or the meaning of Vader’s line about “last we met” or whatever. Those to me are relatively unimportant details that, while iconic from my childhood, also don’t need to constrain the narrative forever. If they can tell a good story while having Vader meet Ben between ROTS and ANH, even though we all assumed Mustafar was the last time they met, sure, fine.
But.This show, on its own terms, is often (not always, but often) clumsily written and directed. (Not nearly as bad as Mando and Fett, of course!) Here’s an example from this episode that’s indicative of how characters say things that are distractingly odd, when Leia and Ben are on the automated ship at the beginning.
LEIA: Can’t you make this thing go any faster?BEN: It’s a trade route, Leia. I’m not in control of it.“This thing” is clearly the ship, so why did he say “trade route” instead of “automated ship”? And even if she had said something that made “trade route” a sensible response, “I’m not in control of it” would be a weird thing to say about a static concept like a trade route rather than something that someone could potentially control the movement of, like a ship. As I watched that exchange, I thought “Huh? What? That’s a weird way to say that.” I knew what they meant but it was still distracting.
Or stuff like, Obi-wan kills four stormtroopers at the checkpoint, then when three stormtroopers (and an unarmored officer) show up a minute later, he immediately surrenders even though his blaster skills are clearly on point and he could easily have taken out the three essentially motionless targets. If you use cinematic language to show us something (Obi-wan can easily take out several stormtroopers) and then immediately show him not being able to take out several stormtroopers without establishing why there’s a distinction between the two situations, it immediately makes me go “What? Why? Just shoot them!”
Individually it’s easy to dismiss a few of these things but they keep happening. The fire scene at the end was almost comical: while I appreciated Vader wanting to burn Ben and make him suffer (which makes perfect sense considering what happened to Anakin, and even though it clearly wasn’t Ben’s fault that Anakin burned on Mustafar, Anakin has clearly been blaming him for it for the last decade), the physical mechanics of it were almost silly. Obi-wan is literally lying in fire for the better part of a minute and all that happens is his cloak gets scorched in a few places. Then after Tala reignites the fire, apparently somehow this means that the stormtroopers (much less Vader) are incapable of just, you know… running 50 feet to the side to go around it. Like, we saw how far the flammable ore spilled, but suddenly it’s an insurmountable obstacle?I can ignore a handful of these things, especially when the storytelling/dialogue is otherwise excellent or so much fun that you can handwave things away. But the show isn’t pulling it off.
Totally agree. I think I’d probably focus less on the issues with canon, even if they’d still be a little annoying, if the show did a better job of being internally consistent.
But it doesn’t. It’s all writing to moments rather than letting moments organically happen. Obi-Wan doesn’t shoot the second group of stormtroopers because if he did, Tala wouldn’t be able to shoot them and reveal herself dramatically. Obi-Wan doesn’t get burned in the fire because that’d be really inconvenient for the rest of the series, but they definitely want the image and the callback. Vader doesn’t just Pull him through when Tala reignites the ore because they want to preserve the second confrontation later in the series. Tala doesn’t tell Leia anything about the tunnel she’s running in, or who she’s meeting at the end of it, because they want Reva to show up at the end. It’s the kind of stuff that would get picked apart in Screenwriting 101.
A child playing with Star Wars figures creates better stories.
For me, most of this stuff while annoying would be forgivable if we were learning anything new about any of the characters, the world, the force, or… literally anything. 3 episodes in I still don’t get why they needed to tell this story, especially since it’s obviously so high budget. I’d happily read a few issues of this as a comic, but the writing is so lacking in creativity (but shout out to the fantastic, world class art department) I can barely make it through these episodes.
What I really found distracting was Obi-Wan saying to Leia “your Dad” and not “your Father”. 😀
Hah, I noticed that too. Nobody speaking in that accent should ever say the word “dad.”
“without establishing why there’s a distinction between the two situations”The wide angle shot establishes why: when the second group pulls up both Obi-Wan *and* Leia are in the open. There’s no way Obi-Wan can get both of them to cover, and the new troopers just have to fire everywhere. With the first group they were moving around Freck’s truck and even then Obi-Wan nearly lost Leia.
I’m glad you’re enjoying it, I really am. You’re able to overlook/don’t see the flaws I do. As dirtside mentions below/above (stupid Kinja nesting system), I find a lot of problems with the show’s writing and staging, which often ranges from odd to totally inept.
Fair!
“it explicitly violates what’s established in the first film”In ANH, Vader says “when I left” not “when we last met”. When you left your ex-wife is when you got divorced, not when you went back to court to argue for more visitation with the kids.
You don’t feel even mildly insulted that they can’t be bothered to make any of it work logically? If so, I’m actually kind of envious of you.I think I might be a little more accepting of it because I grew up watching classic Doctor Who, which was always effing with the canon and creating new canon which would then be effed with by someone else later on. I always loved the book The Discontinuity Guide where they tried making sense of the classic series.
I guess I’m wanting to hold this to a higher level for two reasons: one, its just not the 60s and 70s any more, and audiences actually expect some continuity. Two, these shows are supposed to be being run by superfans–you’d think they’d at least try to make things work.
Other then being stronger and faster, Anakin hasn’t changed much. He still blames everyone else for his misdeeds and what happened to him. He’s embraced the Empires fascists view. As did Reva, even the the actress in real life is crying racism with the fans.
Star Wars is nothing but recycled tropes. The original three (well, two and a half) did it in clever and somewhat subversive ways, but ever since, everything with the Star Wars name attached hasn’t been much more than rote mythological storytelling, increasingly trapped by its own self-referential canon. It’s all weak and boring and predictable, and not just because even Luke’s eventual Beowulf-inspired demise is predicated on Campell’s hero’s journey, but because it’s just all boring dreck designed to sell itself over and over again. My Little Pony took more creatively adventurous risks than Star Wars.And now I’m done channeling the spirit of Harlan Ellison.
It’s well known that Hayden Christensen found himself instinctively making lightsaber noises during the prequels. So I gotta wonder if he found himself making Vader-breathing noises during this production.
India Virma, wasn’t she the lady from Star Wars Battlefield 2 playing a defector as well?
No, that was Janina Gavankar. (Also it’s Battlefront 2, not Battlefield 2.) Indira Varma was Ellaria Sand on Game of Thrones.
Damn it I didn’t catch that autocorrect error, and ah thanks I seem to have mixed up the names a bit.
She was also Vorenus’ wife on Rome, that’s what I recognized her from.
i mostly know her from a detective series i watched on netflix years back. something about a sinister pharmaceutical company with the big bad being the evil german from Wonder Woman. Pretty decent and i think showed off her acting chops better than GoT did altho ymmv
They could redub Vader’s voice with updated more fitting dialogue during Vader’s saber battle with Kenobi in ANH, since we can’t see Vader’s face behind the helmet.
This episode is as close to an A grade as any episode of SW tv has yet come.
I would agree with that, though a B- is still the closest any SW TV has come to an A grade if nothing else did better.
Rewatched Rogue One about a week ago, it’s a fantastic film and was a wonderful vehicle to cover backstory in the SW universe. This series is basically the opposite, it all feels unnecessary and forced. If there is a reason why the plot is going in circles, it’s because there literally isn’t a compelling story to be told. Original stories, compelling ones, like Rogue One don’t feel so redundant…Also…the production is garbage, the sets look and feel cheap. Darth Vader is held at bay by a brush fire? Come on…
This series has the same root problem that Solo and The Book of Boba Fett had. It’s Disney expanding on a story that doesn’t need to be expanded, just because they had a character they liked. They were so happy that they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.I don’t think that Obi-Wan meeting Leia and Vader before ANH improves any character involved, and Reva continues to feel like a main character that should have remained a secondary one at best (I don’t think Ingram succeeds in shading her, although it isn’t her fault).
Agreed – like, there’s No way we get a satisfying motivation/backstory for Reva that ends with, “which is why she definitely Should have joined the Empire – aka the people that killed all her friends/fellow jedi-padawan-students? – and hurt strangers across the galaxy, including specifically Obi-Wan”, right?
… and that backstory has to take into account that Obi-Wan is already feeling responsible for Darth Vader, and that it would be a pretty bad look if both villains of your show had the exact same motivation.
That Reva backstory is being saved for a Reva-centric show, I guarantee it. It’d be another excuse to get Darth Vader back into a show, and that’d be reason enough for Disney.
I have to wonder at this point whether they have had James Earl Jones record hours of random dialogue so they have the capability to stitch it into whatever they like once he passes. The man is 91. We can’t keep asking him to voice Vader forever.
They almost certainly have a high fidelity recording of him reading through a tone and sound dictionary as well as the rights to train machine learning models on it for future synthesis. Presumably in exchange for a giant bag of money they handed over to Jones.
His voice already sounds like it was given an AI de-aging pass, because it sounds better than it did in Rogue One (or the prequels for that matter). They might have had him record dialogue but it’s just as likely they’ve got a voice generator in the works, maybe that just takes the inflections from another actor like some kind of audio motion capturing. (I have no idea if that software is a thing yet, but I have zero doubt that it’s being worked on it its not.)
inquisitors don’t always join willingly. A lot of them are tortured, broken, and brainwashed into joining the ranks as a means of survival and the empire happily discards them. That’s why they don’t even use their names.
I’m assuming that’s like, expanded universe/’legend’ canon or information? Because the recent mainline efforts in creating backstory have included Rey Palpatine-Skywalker, you know? Edit: just to emphasize, I’m saying your possible story arch is probably too good
All Inquisitors are canon as are their backstories since it’s all been a product of Disney. A lot of it is expanded on Jedi Fallen Order. The Second Sister was a padawan called Trilla who was captured and tortured until she broke and took to the dark side, turning into an inquisitor. She placed a lot of hate on her former master for running away and leaving her.The Grand Inquisitor is one of the few exceptions. he was turned by Palpatine prior to order 66 and he was one of the reasons why Anakin and the 501st was able to just waltz in and kill everyone.
The Second Sister was a padawan called Trilla who was captured and tortured until she broke and took to the dark side, turning into an inquisitor. She placed a lot of hate on her former master for running away and leaving her.Why do these characters need to be tortured and broken to join the dark side, when in the OT the dark side is a thing you “give in” to, by not controlling your anger, hatred etc? What happened to the classic Star Wars message of “hate in and of itself is bad, and if you act through hate, the dark side wins?”In the OT it seemed to be much hard to stay on the light side, and becoming a dark side force user was basically the default?
This would be an extremely cool backstory for her. If we ever find out her backstory (hopefully not in her own D+ series) I hope theyre allowed to go this dark
“If you don’t think it makes sense for an Inquisitor to have joined willingly, just assume they were tortured and brainwashed into it” – I think this is called “kicking the suspension of disbelief down the road”?
Kind of worried that the fire will serve as some sort of back story for why Kenobi is “old” in a New Hope
I’m a firm believer in the idea that if you can come up with a good enough story, that outweighs any idea that the story “didn’t need to be expanded on.” They’re just not doing a good enough job here: far too much clumsy writing and direction, and bringing in elements like Leia and Vader that are really obviously just because it’s a Thing You Know.
Yeah, I agree. I think there could have been a really good story to tell here. They’re just not telling it.
Um, it’s definitely not a “Thing You Know” given the entire premise of the show is the confrontation between Vader and Obi-Wan. The story itself is solid: it explores Obi-Wan’s grief, trauma, and failure during his exile while developing an entirely new relationship between two characters, being Leia and Obi-Wan, and expanding upon the relationship between Vader and Obi-Wan given their past history. Leia’s kidnapping is literally the only thing that would cause him to leave his exile and that aligns with the show’s theme that the Jedi code of helping others makes them vulnerable in a hostile world.
Yup. Breaking Bad really didn’t need a prequel series…
Nobody would succeed in “shading” Reva with godawful dialogue the Inquisitors are saddled with. Aslo, Kang is so wildly bad as the 5th Brother I don’t understand how people aren’t bringing that up. They’re all stuck with cartoonishly bad dialogue, but they’re on totally different tones, which is an issue with the director. It feels like none of the Inquisitor actors know where they are supposed to be tonally, and the awful dialogue is doing them no favors. And, is Reva a main character at this point? She could be if it was written well, or any of the Inquisitors for that matter, but instead Leia and Vader are being shoehorned into this series, logic be damned. There’s nothing narratively they can do to make any Inquisitor feel like a threat when they have Vader directly involved. It’s just pandering, dumb writing.
Yep. I never bothered to know his name, but yes, the 5th Brother guy is bad, too, maybe even worse than Reva
I feel like “expended on a story that didn’t need to be expanded” could apply to Rogue One as well. I just don’t think Disney knows what to do with this IP. The fact The Mandalorian works at all is a mini miracle, but it is so separate from the rest of what’s going on.
I hate that trolls are attacking Ingrahm online but her performance is astonishingly bad. Her acting is thankfully not Gina Carano bad but she is really really bad
I just… cannot disagree enough with the people saying this interferes with a canon that didnt actually exist. Obi-Wan left Anakin to die on that lava shore. There was absolutely zero reason for him to think he was still alive. Empire already retconned this shit, it’s not like retconning and fixing plot points is new to Star Wars. This was kick-ass, and Vader’s rampage through town was terrifying, as was his “payback” to Obi-Wan. Vader is terrifying.
Freck was played by Zach Braff, apparently.love the end credits music and really enjoying the show, but i didn’t like it when Vader killed that boy. that was a bit bleak for me.
Yeah I coulda sworn it was Seth Rogan. Had to look it up and was baffled by Braff.Braffled.
I absolutely assumed it was Seth Rogen – that voice! – but good job Zach Braff then!
Yeah, I felt the same. I just got done telling my wife that Vader has never really personally killed “innocents” for no reason and then that kid’s neck was snapped. He has killed younglings but they were potential Jedi, has killed Rebels firing on him, has killed Imperial officers that failed him, Alderaan was Tarkin’s decision, so I found it kind of off that he just killed someone like that.
agree about Vader. Kind of funny how his blowing up a planet doesn’t register as viscerally as casually neck-snapping a kid.
Shit, I totally thought that was Seth Rogan. Braff could definitely play the voice of Seth Rogan in some sort of biography, maybe will need some prosthetics but hes got the voice down completely.
Yes, if there’s one thing we need to draw the line at it’s the former Anakin Skywalker casually murdering children
Um, you do realize that in ROTS Anakin Skywalker (now Darth Vader) brutally murdered dozens (?) of younglings at the Jedi Temple? Killing one random boy in the street is par for the course for him.
You know Vader is in full on don’t give a fuck mode when he’s one handed fighting with the lazer sword.
Lightsaber!
hahaha I know, but technically Lazer Sword has had a few in-universe mentions “I saw your lazer sword” episode I “I’m going to walk out with a lazer sword?” Episode VIII. and apparently Lucas called them lazer sword on set as well (Colbert mentions he did a Star Wars bit with Lucas and called it Lazer Sword to be cool and then Lucas corrected him with lightsaber).
At this point, the most interesting thing is watching how the production creatives of a massive property have no idea what they want to do with it, so instead cannibalize some fan service. “Here’s some Vader and Obi fighting! How cool is that? Don’t worry, every one of our upcoming series involve characters that are already dead or have arcs where you know where they end, and we’re going to throw in a bunch of nonsensical character meetings because, well, we can.”It’s so bereft of ideas. The D+ series can’t narratively move beyond the last trilogy because anything new is going to be a movie, not a D+ show. In the interim they’re just going to mine the spaces inbetween with logic be damned.
Good God. Lighten up, Comic Book Guy.
its weird because they have shown they can create new characters that catch on with audiences… but then they always have to force a Skywalker in there, somehow. Here’s a thought for the show’s writers – Go watch a random old season of Gunsmoke, pick your 6 favorite episodes, and adapt them using Star Wars trappings. Have Tim Olyphant play the Marshall, keep Weequay as bartender. Get yourself the Star Wars equivalent of a crusty doctor, a sassy sort-of love interest, and a goofy deputy, and you’re off to the races. No force, no skywalkers.
But there was a solo
true. need more stories like that but featuring new characters
There could be interesting stories involving the force or not involving the force. I don’t see the force as an issue with all the more recent SW stuff. It’s the ridiculousness of shoehorning known characters into everything. There can be new stories and characters involving the force without Luke showing up. There can be new stories and characters that don’t involve the force without Boba Fett being involved. Shit, they could’ve done a story about Obi Wan’s years in hiding that involved new characters but, no. Instead Obi Wan has to interact with Leia and Vader, no matter that it doesn’t fit with the stories already told. It just makes the universe feel tiny.It’s emblematic of how badly the suits at Lucasfilm have handled the property. There was no overarching vision as to how they wanted to proceed. It’s mind boggling that three massively expensive movies got greenlighted with different directors and writers for each without any solid idea of the overall story arc. Which results in ridiculousness like an opening scroll that says the Emperor is suddenly back and that’s that, cause, “you all know the Emperor, right? You know that iconic scene where Vader refound his humanity and died killing the Emperor to save his son? Meh, the Emperor’s back because you know who he is sooo… nostalgia, bro! Now Rey has to deal with the same enemy Luke did!” And that’s the D+ series as well. It’s particularly confounding because The Mandalorian was successful and avoided it for a while but, nope, here’s a creepily rendered Luke voiced by an AI program.
I agree 100%. Definitely stories to be told about force-users as well as characters who no force powers or even believe in its existence. I do think when you mix both type of characters together, at this point the force users will pretty much eclipse the rest of the cast, unless you split the cast up (admittedly a pretty common and easy-to-use plot device).Hot take: as i reflect more on star wars, i am increasingly of the opinion that the best depiction of the force was in ANH – in which most of its usage was in situations that witnesses could mostly explain away (aside from Vader’s force choking)… getting “lucky” with aiming, being able to hypnotize people a bit, having vague premonitions, with Vader the ultimate dark practitioner having some minor telekinesis. Then in ESB the force turned into full-blown major telekinesis and from there it just kept ratcheting up, much like how Superman’s powers increased over the years.I love a cool lightsaber fight as much as anyone, but would be happy if they scaled back on telekineses, mind-reading, lightning bolts etc.
Because this is all about the Skywalkers. They’re going to mine everything they can from the Skywalkers and then move on to something new. And then probably go back to the Skywalkers eventually. Just like Marvel will probably get Cap and Tony back at some point too. There’s too much money on the table to just kill off the one thing you just paid billions of dollars for.
So just because you know Vader and Obi Wan die, do you not enjoy things like Empire Strikes back, or any given episodes of the clone wars? Hell, Luke dies in the last jedi. I guess I can’t enjoy any of the original trilogy because where are the stakes, right?
“ain’t that kind of movie, kid.” – Harrison Ford to a young-and-spazzy Mark Hamill
“So, Lord Helmet, at last we meet again for the first time for the last time.”So why would Hayden Christiansen even want to do this? Can’t see his face, doesn’t use his voice. He’s basically an avatar.
Money
Huh, it’s almost like we’re only halfway through the series and there are lots of opportunities for him to do something outside the Vader suit yet.
Huh, it’s almost like we’re only halfway through the series and there are lots of opportunities for him to do something outside the Vader suit yet.Since the sequel trilogy established that two force users can communicate by projection, if Obi-Wan and Vader were to do that, presumably Vader’s projection would be Anakin, wouldn’t it? Or were Kylo and Rei able to do that only because they were “special” in some way?
Yeah exactly, I’m pretty sure we’re going to see something like that in an upcoming episode. We already saw a brief glimpse of non-charred Christiansen at the beginning of this one. At least I think that was him in the field from afar.
He gets to work with Ewan again without having to work with George again.
Enjoying the series so far, but I’m shocked we got a Kenobi/Vader fight this soon. Felt like it would build up a bit. And while the fight itself was thrilling and had some cool visuals, it really ended on a dud. Kenobi’s body is right there! Just use the Force to pull it to you. Does fire magically negate force powers now? They needed better writing to finish that scene. They had a good thing going there but crashed the landing a bit
Vader doesn’t want to toast Obi-Wan just once; he want to do it again and again and again.
After three episodes, my opinion so far is the plotting decisions of this series are pretty terrible. Centering a show around Leia being kidnapped and Obi-Wan having to confront Vader while rescuing her is dumb because we know Leia is going to survive, we know Obi-Wan is going to survive, and we know Obi-Wan and Vader’s actual final confrontation happens later. There are no stakes to anything happening here.If they wanted to create this kind of show, they should have made it about Obi-Wan having to choose to help his fellow Jedi and / or Force-sensitive children who are being kidnapped and putting himself in the crosshairs of the Empire as a result. It’s almost the same plot but you add stakes because the new Jedi characters would have unknown fates. If the show wanted to be more bold, they could have Obi-Wan ultimately fail.I also wouldn’t have had Vader confront Obi-Wan. Seeing Vader hunt down Jedi and having close calls with Obi-Wan would be just as impactful without needlessly undoing some of the impact of their confrontation in ANH.
I still stan for my idea of the Obi-wan show being a noir about him getting involved in the Tatooine criminal underbelly, and having almost nothing to do with Jedi or the Force. One of the core conceits is that Obi-wan has basically cut himself off from the Force so that Vader can’t find him on Tatooine, which means he can’t rely on his Jedi abilities to solve problems. No lightsabers, no Jedi/Sith characters besides Obi-wan. His starting point for the show would be that after ten years in hiding, he’s really depressed because all the news from the wider galaxy is that the Empire is just being more and more oppressive and evil, and he can’t do anything about it, but he justifies hiding by saying he has to protect Luke. His arc would be that he could still find purpose in helping people even if he can’t use the Force to do it, and that’s what gives him the strength to go on protecting Luke as he grows up.The plot goes something like this: He’s on good terms with the Larses, and comes around every few months to say hi and have dinner. Luke just knows him as “Old Ben,” of course. But then Ben starts having nightmares about a Force-sensitive child being in danger, despite having closed himself off from the Force. He assumes it’s Luke, but after weeks of closely watching Luke, nothing happens, and Owen finally gets fed up with him hovering around and tells him to get lost for a while. The nightmares continue, and finally Ben realizes that it’s not Luke, it’s someone else on Tatooine. He goes into Mos Espa and learns that someone has kidnapped a Force-sensitive child and is going to sell them to the Empire, but he doesn’t really know where to start looking.So he goes to Owen and asks for his help, but Beru volunteers, because she grew up in a bad part of Mos Espa and is familiar with the criminal element there. Owen’s like, fine, but you better not let her get hurt. So Ben and Beru go into town and investigate; noir hijinks ensue. At the climax, Beru gets seriously injured, but they manage to save the child and reunite her with her parents. Owen is furious and tells Ben he’d better not come around any more. Ben is upset but resolves to continue keeping an eye on Luke from afar.
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Pretty good. I’d watch this. And the crazy thing is, the movie I can see this closest to is Attack of the Clones (or parts of Attack of the Clones anyway)
So you really want him to hide tires?
I reckon if you took that to Disney high command they’d get three sentences in and say it was too complicated and what you need to do is go back and get to the real CORE of Star Wars and also Obi Wan has to use his lightsaber because this is what an audience expects.
Okay, this is way more compelling than the actual show.
I suspect we will get follow-thru on that mention of children being abducted by the empire. normally, i would predict that as part of the effort to rescue Leia, Obi learns that a bunch of kids are being held at the same imperial station/whatever. He will end up risking the Leia mission to save those other kids. And probably Reva will see this and it will cause her to turn away from the dark side. At least that is how i would see it unfolding. After BoBF’s puzzling storytelling choices i think all bets are off, though
Foreshadowing!
I think they should’ve made it a dark character piece about Obi-Wan’s isolation and loneliness during one of the darkest parts of the Star Wars universe. Could’ve made for really compelling stuff.
Except they already did that with Luke in TLJ and the fanboys lost it, even though he did end up literally saving everyone. I’m actually surprised there’s not more complaining about Obi Wan not being presented as an all-powerful swashbuckling Jedi right out of the gate.
That just sounds like a horrible way to consume any entertainment. An average meta knowledge entertainment as a whole is going to tell you that most characters are going to live. The thrill isn’t “are they going to survive”, it’s “how are they going to survive”.
Not sure how you got how I consume entertainment as a whole out of what I said. I don’t care if characters survive or not and I watch plenty of shows with no life or death stakes whatsoever. The point I was making is plotting the show this way is boring. And to make it more clear, I don’t feel thrilled by anything shown in this show thus far. It feels very by the numbers and boring to me.
Yeah, and it’s even less about if they live or die in this case, but more about are the logic and decisions these characters make batshit stupid and pointless? The answer is always yes. Why write an interesting story when you can continually scrape the bottom of the barrel and people will eat it up.
“Needlessly undoing some of the impact” seems to be mantra of all SW projects for a long while now.
It’s not about the stakes, the story is about the journey. It’s not that they will survive, it’s about HOW they will survive. The show’s focus is developing Obi-Wan’s character, his relationship with Vader, and new never-before-established relationships with other characters, such as Leia. This show is all about Obi-Wan and Vader. The impact of their confrontation and everything following doesn’t negate the impact of their confrontation in ANH. Centering this show around character development is why its gotten good reviews and ratings.
“Leia, stand back while I shoot the controls of this laser gate, so we can pass, since it was not working, therefore preventing us from advancing!”“Ok, Leia, now that the obstacle that was making impossible for us to advance was removed we can finally go!”…
Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the greatest Jedis of all times…
On the plus side, I think Leia’s characterization improved a little bit from the previous two initial episodes, and Mose Ingram kept being great in the role of Reva (screw every racist, even the ones disguised as “critics”).On the down side, in pretty much every other aspect the show keeps going downhill. Obi Wan continues being an unbelievable idiot who apparently doesn’t know the concept of hiding his face. He literally has a hood in his robe, yet refuses to use it, making a point of showing his face everywhere, to everybody, despite knowing the Empire has crispy pictures of his mug, as seen in episode 2.Also, the show lost an amazing opportunity of enriching the lore, in the sequence in Freck’s transport. When Freck expressed some sort of approval of the Empire by saying “Nothing wrong with a little order, right?”, and the troopers boarded the transport, I sincerely expected they surprising Obi Wan – and us, the audience – by chatting in a friendly manner, even displaying the humanity they have under their armors. A different portrayal of Empire troopers, being just common people in a bad job, not the usual evil stereotypes.I won’t even comment all the other issues and plot holes created towards the established canon, or the mountain of absurd actions in the show, because other commenters have already did that (Vader/Obi Wan meeting, Vader being unable to go around or even snuff the flames, Obi Wan laying in the fire and somehow not having his face harmed, Obi Wan shooting down four scattered troopers and right after surrendering to other 3 in a line in front of him, etc.)…I’ll just leave this one here, because I’ve not seen it commented so far, and it was particularly aggravating:“Leia, stand back while I shoot the controls of this laser gate, so we can pass, since it was not working, therefore preventing us from advancing!”“Ok, Leia, now that the obstacle that was making impossible for us to advance was removed we can finally go!”…
Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the greatest Jedis of all times…
Yeah, apparently Obi ignoring the force for a while also made him monumentally stupid. That would even be kind of a clever angle if that was intended, but since every character keeps having bouts of monumental stupidity, it’s clearly just the writing.
That one got me, too. The gate is there to stop vehicles, but… just… walk around…
I had assumed they were planning to take the transport which would have made perfect sense, but then they walked through the gate and I was baffled.
I thought he was shooting it so they could get in the vehicle and drive off. But then they just walked thru leaving the vehicle behind and was like “WTF?!? Why even bother?”
The new rematch between Vader and Kenobi does feel unnecessary, but honestly I’ll allow it. It’s a much better fight than their video gamey Mustafar brawl at least, and it totally makes sense Vader would be petty enough to try and drag Kenobi through some fire. It’s a bit weird Vader just watches Kenobi go, but then I realized he’s disappointed. He spent all that time building up what he would do if he ever met him again in his head and when it finally happens Kenobi puts up no fight. I expect when they meet again in the finale (let’s be honest, that’s happening) not only will it be much more even, but they’ll probably end with Kenobi surprising Vader somehow, letting them tie it back to the ‘when I left you I was but a learner’ in Episode IV. As for Christensen, honestly I hope we actually get to see him somehow or another, either through flashback or Force vision or what have you. He was unfairly blamed for II and III’s script problems and I’d like to see him get another chance at Anakin. Hell, I’d happily take a Darth Vader solo series, just base it on one of the recent Marvel comic runs.
Isn’t Christiansen a little short to be a Darth Vader?When up against Kenobi he didn’t feel very intimidating. He’s the most intimidating villain ever. But not very physically imposing. RIP David Prowse.
I feel like how Ben got away from Vader was one of the dumbest things I have seen on TV in years. And I watch a lot of TV. And I have seen a lot of dumb things. Including in this very episode. But this one truly stood out.Interestingly, not long before while watching the episode, I had said out loud I was willing to overlook the canon violations in order to get another truly dark and powerful Vader story. Just an all time great villain, and seeing him doing his thing was worth some canon bending to me.But then . . . a man who commands not only the Force, but armies of Stormtroopers and friggin’ starships, is stymied by a small fire. A barrier that, say, your average small-town police department could figure out when in pursuit of a suspect, defeats Lord Vader when he is literally in sight of his personal nemesis.Horrible writing, and made all the more horrible by the fact it entirely undermines the whole point of Vader.
i dunno, i get the sense that Vader wanted Obi-Wan to get away, on some level, after decisively winning round one. Kind of a cat toying with a mouse type of situation. He probably looks forward to Ben recovering from his injuries so he can beat him down all over again.
that’s what I got out of it too. He knows someone is helping Kenobi and killing Obi Wan then and there wouldn’t be as satisfying and having him writhe knowing his biggest failure was now coming after him, and also helps root out whoever is helping him and potentially other Jedi.Vader is vengeful but he’s not stupid or shortsighted.
But just before, Vader says he is planning a long torture session. And he has no idea Kenobi will even have a means of escape. And then someone unexpectedly relights the fire he just put out, and he spontaneously changes his entire long-planned revenge?Maybe that is supposed to be the explanation, but if so it is still horrible writing.And the fundamental problem is you can’t have a Vader at the height of his powers and with armies to command come face-to-face with a Kenobi who is weak and isolated, and then Vader does not end up killing him. Indeed, we know that, because we saw it happen before.And although there may be some theoretical explanation for how that inevitable ending was avoided this time, it was not made remotely plausible by anything we were shown.
And although there may be some theoretical explanation for how that inevitable ending was avoided this time, it was not made remotely plausible by anything we were shown.This exactly. It’s just plain bad writing. If Vader wanted Kenobi to get away for some reason there’s a million plausible ways to illustrate that motivation. Something as simple as having him holding out his arm to signal to the troopers with him to not do anything. He wouldn’t even have to speak and the audience would still know Vader had some longer term motivation, even if we are not sure what it is. Instead it was written and shot in a manner that was just implausibly silly. I can understand them wanting a scene at this point where Vader beats down Kenobi, but if you’re going to do that you better come up with a plausible scenario that portrays Kenobi surviving. Not the mess we were shown. A mess that also included Kenobi’s “rescuer” abandoning a 10 year old, a tunnel that is explicitly said to run straight with no branching, Tala somehow not encountering Reva on her way back, and yet Reva somehow is ahead of Leia, as though Reva knows the tunnel systems of this backwater she’s never been on like the back of her hand.
He literally ordered a Stormtrooper to bring Obi-Wan to him seconds before Obi-Wan’s unlikely escape.
If that’s where the show wanted to go, leaving it ambiguous is not the right choice. A simple line exchange like:Stormtrooper: should we get him, sir?Vader: leave him.Wouldn’t have necessarily made sense given that he’s put in 10 years of, energy and resources into finding him in the first place, but at least the internet wouldn’t be debating Terrible deus ex machina vs. Maybe Vader let him go for shits and giggles.
The episode implies heavily that Vader wants Obi-Wan to get away. They show Vader looking at the droid dragging Obi-Wan away while the stormtroopers are yelling about not being able to see anything. It would have been trivial to use force powers to destroy the droid and put out the fire, but Vader almost wants the plausible deniability of letting him go.
But then . . . a man who commands not only the Force, but armies of Stormtroopers and friggin’ starships, is stymied by a small fire. Well, yeah. If MY body was savagely, irreparably burned in a giant, lava borne fire, I just might freak internally when the flames got higher and hotter and covered a larger area all of a sudden. And think to myself, “Fuck this—I’ll get him tomorrow when I inevitably catch up to him again.”
Except he has chosen to live on a planet that is…. covered in molten lava and volcanoes, so I think he’s probably worked through his fire issues.
You would really think that? You wouldn’t simply order one of the soldiers you had with him to walk 5 meters around the flames to grab the guy you’ve just spent 10 years worth of time, energy, and resources to find?Also, if you were irreparably burned in a lava fire, but now you’re 90% fire retardant robot, you wouldn’t feel like you’ve conquered fire? You’d delay a 10 year mission that’s now at your fingertips because there’s some flames between you and your quarry?
He had already force-choked him 15 feet in the damn air. Plenty high to get over the fire!Not as silly as them messing with that laser gate, only to have the shot pull out and reveal that they could have just WALKED AROUND it!
When I see something like the inquisitor somehow getting to the rendezvous AND killing everyone before Leia while using the same route, and Varma’s character backtracking and not coming across her either (unless she’s bisected in the tunnel now)… it’s just sloppy and cheap. How the hell do you write, shoot, and edit that sequence without any part of your brain going, “I need to explain how this is possible.” Because even my 8-year old was mad.
Because a 7-year old can figure out that the only place to go is the space port, so Reva should just go directly there and see if someone pops up.
I certainly have my nit picks about this series, but, cinematically, it looks great. I can be a stickler for canon as well, being a Star Trek fan in addition to my love of Star Wars, but, so far, I feel the canon has not been overly messed with, and it actually fixes a plot hole from ANH:By having Leia meet Kenobi as a young child, it adds some extra emotional resonance to Leia’s recording in ANH when she ends it with: “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”When young Leia meets Kenobi, he says his name is Ben. In ANH, when Luke rescues Leia, he says, “I’m here with your R2 unit! I’m here with Ben Kenobi!” She responds, “Ben Kenobi? Where is he?” She probably would not have known he had been going by Ben if she hadn’t met him much earlier.Also, in ANH, Vader says, “When I left you….” That implies that during Kenobi and Vader’s final meeting before ANH, Vader walks away from a (presumably) victorious Kenobi.
Obi-Wan Kenobi the series seems to be doing its darndest to make me not care about Obi-Wan Kenobi the character.
My uncle says he’s dead.
He’s just a crazy old wizard.
CROSSOVER!
Must not be a king.
Is it possible to get a different reviewer for this? Someone who doesn’t have a bias against this show due to a perceived break in canon from the OT? I thought we were reviewing this show, not the OT. Thanks.
This review is on par with every other site I’ve seen that’s doing episode recaps. Hell, it’s on par with the vast majority of comments here. It has less to do with the OT and more to do with the general consensus that the show is middling at best. Up to this point anway.
this person didn’t even review the previous episodes ding dong.
I liked this one a little better than the first two, but that’s not saying much. I have to ask: is Deborah Chow a good director?
So this is… fine? At least we are in newish locations. SoCal coastal desert instead of Tunisia! Quarries!
I find most of the characters pretty terrible. McGregor is doing wonderfully, as always, even if the writing is failing him. I think Moses Ingram’s take on Reva is pretty cartoonish. I don’t know why the reviewer thinks there’s much brilliant acting or nuance here. (And none of this has anything to do with recent controversies. It’s just a flat role and a hammy performance.) Young Leia almost makes me miss Jar-Jar.
But it does have one thing I like that the sequel trilogy developed: far more glowtastic lightsabers! If you watch some of the fight scenes, particularly in Force Awakens, you’ll note how much more radiant the lightsabers are and how much color and light they give off to the persons wielding them. This new approach to lighting was evident in our little quarry skirmish.
I don’t really know what this show is for other tham milking IP. I would have thought a show focusing on Obi Wan—and bringing back McGregor, no less—would be such a sacred undertaking that they would take it seriously. You get one shot at this, folks. Doesn’t seem to me anyone really cares.
They weren’t serious about their shot at making a coherent movie trilogy, so I can’t say I’m surprised here.
I’m wondering how they are going to explain Bail Organa surviving the next ten years when Vader and the Empire now knows he had a direct line to Kenobi this whole time.So, Kenobi is the Jedi who collected Revan when she was a kid, right? That’s going to be the reveal?
I think Revan is somebody else.
Sorry if this has already been covered, but isn’t the Empire a workplace with rules and such being a big deal?So Reva gets to kill her boss and take his place with no consequence whatsoever?
It’s a gundark-eat-gundark kinda empire!
That’s pretty much the Sith Career Development plan.
Pretty sure she blamed the Grand Inquisitor’s death on Obi-Wan.
This review makes no sense. You’re watching a new character study of a major star wars character that adds to canon, and you’re saying Disney is too focused on the past in their new content? The IP is all about featuring Star Wars characters in Star Wars tv shows.
If Vader’s helmet doesn’t somehow shatter or whatever to reveal Hayden in the final episode then, yes, absolute stunt casting.
“To her credit, young Vivien Lyra Blair is perfectly cast, giving you a
sense of the quippy, no-nonsense “princess” Leia will grow up to become”
She is a great actress, but she is bit too young. She was 7 years old when filing this.
This show really doesn’t sync with Leia’s message to Obi-Wan in Star Wars. She mentions General Kenobi having served her father in the Clone Wars, but nothing about him rescuing her?
Leia is making a formal diplomatic request, so she starts with “General Kenobi”. However, she ends with “Help *me*, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Furthermore, when Luke springs her from the jail cell she says “Ben Kenobi, where is he?”
> Whether the show can finally let go of what was and become something if not entirely new then
entirely more engrossing is yet to be determined. There’s only so many
cat-and-mouse episodes we can watch before hoping we’ll be shown a story
taking place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away that maybe we haven’t yet seen before.I have absolutely zero faith that the current heads producing Star Wars content will ever be able to deliver this. This was the worst kind of fan service this week. The much better storytelling is to have Vader be a threat in the shadows. Maybe you see glimpses of him in the background, pushing the inquisitors on. Maybe you get a quick cameo ala Vader in Rogue One. Instead we got this, and now we’re likely to get more of this for the rest of the season. I honestly feel like Kathleen Kennedy sees what Star Wars “mega-fans” put on Twitter and forums and has decided that those are the people that need to be made happy with all this content (which I suppose is the audience that’s going to keep tuning in). This is exactly why we got the steaming pile that was Rise of Skywalker after the “fans” took so much affront to The Last Jedi daring to have some different takes on certain characters (that were good for that character’s development, whether they liked it or not) so it was back to playing the hits. And that’s all this show is turning into, I’m afraid. Playing the hits. Much like Boba Fett, the chance to maybe tell an interesting story about a character’s growth and journey from a starting point to where we know them is being squandered. And it will continue to be. And it’s a shame.
My wife just now pointed out to me that Vivien Lyra Blair played “Guppy” in Robert Rodriguez “We Can Be Heroes!” (a movie I enjoyed a hell of a lot more than “Wonder Woman 1984″, released the same weekend). Now, I like the kid even more!
I completely agree with this review, the only place I differ is that I’ve long since given up on expecting anything from any Star Wars property. The name means nothing to me anymore, and if the Franchise happens to sometimes deliver something that’s somewhat entertaining, as Kenobi is, that’s as much as I ask from it at this point. With the benefit of hindsight I’ll say we would have been better off if they’d just stopped in 1983.
You know, Pauline Kael once wrote that she was disappointed to learn when she became a professional critic and started engaging heavily with industry types that it’s not so much that the directors and writers in Hollywood are cynical or crass in how they create movies and shows, it’s more than what we get from them is really the best they can do.
Of course it is dreck. Because Lucas and then Disney felt compelled to replace the mythos of their characters with dreary plots of mild peril and implausible coincidences that are so bland that even the characters seem to have forgotten they happened. Obi Wan Kenobi is just a boring series like Bobba Fett that has no reason for existing at all except to pad out a streaming service. I’m fully expecting the remainder of the series to play out exactly as you might think – Obi Wan will have moment of doubt until Liam Neeson appears, he’ll overcome his doubts and emerge from some hopeless climactic situation, defeating the baddies to flee into the wilderness once more. And absolutely everything about what happened will be forgotten by everyone.
Aside from the core issue of telling a story that feels incredibly inessential, full of characters whose fates we already know —This series also has the unexpected problem of logical and production inconsistencies all over the place.The forest chase with Leia is the most egregious example of what feels like cheap/lazy production. But in this episode I was mostly baffled about why Obi-Wan has to shoot the laser barrier, when you can clearly just walk around it. And even then, surely he could have spotted that vehicle heading towards them?And then why does Vader entertain that weird, incredibly slow chase with him? Why not bring a few stormtroopers along? What even was Obi-Wan’s plan there? He wanders about and seems surprised when he sees Vader, even though presumably he’s trying to lead him away? It’s all very weird.And yeah, the tunnel stuff doesn’t really work either, does it? It’s incredibly irresponsible to leave the CHILD you’re smuggling to safety.So in summary: this show feels oddly lazy for what should be such a big deal.
IMDB lists JEJ as being cast in 2 episodes, 3 and 4, while Christenson is shown in the cast of all 6 episodes. So I’m willing the give the series and Christensen a chance to develop DV. So far they’ve fulfilled the promise of a rage-filled absolute evil version of the character portrayed by the interviews with Christensen prior to the series release.
Christensen was not in the credits for the first episode.
The show is a hunk of lifeless blah.
Disney has not done a good job with the Star Wars universe for the most part, especially episodes 7-9. I would say that Mandalorian and Obi Wan Kenobi are the best of the series small screen live action shows so far. As a fan of Star Wars, it’s always cool to see Darth Vader. I know the dialogue, plot and writing is lacking but still I find Obi Wan Kenobi entertaining. At least we can get a canon backstory that sets up a New Hope. I had always wanted to know what happened the 30 years or whatever between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, especially the major characters like Obi Wan, Darth Vader and the Emperor. Would be great to see the emperor in this series. Also, the Darth Vader comic series a few years back was really good and it showed the tension between Vader and the Emperor. I actually think a Darth Vader series would be even more entertaining than Obi Wan. There is much more that the writers could do with a Vader series set in this timeframe.
When
I interviewed Katee Sackhoff last spring, she told me that she assumed
that she would not be cast as Bo-Katan, even though she played the part
in the animated series, that they would pick a bigger Hollywood name.
She said this without an ounce of bitterness, more matter-of-fact. To
say she was pleasantly surprised when they approached her about the part
is an understatement.
Like the Berlanti-verse, the Star Wars universe appears to enjoy
rewarding its actors for their past service. Of course they could have
put anybody in the suit, but they chose to reward Christensen (and
Sackhoff) and that deserves some respect.
For reference, go back and watch the extras for EpIII. They talked about
how Christensen “inhabited” the Vader armor, much like they are saying
now.