A long time ago, in this galaxy, right here, people absolutely hated the Star Wars Prequels. I mean hated. If you think Star Wars fans are toxic now, it all started in the late 1990's when a Lucasfilm executive had the inspired idea to "engage fans online." It was a great idea that has in no way whatsoever lead to the decline of Western Civilization.
There was a time when anyone writing about the prequels online couldn't help but make snide comments about how terrible they were, even if they were writing about something completely uncontroversial, like their box office performance or visual effects. And these people would do it as though it were absolute fact. Prequel Derangement was like an itch. They couldn’t help themselves. This sickness drove “fans” as far as to make life miserable for prequel actors like Jake Lloyd, Ahmed Best, and Hayden Christiansen. The over-the-top backlash to the prequels was one of the contributing factors that motivated the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney.
However, by the time we got to the Disney era, attitudes had changed significantly and there grew a new appreciation for George Lucas' maligned second trilogy. Part of this was that people who were kids when the prequels released were now grown up and nostalgic for their Star Wars. Part of it was people seeing the quality that was always there alongside the flaws. And part of it was just that there was now much more Star Wars for fans to hate on so they couldn't devote all of their attention to hating on the Prequels.
It was with this new perspective that Obi-Wan Kenobi was released. It is a show that leans heavily into Prequel nostalgia in way that would have been impossible even five years earlier. It even kicks off with a pretty awesomely unapologetic prestige TV-style recap of the Prequels. I mean, Jesus, Jar-Jar is even in it (briefly.)
The show, of course, brings back Ewan MacGregor as Obi-Wan. Ewan is an actor who, like Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness before him, had mastered the near-impossible task of turning out a good performance despite working with George Lucas' writing and direction. Even people who hated the prequels praised Ewan MacGregor’s characterization, so bringing him back was a no-brainer. More remarkable, is the return of Hayden Christiansen as Anakin/Vader, an actor who was often the target of Prequel hater's ire and who starts his continuing redemption tour with this show.
These two actors have always had great chemistry both on and off-screen. The shared experience of making Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith together seems to have bonded them like brothers. Witnessing their rekindled bromance was one of the great joys of the Obi-Wan Kenobi press junket. There is a lot of well-documented toxicity around Star Wars (and around this show specifically) but seeing Ewan and Hayden back together again was wholesome and delightful. Indeed, these two have grown into elder statesmen of Star Wars and it was quite gratifying to see Hayden get a veritable hero’s welcome from the fans attending Star Wars Celebration in Japan last year. He shows up in multiple capacities here, some wonky de-aging notwithstanding.
The show, however, is wildly uneven, poorly-paced, and full of puzzling decisions. We start as we might expect, with an Obi-Wan who is older and full of regret and trauma eking out a living on Tattooine, within a stone’s throw of young Luke Skywalker and his adopted family. Instead of this story being the predictable Tatooine-based adventure involving Ben and Luke, we turn our focus to Anakin and Padme’s other child, Leia, here a mischievous ten year-old-girl who is kidnapped from her adopted family on Alderaan as part of a plan to lure Kenobi out of hiding.
As might be expected from a story set in this time period roughly half way between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, the Jedi hunting inquisitors are the main antagonists, at least in the first half of Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Imperial Inquisitorius were introduced in Star Wars Rebels and later fleshed out in other media as the squad of former Jedi that Vader and Palpatine turned to the dark side to help them hunt down the Order 66 surviving Jedi (of which there were quite a few, it turns out.)
The Grand Inquisitor and the Fifth Brother are both straight from Rebels but have suffered a bit in the translation from animation to live-action. The Grand Inquisitor is particularly disappointing as he is a Pau’an, a species we have already seen in Revenge of the Sith in all its Nosferatuesque glory, here rendered inexplicably egg-headed and human-looking.
The Inquisitor who gets the most time is Reva, the Third Sister. We see her as a youngling in a flashback at the start of the series during an Order 66 flashback and later stabbed with a lightsaber by Anakin Skywalker and left for dead (more on that later.) Reva has figured out that Darth Vader is Anakin and wants to find Kenobi in order lure Vader into a position to kill him. Moses Ingram plays Reva and does an admirable job with a fairly mediocre and one-note character who is largely just written as a tropey “tough chick.” What’s worse, she goes on a genuinely dumb and unmotivated rampage at the Lars homestead, which basically ruins what would have otherwise been a tragic and meaningful character arc. What’s worse, the Jedi Fallen Order game featured another conflicted Inquisitor who was given a similar and much more nuanced characterization which makes Reva feel oddly redundant.
All of that said, none of this is on the shoulders of Moses Ingram who was hired to play a character written from an imperfect script. Of course, none of that stopped racist assholes from harassing her online. There is a certain strain of Star Wars fan who seem to get oddly triggered when seeing women and people of color headlining these projects and they seem to make it their mission to harass people online. It got so bad that Ewan McGregor had to record a damn video about it.
Again, not to say there aren’t any number of legitimate issues with this project, such as some oddly-lackluster “action” sequences such as a runaway Jedi using the force to pull down an awning which somehow stops a trio of inquisitors from pursuing him. Or in a later scene when Vader and a squad of Stormtroopers look on helplessly when Obi-Wan is pulled away to safety a mere twenty feet away with only a thin wall of fire separating them. And do not get me started on the hare-brained sequence in which Obi-Wan breaks into the Fortress Inquisitorious to rescue a kidnapped Leia (another element ripped from Jedi Fallen Order) and attempts to smuggler her out in a damn overcoat.
So there are a lot of issues here. But a lot works as well. Not only do we get Ewan and Hayden but but also Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Pliese reprise their roles from the prequels as Owen and Beru Lars, as do Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa, Leila’s adopted father. Even Temuera Morrison gets a cameo as a down-on-his luck Clonetrooper. We also get a cameo from Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. Maybe most impressively, Liam Neeson appears in the show's final moments, paying off a subplot from Episode III. And that's not even mentioning a new John Williams theme for the show.
Indira Varma (who played opposite Pedro Pascal in Game of Thrones) is introduced here as an Imperial double agent who is helping feeling Jedi and Force sensitives in a kind of Underground Railroad. She is a great character who feels straight out of Andor and who ends up being influential on Leia. And of, course, there is Leia, here played by Vivian Lyra Blair who manages to capture some of the regal command of Princess Leia but also some of legendary sass and wit of Carrie Fisher herself. I would love to see her play Leia again in a future project.
The show unfortunately starts a maddening trend in Disney Star Wars of people surviving being impaled on lightsabers, the very wound on which the fate of the galaxy turned with the killing of Qui-Gon in Episode 1. There are three different instances of this in this show alone. Reva, survives this wound not once but twice. So does the Grand Inquisitor, from a wound inflicted by Reva who should have known better.
But ultimately, this was billed as the Rematch of the Century between Obi-Wan and Vader and their final duel is wildly satisfying and even helps to elevate the rest of the show. This is really a top tier Star Wars duel and very much worth the price of admission, and even contains some moments that emotionally pay off the Prequels in a way that was not possible under George Lucas’ direction. It is for a few short moments in this final duel that Hayden’s return really counts leading to a moment that is one of the most iconic in Star Wars both in terms of the story of the Skywalker Saga and also in the meta sense for us fans who always knew that these guys could act and that Star Wars can also serve up haunting and heartbreaking moments.
FAN CUTS
I think Fan Cuts are fascinating an have been a part of Star Wars since at least The Phantom Menace. I talked about a fan edit of The Book of Boba Fett which I thought was a really interesting way to watch the story. I also watched the Patterson Cut of Obi-Wan Kenobi, which for my money is a much better version of the story in only because it removes some of the things that don’t work in the show such as Reva’s survival of her clash with Vader and subsequent Tattooine rampage. It also adds some minor visual fixes such as offering improved de-aging, fixing the “40 Year-Old Padawan” effect.
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