Unorganized Thoughts On and Reactions to Obi-Wan Kenobi

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https://lebeauleblog.com/2022/06/23/...bi-wan-kenobi/

Disney’s six-part Obi-Wan Kenobi series wrapped up and I have thoughts. I haven’t organized them into anything especially insightful. If I waited until I had something meaningful to contribute, the conversation about the show would likely be over. These shows have become ephemeral. They generate lots of buzz for their respective streaming service while they are going on and then they are mostly forgotten. Replaced by the next installment. So before we move on to another series, let’s compare notes on Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The show was apparently developed as a stand-alone movie. Following the disappointing performance of Solo, Disney/Lucasfilm panicked. That’s understandable. Han is among the most popular characters in the entire franchise. If a solo prequel outing featuring Han Solo can come up short, movies starring Obi Wan, Boba Fett or Darth Maul are no longer going to be viewed as sure things.

When Disney bought Lucasfilm, they saw it as a license to print money. When The Force Awakens opened to record-breaking numbers, it seemed like their money-soaked dreams had been realized. Disney’s previous acquisition, Marvel, redefined what a franchise could be with the MCU. Competitors were busy scrambling (and mostly failing) to recreate that success. Star Wars seemed like another shared universe ready to be unleashed.

That’s not how things turned out for a variety of reasons. In the days leading up to TFA, I warned readers to calm down a little on this whole Star Wars thing. Two weeks before the movie was released, I made this prediction “I’m sure the trappings of the franchise will be present and the filmmakers will probably deliver two hours of zippy fun. But Disney is launching a massive franchise here. Creative risks will likely be in short supply.” Nailed it!

When I was a nerdy little kid, I would sometimes get into conversations over which was better; Star Wars or Star Trek. Among my friends, Star Wars was the clear favorite and I always attributed that at least in part to its scarcity. Star Wars consisted of three movies which were all of relatively high quality. They fit together to tell one big epic story. By comparison, Star Trek was all over the place.

There have always been ancillary Star Wars material, but most of the early ones faded quickly from memory. I watched the Star Wars Holiday Special when it aired and yet in the days before it was available online, it seemed like a bad dream. I remember reading Splinter in the Mind’s Eye and Marvel comics that filled in the gaps between movies with stories that weren’t allowed to advance the overall plot. Post Return of the Jedi, there were Ewok TV movies and cartoons, but most fans of the movies had already moved on.

Today, Star Wars has become an all you care to eat buffet of supplemental material. The sequel trilogy ended in a way that highlights one of the issues the franchise faces. Specifically that its fans want different things from it. A lot of modern Star Wars fans grew up on the prequel trilogy and the Clone Wars cartoon. For a lot of them, Obi-Wan was a massive hit of nostalgia, I’m sure. In many ways, it was for me too but not on the same level.

Watching the Star Wars shows on Disney+ I am often struck by the introduction of characters or concepts that the audience is clearly expected to recognize. After each episode airs, I’ll watch a video on YouTube that will fill me in on which characters came from comic books, video games or cartoons. It seems like Lucasfilm really expects everyone to have studied the Clone Wars these days!

The shows themselves usually include enough information about these characters that I’m not lost. But I also don’t get any rush out of seeing a live action take on a character that previously only existed in drawings or renderings. The trend has been to shuffle these characters on and off stage long enough for fans to recognize them without giving them much to do.

When Disney+ launched, the big draw was The Mandalorian. The concept seemed to be “What If Boba Fett But Not”. Disney/Lucasfilm clearly wanted to do something with the popular bounty hunter, but the character had never really been developed. The Mandalorian seemed like a way for Disney to hedge its bets with a character who was Boba Fett in every way but his name.

Following the success of The Mandalorian, Disney grew more confident. In the second season, they introduced Ahsoka Tano from the Clone Wars and resurrected the actual Boba Fett for his own spin-off show. Stretching the limits of technology, they even had a cameo from a post-Jedi Luke Skywalker. In just two seasons, Lucasfilm had erased its concerns about using established characters. And now, following The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan, it seems like nothing is off the table.

This is not inherently a bad thing. But execution is key. These characters may be familiar to fans who venture beyond the movies and Disney+ streaming, but they are new to me and probably a lot of other viewers. You have to give us a reason to care about them beyond “that’s so-and-so from the cartoon/comic/video game”.

That was a lot more than I intended to write about the current state of Star Wars. I’m sure its a topic we’ll revisit in the future as the movies attempt to rediscover the Force. Which is probably as good of a segue as I am likely to come up with to start talking about Obi-Wan specifically.

There’s a lot to criticize, but let me get to something I liked. Obi-Wan’s arc in this series is one I can relate to. At the beginning of the show, he is ten years out from the formation of the Empire and the complete collapse of everything he believed in. The Jedi utterly failed and the galaxy was paying a high price. Obi-Wan starts off the show as a shell of a man with no faith and no will to fight.

I feel that way a lot of the time. I don’t have a lot of hope for the future and I don’t see much I can do to impact change except obviously write blog posts about Star Wars. Over the course of the series, Obi-Wan has his faith restored as he gets to know the future leader of the Rebellion. That’s a nice story that I think serves the characters well. Do I think there’s a real world Princess Leia in grade school who will one day save us from ourselves? No. But it was cathartic to see Obi Wan get his groove back.

It was also interesting to me to revisit the prequel trilogy. Especially in light of the disappointing sequels. I dislike them both but in different ways. The sequels are a disjointed mess which are bookended by entries that are afraid to take any creative risks. The middle chapter refuses to deliver on any audience expectations. The prequels, for all of their many flaws, are at least consistent. Obi-Wan and all the pre-show hype gave me at least some appreciation for why people like this era of Star Wars even if I don’t.

On the whole, I liked Obi-Wan well enough to recommend it. By design, it has to end in more or less the same place it started since it follows up on Revenge of the Sith which set things in motion for the first Star Wars movie. Obi-Wan gets to mess things up a little by allowing Ben Kenobi to leave Tatooine for an adventure with young Princess Leia, but everything needed to be put back in place by the end of the series. Like most prequels, Obi-Wan feels less than essential. And like all Star Wars, the continuity is knotty as hell. But I’m used to that by now.

The series required characters to make ridiculous decisions to facilitate the plot. The plot armor was strong with pretty much everyone. Darth Vader seems to forget he has more than one ship at a key moment and it’s puzzling why certain characters walk away from life or death struggles. In one case, a character specifically comments on what a bad idea this is before leaving a character to almost certain survival. And in another…