Obi-Wan Kenobi series: speculation

That article rests on a faulty premise: That "The Last Jedi" was a daring, bold, glorious reinvigoration of the Star Wars spirit, when -- despite some new elements -- it was a shallow, annoying, repetitive, regurgitated crapfest disguised as art. TLJ hardly brought any new worlds or horizons to the screen. What it mostly did was grind the Saga through some pretentious arthouse mincer and sprinkle some fake diamonds on the compressed mess that emerged the other side. Harsh? Yeah. I mean, look, it's still a compelling movie. But the film blatantly revisits TESB and ROTJ to a degree that is downright shocking and obnoxious. The "new" plot element of a chase in space, meanwhile, just brings the whole film to a crashing halt. Where is the soaring production design? The visual splendour? The fiendish imagination? It's all so fucking muggy and boring.

A lot of the camera work is really insipid and downright ugly, too. Especially the base scenes on Crait. They look like they were done on a cheap HD camera by a second unit. Ugly colours, terrible framing, and vapid compositions. Shit dialogue, too. For a film that needed a kick up its rear, those base scenes only throw the vacuity of this "reimagining" by inferior minds (who think they're brilliant, pioneering geniuses) into sharp relief.

This long, establishing crane shot in AOTC is better than anything in TLJ and the rest of the Sequel Trilogy. And far more beautiful. Fact.



As for the new Obi-Wan miniseries? 

I'm still taking a "wait and see" attitude. It'll probably be a wet fart, but that's to be expected by now.

He's definitely doing his duty in watching over Luke. In fact, at the start of ROTS, he admonishes Anakin for straying to help the clone troopers under attack: "No, no. They are doing their duty and we can do ours." Later, he asserts he can't follow Anakin down the path of empire because: "[His] allegiance is to the Republic -- to democracy." To people. There are also the many layers of sorrow and rebuke in his final words to Padme after she refuses to disclose Anakin's whereabouts: "Anakin is the father, isn't he? I'm so sorry."

In saying he will "watch over" Luke, he is actually taking a leaf from Palpatine's book, who tells Anakin back in Episode I: "We will watch your career with great interest." Only, this time, it's more benevolent (and Obi-Wan's assumed name on Tatooine reflects that). Actual relatives will do the raising, and Obi-Wan will be there in the background, keeping guard and protecting from afar. But yes, it does bring the role of a godfather to mind. Obi-Wan has every intent of one day picking up where the Lars leave off, encouraging Luke to become a Jedi and even symbolically handing down Anakin's lightsaber -- as if trying to redeem his own life in the process.

I'm of the opinion that one of the most brilliant and devastating story choices Lucas made in ROTS (and there's a lot to choose from) was having Obi-Wan go to Padme, break her heart with the revelation that Anakin has turned to the Dark Side, and ultimately get her to inadvertently lead him straight to Anakin. And the clincher: Obi-Wan appearing at the top of the ramp of the ship when he did. It's reasonable to assume Obi-Wan ran that confrontation over in his head many times afterward, because it not only led to the destruction of Anakin, but to the loss of Padme, and two children were orphaned -- and separated -- in the process.


I wish Lucas had left the earlier scene of Obi-Wan going to Padme's apartment and talking about his worries toward Anakin with her, gently asking her to try and keep him on the straight and narrow. It would have made for a hounding contrast with their later scene and given us a bit more of their connection to ingest. As it is, even with the economic storytelling of the finished movie, you easily detect the affection that the two (Obi-Wan and Padme) have for one another. Years ago, I likened the Anakin-Padme-Obi-Wan dynamic to the so-called Camelot era of the JKF presidency. A political fantasy that couldn't last. And aptly enough, Natalie Portman would go on to play Jackie Kennedy in the film Jackie, a decade after the completion of the PT. 


I'll need to watch these new clips to get a better sense of her, but from the little of seen and heard of her, Chow does seem pretty sincere and a lot less smug and loquacious than Abrams and Johnson. She doesn't seem to be someone chasing the limelight or going out of her way to authorially impose herself. Not everyone has to be the same way, of course, but this is a nice change.

This is a very good catch, AD.

Totally. The geek media continues to curate reality and frame things in specific, misleading ways.  


They do. Unfortunately, their poison continues to have a noticeable effect on younger generations.

I doubt that person is any kind of boomer. This is what their little bio says:


Sounds like they might live near me -- maybe I've even met them without realising.

(I'm not a million miles away from Aberystwyth).

I should have words!

Harsh much?

While I still find it the most agreeable of the three, yeah, has ever a movie spun its wheels in place more than The Last Jedi? If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line then that movie finds an even shorter path by being just a dot. I remain more critical of the visuals amidst its neighboring installments, however. Sure, Johnson pauses once too often for a reach in 'Conceptual Portrait' photoshoot style imagery at the expense of communicating a more comprehensive visual grammar and his art-direction can be postmodern to a level of lethargy, its color wheel no broader than a sample booklet of stone tiles. Yet the movie can be comely in the same respect, and I maintain that Johnson has richer scale and cleaner editing in action than JJ 'the Pretender' Abrams who -- well, lets just give him props for uniformity -- directs at the same level of sophistication with which he writes ...leaving it at that. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi meanwhile, from the trailers and especially that clip a page back, just looks stock as hell. I mean, is this Star Wars or an episode of Law & Order? It's a current year TV show and Chow a current year TV show director so...par for the course, I guess. All the above together, it does make me yearn for the workmanlike unaffectedness of Richard Marquand.    

Ingram, ma boogie. I was hoping you'd show up.

Yes, harsh. Harsh as hell. It's a movie that generates a lot of internal conflict in me.


Yes, the wheel-spinning aspect of the movie is infuriating. But it's also all the recycling/rehashing that accompanies it. So much cribbed from TESB and ROTJ, yet passed off as daring, inventive, new. Between them, TFA and TLJ make for a weirdly fractious pair, and a pretty dismal two-thirds of a trilogy. The story -- what little there is -- barely feels told by the end of TLJ. Yet the trilogy is almost over by then. One could draw an equivalence with the OT and the PT, but they still offer abundant imagination and a rich assemblage of action, adventure, and meaty themes. TFA and TLJ, on the other hand, are awkward chimeras: OT rehash movies at odds with each other, both doggedly refusing to establish an epic backdrop or do much that would infuse the trilogy with its own momentum and identity. They work reasonably well as movies in their own right, but they make for shitty chapters in a Star Wars trilogy.


Ha! Natty description. Yeah, the cinematography of TLJ is decent on its own terms, but weirdly callow next to the bounteous framing and vivid colouration of the preceding saga movies (even TFA). Of course, on some level, that's deliberate. But here is where it stands out like a sore thumb. Because the camera is heavier, and far less limber than Abrams' camera on TFA, too. It's not even at the Lucas-level of "documentary fantasy". It's just frozen up so often or put really close in the actors' faces. No Star Wars movie has more turgidity in its camera placements, movements, and sheer abundance of close-ups than TLJ. I think the movie tries to balance deconstruction with an arthouse mystification in this way, but I'm not sure it goes too well against the other movies. And it probably reflects limitations on the part of the film's director. Johnson has admitted, for example, that he isn't keen on worldbuilding, and that he really only cares about plot, characters, and themes.


Not all of Rian Johnson's writing is all that sophisticated, bro. Some of his dialogue is blatantly expository. Like: beating-you-over-the-head expository. I think he does have a much cleaner command of action, and a better sense of scale, however. So, yeah, I'm with you there. That said, I also think JJ really upped his game in TROS, delivering action sequences that were not merely loud, but zesty and fun. The scene of Rey running ahead of Kylo's TIE Whisper and somersault-slicing it is superbly edited. Yet the standout action scene of the Sequel Trilogy probably remains the red guard fight in Snoke's chamber. Even the short scene of Rey duelling Luke in the rain, while pallid and dark, is clean and effective. However, there is more fury to the action scenes in TROS, possibly stemming from a deeper fusion of choreography, staging, effects, and sound design. In short, despite solid technical/aesthetic qualities in TLJ, I prefer TROS much more.


I'm with you on the stock look of the Kenobi series. Marquand certainly delivered solid results under Lucas' supervision. If anything, he gave the OT a theatrical upgrade, bringing a certain poise, grace, and poignant solemnity it had lacked (or that had been latent) to that point, through a series of measured, well-directed scenes involving Luke and his mentors on Dagobah and his Force-gifted family members on Endor, with a pleasing sense of mysticism retained. I doubt this new series can boast anything comparable. Yet I'm striving not to be a party pooper about this. It's hard, though. I loved Star Wars when it was so beautifully composed and classical-looking that all the shallow tricks and tics currently in-vogue weren't even thought of when watching. Because Lucas' Kurosawa-influenced camera aesthetics were perfect already. This looks, yah... assembly line.

Some new footage here:

I’m pretty excited for this show. More excited for this than literally anything SW since 2005. Seeing Ewan and Hayden together and the possibility of a character driven drama reflecting on how much Obi-Wan has lost in the storm of emotions that ROTS drives me to every time I watch is a compelling hook for me.

It's fertile ground for a well-made series to exploit. Much more compelling than ragtag rebels vs. another empire again. Especially when you have prequel actors and other people working on it that see the prequels as something more than an unfortunate stain on the franchise best left behind.