|
|
Post by jppiper on Jun 9, 2022 23:48:48 GMT
More and more I get the feeling that the new creators share some common fan misconceptions about the movies and it’s having a negative effect. The greatest example is Dave filoni’s famous duel of the fates “explanation” If you don't mind me asking what problem did you have with Dave's DOTF Explanation? |
|
|
|
Post by ArchdukeOfNaboo on Jun 10, 2022 14:45:53 GMT
I notice a great deal of snobbery towards the television series format in recent pages here. I mean, are some of you still living in the 1990s? Did you not take note of what happened in the past decade? The cinema has become a shadow of its former glorious self, and is now stuck with a Marvel form of diarrhoea; all the best screen drama comes on the small screen.
With the right storytellers, and an appropriate budget, I think the series format is a great fit for Star Wars. Lucas himself pioneered this with The Clone Wars, let's not forget - it's not as radically new as you think it is. It begun in 2008. He was also trying to do a live action version in Underworld, as we explored in another thread.
I've since posited some argument as to why but will reiterated that I'm nowhere near as accepting of this so-called "Second Golden Age" of television as is everyone else. I think it extremely overrated. Not garbage to be dismissed outright but certainly overrated, especially with all the worst habits of long-form storytelling and commonplace 'method' drama that tends to drag-out a narrative with little-to-no regard for presentational form and often well past its expiration date. From the scripting phase onto the editing room, just about every feature-filmmaker is obliged to hone their work with prudence. Some manage more cannily than others; Lucas in particular was impressively ruthless. With showrunners the whole mindset is all but reversed: to treat every season, episode, scene, like a quota to be met, to sustain on average a 22 to 45-minute runtime no matter what, at the core of it. Padding, lots of padding. Menial goings-on. Such is the obvious characteristic of all modern television that strikes me apparent, that always leaves me with the impression that I'm watching something prefab and intended as disposable time-consumption most convenient for the living-room viewer. I can almost feel the writers by mandate rationing out plot and narrative developments like canned goods—compositional movement & momentum being of no concern to the process of packaging with equal portions, and with pop-IPs like Star Wars being reduced to some kind of weekly "Loot Crate" of trivial trinkets. In recent years the industry of thrifty digital FX -- stock and ubiquitous -- along with chic multi-media marketing has brought about a bad tendency for genre shows to feign cinematic grandeur, in turn only delineating that much more the aforesaid modus operandi.
You're right about correlating (mainstream) cinema having become bloated and top-heavy with the Marvel franchise or whatever its ilk, but such is a consequential symptom of multi-media conglomerates placating to the lowest common denominator of content consumption over aspiring to venue experiences.
 |
|
|
|
Post by Cryogenic on Jun 10, 2022 17:55:49 GMT
I've since posited some argument as to why but will reiterated that I'm nowhere near as accepting of this so-called "Second Golden Age" of television as is everyone else. I think it extremely overrated. Not garbage to be dismissed outright but certainly overrated, especially with all the worst habits of long-form storytelling and commonplace 'method' drama that tends to drag-out a narrative with little-to-no regard for presentational form and often well past its expiration date. From the scripting phase onto the editing room, just about every feature-filmmaker is obliged to hone their work with prudence. Some manage more cannily than others; Lucas in particular was impressively ruthless. With showrunners the whole mindset is all but reversed: to treat every season, episode, scene, like a quota to be met, to sustain on average a 22 to 45-minute runtime no matter what, at the core of it. Padding, lots of padding. Menial goings-on. Such is the obvious characteristic of all modern television that strikes me apparent, that always leaves me with the impression that I'm watching something prefab and intended as disposable time-consumption most convenient for the living-room viewer. I can almost feel the writers by mandate rationing out plot and narrative developments like canned goods—compositional movement & momentum being of no concern to the process of packaging with equal portions, and with pop-IPs like Star Wars being reduced to some kind of weekly "Loot Crate" of trivial trinkets. In recent years the industry of thrifty digital FX -- stock and ubiquitous -- along with chic multi-media marketing has brought about a bad tendency for genre shows to feign cinematic grandeur, in turn only delineating that much more the aforesaid modus operandi.
You're right about correlating (mainstream) cinema having become bloated and top-heavy with the Marvel franchise or whatever its ilk, but such is a consequential symptom of multi-media conglomerates placating to the lowest common denominator of content consumption over aspiring to venue experiences.
Yeah, honestly... 10/10 to Ingram for articulating his opinion with typical elegance and finesse. I'm not sure all his criticisms apply to the Obi-Wan series, however. They are somewhat attenuated by the nature of the series, itself positioned somewhere between the short-form narrative of cinema and the long-form domain of television. Technically speaking, it's only six episodes long (although other developments may be in the works). This at least means the makers have had to think a little more carefully about themes and arcs and packing in all major story beats into one relatively self-contained block, into what will amount to somewhere between three and four hours of screen-time, tops. In some ways, it's more digestible than a feature film, even if a little less cinematic in places. Yet it's still able to pack a punch. It's this weird in-between thing. I'm quite liking it for that. If there is some disappointment here, then it's that the series will be over in a flash. They even pushed back the premiere by two days and then released two episodes at once. This only left five until the next one. Everyone was really still processing the first two. Then the third hit and created a lot of controversy. Now we've had the fourth, the shortest of the lot, and oh, boy: all the complaining has really started now. I do keep wishing this thing could have been a few more episodes. But, as I've also said, I'm intrigued by this rhyming scheme they seem to have going, where all the main Saga episodes (i.e., the LUCAS ERA SAGA) are paid homage. Obi-Wan is going to turn out, then, in an odd way, to be the The Star Wars Saga in microcosm, but with all the modern storytelling devices of the streaming era. As Obi-Wan himself might say: Curious. |
|
|
|
Post by ArchdukeOfNaboo on Jun 10, 2022 18:29:27 GMT
Some quotes I thought I might highlight from recent interviews with the main writer, Joby Harold:
Interview with The Wrap:
|
|
|
|
Post by Cryogenic on Jun 10, 2022 18:55:49 GMT
The Obi-Wan/Leia dynamic has been the best thing about the series so far, I think. It has an interesting "dark mirror" in Vader and Reva. I can't impugn what they've done here, even if some fans are calling it "Obi-Woke Kenobi". Some smart writing and excellent casting choices have really made Leia and Reva stand out to me. And yes, I totally dig their decision to emphasise the fact that Leia has two sets of parents, and both have imprinted on her in various ways. The warm, healthy relationship between Bail and Breha has also been refreshing to see, even if their characters have been contained to the first episode. |
|
|
|
Post by Ingram on Jun 10, 2022 21:57:34 GMT
10/10 to Ingram for articulating his opinion with typical elegance and finesse. I'm not sure all his criticisms apply to the Obi-Wan series, however. They are somewhat attenuated by the nature of the series, itself positioned somewhere between the short-form narrative of cinema and the long-form domain of television. Technically speaking, it's only six episodes long (although other developments may be in the works). This at least means the makers have had to think a little more carefully about themes and arcs and packing in all major story beats into one relatively self-contained block, into what will amount to somewhere between three and four hours of screen-time, tops. In some ways, it's more digestible than a feature film, even if a little less cinematic in places. Yet it's still able to pack a punch. It's this weird in-between thing. I'm quite liking it for that. It's not strictly the episode packaged whole that bespeaks the humdrum of television but the venue itself ...or lack thereof to be specific. They've opted to string together a storyline outside feature-length tenets; whether six episodes or twelve or twenty-two, they're playing to the meter of weekly at-home consumption. This series does indeed benefit from the simple fact that it's a mini yet, once you break away from the feature-length presentation of a thing, by overwhelming commercial nature does it become in no small part a process of accounting for allotted runtimes from one chapter to the next. Am I to believe that everything in this series has been of such critical artistic import that it could never have otherwise been trimmed, omitted or conceptually reworked to fit a theatrical release, that experimental vignette storytelling abiding its own rules beyond theatrical presentations was the chief muse of the writers/filmmakers involved, that Disney carrying on with Star Wars to justify its streaming service is not a major factor, that someone proposed an Obi-Wan movie only for someone else to counter, "No, I've got something even MORE daring."...? I'm not that religious.
It's a TV show.
It's also a pretty decent one. Am I patronizing the show? Well, as to my snobbery, ArchdukeOfNaboo ... I must admit that I love the idea of a sprawling Obi-Wan miniseries, but I'm not certain it's panning out so well in reality. Some people are saying that "Stranger Things" is whooping Kenobi's ass. I've never really sat down and watched the former, but I thought I ought to check out the Season Four trailer for ST, so I did; and yeah, if nothing else, the series is impressively shot -- very rich colour palettes, very cinematic: A TV miniseries that is pretty freakin' awesome is the 2008 HBO production John Adams starring Paul Giamatti. Giamatti is fantastic in the title role and the whole series is very intelligently written. It's only seven episodes long, yet has a run-time of 500 minutes. By comparison, Obi-Wan is six episodes and looks like it'll be clocking in at not more than 200 minutes. While there's something to be said for concision, worse than concision is pointless clutter and filler to disguise a hollow or poorly-articulated premise. I really hope that hasn't happened with Obi-Wan, but it could be argued that Star Wars isn't really making a true go of it in the television format under Disney. This raises some interesting faucets. First, while I harp on the medium, the series in question, when-and-where it devolves a bit into commonplace televisual ticks, none of the "cheapness" is egregious in its own right or somehow fails at conveying a scene at face value. Nothing about the show is broken or inept in its technical craft...enough to constitute a (relatively) objective claim, anyways. The problem I have is a little more nuanced and one I've since referenced pages back in this thread and also in the Dune thread, where mainstream industry entertainment media production -- wielding digital film or its DI equivalent -- has become such a uniformed well-oiled machine that there is little to distinguish between feature films, streaming shows and slick adverts alike. You cite Stranger Things as looking very cinematic ...eh, yes and no..? It's glossy and professional. What show of any pedigree or fandom cred isn't these days? Everything looks "good" in a storefront sense. Rather, it's that nothing really looks cinematic anymore via granular celluloid nor any visual grammar that predates the art-house music-video/marketing era while nothing on the small screen much exhibits the humbler limitations comparable to television of old. Media arts across the board have since become a single Stretch Armstrong of digital exactitude and sophistications that is merely pulled this way or that per whatever commercial intent or manner of distribution. The only thing there is to discern these days is a general contrast in tonal pretense or the ballpark range of the budget.
Likewise respectively for the writing and dramaturgy; there's really just one default mode anymore where comedy/comic-relief is played for memes and self-awareness while pretty much everything else -- situation drama, horror, sci-fi, fantasy -- is subject to the gravity of a varied nondescript method style, depending on the reach of the content.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is square in the middle of all this. The series is very handsomely mounted and intermittently fun mediocrity. High-end mediocrity. Everyone here has Disney+, right? So pull up any MCU series and tell me its filmmaking & storytelling practices are generally all that different. If one entertains or resonates more than the other, I argue it's mostly due to the raw material. (Mostly. Yes, McGregor himself still maintains a charming touch of artifice from another time when an auteur was holding the reigns.) For the moment, at least, I sincerely don't mean this as a criticism of the show. Alright, so it's commonplace. That's not to call it a loss. Dunkin' Donuts coffee is commonplace—I buy that shit all the time, whole boxes of k-cups. Fight me.
If there's a point I'm trying to make, however... I can't help but long for a pre-savvy age when television better knew its place and acted accordingly.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Exhibit A:
Please consider the talent roster in those opening credits. Seriously.
This was a great show. It's maybe not the best example because it was in fact ambitious for its time, affording a million-dollar-plus budget for each episode in order to appropriate real locations around the world, with period set dressings and sizable extras to boot! And yet it compensated with dime-thrifty approaches like shooting on 16mm film instead of 35mm and structuring a multitude of episodes so that they could air separately or as two-parters between network primetime slots and syndication. But what I love about the show is just how unaffected it is. Action and dramaturgy are staged in earnest with fixed, single-camera setups that move only for clarity's sake while the scripts couldn't be any more straightforward in delivering leisurely paced low-wattage adventure/romance narratives for a TV viewing experience. It's very simple, dopey, old-timey but always on point with dramatic setups and resolutions. Obi-Wan is still a saga character over a serialized one, granted, so excusable enough I suppose that he's caught up in a storyline that arcs the show. But I'll tell you this much, when Obi-Wan Kenobi works best for me is when, equivalent to the show above, its titular hero is just negotiating worldly galaxy milieus businesslike and swashbuckling about at tempered speeds—some slipping in 'n' out here, a rooftop blaster exchange there, a neato danger-run through Imperial trappings, goofy villians... Even sticking him with a babysitting gig is apropos to the idea of capers moderated with a TV-lite step and, as I type this, I'm just now appreciating the parallel between a young man Indy and a shell-shocked Ben Kenobi travailing thrills & spectacle comparably modest to their cinematic counterparts. Where the series slags for me is where it tries to be more -- more monumentalism, more gasping, more OMG! -- which I understand is a nearly inescapable condition of televising a Star Wars legacy character to begin with. By my standards, then, it was destined to be at odds with its chosen medium. Pyrogenic implies, I think, that maybe we should cut it some slack for pragmatic reasons. I wish the show would've cut itself some slack. Other made-for-TV popcorn works I hold in high esteem:
- The Sharpe's series that ran throughout the '90s with Sean Bean
- Hallmark's The Odyssey and Merlin from 1997 and 1998
- Dinotopia
- Lonesome Dove
- Spielberg's original 1980s go at Amazing Stories
Impossibly epicurean demands? I'll leave that for you guys to decide. Myself, I'm just not hip with the times. I'm an analog Zenith kinda guy; all this streaming-era à la mode is a bit of a wet blanket.
|
|
|
|
Post by Cryogenic on Jun 11, 2022 1:45:43 GMT
It's not strictly the episode packaged whole that bespeaks the humdrum of television but the venue itself ...or lack thereof to be specific. They've opted to string together a storyline outside feature-length tenets; whether six episodes or twelve or twenty-two, they're playing to the meter of weekly at-home consumption. This series does indeed benefit from the simple fact that it's a mini yet, once you break away from the feature-length presentation of a thing, by overwhelming commercial nature does it become in no small part a process of accounting for allotted runtimes from one chapter to the next. Yeah, true. A television production, by virtue (or vice) of its Procrustean format, does present with certain limitations compared to the cinematic format. Very good writing and show development, however, can somewhat overcome these limitations, and bring an intimate, focused feel to the gradual unfurling of the premise and setting. It's a chance to go deeper and more finely-contoured. That said, breadth doesn't equal depth, and film remains the ultimate visual medium. LOL. Of course, the Obi-Wan series is part of Disney's financial ledger, and a way of Disney justifying and growing its streaming service. The same way that "Star Trek: Voyager" was designed to help launch UPN (United Paramount Network). That commercial reality can actually make it cooler. It's a new thing commissioned to help another new thing. It is proof that Star Wars can maintain itself in the streaming era; it doesn't have to be a cinematic franchise only. Now, as to your larger point, which I am trying not to sound obtuse toward: There's no doubt in my mind that Obi-Wan could have been structured differently -- would have been structured differently; had it been a feature film as originally intended. No, the move/downgrade into television land wasn't a bold move by itself. However, I'm a little wary of being dragged into absolutes here. There's a certain boldness in the presentation, a touch of the grandiose, even though it's "just television". It dares to take the Campbellian Hero's Journey, traditionally the purview of the movies (i.e., something the movies popularised and almost patented for themselves), and try it in the television realm, focused around a cinematic character; who is here presented both mythically and as just a man. It has one foot in one realm, the other foot in a different one. That duality informs the entire project. There's an underlying frisson helping to elevate it above "mere television". At the same time, it gets to be something of a segmented orange, with story-chunks very explicitly broken up into episodic escapades, much more varied in look and tone than normal for this format. True. I don't like that samey-ness, either. There used to be much more delineation and variation. Kicking film -- celluloid -- to the curb has been a bad move that has deprived cinema of some of its intangible magic. I was reminded of that watching a clip the other night from a film reputed to be otherwise fairly marginal (Universal Picture's 2009 romcom "It's Complicated"): Cinema has taken a turn for the worse since analogue filmstock was essentially abandoned in favour of an all-digital workflow. Ironically, George Lucas is, in some ways, the man most directly to blame for this sea-change movement; even though it was bound to happen sooner or later.
I should have written "quasi-cinematic". It's no more or less cinematic than what passes for cinema these days, true. That's basically what I meant. By comparison, the Kenobi show is now being denigrated for lacking the polish and expensiveness of "Stranger Things"; even though it still looks pretty good to me. I'm probably rather biased on this point. I can't stand horror material, least of all television horror, least of all anything trending in that area. I'm also a Star Wars fanboy. I still feel like being loyal to the brand.
I know. The method style has its place, but is definitely overused. I prefer the wry observational qualities of something like "Lost In Translation"; and, of course, the documentary-fantasy serial style of Star Wars. The Kenobi series, however, still has an enjoyable mix of modern acting trends and a kind of comic-book grandeur. "The Mandalorian" seems to have this, too. Other dramas can be putrid in their seriousness and morbidity.
The MCU style of action-drama is far more snide. Or simply too dramatically reductive. The Obi-Wan series is something of the latter, but I think it avoids the former. Maybe some moments with Leia and the scenes with Haja evoke the Marvel style of dramedy, but the series is otherwise refreshingly free of those idiotic encumbrances of the Marvel movies. It still treats the Star Wars universe in a serious fashion; the characters still broadly feel like Star Wars characters. Seeing Obi-Wan strolling around Daiyu at the start of the second episode gives me authentic Star Wars vibes. It has the right amount of atmosphere and grace. Maybe it's still the content doing the most to set the two apart. I admittedly find it hard to judge.
Well described. I can see that that show is very solidly done and has a crisp sense of pacing and momentum. There's an amazing lack of pretense to it. Unfortunately, it also comes from a different era, before -- as you've been stressing -- streaming services and digital production techniques took over and became the new normal. It's worth noting how intense and emotionally gripping the Obi-Wan series is compared to "Young Indy" (going by that episode, anyway). Some kind of emphasis on worldly trauma seems to have become the thing to do in the last ten years. Maybe we're just cottoning onto how shitty the world is and how miserably human beings treat one another.
Yeah, I like the serial hijinks side of the series, where Obi-Wan's Jedi-mercenary, James Bond-like qualities are emphasised or momentarily brought to the fore. The rooftop shootout in the second episode is a great little sequence with some remarkably fluid action direction. I adore everything about that short-lived sequence. The series, at its best, is able to find a balance between more involving character moments, and then a few well-done digressions to action, in which some of the underlying tension is released with wonderful piquancy. There's at least a touch of virtuosity at work when Obi-Wan plays its better hand and expertly juxtaposes these elements and hits a nice rhythm.
I think it might be guilty of overreaching in places, but I'm still trying to resolve the bigger picture of it in my mind. Some parts of it are simply too delicious for me to ignore. There's a lot of really neat ideas and moments in each episode, regardless of some criticism I've already made or perhaps thought of making. I also wonder, at this stage, if they've done some things deliberately, knowing that fans will crease up in irritation, simply because all the people involved perceive the meme potential and how they may become series tropes in their own right: e.g., Vader extinguishing the fire against Kenobi at the end of their fight in the third episode, then Tala reigniting it, and Vader just standing there, doing nothing as if totally flummoxed (yet also watching Kenobi and staring past the flames intently). This, I suppose, can lend the impression the series is just winging it and sometimes feels thrown together, but I'm not sure it's that simple. An off-kilter, that's-fucking-stupid, near-Brechtian kernel of storytelling has essentially become part and parcel of the Star Wars viewing experience. This show is a crafty schemer. A bit like Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi himself.
|
|
|
|
Post by Cryogenic on Jun 11, 2022 11:28:25 GMT
Here's a neat bit of visual rhyming. Obi-Wan's droid warning light system for his cave dwellings shows a sudden transition from blue to red in the first episode. Blue when the coast is clear, red to mark an intruder (Bail) near the end of the episode. Similarly, Leia's droid LOLA shifts from blue lights when her captor drops LOLA to the ground in the first episode, to red at the end of episode four, after covert reprogramming by Reva -- perhaps indicating a sudden plot shift in the last two episodes:     |
|
|
|
Post by Seeker of the Whills on Jun 11, 2022 11:45:16 GMT
The writer confirms that the Jedi in the basement were like "butterflies pinned to the wall": ew.com/tv/obi-wan-kenobi-star-wars-timeline-canon/I'm not behind the depiction of Vader Disney seems to be pushing. I thought the scene at the end of Rogue One was a cool action scene, and kind of mirrored Anakin's slaughter of the Separatists, but I think it veered into the territory of making Vader the Terminator, which Lucas said he didn't want to do. With this series they have even further made him a killing machine, and into a sort of character that I at least never imagined him as, with him keeping the bodies of the Jedi. I just think that makes him too irredeemable. I thought that part was very off-putting and tone deaf, and the reason I haven't had any urge to rewatch that episode yet. |
|
|
|
Post by nickromancer on Jun 11, 2022 14:52:03 GMT
The writer confirms that the Jedi in the basement were like "butterflies pinned to the wall": ew.com/tv/obi-wan-kenobi-star-wars-timeline-canon/I'm not behind the depiction of Vader Disney seems to be pushing. I thought the scene at the end of Rogue One was a cool action scene, and kind of mirrored Anakin's slaughter of the Separatists, but I think it veered into the territory of making Vader the Terminator, which Lucas said he didn't want to do. With this series they have even further made him a killing machine, and into a sort of character that I at least never imagined him as, with him keeping the bodies of the Jedi. I just think that makes him too irredeemable. I thought that part was very off-putting and tone deaf, and the reason I haven't had any urge to rewatch that episode yet. It also leaves some logical questions. When did they start preserving them? There’s a frozen padawan wearing his training garb which implies after RotS Palpatine called a janitor and was like “hey I need you to scoop one of the dead kids off the floor and preserve it ... yeah ... you ever had one of those butterfly collections?” |
|
|
|
Post by Seeker of the Whills on Jun 11, 2022 15:49:23 GMT
The writer confirms that the Jedi in the basement were like "butterflies pinned to the wall": ew.com/tv/obi-wan-kenobi-star-wars-timeline-canon/I'm not behind the depiction of Vader Disney seems to be pushing. I thought the scene at the end of Rogue One was a cool action scene, and kind of mirrored Anakin's slaughter of the Separatists, but I think it veered into the territory of making Vader the Terminator, which Lucas said he didn't want to do. With this series they have even further made him a killing machine, and into a sort of character that I at least never imagined him as, with him keeping the bodies of the Jedi. I just think that makes him too irredeemable. I thought that part was very off-putting and tone deaf, and the reason I haven't had any urge to rewatch that episode yet. It also leaves some logical questions. When did they start preserving them? There’s a frozen padawan wearing his training garb which implies after RotS Palpatine called a janitor and was like “hey I need you to scoop one of the dead kids off the floor and preserve it ... yeah ... you ever had one of those butterfly collections?” Yeah, it implies a level of sadism in whoever was in charge of the operation. Vader is in charge of the Inquisitors, so I think it is implied that he is the one responsible for the preservation of the Jedi corpses. Which is a depiction of the character I don't agree with. If it is Palpatine who ordered the Jedi to be preserved, that would make a little more sense. But I think it would be out of character for Vader. |
|
|
|
Post by nickromancer on Jun 11, 2022 15:57:05 GMT
It also leaves some logical questions. When did they start preserving them? There’s a frozen padawan wearing his training garb which implies after RotS Palpatine called a janitor and was like “hey I need you to scoop one of the dead kids off the floor and preserve it ... yeah ... you ever had one of those butterfly collections?” Yeah, it implies a level of sadism in whoever was in charge of the operation. Vader is in charge of the Inquisitors, so I think it is implied that he is the one responsible for the preservation of the Jedi corpses. Which is a depiction of the character I don't agree with. If it is Palpatine who ordered the Jedi to be preserved, that would make a little more sense. But I think it would be out of character for Vader. Yeah the fact that it’s on Mustafar’s moon much closer to Vader’s base of operations than Palpatine implies it’s his tomb/shrine. Which is weird since I don’t think Vader would be interested in preserving his history. My initial speculation as I watched was that they were preserving the DNA of every Jedi, as if the inquisitors theorized that the Jedi were symbiote “cells” of a greater consciousness connected by the midi-chlorians and they wanted to capture every part of that body for Palpatine’s dark purposes |
|
|
|
Post by Cryogenic on Jun 11, 2022 16:11:08 GMT
The writer confirms that the Jedi in the basement were like "butterflies pinned to the wall": ew.com/tv/obi-wan-kenobi-star-wars-timeline-canon/I'm not behind the depiction of Vader Disney seems to be pushing. I thought the scene at the end of Rogue One was a cool action scene, and kind of mirrored Anakin's slaughter of the Separatists, but I think it veered into the territory of making Vader the Terminator, which Lucas said he didn't want to do. With this series they have even further made him a killing machine, and into a sort of character that I at least never imagined him as, with him keeping the bodies of the Jedi. I just think that makes him too irredeemable. I thought that part was very off-putting and tone deaf, and the reason I haven't had any urge to rewatch that episode yet. It also leaves some logical questions. When did they start preserving them? There’s a frozen padawan wearing his training garb which implies after RotS Palpatine called a janitor and was like “hey I need you to scoop one of the dead kids off the floor and preserve it ... yeah ... you ever had one of those butterfly collections?” I thought the scene was cool and creepy, although also Nazi concentration camp levels of sinister -- truly disturbing for Star Wars. It doesn't get any better if you read the Wookieepedia entry for Fortress Inquisitorius. This is not a nice slice of Imperial history. Still, the preserved youngling isn't a plot-hole: starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fortress_InquisitoriusTaken from the main description at the top of the page: Taken from the history/early history sub-section (potential lore spoilers for other Star Wars material): That passage makes clear that there were still younglings around. They were simply in hiding and under the care of Jedi who escaped Order 66. Obi-Wan's visceral reaction to the preserved youngling implies his renewed dread of the Empire and is maybe also a stinging reminder of the carnage Anakin caused by turning to the Dark Side. After all, Anakin himself was once a Padawan, whom Obi-Wan took it upon himself to train at the same age as the preserved youngling he gazes upon. In ROTS, when he and Yoda return to the Jedi Temple, Obi-Wan mournfully remarks, "Not even the younglings survived." Maybe not those younglings. Obi-Wan suddenly realises the horrors of the Sith ruling the galaxy go deeper than he imagined -- a little like him discovering the clone army on Kamino (where there were foetuses in human-sized vials). Speaking of clones, this bizarre place in Fortress Inquisitorius is probably meant to tie into the Emperor's long-term goal of defeating death and attaining immortality. This was established in TROS when Kylo encountered a cloned version of Palpatine and walked past the Snoke pickling tank. These entombed Jedi aren't so much trophies as museum pieces for experimentation. Palpatine is trying to crack the secrets of life and death and likely running investigations into how to manipulate the midi-chlorians for his personal gain. This is alluded to in the opera scene in ROTS. He tells Anakin the Dark Side of the Force is "a pathway to many abilities that some consider to be unnatural", and he explains that the legendary Darth Plagueis was able "to use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life". How much Vader agrees with this plot is unclear, although he might believe there's a chance of bringing back Padme one day. The scene is also a little meta in that it represents a known Star Wars character venturing into the unknown and encountering the wider, bizarre lore of the expanded Star Wars universe. There is potentially something interesting laden in the subtext of the fourth episode. Despite the horror of the Death Star and the Empire's brutal attack on the Lars homestead in ANH, the original "episode four" of The Star Wars Saga, very little about the Empire feels macabre. This "episode four" of the Obi-Wan series inverts that. At the start of the episode, Obi-Wan is placed in a bacta tank and is juxtaposed with Anakin in his tank. He then comes to and struggles to get out. He is determined to rescue Leia from the Inquisitor fortress that is submerged in an ocean. He swims through the ocean and breaches the fortress underwater. He finds Jedi frozen in some kind of amber-like substance. He fights the stormtroopers and cracks the window and water rushes into the base. At the end, one of the rescuing snowspeeders is attacked by Reva and crashes into the ocean below. The emphasis on water and the subconscious and amniotic dread/perversion (e.g., Reva's dark mother overtures to Leia) is very pronounced in this episode. There's a touch of gothic horror about it all (the Wookieepedia entry also states that Fortress Inquisitorius was inspired by Gothic cathedrals). All the installments of Kenobi seem to have strange, distinctive undercurrents. The episodes seem designed to fit together in a larger mosaic that tells an orthogonal story encompassing many strands. |
|
|
|
Post by ArchdukeOfNaboo on Jun 11, 2022 22:49:48 GMT
The writer confirms that the Jedi in the basement were like "butterflies pinned to the wall": ew.com/tv/obi-wan-kenobi-star-wars-timeline-canon/I'm not behind the depiction of Vader Disney seems to be pushing. I thought the scene at the end of Rogue One was a cool action scene, and kind of mirrored Anakin's slaughter of the Separatists, but I think it veered into the territory of making Vader the Terminator, which Lucas said he didn't want to do. With this series they have even further made him a killing machine, and into a sort of character that I at least never imagined him as, with him keeping the bodies of the Jedi. I just think that makes him too irredeemable. I thought that part was very off-putting and tone deaf, and the reason I haven't had any urge to rewatch that episode yet. The writing for Vader and Obi-Wan has all been fine, in my book. The problem is that they don't get enough attention (counting Anakin/Vader as the one character here), and we spend too much time on worthless supporting characters, and have already recycled the rescue plot. Darth Vader was originally going to be more gruesome in this series, it's to Lucasfilm's credit that they stepped in and put manners on the writer for once. People have been talking about the character being irredeemable since his actions depicted in Episode III's Order 66, so I'd be more careful on that one.
It's odd actually that rumours of a Darth Vader show are popping up. As much as I love the Dark Lord of the Sith as anyone else, the bitter truth is that - in contrast to Anakin - he's one-dimensional, with severe limitations in the characterisation that make him unsuitable to lead any standalone film, let alone a series. Drama is all about human emotion, and Vader barely has any.
Episodes II and III are all about taking a young, dynamic, main character, and transforming him into a menacing but predicable cyborg barely on the screen long enough to be called a supporting character. As a 12 year old, I may have loved the idea of a robot slashing out at random victims episode after episode, as an adult, however, it terribly bores me.
Ever since the PT was fully realised, truth be told, I've found Palpatine to be the more enticing villain ignoring the existence of tros here. Darth Vader only gets interesting in TESB.
|
|
|
|
Post by Cryogenic on Jun 11, 2022 23:34:20 GMT
The writer confirms that the Jedi in the basement were like "butterflies pinned to the wall": ew.com/tv/obi-wan-kenobi-star-wars-timeline-canon/I'm not behind the depiction of Vader Disney seems to be pushing. I thought the scene at the end of Rogue One was a cool action scene, and kind of mirrored Anakin's slaughter of the Separatists, but I think it veered into the territory of making Vader the Terminator, which Lucas said he didn't want to do. With this series they have even further made him a killing machine, and into a sort of character that I at least never imagined him as, with him keeping the bodies of the Jedi. I just think that makes him too irredeemable. I thought that part was very off-putting and tone deaf, and the reason I haven't had any urge to rewatch that episode yet. The writing for Vader and Obi-Wan has all been fine, in my book. The only things I find questionable are: a) Some of the trash-talk dialogue from Vader to Obi-Wan in their clash on Mapuzo. What is it Vader says? "The years have made you weak." That's so insipid. It's also too uncomfortably close to his line to Obi-Wan in ANH: "Your powers are weak, old man." I expected more. That said, the line readings were very good, and it actually sounded like it was Anakin/Hayden talking beneath the mask. b) As Seeker has pointed out, Vader is pretty sadistic in the village scene, attacking innocents and murdering them, all to flush out Obi-Wan. It seems a tad out of character for Vader to be quite that savage. In the Saga films, his targets from ROTS onward are either military targets or people of a certain rank/station. Those poor villagers were hiding in their houses and Vader drags them out and kills several of them just because he can. You're right to point out that people have complained Lucas went too far in having Anakin straight up murder the Jedi younglings. We need to keep that in mind if we're going to make critiques of this show's representation of Vader. That said, as Seeker indicated, Anakin looks and sounds anguished and in pain when he commits his murders in the prequels. The Obi-Wan miniseries' depiction of Vader shows him to be more of an angry brute. As for "worthless": Hey, now, we can also look to the prequels there and recall people's reactions to Jar Jar. I'm not seeing worthless characters in the series so far. True, the main attraction is Obi-Wan, but I also like Leia and Reva and I think all of their stories are going to dovetail nicely. I just don't get the complaining that Disney series introduce other characters and perform bait-and-switch tactics because they're pursuing an agenda. I mean, sure, a pure character study of Obi-Wan would be nice, but I've accepted that isn't Disney's modus operandi. And that's okay, in my opinion, provided they still do something interesting. The nice conceit is that the Star Wars galaxy is a big place and it should be possible for different characters to share the same story space. Having two or three characters' arcs coincide actually brings more intelligence and complexity to the storytelling. Well, from a certain point of view.
He doesn't have much character, no -- at least, I'm not sure what there is left to explore, once this series is through. Surely, at some point, Vader just becomes demystified and actually turns boring. He's been in enough Star Wars media at this point. It's time to move beyond Vader and reach for something new.
That's a very good point. Vader is really just a punctuation mark in the prequels. The prequels are much more concerned the transformation process, rather than the end destination.
|
|
|
|
Post by jppiper on Jun 11, 2022 23:50:06 GMT
Cryogenic God did they forget what Palpatine said to him? Do What Must be Done Lord Vader Do not Hesitate show no Mercy.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ingram on Jun 12, 2022 7:38:00 GMT
I'm not much for investing in appendix lore (Wookieepedia or otherwise) over how something might best inform or evoke the relatively immediate storytelling that's happening on screen. Maybe dead Force users is all for some Super-Palpatine 2.0 bullshit. Maybe Vader houses all those entombed Jedi deep within Fortress Inquisitorius because he's a butterfly-trophy collecting psychopath or maybe, just maybe, because such constitutes his own distorted version of honoring them. Perhaps Vader has a certain detached sympathy for an Order he once served, believed in, idealized, and thus enshrines it in traces to feed his inner vexation: My enemy. Vermin of the galaxy. Yet why do I still need you so?
Even in A New Hope he mocks Imperial super-weapons next to the power of the Force. Vader's a monster, but he's always conveyed his own convictions about it, a frame of mind never entirely in-step the the Empire as a whole.
I dunno. Just a thought.
|
|
|
|
Post by Cryogenic on Jun 12, 2022 23:23:01 GMT
I'm not much for investing in appendix lore (Wookieepedia or otherwise) over how something might best inform or evoke the relatively immediate storytelling that's happening on screen. Maybe dead Force users is all for some Super-Palpatine 2.0 bullshit. Maybe Vader houses all those entombed Jedi deep within Fortress Inquisitorius because he's a butterfly-trophy collecting psychopath or maybe, just maybe, because such constitutes his own distorted version of honoring them. Perhaps Vader has a certain detached sympathy for an Order he once served, believed in, idealized, and thus enshrines it in traces to feed his inner vexation: My enemy. Vermin of the galaxy. Yet why do I still need you so? Yeah, it can be a mixture of things, but some of the people trapped in the amber/resin aren't even Jedi. They were simply Force-sensitive and therefore hunted by the Inquisitors. This is alluded to at the start of the episode when that guy on Jabiim mentions his wife being captured and never seeing her again. Of course, this doesn't rule out Vader having his own reasons; perhaps it even strengthens them. |
|
|
|
Post by stampidhd280pro on Jun 13, 2022 4:02:09 GMT
The first five notes of Obi Wans theme are the same as Qui-Gon's. Thought i noticed it in the past week or so. Has anyone else noticed?
|
|
|
|
Post by stampidhd280pro on Jun 13, 2022 4:05:16 GMT
The first five notes of Obi Wans theme are the same as Qui-Gon's. Thought i noticed it in the past week or so. Has anyone else noticed? or the first four notes of Obi Wan's theme reference the first five notes of Qui-Gon's. |
|
