I always get the sense that after viewing each episode Cryo solemnly hikes atop some foothill in wherever bumfuck English countryside, walks around in circles, sits, meditates, walks around some more until his thoughts are finally crystalized and where he then runs giddily back down the down the hill like he just solved the Riddle of the Sphinx.
LMAO. Close. Bumfuck
Welsh countryside, and only if I'm being really, really good, and strolling about in the outdoors, breathing natural air, not this Darth Vader existence in my little lair. I do walk in circles, though. And sort of shake and jostle around. Too much nervous energy. It is, indeed, how I solve problems. It's my way of running back scenes and moments through my head; trying to relive one thing or another. By getting out of my chair and moving around, I make everything more visceral, more present-tense; and then, bit by bit, I guess I piece it all together. Then I'm ready to sit back down and blast through whatever it is I've got to say.
Eeeeh, yeah... I think I like your version better.
Your speculation was wider of the mark as to my particular silence, however. There's a much more prosaic reason for it. It got suddenly hectic at work. Some guy is off holidaying in Romania, and another guy's wife just gave birth yesterday, and the combination of the two has thrown the rota into chaos. I knew something like this would happen at the end of the series. So, yeah, I've been leaned on to do more hours than usual -- more than is comfortable for me, anyway. I only just got done watching the final episode. And then I'm in work again tomorrow, and ten hours later (technically against the law), I'm back in work again. Then I have one day off and I'm in work again; and so on, it would appear, for the next two weeks. Ah, well. But enough about my slave existence on Walestooine. Let's get to the episode:
--------------------------------------------
My "LOL", I'd just like to clarify, was in response, not to your reply, which I read just now, but yes: the episode itself; and it's maybe also a meta comment about my whole stupid, pointless connection to Star Wars... a recognition, at long last, at how ridiculous and pathetic it all is. Because...
This episode completely underwhelmed me and felt stupendously mediocre. I liked the part where Obi-Wan went nuts on Vader ("You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts!"), and I guess the final scene between Obi-Wan and Leia was alright --
but the rest? What was the fucking
point of this series? It's like watchbait. Or streambait. Are those words? They are now.
In this episode, they made the blatant evisceration of continuity and logic official. Vader's Star Destroyer was firing at that pipsqueak rebel transport for
how long and it takes no damage??? And what about the relative indifference of everyone inside? Joe Rogaine, Obi-Wan Cannoli, Ley-uh, HAHAJARJAR -- they didn't really care, right? Sorry, the damn Empire was tailing their ass and Vader even ordered the guns to be intensified, but they just keep chug-chug-chugging along, acting like the only real problem was that the cistern of their toilet was taking longer than usual to refill itself. Thanks, TLJ, you big pile of bantha piss(take). Ugh. The episode started on a drawn-out, moldy cracker of a note, and it only kept delivering more of the same. I just didn't feel there were any believable stakes. This whole thing was and is rubber-band Star Wars made for streaming dunderheads. Not the carefully layered, tightly-plotted Saga films we know and love. Or "Rogue One". Or "Solo". Just dumb, tedious, fan-fiction tripe.
Perhaps I'm just burned out with work right now, but I can't muster the enthusiasm to say much about the final/not-final installment of the series. I'm itching to return instead to my deep dive on "Solo", much as I did when "The Rise Of Skywalker" came out. This series has not kindled the same fire within me. It's just come and gone like an empty cargo train passing in the night. And instead of a firecracker of an ending, the series petered out with the sort of climax -- and kind of climax
ing -- I expected. Just a forgettable, big fat nothing burger of a show. I saw stampid refer to it as "paint by numbers" and that's about right. Seriously, what actually happened of any note? I count three things:
i) Vader and Obi-Wan fought on a soundstage; sorry, rocky world #155, in poor lighting, and then that was kinda it. I liked the part where Obi-Wan hurled rocks at Vader and damaged his suit, but his surprising burst of aggression wasn't very Jedi. Then he leaves him behind again, only making the line in ANH from Vader about Vader leaving him all the stranger. But whatever.
ii) Reva hobbled her way to the homestead on rocky world #160; sorry, Tatooine, battled Owen and Beru in poor lighting, and then went to find Luke, in super poor lighting (and great gobs of super shaky cam -- yay!). That was kinda it, except for Reva getting all weepy and shit, and looking like she gained 30 pounds for some reason. Of course, no explanation is offered for how Reva survived being gutted by Vader; except maybe she has some kind of SJW shield around her or something. Like Rey! Rey-Reva. Rejoice for the abundance of Mary Sues under Disney! Double rejoice that you're banned for using the term on TFN! Hooray for humanity! Hooray for the universe!
iii) Basil Oregano (Copyright RedLetterMedia) shows up and thanks Obi-Wan Cannoli who breaks his cover again and pointlessly goes to Alderaan for all of ninety seconds to greet Leia and return LOLA. Okay. I hope there were no witnesses or anything.
Wait, four things, I guess:
iv) Obi-Wan returns to Tatooine and retreats between a cliff bluff never to be seen again. Until season two. And then season three. And then some spinoff thing featuring Obi-Wan Cannoli because the world just can't get enough of Obi-Wan Cannoli played by Ewan McCheeseGrater.
In the midst of these pivotal, epochal events, the episode manages to:
a) Turn Luke Skywalker into a total MacGuffin who speaks all of four lines.
b) Marginalise the wives of Bail and Owen by having them speak, hey, whaddayaknow, all of four lines each.
c) Add in empty, worthless cameos by Ian McDiarmid and Liam Neeson in distractingly bad makeup; who were definitely both used better in TROS than this fan-wank streaming junk.
d) Shank those poor struggling rebels, including Haja, by yeeting them out of the story entirely. I guess they never really mattered, anyway. Joe Rogaine fixed the hyperdrive and returned home to trim his beard and to copious amounts of space pretzels, an enviable collection of body warmers, and a big, comfy armchair.
Wait -- was this a
Star Wars thing? Where am I?
Who am I?
DON'T FUCKING USE SHAKY CAM.
DON'T FUCKING USE SHAKY CAM.
DON'T FUCKING USE SHAKY CAM.
Just putting that out there.
What else?
The music in the long-awaited (well, three-week awaited) re-match between Obi-Wan and Vader sucked. Cut-rate "Battle Of The Heroes" and
then some. You wanna light that scene in a way that is compelling or provide it a score of the same calibre? Of course, you don't.
I did like the part where Obi-Wan went nuts on Vader, though. Okay, I already said that, but that was cool. So was Vader's mask getting all torn up and Anakin's face becoming exposed. That part, in fact, was
badass. And the way he talked. The episode needed more shocks like that: more edge, more zaniness, more digression into action-pulp. And yes, Obi-Wan shedding tears in front of his former apprentice and apologising profusely was moving. The line from Anakin that Anakin killed Anakin was also very Anakin. Anakin Anakins. Obi-Wan has to depart his old Padawan hearing
that. That was chilling. For real, this part was actually very well-done. Anakin alone on a forsaken rocky world, wrecked and rancid with hatred, his whole existence one of genuine pain and suffering, screaming Obi-Wan's name to no-one and nothing in particular -- abandoned.
Although the encounter also made Obi-Wan seem cruel. It is obvious to the viewer, and should be abundantly clear to Obi-Wan, that Anakin doesn't really have much to live for. He's just a hateful, pathetic shell. The one thing that might give Vader hope is a hint that his offspring are out there and that some genuine trace of Padme remains. Obi-Wan couldn't exactly disclose that fact straight to Vader, but it's pretty cold on his part to walk off with that knowledge, leaving Vader in his spiritual dark. Obi-Wan, while showing Vader mercy, doesn't really do anything to reach out to him, or reason with him, or show him the error of his ways. It's just a Force-sticuff, resulting in a knockout, triggering a comeback, concluding with Obi-Wan gaining the upper-hand and ultimately leaving the battle arena. He doesn't impart any Jedi wisdom to Anakin. He just apologises and leaves. Leaves him alone to die again, gasping for breath on a barren, anonymous desert world, with no trace of help or rescue in sight. "Obi-Wan once thought as you do." Yeah, sure he did. Stockholm Syndrome Vader.
Reva heading to Tatooine Reva arriving on Tatooine Reva already being on Tatooine, somehow alive, was alright. I guess I like how Owen and Beru barricaded themselves at the homestead and awaited her arrival at sunset. Nice Western vibes. And the little melee between Owen and Reva wasn't half bad. It was nicely understated compared to Obi-Wan and Vader's brawl and may have even surpassed it in that regard. No theatrics. No trash-talking. No baked-in score-settling. Just a man trying to protect his wife and child. I dug it. It didn't really have much point to it, but I dug it.
Sadly, this episode was very male-centric. Reva was a sad, hobbling mess whose arc, I guess, was completed (and also truncated) on Tatooine. Leia had that slightly-too-cute moment with the holster on Alderaan, and it was Beru that was determined to stay and defend their home, their son, their entire way of life against Reva; contra Owen. But the men got most of the focus. Obi-Wan, Roken, Haja (entrusted to return Leia to Alderaan), Bail, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Palpatine, Qui-Gon. They were all, in their own ways, very centered and august, or their appearance was an exclamation mark loaded in nostalgia and fan pandering, and they sucked up almost all the available dialogue duties or predictable "nobility" points. By comparison, Breha and Beru were non-entities, just there to be there. Ditto the young and rather effete version of Luke. This aspect of the episode really gave me a shudder. Despite being directed by a minority female (as much as I hate that term), the series rounds off in a very rote and predictable way, giving almost all the honours to the men. And even then, in a tickbox way. When there was an opportunity for Obi-Wan and Luke to have a meaningful exchange in the penultimate scene, the series is so comically uninterested that it simply compresses their first meeting into a trite "Hello There" meme. Seriously: Obi-Wan says the line and that's it. We don't even get Luke's reaction.
WTF?
Another thing that really annoyed me was Bail implying he might telephone Obi-Wan from Alderaan again; or Obi-Wan, I guess, was the one saying it was perfectly fine if he ever felt the need to call on him again. Dude... Why? Ugh!!! The twins were meant to be kept
hidden. And what the hell was up with this episode, anyway? Did Bail actually go to Tatooine or not? Did a bunch of scenes just get cut out? I thought he said he was heading there in the last episode. He doesn't even mention it to Obi-Wan at the end. It was like these episodes were written by different people. The Obi-Wan series started with promise, but turned into amateur hour Star Wars by its conclusion. Plot threads are established and dropped, there's almost no time or damage logic (the series evokes the rebels-vs-empire motif, but clearly treats it like filler and barely bothers to sketch out meaningful cat-and-mouse stakes), and whole characters appear and then disappear on a whim. I had to LOL at Obi-Wan entrusting Leia to Haja. Dude, he dropped your fucking cellphone and allowed Reva to discover Luke on Tatooine. How reliable do you think he is? Oh, wait. The series doesn't care. It doesn't even care that Obi-Wan no longer has that little communicator or that Obi-Wan doesn't seem to realise he no longer has that communicator; or that, in theory, the enemy could still find it.
Likewise, Reva's story isn't really resolved. Her final scene is a sweet little scene of Obi-Wan telling her it's up to her what course her life takes from this moment on. Fine. But that's literally it. That's the last of Reva as far as this episode/series is concerned. How can she possibly atone for all the misery she and the Inquisitors inflicted? Can she even be trusted? And even if she can, if we're willing to grant the idea that she has effectively abandoned her evil ways, wouldn't the Empire find her? Isn't she still a liability to herself and others? How can she even survive? Wasn't she fatally stabbed by Vader? Isn't she gradually bleeding out and wasting away? Absolutely none of this is touched upon. People love to bitch about the Sequel Trilogy and what a damp squib of an ending TROS is to the entire Saga, but at least it bothers to tie up its assorted plot threads. Not for Obi-Wan Kenobi, however. Nah, just keep everything hyper-safe and hanging; ready for exploitation six months or a year down the line. This isn't storytelling; it's storyteasing. It's banal and insipid. And deeply unsatisfying. It's exactly the same crap fans complained about from TFA onwards, but again; at least the Sequel Trilogy attempted to wrap itself up in a reasonably definitive way. I certainly got more out of TROS' ending than whatever this microwaveable crap is meant to be.
The Grand Inquisitor was another character confusingly depicted. He literally has one scene -- count it:
one scene -- in the entire episode. A scene in which he bitches at Vader for diverting to follow an inconsequential Jedi like Obi-Wan and not wasting the fleeing rebels on the spot. DUUUUUDDDE... You're the fucking GRAND INQUISITOR. You're meant to be more obsessed with catching Jedi than Vader himself. And you knew how important a catch Obi-Wan represented in the second episode ("The last ember of a dying age"). And you know how important he is to Vader. This is some serious bullshit. It highlights a serious flaw in the writing that is systemic to the series; or these last few episodes, where all the "meat" was meant to be, at least. And it's this: Characters are written to hit certain story beats (like Bail telling Obi-Wan, very unwisely, with no attempt to conceal anyone's identity, that he was heading to Tatooine to assist Owen), rather than taking consistent, rational actions in line with their core beliefs and principles; or even just their personal anxieties and desires. And like Reva, how is the Grand Inquisitor still breathing; and looking very intact, compared to battle-damaged Reva, anyway? The series makes zero attempt to explain or justify its numerous plot contrivances. Things just happen because the plot demands it. It's almost a parody of fan complaints toward the prequels.
I'm not sure what to make of Ewan's acting, either. It's certainly not what I'd call bad. But it's kind of bland and not very interesting. He is soft spoken and radiates genuine concern and empathy in ways that are quietly entrancing. At his best. But Obi-Wan never emerges here as a witty or crafty character. His best dialogue is probably to Leia at the end. When he explained how she is a mix of both her biological parents, that landed well. It might even be called beautiful. Elsewhere, however, Ewan almost seems a bit lost. He looks drawn and somewhat haggard and seems to be lacking almost all the mirth of his portrayal in the prequels, as well as Alec Guinness' affable "Uncle Obi-Wan" in ANH. I dunno. His performance feels very middle-of-the-road and flavourness. It's an apt reflection of the series itself. Why Mark Hamill's performance in TLJ works better is tied into the underlying bitterness that Luke expresses. When, on Crait, he faces down Kylo and declares that he won't be the last Jedi, it's a statement of spine-tingling power: a genuine affirmation of the heart and the sort of declaration that Obi-Wan in this series never gets to make. That "Hello There" is so grating because it's incredibly dumb and patronising next to what the elder Luke says to his nephew; which is full of emotion, authority, and Jedi-like conviction. Obi-Wan could surely have said something inspirational or warmly reassuring to Luke -- he had, of course, bolted away from home, in fear of his life, and collapsed unconscious, only the night before. Instead, the meeting is played for its fanwank "emoji" factor; leaving a viewer with nothing of substance to ruminate on. It just rubs salt in the wound and serves as a parting reminder of how dreadfully dull and idiotic half of the Obi-Wan series (in my estimation) turned out to be.
Then there's the Qui-Gon cameo at the end. Oh, brother. Look, I'm sorry, but you don't tease Qui-Gon for half your damn series and then just insert a weird-looking Liam Neeson into your shitty series at the end, for a single scene, where he speaks all of two lines. Fuck you. That's complete bullshit. What were his lines meant to mean, anyway? Obi-Wan
was looking for him. He was certainly imploring and calling on him. You left him a fragile, battered wreck of a man, Qui-Gon. I bloody hate Qui-Gon now. What an asshole. The trivial nature of Qui-Gon's cameo also underlines the fact that this series had nothing genuinely empowering or elevating to say with regard to Jedi mysticism or the spirituality of the Force. Absolutely fucking nothing. Yes, it may have had something to say about hate and vengeance, and courage and endurance, but not necessarily a lot, given its muddy storytelling throughout. The more esoteric side of Star Wars was shunned in favour of having Obi-Wan going John Wick on stormtroopers, snapping their necks, screaming a hackneyed "Nooooo!!!" over the death of some random rebel lady, and throwing rocks at Vader. Ter-fucking-rific. There was nothing as inspiring put into it as Luke going peacefully into the Force in TLJ or grabbing the lightsaber and asking Rey "What are you doing?!" and raising his old X-Wing in TROS. This is a travesty. And one that I will not easily forget. As cynical as I've sometimes gotten toward the Sequel Trilogy, I won't stand for the chief creatives of it being called hacks when something as measly and weak-tea as the Kenobi series gets a pass. Prequel references are nothing if you deliver a horribly-cooked meal at the end; or gruel disguised as a banquet feast.
And I mean that because the production values here are also, well... in the words of Obi-Wan... not good. It's television offal. The egregious presence of shaky cam would probably, if I'm being honest, cause me to halve whatever score I'd give the series, even if the rest of it were good. No, they just had to shake and jerk the camera around in practically every scene of this, didn't they? Make some serious attempt at decent cinematography or just stay home. Shaking the camera non-stop is not only amateurish but downright obnoxious. I almost stopped the episode half-way through. Then there's all the murky cinematography in this one. Genius, just genius. The series' climactic showdowns where everyone becomes a fuzz of pixels and every outcropping of rock looks like every other outcropping of rock. How edgy, how artistic, how subversive. I swear, at one point, the episode went from Obi-Wan and Vader on buttfuck nowhere to Reva hunting Luke on Tatooine and I couldn't tell the difference. At all. I have a friend who watches a lot of K-drama, plus a few Western shows, like the recent miniseries "Chernobyl", and he gave me his opinion of Obi-Wan the other day. I didn't even know, in fact, he'd been watching it. He said that he thought that the writing, acting, directing, cinematography, and effects were all mediocre. He's no card-carrying member of the fandom menace. This was an assessment given by a VR fanatic and an avid consumer of streaming media. The series has obviously given off a cheap stench to many viewers. It just doesn't hold up very well against the movies at all.
I'm sorry if my sudden veer into harsh criticism offends or upsets anyone, but ol' Cryo will always tell you how he feels. They stopped me from doing it on TFN and I expect people to be more grown-up about it here. I can't lie and say the series is a wonderful slice of Disney+ entertainment. Maybe it is.
For Disney+. That's not good enough for me. I'm quite exacting and have high standards. I don't know why the series started off so strongly for me. The first two episodes gave me a real buzz. It almost feels they were telling a different story there. Leia was such a strong and engaging character in the first two episodes. And I like how they depicted Obi-Wan in a funk; and then how Leia started challenging him and drawing him out of it. They had such a lovely dynamic to start with. I still adore that framing device with the gonk droid and the train whistle in the first episode, I still love Haja and the rooftop chase in the second. I've no idea what happened after that. Actually, maybe I do.
What happened to Haja? It's more an answer than a question. The answer is that nothing happened. He was a character that lent a certain humour, uplift, and poignancy to the second episode. But he provided little to nothing to the series after that with his subsequent appearances in the fifth and sixth episodes. I mean, he was just there to be there -- and very fleetingly, at that. Like Reva after she is unable to kill Luke, like the trotted-out wives of Owen and Bail, Haja is just a piece of the furniture. A punchline to a joke or the coda to a story that is never developed. Like Obi-Wan "Hello There"-ing Luke, it's all surface, no feeling. Reva's mind invasion of Haja implied a broken person: a person just coming to grips with the hollowness of his life and the ways in which he could turn things around. But Haja is then just a tokenistic device to carry and drop Obi-Wan's communicator in the fifth episode and the person randomly entrusted by Obi-Wan to return Leia to Alderaan in the sixth episode. He and Leia don't even get a short scene together in the last episode. Also: What happened to that kid he was working with on Daiyu? They were a team and then Haja appears on his own at the rebel base. The series literally uses its characters, as I said before, to hit certain beats, or evoke certain feelings. They aren't really characters or people in their own right. They are just chess pieces to be dispensed with when the main action needs to resume.
Screw this series. It wasted my time. It caused me to get excited and fall in love with the possibility of Star Wars working on television (which, sadly, seems to be its future for the time being). It also damaged my faith in Disney at a time when I had become conflicted about the future of the franchise under the Disney empire. The only two Star Wars productions I really like from Disney, so far, have been TROS and "Solo" (with some basic respect/interest in TFA and TLJ and now "The Mandalorian"). But for reasons that some here probably can't -- or won't -- understand. That's okay. We're all different. No two of us share exactly the same connection to the franchise; why Star Wars matters as much as it does to each of us probably can't be articulated in more than a notional sense. At this point, I guess I'm my own person, chasing my own meaning from the franchise, seeing value in things other fans despise or despair over; just as I seem to dislike other bits 'n' pieces that other fans seem to love. But I really hate how sloppy this series came out in the end. I'm sure they were
trying to say something deep; but then again, I'm not sure they
had anything deep to say. Lucas did. Ultimately, the superfluous nature of the series erupted like a tsunami in its latter episodes, along with a careless, haphazard quality that made me upset it was even made.
.This is the kind of long, busy thread we jumpstarted the forum for in 2019. We might not have turned the clock back to 2005, but I sure hope we gave some flavour of it.
