[7.4/10] I can’t deny that it’s cool to have what amounts to Prequel Obi-Wan fighting Original Trilogy Anakin. There is a power to seeing the two stand-off once more. Vader is vengeful, ready to torture his former master in exchange for the pain he experiences everyday. Kenobi is rusty, graceless in battle, more apt to flee than to fight. The way their red and blue lightsabers illuminate a desert landscape, giving each of them the look of conflicting auras that surround each of them, adds to the potency of the iconography at play.
But by god, it probably shouldn’t happen at all and definitely shouldn’t happen like this. Can you stretch and fit this together with their confrontation on the Death Star in A New Hope? Sure. It’s no more implausible than any other soft retcons Star Wars has been pulling since The Phantom Menace. The catch is that it diminishes the power of that later confrontation, since it’s not the first time they’ve challenged one another since the fateful duel on Mustafar. This is a bigger, more intense stand-off than the almost wry tone they take with one another in Episode IV.
It contributes to my working theory about the Obi-Wan Kenobi mini-series. It’s a follow-up to the Prequel films, and not a precursor to the Original Trilogy. Perhaps that shouldn’t be particularly surprising. They’re returning actors from the Prequels, not the OT, obviously. And despite painful attempts to jury-rig them together, Eps. I-III don’t line up well with Eps. IV-VI. George Lucas threw at all kinds of connections (or rhymes) if you will between the two trilogies that only resulted in deeper and more head scratch-worthy inconsistencies. So it’s natural, then, that this series is more of a sequel to the events of the movies Ewan McGregor starred in, and either contradicts or low-key undermines the ones he didn’t.
I could live with that, though, except for the fact that Obi-Wan shouldn’t have gotten away. Deborah Chow and the rest of the creative team wrote themselves into a corner here. They wanted to have the big Vader/Kenobi throw-down, but there’s no way it should result in anything but death. There’s too much bad blood, too much history, for it to go any other way.
You can work your way around that, to a degree. Have some natural disaster strike or a last minute rescue to ensure Obi-Wan’s escape. But all we get is Vader being too afraid of fire to go after his former master...despite the fact that he started a fire just a minute earlier? How do Obi-Wan and his allies get off the planet when the Empire, the Inquisitors, and Vader himself know that Kenobi’s there? It just feels cheap and unearned.
The confrontation is cool in the moment. The poetry of Anakin using his force powers to burn Obi-Wan is grim but potent. Their exchange of “What have you become” “Only what you made me” is grim but poignant. And the fight choreographers walk a nice line between the acrobatics of their Ep. III fight and the stodginess of their Ep. IV fight. But on the whole, the confrontation doesn’t align well with other elements of the franchise and doesn’t add up for something either combatant would let go.
Still, as with his first appearance in Rebels and the famous hallway scene in Rogue One, it’s both awe-inspiring and terrifying to see Vader act as such a remorseless monster. The way he drags civilians out of their homes and chokes them, snaps necks, or drags them behind him conveys a menace and an evil that even the Inquisitors haven’t displayed until now. From the gruesome but tactile imagery of his armor coming on, to his brutal march through the streets of a mining camp, to his impulse to torture his onetime brother rather than merely kill him, Vader as villain is back in full force, and made that much more chilling.
Despite my qualms about the actual Kenobi vs. Vader match-up, I rather enjoyed everything up to that point. Obi-Wan and Li’l Leia continue to have a remarkably endearing dynamic together. Obi-Wan as the play it safe paternal figure who’s convinced they can’t trust anyone, contrasted with Leia as the laissez faire, improvising, and trusting young kid, makes for a good character back-and-forth and thematic give and take.
Obi-Wan has seen people he thought were his friends and allies betray him. Of course he’s leery of trusting anyone and believes anyone could be a liar or a turncoat in waiting. But Leia is (a.) inclined to go see the world she’s been sheltered from until now and (b.) thanks to her latent force abilities, liable to trust her own intuitions about the world. Watching their priors clash and run aground on seemingly friendly yet Empire-aligned truckers, loader droids who are treated as appliances but prove key to fending off danger, and hidden allies who help ferry force-sensitive folks to safety.
Seeing the two of them navigate being undercover, having to find allies where they can, and learn that there’s more like them is all kinds of endearing. I particularly love the resonance between Obi-Wan talking in character about ”Luma’s” mother dying to keep up their cover story when he’s actually talking about Padme dying. It’s a nice way to turn a moment of necessity into one of genuine emotion.
There’s a lot of tension to seeing Kenobi sit across from stormtroopers on the back of a galactic pickup truck, and have to sneak around a mining town to get by. The quiet moment when he reassures Leia that he’s not her biological father, with the hint of regret that comes with knowing who he is, adds to the air of tragedy as well.
But there is, appropriately enough, a measure of hope to this as well. Leia’s propensity to treat droids kindly comes back to help them here, as the loader droid saves them in a tight spot and shows a loyalty and sophistication that others miss. I also love a disillusioned Obi-Wan learning that there’s a network out there to help force-sensitive folks escape and be safe. (And hey! Quinlan Vos lives! It’s cheap but cool.) Even in a dark hour, Obi-Wan’s finding reason to believe things can be better, that this was all worth something, that there’s a place out there for people who know The Force, and it’s uplifting after so much tragedy in his life.
I’m still lukewarm on Reva and the machinations of the Inquisitors. But it is cool to see Vader play them off one another as they jockey for position. And, of course, Leia running into her lends an air of foreboding as cliffhangers go.
Overall, I enjoyed a lot of this. The Leia/Obi-Wan scenes remain great. The confrontation between Kenobi and Vader is stirring and scary. I can’t deny that. It just never should have happened, and doesn’t happen plausibly either.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2022-06-02T23:34:57Z
[7.4/10] I can’t deny that it’s cool to have what amounts to Prequel Obi-Wan fighting Original Trilogy Anakin. There is a power to seeing the two stand-off once more. Vader is vengeful, ready to torture his former master in exchange for the pain he experiences everyday. Kenobi is rusty, graceless in battle, more apt to flee than to fight. The way their red and blue lightsabers illuminate a desert landscape, giving each of them the look of conflicting auras that surround each of them, adds to the potency of the iconography at play.
But by god, it probably shouldn’t happen at all and definitely shouldn’t happen like this. Can you stretch and fit this together with their confrontation on the Death Star in A New Hope? Sure. It’s no more implausible than any other soft retcons Star Wars has been pulling since The Phantom Menace. The catch is that it diminishes the power of that later confrontation, since it’s not the first time they’ve challenged one another since the fateful duel on Mustafar. This is a bigger, more intense stand-off than the almost wry tone they take with one another in Episode IV.
It contributes to my working theory about the Obi-Wan Kenobi mini-series. It’s a follow-up to the Prequel films, and not a precursor to the Original Trilogy. Perhaps that shouldn’t be particularly surprising. They’re returning actors from the Prequels, not the OT, obviously. And despite painful attempts to jury-rig them together, Eps. I-III don’t line up well with Eps. IV-VI. George Lucas threw at all kinds of connections (or rhymes) if you will between the two trilogies that only resulted in deeper and more head scratch-worthy inconsistencies. So it’s natural, then, that this series is more of a sequel to the events of the movies Ewan McGregor starred in, and either contradicts or low-key undermines the ones he didn’t.
I could live with that, though, except for the fact that Obi-Wan shouldn’t have gotten away. Deborah Chow and the rest of the creative team wrote themselves into a corner here. They wanted to have the big Vader/Kenobi throw-down, but there’s no way it should result in anything but death. There’s too much bad blood, too much history, for it to go any other way.
You can work your way around that, to a degree. Have some natural disaster strike or a last minute rescue to ensure Obi-Wan’s escape. But all we get is Vader being too afraid of fire to go after his former master...despite the fact that he started a fire just a minute earlier? How do Obi-Wan and his allies get off the planet when the Empire, the Inquisitors, and Vader himself know that Kenobi’s there? It just feels cheap and unearned.
The confrontation is cool in the moment. The poetry of Anakin using his force powers to burn Obi-Wan is grim but potent. Their exchange of “What have you become” “Only what you made me” is grim but poignant. And the fight choreographers walk a nice line between the acrobatics of their Ep. III fight and the stodginess of their Ep. IV fight. But on the whole, the confrontation doesn’t align well with other elements of the franchise and doesn’t add up for something either combatant would let go.
Still, as with his first appearance in Rebels and the famous hallway scene in Rogue One, it’s both awe-inspiring and terrifying to see Vader act as such a remorseless monster. The way he drags civilians out of their homes and chokes them, snaps necks, or drags them behind him conveys a menace and an evil that even the Inquisitors haven’t displayed until now. From the gruesome but tactile imagery of his armor coming on, to his brutal march through the streets of a mining camp, to his impulse to torture his onetime brother rather than merely kill him, Vader as villain is back in full force, and made that much more chilling.
Despite my qualms about the actual Kenobi vs. Vader match-up, I rather enjoyed everything up to that point. Obi-Wan and Li’l Leia continue to have a remarkably endearing dynamic together. Obi-Wan as the play it safe paternal figure who’s convinced they can’t trust anyone, contrasted with Leia as the laissez faire, improvising, and trusting young kid, makes for a good character back-and-forth and thematic give and take.
Obi-Wan has seen people he thought were his friends and allies betray him. Of course he’s leery of trusting anyone and believes anyone could be a liar or a turncoat in waiting. But Leia is (a.) inclined to go see the world she’s been sheltered from until now and (b.) thanks to her latent force abilities, liable to trust her own intuitions about the world. Watching their priors clash and run aground on seemingly friendly yet Empire-aligned truckers, loader droids who are treated as appliances but prove key to fending off danger, and hidden allies who help ferry force-sensitive folks to safety.
Seeing the two of them navigate being undercover, having to find allies where they can, and learn that there’s more like them is all kinds of endearing. I particularly love the resonance between Obi-Wan talking in character about ”Luma’s” mother dying to keep up their cover story when he’s actually talking about Padme dying. It’s a nice way to turn a moment of necessity into one of genuine emotion.
There’s a lot of tension to seeing Kenobi sit across from stormtroopers on the back of a galactic pickup truck, and have to sneak around a mining town to get by. The quiet moment when he reassures Leia that he’s not her biological father, with the hint of regret that comes with knowing who he is, adds to the air of tragedy as well.
But there is, appropriately enough, a measure of hope to this as well. Leia’s propensity to treat droids kindly comes back to help them here, as the loader droid saves them in a tight spot and shows a loyalty and sophistication that others miss. I also love a disillusioned Obi-Wan learning that there’s a network out there to help force-sensitive folks escape and be safe. (And hey! Quinlan Vos lives! It’s cheap but cool.) Even in a dark hour, Obi-Wan’s finding reason to believe things can be better, that this was all worth something, that there’s a place out there for people who know The Force, and it’s uplifting after so much tragedy in his life.
I’m still lukewarm on Reva and the machinations of the Inquisitors. But it is cool to see Vader play them off one another as they jockey for position. And, of course, Leia running into her lends an air of foreboding as cliffhangers go.
Overall, I enjoyed a lot of this. The Leia/Obi-Wan scenes remain great. The confrontation between Kenobi and Vader is stirring and scary. I can’t deny that. It just never should have happened, and doesn’t happen plausibly either.