Star Wars series -Spoilers galore

Celebith I'll even go one step beyond "Holiday Special" and say she feels like someone that wandered in from a Star Wars show at Disney World.

Like you said, she doesn't really fit the aesthetic of the rest of the show(s).  Overly broad, and she does always seem like she's entering from the edge of the stage, in the middle of some dialog and then a 'well, hello audience!  welcome to the wild west show' sort of vibe.  The mayor's aide also didn't really fit the rest of the show.

Most of these shows (including the Clone Wars / cartoons in this category) are better off when they're establishing their own mythologies and less good when they're trying to flesh out other back stories.  BoBF works as an 'old gunslinger tries to adapt to a changing world that he obviously doesn't understand, and only partially succeeds through the help of his friends' story, but it's not pitched that way.  Boba Fett worked because he was a total blank slate that audiences could identify and mythologize with.  Every bit of fleshing out made him worse.  OTOH, characters like Asohka and the clone troopers work because they color in Anakin's fall so it isn't just a snap decision to join Palpatine, but they're engaging the audience outside of what had already been there.

It's not about being silly, for me.  I am fully on board with Baby Yoda sight gags and Ewoks and all sorts of dumb space shit in my Star Wars.  It's like what Bith said: she's playing it to the rafters in a stage show when everyone else is TV acting.

OH I didn’t know Gingerhaze had taken their art to a dedicated website! I love their art.

Also did not know about the name & pronoun change; guess I’m behind the times.

The trailer didn't move me to be as excited about this as I should be. Ten years ago I would have been over the moon about Ewan coming back as a middle aged Obi-Wan but there has been far too many poor or mediocre Star Wars content since then.

I'm a bad Star Wars fan, I have had Andor and Alderaan mixed up ever since this was announced and it has caused endless confusion on my part about the timeline. So 5 years before BBY and 5 years after the Obi Wan show right?

I'm enjoying it, but it feels like what it is: the first half of an unfinished story. As a result, I'm kind of hesitant to judge it right now. What it feels like - and we got hints of this in the Mandalorian 2.5 episodes of the Book of Boba - is that they're finally integrating this Dave Filoni story that's been developing over Clone Wars and Rebels with the Lucas-era movies. Granted, they sort of zippered off the prequels to begin with, but we've never seen the two pillars interact like this before. And there's elements of "finally!" and elements of "I need to see if they pull this off."

So far, I think they've managed to thread the needle, at least so far, of doing an Obi-Wan story that doesn't create huge problems they'll need to address at some point. And half of my concerns had been about that. The story makes a basic amount of sense - or at least I think it does, assuming some things play out how I think they will - while still feeling true to the characters and the story.

In short, I like the first half of this story. I like how Ewan is portraying a very reluctant Obi-Wan, young Leia is mostly working for me, and the Inquisitors seem to be translating to live action pretty well. They handled the Kenobi/Vader interaction by simply avoiding a fight, which was probably the right call (though I think it's possible that they'll have a real fight eventually, and, if so, Vader will probably get annihilated - it'll be The Force Unleashed destroyed armor in live action).

So, solid B+ so far.

I noticed that too, it was very CW or BBC level editing and made it seem like they did not have the budget for a different set so just had him run back into the same set.

Look, I’m not one to overthink some of the more ridiculous Star Wars elements, and I get that “break in to Imperial bases for reasons” is a tradition, but my god, how can the Empire have such fucking horrible security? No cctv anywhere that catches a glimpse of a rando wandering around the halls? No monitoring of communications/data stations that would get Tala shut down in a heartbeat?   

I honestly think this is bothering me more now because I’m extremely aware of the type of security that’s required to, like, get on a plane, or just into my office. You’d think a fascist military base would run a tighter ship.

And yeah we all want to see Obi-wan in his whole Jedi get-up, but it’s utterly idiotic to have him in the robes at all in this show. Ok the Jedi dress has been bothering me the whole time, just this week it got to be too irritating. There are other styles & colours of cloaks, y’all. He doesn’t have to mosey around in uniform.

On other, unsurprising news, I continue to make ridiculous squeaky noises at baby!Leia, and her taking Obi-wan’s hand was just…heartbreakingly perfect.  Reva’s aborted hand-motion, like she had to physically keep herself from choking out a child, was kinda hilarious. Welcome to headstrong ten-year-olds*, Third Sister.


*that child is not ten. Her face is still too babyround, and I can’t explain it more clearly, but ten-year-olds don’t run like that. I don’t particularly care that the actress is younger, because she’s perfect, but maybe stop actively saying her age.

De-aged Christensen was into the uncanny valley for me, he ended up looking like a totally different person. I agree about the guilt trip, that is the best part of the show. Unfortunately Disney felt like they had to shoehorn it into the wild adventures of an old man and a precocious child who are repeatedly caught and then pull off daring escapes*. Don't get me wrong, baby Leia does not grate on me as much as it does others, but this could have been an amazing show if it really just focused on Obi Wan and his struggle to come to terms with his failure. The best part of the prequels is the realization that Yoda and Obi Wan in addition to most of the Jedi are deeply flawed. That provides a lot of context to their actions in the original trilogy. This show should be giving us that arc for Obi Wan where he goes from reluctant to hopeful in advocating for Luke with Yoda. We have gotten bits of that, but in between too many daring escapes.

*Seriously I think 4 out of 5 episodes have ended with someone with a red lightsaber watching their prey slip away yet again. That is just lazy writing.