Obi-Wan Kenobi (the 2022 miniseries)

[Stavrogyn]

The Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries, which will have six episodes, is set to premiere this Friday, May 27.

Is anyone excited and planning to watch it? I've been a Star Wars fan since early childhood (my mother's fault: she has been crazy about the first film since it came out back in 1977 - I have actually been named after one of the characters), and, despite their flaws, the prequel trilogy films have a special place in my heart. So, even though I have hated the sequel trilogy, I'm very excited about this series. The Mandalorian gave me hope that Star Wars can still be good.

Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen are back! Who would have imagined! Everybody loves Ewan - he's a great actor and his take on the character was as iconic as Guinness' - but Hayden has always been divisive. For my part, I have always liked him, especially his voice, and I cannot believe that he's returning despite the backlash from 20 years ago.

For anyone who may have missed it, here's the latest trailer:

 

[thunderclap]

I'm cautiously optimistic, however I've been very disappointed with Star Wars shows so far. Mandalorian is barely watchable, Boba Fett less so. I only made it two episodes into BF before giving up. It will be nice to see Ewan McGregor reprising the role, though.

 

[Tulpa]

I'm cautiously optimistic, however I've been very disappointed with Star Wars shows so far. Mandalorian is barely watchable, Boba Fett less so. I only made it two episodes into BF before giving up. It will be nice to see Ewan McGregor reprising the role, though.

Watch E5 of Boba Fett. One of the best episodes of television I've seen in the past year. Self-contained, too. Unconnected to BF.

The rest of the series wasn't good at all. The Mandalorian is slightly better but has lots of average for every brief highlight.

 

[Stavrogyn]

I'm a bit surprised by your lukewarm reactions to The Mandalorian, @thunderclap and @Tulpa. I rate the series among the best Star Wars entries since the original trilogy. Of course, it's not art, it's mass media produced for earning profit, but as such, for me, it absolutely works. And I know a few people who love it as well.

The prequel trilogy has a lot of really great moments but is such a mess aesthetically that I cannot help myself not to rate entries like Rogue One and The Mandalorian (maybe even Solo) higher.

I will watch The Book of Boba Fett soon, but my oh my, judging by your comments, I won't be thrilled.

How come you didn't like The Mandalorian more? To me, it keeps getting better and better as the series progresses.

 

[Tulpa]

I'm a bit surprised by your lukewarm reactions to The Mandalorian, @thunderclap and @Tulpa. I rate the series among the best Star Wars entries since the original trilogy.

It's beautifully produced, expensively assembled and very hollow. I don't like the case-of-the-week format that keeps finding increasingly-bizaarre ways to slow the journey down. And most episodes fail at being good self-contained stories beyond the overarching narrative.

There are exceptions. The Ahsoka episode was great. The Bryce Dallas Howard and Taika Waititi episodes were great. Some excellent set pieces and solid episodes interspersed with the meh.

But even the meh was never bad. I'll still watch the next series. And I never regretted watching it. Unlike Boba Fett; that was gnarly (apart from the outlandishly good 5th episode).

Of course, it's not art, it's mass media produced for earning profit, but as such, for me, it absolutely works. And I know a few people who love it as well.

It is art. Vast majority of artwork is produced for earning profit; I don't recognize a distinction. There's bad art that's not commercial and there's excellent hyper-commercialized art. I just didn't love this particular artwork.

However! This looks surprisingly great:



Fantastic trailer. I was a zero on anticipation until watching it and now I'm more excited for that than tomorrow's Obi-Wan bow.

 

[Stavrogyn]

It is art. Vast majority of artwork is produced for earning profit; I don't recognize a distinction. There's bad art that's not commercial and there's excellent hyper-commercialized art.

I can see your point.

When talking about the usage of the word "art" itself, it might be a question of semantics depending on the language, because I think that "art" has a broader sense in English than its counterpart in my language, even though I tend to use it the same way I would use "umjetnost" in Croatian. In that sense, I wouldn't consider The Mandalorian art - despite the fact that I love it - the same way I would Van Gogh's paintings, Beckett's books, or - to get closer to the medium in question - most of David Lynch's projects.

But I agree with you that very commercial products can often be considered art, and vice versa.

Fantastic trailer. I was a zero on anticipation until watching it and now I'm more excited for that than tomorrow's Obi-Wan bow.

It looks interesting! I already had some expectations because I loved Rogue One, and was pleasantly surprised when they announced this series in the first place.

I will be watching.

 

[thunderclap]

How come you didn't like The Mandalorian more? To me, it keeps getting better and better as the series progresses.

For The Mandalorian is feels more like a fan film to me. Some of the acting from the lesser cast members is bad, as are some of the sets. I also don't like how there is no general flow to the series, with each episode having it's own style/genre. One day it's a western, another an action adventure, etc. No cohesion, I suppose. If they're going to do a serialized show then there needs to be a consistent feel to it, and the genre swapping doesn't work for me.

Now Boba Fett... ugh. I was willing to give it a chance but two minutes in I knew I wasn't going to like it. Boba Fett escapes the sarlacc pit by burning a hole and punching through its stomach and then climbing up how many feet of sand? That was terrible writing. And then he's imprisoned and he starts sympathizing with the sand people? It's so out of character. I stopped when we had a bunch of parkour happening in the streets. And the episode you mentioned I assume is the one where it's actually a Mandalorian episode... that pretty much tells you how much faith the writers have in their own show.

 

[Metamorphosis]

Rogue One is awful. I genuinely can't grasp what people seem to like about it at all.

One of the big problems all these Disney SW shows/movies have is failure to establish any of the aesthetic of the original movies. They totally feel like high end fan films.

 

[Stavrogyn]

I suppose that any new Star Wars that comes out ever again will feel like a fan film because it'll be made without George Lucas' input. You can either make something that feels like a fan film or something that totally betrays what Star Wars should be according to fans' perceptions.

I think that Rogue One and Solo are much closer to the original trilogy's aesthetic than, for example, the prequel trilogy, even though the prequels are without a doubt canon and I love them. It will always be hard for me to think of anything besides episodes 1 to 6 as true canon because, well, Lucas is no longer involved. Maybe that's why I'm more relaxed with the new content.

That's also the reason why I'm sort of able to dismiss the sequel trilogy and pretend that it never existed (sort of, not completely). The first 10 minutes or so of The Rise of Skywalker feel like the worst fan fiction imaginable (the opening scenes with Palpatine), which says a lot because Palpatine is probably my favourite character of the whole franchise.

Just to be clear: there's a lot of Star Wars content out there and much, much more is coming, so I know that it can be divisive, and I'm not trying to bash anyone's opinion - I'm simply expressing my own. It's actually fun that people's views on different Star Wars installments can vary so much - it opens the possibilities for discussion.

I'm intrigued by all the bad feelings towards The Book of Boba Fett (except episode 5, like Tulpa said). It makes me want to watch it as soon as possible!

 

[Tulpa]

Obi-Wan Kenobi is brilliant as of Part One. Haven't watched the second, yet.

Proper, bona fide filmmaking. The contrast with Boba Fett is shocking.

 

[Stavrogyn]

Obi-Wan Kenobi is brilliant as of Part One. Haven't watched the second, yet.

Proper, bona fide filmmaking. The contrast with Boba Fett is shocking.

Glad you liked it!

I've seen both episodes yesterday evening and enjoyed them both. Excitedly waiting for Wednesday!

I love following these characters again.

 

[Soolsma]

Rotten tomatoes from me. Once again the absence of the imagination Lucas is ever the more apparent in this newest iteration of Disney's cashgrab Star Wars. Especially so in general atmosphere, design etc. Good example: where the hell are all the aliens? Remember back when we'd walk into a bar on Tatooine and we'd see at least 8 different species of aliens, a bunch of droids too; or the times we found ourselves on a planet full of Ewoks or Gungans (no matter how controversial). I was almost constantly bothered by seeing 95% humans in nearly every shot. Yes, in Star Wars lore humans are the most populous species in the universe. But I really feel that the lack of other species is mostly due to alien make-up being expensive and time consuming. It's just one of these things that makes me feel like we are not at all in a galaxy far far away, in fact, it feels very close to our contemporary home: a world wherein monopolization of media has taken over from imagination.

I will say that the Mandalorian and The Last Jedi did relatively alright in some of these aspects, but all in all I'm not so fond of Disney's Star Wars. It just feels wrong. It's crystal clear they are very careful in taking creative (commercial) risks. I totally understand the outspoken frustration of Lucas when it comes to plot devices that were shamelessly reused in the sequel trilogy. Say about the prequels what you will, at least they had spirit!

I'll watch it nonetheless though.. *sigh* Am curious to seeing Hayden reprise his role.

 

[thunderclap]

Finally had a chance to watch the first episode, though it's hard to say how good it will be with only one episode since the episodes of these SW shows seem to be hit and miss quite regularly. Initial thought is Obi-Wan is better than Mandalorian and much better than Boba Fett. Some of the acting is still really piss pour, and the costumes continue to look cheap as if they were bought off a shelf at Walmart. The special effects look decent, though there is still some shoddy CGI. Still it was enjoyable enough for me to keep watching, at least for the time being. I was surprised to see the story will have some focus on

Spoiler

Leia

. Didn't expect that which was nice.

 

[secretlettermkr]

I really enjoyed the first two chapters of Obi Wan. Some actors are weak, some shots are average, some scenes are quind of slow, or sloppy, but overal is quite good and Ewan is ObiWan no doubt.
The Mandalorian started pretty bad, but slowly grow and the last few episodes of season one were great. There was a really awfull one, the one on that village, the mother and the daughterr were the worst actors ive seen in a while, and the plot was awfull. Second season was really good!
Boba Fett was AWFULL .... it has only one GREAT episode, and the next is good, and the last one is lame. Those two episodes that worked (the great one and the "good" one where completely another series..

 

[Tulpa]

Boba Fett was AWFULL .... it has only one GREAT episode, and the next is good, and the last one is lame. Those two episodes that worked (the great one and the "good" one where completely another series..

I didn't even think the other one was that hood tbh. Lots of fan service and "cool" stuff but I never think I should watch it again.

But Chapter 5. Jesus. Where on earth did that come from? Slow cinema meets Star Wars.

I watched over as soon as it finished. Almost works as a standalone film without any context.

Bryce Dallas Howard is a huge directorial talent. It's so jarring seeing this episode listed among the rest of the series' mediocrity.

 

[secretlettermkr]

I didn't even think the other one was that hood tbh. Lots of fan service and "cool" stuff but I never think I should watch it again.

But Chapter 5. Jesus. Where on earth did that come from? Slow cinema meets Star Wars.

I watched over as soon as it finished. Almost works as a standalone film without any context.

Bryce Dallas Howard is a huge directorial talent. It's so jarring seeing this episode listed among the rest of the series' mediocrity.

yeah, i forgot to put the "" on good, so what I meant was it was "good", actually the fan service was the worst part

 

[boske]

I saw both episodes, and very much liked them, I agree with secretlettermkr's assessment. Looking forward to the remaining ones. I do not think prequels were that bad, yes, they could have been a lot better, but I still enjoyed them. For the record, I did not watch any of the sequels (7-9), nor the other Disney SW material, and do not plan to.

 

[Stavrogyn]

From what I'm reading here, The Book of Boba Fett keeps sounding more and more intriguing. It would be different if everyone just said it was meh, but to call most of it awful and episode 5 great makes it a must-watch for me. I'm always interested in the extremes.

As for Obi-Wan Kenobi, it's been a few days now since I've seen the episodes, and they still occupy my thoughts. (I even dreamt of Star Wars on Friday after watching them.) Granted, I've been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember, so I might not be completely objective, but I didn't mind most of the issues mentioned here, like weak acting, cheap costumes, or lack of aliens (@soolsma I think this may also apply to Star Trek - most of the non-human races are humanoid and look almost completely the same as humans).

I'm a bit concerned about how Reva will turn out as a character. I don't mind her so far, but don't find her all that convincing either. Imagine if instead of all these Inquisitors we had a villain like Darth Maul? Now that would have been something!

 

[Stavrogyn]

For the record, I did not watch any of the sequels (7-9), nor the other Disney SW material, and do not plan to.

I like The Mandalorian, so I would recommend it. But I seem to be in minority here.

As for the sequel trilogy: if you care about episodes 1 to 6 at all, then yes, it would be safer not to ever see those films.

If I ever held a course in filmmaking or something similar, though, I would include those films in my curriculum as an example how to have a beloved saga and characters at your disposal, iconic cast and crew members ready to return, as well as all the money in the world, and then fail miserably.

Especially episode 9. That film could have become a part of the so-bad-it's-good canon if it weren't so dull most of its runtime.

 

[boske]

Thank you Stavrogyn, I will remember about the Mandalorian and will try to watch it in the future.

I do believe Lucas when he said that he had never considered Episodes 7-9, and that SW for him has been the story of the fall and the redemption of Anakin Skywalker. Episodes 1-6 imo have a consistent mythology, and I find Kenobi compelling, as it tries to give us another glimpse into it all. Just like with FWWM, we all knew how it was going to end, yet seeing it first-hand was fascinating nonetheless.