Obi-Wan Kenobi (Disney+)

[HaemishM]

I want to third the concept that "holy shit Star Wars needs to stop dry humping this very tiny set of characters we have." Even if you count all the animated shows, the D+ shows, and the movies, there is literally about a 50 year span in a galaxy of billions/trillions of planets with a civilization spanning thousands of years. Do something else, FFS.

I always got the impression in A New Hope that Leia only knew of Kenobi by reputation and not personally, but I've probably forgotten more about those movies than I can remember. My Star Wars fandom really crashed about the time of Attack of the Clones and has only had momentary resurgences around the decent projects (Rogue One and Mando).

[Samwise]

I mean, ANAKIN/Vader certainly knows he's from Tatooine and he certainly knows that Owen still lives there with his wife Beru, even the slightest hint that Owen is raising a kid named Skywalker should be game over.

As soon as Anakin first met Owen in whichever movie that was (I think Ep 3), I immediately recognized it as a severe mistake from the perspective of making the overall narrative make any kind of sense, but didn't bother to actually work through the consequences because so much else was going on in that movie that I didn't have time to focus on any one part of it.  This series really brings all of the narrative seams between Ep 3 and 4 into view though, and the more stuff you try to pile onto it to try to stitch the story together, the more of a mess it becomes.

Oh well.  These are not the plot holes you're looking for.  Remember when Obi-Wan did that in episode 4???    

[Riggswolfe]

It's bad enough when Obi-Wan doesn't seem like he even knows C-3PO or R2D2 in Star Wars, but now Leia doesn't even fucking know who he is despite the events of just the 2nd episode of this show?

Um? What? If you're talking about A New Hope she specifically goes to ask him for help and when Luke rescues her from her cell she's sort of suspicious until he says "I'm here with Ben Kenobi!" and she responds "Ben Kenobi? Where is he?" and runs out of the cell. It's quite clear she knows who he is in A New Hope though the movie never explains how she knows him both by his actual name and his "hiding on Tatooine" name.

She knows who Kenobi is but I always had the impression she never met him in the flesh. Whatever I'm not going to worry about it too much.

I do want them to move on from this time period.

In the hologram she sort of gives that impression. But when Luke mentions his name she is super excited and instantly trusts Luke. It's not really a big deal I was simply saying that one part of Haemish's post didn't jive with my impression of the movies.

I want to third the concept that "holy shit Star Wars needs to stop dry humping this very tiny set of characters we have." Even if you count all the animated shows, the D+ shows, and the movies, there is literally about a 50 year span in a galaxy of billions/trillions of planets with a civilization spanning thousands of years. Do something else, FFS.

I always got the impression in A New Hope that Leia only knew of Kenobi by reputation and not personally, but I've probably forgotten more about those movies than I can remember. My Star Wars fandom really crashed about the time of Attack of the Clones and has only had momentary resurgences around the decent projects (Rogue One and Mando).

I guess it's open to interpretation. I think it's a bit odd how she knows him by both names and seems formal in the hologram but excited on the Death Star when Luke says he's with Ben Kenobi. No biggy but I don't view this particular thing as an incongruity between Obi-Wan and A New Hope.

And I very much agree with you on your point about just revisiting the same characters and times over and over. I'm giving it a pass with Obi-Wan because he's probably one of my favorite characters in the whole saga but I'd really like them to explore other stuff. Lucas already made the galaxy small by making everyone know everyone else down to Anakin building 3p0 in his bedroom instead of 3p0 just being a droid that Leah's dad bought her at a showroom one day.

OTOH, I suspect a lot of this has to do with the fans. They've got that High Republic thing which is, I think, 1,000 years or so in the past but it doesn't seem to have drawn very much interest. You can go to Youtube and find 10,000 videos about what Yoda did in his hut on Dagobah but you'd have to look very hard to find anything about the High Republic aside from "Kathleen Kennedy's new project is failing because she sucks!"

[Velorath]

These bits are good and I appreciate their work, but I really wish we could just move to a whole new time in the SW saga. Old Republic, whatever. Just stop redoing existing work and create new stuff. The beats are all there, we just need new people and stories.

Good news, Disney just released some new information on a Tales of The Jedi D+ series, a title some might remember from a series of comics focusing on ancient Jedi (and Sith).

Oh wait, bad news, this is an animated 6 episode thing focusing on prequel era characters like (yawn) Ahsoka and Count Dooku.

Additionally, Filoni brought the first Jedi tale with him. Entitled “Life And Death,” the short, 15-minute episode presents Ahsoka’s birth and first hunting trip

Jesus... this fucking guy.

They also announced the kid-focused Young Jedi Adventures, set during the High Republic, as well Skeleton Crew, starring Jude Law and taking place at some point after RotJ (so roughly around the time of Mandalorian). The Acolyte, which was announced a couple years back, and is being run by the creator of Russian Doll also takes place during the High Republic era.

The only real bright spot is that the next movie is supposed to be the one Taika is doing which is currently scheduled to release next year.

[Khaldun]

The one thing you have to give the animateds credit for is that they've made some new characters stick and they've made some prequel characters better. Ahsoka is the best example of that.

But they really need to create a story-telling setting where none of the familiar characters matter except maybe in a brief opening handoff (sort of like Doctor McCoy in the first episode of TNG) that can buoy up a bunch of fundamentally new characters in some fundamentally new situations.

Nar Shadda/underworld stuff is one possibility. Solo could have been an entry point to that but it wasn't.
Dathomir could be interesting. Force powers without Jedi or Sith, intrigue, complicated culture.
I dunno. Something.

I also think they've got to either put a premium on getting better action scenes from the directors they're working with or they've got to identify what's holding them back. If it's money, that's just stupid--this is going to eventually cost them viewers and peel people away from the franchise overall. If it's interference from the top--which I think seemed to be going on w/Book of Boba Fett--then that needs fixing too. I think it's fine for Star Wars to be kid-friendly but there's a way to do that which draws more effectively from ANH and ESB and less from fart jokes and Anakin pod racing in TPM. In Book of Boba Fett and this so far it seems closer to TPM, gruesomely executed Jedi notwithstanding.

[eldaec]

They have dozens of settings. The prequel through to R1 era is chock full of interesting settings that don't have to focus on existing characters.

Whether they will write anything without existing characters is another matter.

Rebels did well on that front.

Agree with you on the action though.

[Velorath]

The one thing you have to give the animateds credit for is that they've made some new characters stick and they've made some prequel characters better. Ahsoka is the best example of that.

Having not watched most of the animated stuff, I guess I remain to be convinced there. I had to test run the Clone Wars animated movie where she was introduced as the most cliched and annoying sassy kid sidekick, and have seen her in the Mandalorian where she felt largely out of place, but was vaguely tolerable because I like Rosario Dawson. Aside from that she seems to get positioned as a super-important character who somehow never gets so much as a single mention in any of the movies. Not since Bendis and Jessica Jones have I seen someone so enamored of their own creation that they retconned into the history of an established setting.

As far as Obi Wan goes, the pluses are Ewan McGregor, Han from the Fast and Furious movies playing one of the Inquisitors, and... I really wanted to find a third thing but can't come up with one. I guess, at least it's a character that you could theoretically build some interesting story around rather than the upcoming Andor series. This series is just bland rather than offensively bad, which for SW is a plus I suppose. As a side note, whenever Kumail Nanjiani appears in something these days it always feels like he just wandered onto the set playing himself and it's starting to become clear why The Big Sick has been his only standout non-Silicon Valley role.

In regards to the action I don't know if some of it is due to the various shows' use of the Volume tech (no idea how much it's been used in any of the action scenes). I think there was a handful of good action scenes in the Mandalorian at least.

[Khaldun]

Ahsoka in the Clone Wars animated movie is simply awful. But by the time the series ended, she was a really good, rounded character and about the only one who seemed to have an astute understanding of the Jedi's weaknesses (and Anakin's inner turmoil, well, her and Palpatine). She was also very good in Rebels.

I suppose you could say she didn't come up in the main trilogy because whatever she was up to at that point, it wasn't at the heart of the Rebel Alliance's command structure. Maybe she's running missions for Yoda that had to remain very hush-hush. Maybe she had to go to ground herself for some other reason. Now, as to why she's not around for the sequel series, I think that might be as simple as "she died in between the events of The Book of Boba Fett and The Force Awakens".

Agree on Nanjiani--some director needs to sit down with him and say 'hey maybe it's time for you to try a different approach if you get cast in a franchise again'.

The other potential asset with Obi-Wan is Hayden Christiansen if they can stage something around him. He's certainly going to be motivated to demonstrate that he wasn't the problem with the prequels, it was how Lucas directed him.

[Velorath]

I'm curious what Hayden will actually get to do in this series. It doesn't look like anybody has said one way or the other if James Earl Jones is back to voice Vader.

[HaemishM]

Oh wait, bad news, this is an animated 6 episode thing focusing on prequel era characters like (yawn) Ahsoka and Count Dooku.

Additionally, Filoni brought the first Jedi tale with him. Entitled “Life And Death,” the short, 15-minute episode presents Ahsoka’s birth and first hunting trip

Jesus... this fucking guy.

Fuck me. JUST STOP. There is absolutely nothing interesting or necessary about that story.

I agree about Nanjiani - it really felt like "I want to be in a Star Wars joint" so they shoehorned him into something that let him play his character from Silicon Valley only with Jedi robes.

Another thing that bugged me is how bad the CGI was on the little lizard camel Obi-Wan was riding in Ep1. It was BAD. Bad frame rates, bad seaming, everything. I read an article on Defector recently asking why so much CGI has been bad lately and it's because there's so much shit being created for streaming that all the CGI houses are having to rush shit out the door without any time to make the stuff great. I can 100% see that as the case here. I also agree with Khaldun that the action scenes were not very good.

I'm a big McGregor fan but I feel like he's never been given much good to work with as Obi-Wan. That feeling hasn't really changed here. PTSD Kenobi has plenty of pathos, but I just don't feel like it's much help to this character or the story.

[Riggswolfe]

The one thing you have to give the animateds credit for is that they've made some new characters stick and they've made some prequel characters better. Ahsoka is the best example of that.

Having not watched most of the animated stuff, I guess I remain to be convinced there. I had to test run the Clone Wars animated movie where she was introduced as the most cliched and annoying sassy kid sidekick, and have seen her in the Mandalorian where she felt largely out of place, but was vaguely tolerable because I like Rosario Dawson. Aside from that she seems to get positioned as a super-important character who somehow never gets so much as a single mention in any of the movies. Not since Bendis and Jessica Jones have I seen someone so enamored of their own creation that they retconned into the history of an established setting.

Ahsoka is awful in the Clone Wars movie but by the end of the Clone Wars cartoon which is arguably one of the top 3 best things ever done with the IP she is amazing and one of the best characters made in that universe. How they took her from annoying sidekick to "come on Ahsoka, you can do it, survive!" is a great example of how to actually build a character in a franchise.

Now, about Obi-Wan, I had this vague feeling of unease when I heard Deborah Chow was directing all of it and was unsure why. Then I remembered that I wasn't a big fan of her action directing in any episodes she directed. It's hard to put my finger on but something about her action directing feels very stiff and sucks the life out of action scenes IMO.

[Threash]

Absolutely, the way they turned the Ahsoka character around is just pure genius. The Clone Wars has A LOT of dumb filler episodes but when it's good it's the best stuff done with the IP. The final four episodes are better than the majority of the movies and Disney + shows.

[Khaldun]

In the original animated movie, Ahsoka isn't just bad, she's borderline creepy in a kind of anime-pedophile way--big eyes, exposed midriff, 14-year old energy. But absolutely by the end of the original series, she's as textured and interesting as any character in Star Wars, arguably the most textured (she's the only person who has been deeply committed to the Jedi who seems in canon and on screen to have some realization of what they're doing wrong and why she can't remain with them).

That's partly why I just fucking hated her showing up in The Book of Boba Fett as Luke's partner in restarting the Jedi Academy--she should be the one taking the lead, not Luke; she should at least have some damn opinions about how not to make the same mistakes all over again.

[Threash]

She wasn't there as his partner, she was there to check he wasn't like daddy. She bailed as soon as she figured he was ok.

[Velorath]

She wasn't there as his partner, she was there to check he wasn't like daddy. She bailed as soon as she figured he was ok.

Seems like maybe one Galactic Civil War late to be checking up on this sort of thing.

[HaemishM]

Thus the danger of retconning new characters into an existing continuity - you have to continually ask "but why wasn't [insert important character name here] involved in [insert galaxy-spanning event of import here]?"

[Khaldun]

I have no issue with Ahsoka having been off doing her own thing from her last appearance on Rebels to her first appearance in The Mandalorian. There's a million stories in there and most of them are good and exciting and can be used to build out more storytelling platforms. But if she's going to show up as Luke's maitre'd or whatever she was doing in The Book of Boba Fett, she's either there because she's like "yes, it's time, let's make a new Jedi Academy" (momentous decision!) or because she's "Hey Luke I have some concerns about how you're doing this..." (interesting story! say more!) or because she's like "I need you to understand what went wrong with your father, so let's talk in between you fucking up this Yoda kid" (also interesting story! but just hint at it and tell it later!)

Unfortunately they did nothing of the sort and just showed Luke kind of pathetically flailing around trying to reproduce Yoda's training methods (which aren't really anything like the Jedi standard AND were done under complaint by Yoda who pretty much fucking thought it was all a bad idea and said so repeatedly) without any hint of Luke having thought about what went wrong back then despite having his DAD's APPRENTICE right there to talk to. Like, that is the fastest move from OH FUCK LOOK AT LUKE HE'S FUCKING GREAT at the end of the previous Mandalorian season to "Luke is a second-year graduate student in military engineering who has just been asked to teach cutting-edge quantum physics/Buddhist philosophy to a new student".

Nobody's thinking this shit through. The Jedi and the Force are the central animating IDEA of Star Wars and the people in charge don't even have the slightest clue what to think about them or how to translate them into action and narrative on screen.

[HaemishM]

The people in charge creatively are fanbois who grew up watching what is essentially young adult pew pew fiction and making up their own head canon around the sparse bits of world building that George Lucas managed to do in between revolutionizing special effects. The prequels proved that almost zero thought went into creating a coherent universe, which was probably to the original trilogy's benefit because HOOO BOY did he not have a fucking clue how to craft a story above a grade school level's worth of depth and complexity. Every time anyone tries to add depth or complexity to the universe, it ends in tears and the barren stare of mental defective. Doing more and more stories in the same time period, with many of the same characters is just exacerbating the situation because none of it makes any sense or fits together. That Kathleen Kennedy is a moron who shouldn't be given control of kid's puppet show much less a multi-billion dollar property is another problem because it really does appear that at times, she just can't help but interfere and I've not seen any indication her interference has helped ever.

You could tell a shitload of stories in the universe, at all sorts of different times with only vaguely connecting threads, and each story would be better off for it. I don't see that happening though, because the overarching directive seems to be "exploit the bits and bobs of this particular IP until there is nothing left but a cold, dead husk."

[Khaldun]

I kind of wish they were fanbois in the sense that Feige is, which is a) I know this material and b) I know how to make it work in a different medium and time and c) I know how to hire some people who can stretch and do things that I couldn't ever imagine.

I don't really feel that anybody but Filoni knows the material and I think his instincts on it are uneven; b) I don't think there's anybody in charge of this property who has good instincts for cinema or television or if they do their instincts are being fucked with or cancelled out by cynical assholes like Abrams; c) they're completely scared of anything that the people at the top think of as off-brand.

[Velorath]

I kind of wish they were fanbois in the sense that Feige is, which is a) I know this material and b) I know how to make it work in a different medium and time and c) I know how to hire some people who can stretch and do things that I couldn't ever imagine.

I don't really feel that anybody but Filoni knows the material and I think his instincts on it are uneven; b) I don't think there's anybody in charge of this property who has good instincts for cinema or television or if they do their instincts are being fucked with or cancelled out by cynical assholes like Abrams; c) they're completely scared of anything that the people at the top think of as off-brand.

Marvel has 27,000+ comics to pull from and virtually every top creator in comics has written something for Marvel at some point. SW for a long time remained largely the brainchild of one man with movies that were clearly canon, and then a bunch of supplementary material in books, comics, games, etc... that all amounted to fan fiction, and most of it of dubious quality. It says something that one of the franchise's biggest gets was the time R. A. fucking Salvatore came on board to write some shitty books.

Filoni being a fanboi means he's spent over a decade trying to convince people that the prequels weren't steaming piles of shit, but aside from that there's not really a cohesive franchise or setting for anyone to be a fanboi of. I'd say at this point they need almost the opposite of Feige when it comes to embracing the material. They need people who can get creative and original with the setting.

[Trippy]

Filoni being a fanboi means he's spent over a decade trying to convince people that the prequels weren't steaming piles of shit, but aside from that there's not really a cohesive franchise or setting for anyone to be a fanboi of. I'd say at this point they need almost the opposite of Feige when it comes to embracing the material. They need people who can get creative and original with the setting.

The Skywalker saga is galaxy-spanning and decades long. You have to either go (way) back before or (way) after to really be original. Or you can write smaller stories with new characters in that shared time period a la Jon Favreau and The Mandalorian.

[Velorath]

Filoni being a fanboi means he's spent over a decade trying to convince people that the prequels weren't steaming piles of shit, but aside from that there's not really a cohesive franchise or setting for anyone to be a fanboi of. I'd say at this point they need almost the opposite of Feige when it comes to embracing the material. They need people who can get creative and original with the setting.

The Skywalker saga is galaxy-spanning and decades long. You have to either go (way) back before or (way) after to really be original. Or you can write smaller stories with new characters in that shared time period a la Jon Favreau and The Mandalorian.

The problem with the latter is that they clearly can't help themselves when it comes to stuff like having Luke show up in the Mandalorian. Going way back or way ahead seems like the way to go.

[eldaec]

Thus the danger of retconning new characters into an existing continuity - you have to continually ask "but why wasn't [insert important character name here] involved in [insert galaxy-spanning event of import here]?"

First off, they should stop making everything a galactic level crisis.

Secondly, same answer that applies in every MCU project. The answer is because this isn't their show/movie so they are busy, now shut up.

[Khaldun]

MCU is (mostly) one planet and there's sorcerers who can teleport people around if need be, so the question feels a bit more pertinent. But even there you can solve the problem narratively: there wasn't time to call people, the problem at hand is for some sort of specialist (sorcerers, say), the useful people you might call are busy right now, the people in the situation are embarrassed/feeling kind of private about the situation they're in, the character involved is an egomaniac of some kind or another and thinks he/she can handle it, the system for calling people has broken down/doesn't work any more (that's pretty much the current MCU), you hate or mistrust the person you might call or vice-versa.

Star Wars is a huge damn galaxy and there's not actually anyone who can just by themselves change the situation once we're post-Order 66. Plus, if you ignore the sequels, especially Abrams' films, the SW galaxy is still a fairly big place. We don't know exactly how long it took to go from Tatooine to Alderaan but there's plausible mise-en-scene clues to argue it took several days. It's not terribly consistent, I know--some jumps that look long on a galaxy map have to have been fairly short in that there's no room in an X-Wing cockpit to take a shit etc. and we see small fighters going all over the place. I think you have to imagine that there are 'routes' in hyperspace that make some places that are seemingly far away relatively quick hops while also making some places that seem close to be very long trips, it's the only way to explain why some planets seem 'remote' and others 'central'. I think we also have to imagine the interdictors that the EU wrote in, so that you have to worry sometimes about coming into a situation that you can't get advance intelligence on because there's a risk that you can't get out of it. Meaning, you can't just zip into every situation every single time somebody yells for help. There's plenty of room in Star Wars for very consequential adventures to have happened far away from the 'main saga' without any of the 'main saga' people getting involved. The Rebellion is only one example--I mean, there HAVE to have been important missions that none of the established characters got involved with or knew about.

What I think they really need is some disciplined, organized Force users who are neither Jedi nor Sith to enter the picture. Different ones--Dathomir witches, cults who are sort of like druids, monks who've wholly withdrawn from the affairs of the galaxy to engage in contemplation, fierce protectors of one culture or planet, you name it. Plop most of them down on the unused left side of the galaxy. They need some new cultures/aliens who represent archetypes they haven't done much with so far--berserker warriors, parasites/symbiotes, empaths/therapists, scientists/rationalists, etc.

[Draegan]

Star Wars needs to go 1000000 years into the future because there have been plenty of stories of the past, just enough to entice people to lock in on characters from bad video games.

Plenty of shit to go off on - no more jedi/sith - travel is localized no more light speed or make it limited in some faction. - post society galaxy or whatever. Almost anything would be more interesting than what's on TV/movies now.

[Trippy]

I would argue Star Wars without the Jedi / Sith, or at least the Force, is no longer Star Wars.

[Khaldun]

You need the Force. You need to either have a central showdown with the problem of "are the Jedi a mistake or not?" or you need to answer it softly and indirectly by introducing "good guys" who use the Force who aren't Jedi particularly. They can't keep fucking around the edges of this issue. Whatever else you think about "The Last Jedi", it tried to make reckoning and I think did pretty well. And then got stuffed down the Abrams Well.

[slog]

I started watching and turned it off when they got to Leia.  Either the writing for her character is bad, the young actress is bad, or both.  Maybe I'll watch more later. 

[Draegan]

I would argue Star Wars without the Jedi / Sith, or at least the Force, is no longer Star Wars.

Still have the force, just Jedi vs Sith don't exist as groups. I dunno make up some bullshit story about how the force died out or sentient beings stopped having midiclorians or whatever. Then plop the story down somewhere in the future where force sensative or force wielding people started showing up again and how that impacts the galaxy.

[Khaldun]

Katherine Kurtz' Deryni novels always make me think about Jedi. The basic gimmick is "once upon a time there were very very powerful Deryni who were also scholars who understood their powers (and how they aligned with faith in God)", then "something mysteriously bad happened and we lost a lot of their knowledge" (basically, given Kurtz' set up, read that as "the fall of Rome") then "we are rebuilding the knowledge and finding amazing scraps of what our people once knew and look what we can do" then "oh fuck the humans hate us because there were cruel Deryni on the throne and oh god now they're killing us, go into hiding" then "slow rebirth/rediscovery by people who know absolutely nothing about Deryni learning and have to be really careful not to trigger persecution" but also "there's still learned Deryni in hiding but they also have lost sight of some of what they once knew".

The end result is a new human/Deryni reconciliation but also a sense that the old learning doesn't cover a lot of the new circumstances.

[Draegan]

Wheel of StarWars

[Riggswolfe]

I would argue Star Wars without the Jedi / Sith, or at least the Force, is no longer Star Wars.

Still have the force, just Jedi vs Sith don't exist as groups. I dunno make up some bullshit story about how the force died out or sentient beings stopped having midiclorians or whatever. Then plop the story down somewhere in the future where force sensative or force wielding people started showing up again and how that impacts the galaxy.

There was a pretty good Buffy the Vampire Comic that had a similar storyline. It was set in the future and now new Slayers had been around for like 200 years then one was "called." She had no backup and didn't understand what was going on and it was a neat riff on that universe. You could probably do something similar.

That said, I think lightsabers and Jedi are a pretty iconic part of the IP at this point.

As much as I am slightly more of a Star Wars fan and Obi-wan in my favorite Star Wars character I find myself looking forward more to Strange New Worlds next episode than the next episode of this, for what it's worth.

[Tebonas]

Never forget that originally the Jedi HAD been a relic from a long forgotten age. Without the prequel retcon that is exactly the setting as envisioned.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, that's one of the continuity things that doesn't really line up very well. Obi-Wan is talking like the Jedi were a distant memory from his youth, and while it's plain Luke has heard of them, they obviously seem mythic to him. (Well, maybe Uncle Owen has been controlling the flow of information in his household a bit aggressively.) Han Solo talks like the Jedi are some ridiculous fake thing but come on, there were thousands of them. Vader has to force-choke a bitch who clearly has no reason to think Vader can do anything of the sort (which makes me think Vader has not interacted a ton with the Imperial Navy up to this point; it actually raises some interesting questions about what it actually is that Vader does most of the time which "Rebels" doesn't entirely answer.) 

Obviously on planets heavily controlled by the Empire, it's unhealthy to even talk about the Jedi, so you can work your way around to explaining why they seem so completely forgotten. (Also, the prequels gave off a vague impression that even with the Jedi being plentiful the chances of interacting with one in a huge galaxy were still pretty low and that ordinary people didn't have an entirely favorable impression of the Jedi anyway.)

[01101010]

I always figured that once the emperor took control of the senate, he controlled the messaging thru out the galaxy from that point on. Not surprising that those born on or around the time of the emperor's ascension grew up under the message that the Jedi were myth... which would have happened around the time when the New Hope characters were all kids.

But that is as far down the theory-hole I am willing to think about it.