Month: June 2022

“A surprisingly satisfying conclusion…”

Well, the final episode of Kenobi has come and pass. Before moving on to the next assembly line Disney “Star Wars” product, I suppose it’s time to give a few final quiet thoughts to Ewan McGregor’s return to that galaxy far, far away, and see from a bird’s eye view how it went, with some deeper discussion on the conclusion to Obi-Wan’s latest adventure across the stars.

While I know some Star Wars fans were unhappy with this show from start to finish, I honestly liked Part VI. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but you can tell, at least, the writers tried on this one. Obi-Wan was finally allowed to stand up and shine after many episodes of mostly being a pushover, attempts were made to patch up some of the plot holes in the Star Wars continuity made by pretty much everything that happened in the show, and Leia’s appearance was minimal and… tolerable. Reva was given a believable conclusion to her story arc that didn’t revolve around her being a Mary Sue, but instead just focused on her awakening once again as a fully fleshed out human being, stepping away, at last, from her one note anger and ambition seen throughout the rest of the series.

Honestly, I liked Part VI a lot, about as much as Part I, or maybe I’ve just convinced myself of that because of how bad the rest of the show is. My expectations were certainly pretty low going into the series conclusion. I doubt I would be as optimistic after a second watch, but, for now, I’m willing to give Part VI an honorable 8/10, tying it with my review of Part I. A lot of the show was spent giving us a proper lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan and a formidable Jedi of the Dark Side, with Obi-Wan actually being allowed to fight on a level worthy of his name and reputation for once, even if it didn’t 100% make sense for him to have gotten that strong (again) quite so suddenly.

There are still a lot of plot holes in this show, and even more created in “A New Hope” by this series even remotely being considered canon. Obi-Wan is portrayed here as being basically a second (or third?) father to Leia, when she didn’t seem to know him at all in Episode IV except secondhand from Bail Organa. Darth Vader’s line of now being the master when he meets Obi-Wan in the Death Star is more than a little screwed up by them having had multiple battles in this Disney+ series. Leia being a super genius on the level of Grand Admiral Thrawn makes no sense in comparison to her smart, but not Einstein-level, persona in the entire rest of the Star Wars continuity. There are various attempts in Part VI to fix some of these issues, which is appreciated, but the overall plot of the series has been crashed so haphazardly into Star Wars canon, it just can’t be patched completely no matter how hard the writers of the final episode may try. This show really doesn’t fit well with the original Star Wars trilogy. It can’t, without having a drastically different plot. The maker of “Obi-Wan Kenobi” admitted knowing nothing about Star Wars before creating this for Disney+ and it shows.

Overall, this is just another subpar Disney “Star Wars” show. Am I glad I saw it? I guess I am, even if most of the episodes were pretty far on the stupid side. It’s certainly far better than all of the Boba Fett episodes of that living nightmare put together. (I don’t really count Episodes 5 and 6 of Boba Fett as episodes of that show – they’re Mandalorian episodes in all but name.) If I average out my reviews of each individual episode of Kenobi, it comes to a respectable 7/10, which is probably a fair review of it as a whole… maybe more fair than the show deserves. For the sake of mercy, I’ll be nice, leave it at that, and move on with my life. As sad as it is to say, Kenobi isn’t really worth any more of my time. It honestly wasn’t even worth the time I spent watching it. My final thoughts on this episode and the show itself are below:

“Kenobi ends with a surprisingly satisfying conclusion, finally letting its title character shine and trying its best to patch up the countless plot holes created by the bad writing of its creators, albeit with mixed success. A final battle leaves the show on a high note, helping flush away the subpar tripe that was most of the rest of its episodes. While not as terrible as Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi was definitely a disappointment, just not from start to finish – some ideas were executed well enough to create a few smiles. Too bad my most common reaction to most episodes was indifference.”

“Better, but subpar Star Wars…”

Looks like two more episodes of “Obi-Wan Kenobi” have premiered since my last review.  If you read my take on Part III, I’m sure you aren’t surprised I chose to take a week off reviewing this series.  Honestly, I didn’t even want to talk about Obi-Wan Kenobi for a while after that episode.  Fortunately, Parts IV and V are both a little better than Part III, although they still have a variety of problems that need to be addressed here.  Unlike last week’s post, I’ll try to keep this review (relatively) brief and mostly spoiler free, at least for Parts IV and V. 

Part IV begins with Obi-Wan trying to infiltrate the headquarters of the Inquisitors, working together with the leaders of “The Path” to rescue a lost comrade who is now in Inquisitor Reva’s hands.  This episode was very… “blah” for me.  If it had frustrated me as much as Part III, I would have written a review on it immediately to vent (despite being burned out by the previous week’s show), and, similarly, I would have written something immediately to celebrate if Part IV had been great.  Instead, it was just a marginal improvement over the previous week’s outing – the good moments weren’t clever enough to impress me and the bad moments weren’t stupid enough to infuriate me, although there were unsurprisingly a lot more idiotic moments than genuinely good ones.  The only way I can describe the show at this point is that it’s ambitious, but also just dumb.  There are some actual good ideas here in the show’s plot, but every single one of them is executed in ways that just don’t make sense.  They violate the lore of the Star Wars universe, defy the laws of physics, clash with characters’ motives and abilities, and, on top of that, are all written in amateurish ways that only aggravate these “suspension of disbelief” problems instead of alleviating them.  Very little in the show really makes sense if you think about it for more than two seconds, and the writers seemed darned and determined to focus your attention on that fact instead of hiding it.  I would personally do the exact opposite if I was writing a show full of plot holes, but that’s just me.

Part V is a little better than Part IV, but still very mediocre.  By this point, I am so sick of Leia, I cringe every single time she is on screen.  I’m so sick of this ten-year-old super genius who can identify different types of starships, resist Force manipulation, stay resolute in the face of interrogation and torture, repair the wiring of massive military bunkers, psychologically dissect those around her, lie convincingly without forgetting any important details of her story, tell when people are hiding things from her, nearly escape on foot from a full team of mercenaries, etc., etc., etc.  Why does anyone else in the Star Wars universe even need to exist when Leia is a thing?  Star Wars fans online may complain about Reva, but I honestly don’t mind her character.  She’s clever and powerful, but not unrealistically so.  I do feel her personality is a bit of a one note (in Reva’s case, mostly ambition/anger), but that seems to be the case with every single character in this show, especially the female ones.  Reva’s actions are generally consistent, and some of the details of her goals and motivations revealed in Part V were somewhat interesting.  I still don’t understand why the writers won’t let her actually fight with Obi-Wan Kenobi, but, again, the show is not written very well so I’m not too shocked by those kinds of obvious oversights anymore.  In a show full of lightsaber combat involving Jedi, why have the show’s two main characters actually have a lightsaber battle?  Instead, let’s make Obi-Wan have a horribly one-sided battle with Darth Vader, and show Reva doing parkour, jumping and backflipping around on Tatooine buildings like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader using the Force.

While I think it is an exaggeration, I definitely understand the feelings of those who feel Obi-Wan is getting “The Last Jedi” treatment here and being degraded as a character like Luke Skywalker was in the Sequel Trilogy.  It is frustrating watching him, four episodes into this six episode series, still struggling to fight a small number of Stormtroopers, his lightsaber apparently now taking up to three or four hits on their armor to kill them (instead of just cleaving straight through them like it should), whereas other characters like Tala can just hit the stormtroopers with a quick strike of their fists and it seems to hurt them significantly through the same level of armor.  Obi-Wan apparently cannot use the Force almost at all, but can still deflect blaster bolts with his lightsaber… how do the writers think that Jedi do this?  I’m pretty sure that’s why non-Jedi don’t use lightsabers.  They can’t sense incoming threats with the Force to block blaster fire and would just get mowed down by their enemies from a distance.  It’s very clear to me that no one with any real Star Wars knowledge is getting any final word on the scripts of these episodes, nor is anyone with any real writing talent, for that matter.

I’ll go ahead and wrap things up here before I end up in another rant.  I give Part IV of Obi-Wan Kenobi a meager 6.5/10 – “blah and uninteresting”, and Part V a vaguely respectable 7/10 – “entertaining, but just barely so”.  As a reminder to those keeping score at home, I gave Parts I-III an 8/10, 7/10, and 6/10, respectively, so we’re at least swinging upwards in quality a little now, which is very much a good thing.  Hopefully, Part VI will be halfway decent and leave the show with a tolerable ending.  My final thoughts on these two episodes are below:

“The Obi-Wan Kenobi show continues to have subpar writing and unrealistic characters that take away from what could otherwise be a very interesting outing into a relatively unexplored part of the Star Wars timeline.  Numerous logical inconsistencies and plot holes, sometimes laughably obvious ones, take away from genuinely endearing moments, and leave the show on the bargain bin of science fiction entertainment.  Overall, these episodes are better than Part III, but still subpar Star Wars.”

By: “The Watchman”

“A wasted confrontation…”

“Part III” of Kenobi is here.  What did I think of it?  How to even begin…

Let’s start like this: Imagine if you will, a sequel to one of the highest grossing movies of all time – let’s say, Titanic.  After surviving in the cold waters of the ocean clinging to a fragment of wood for survival at the cost of her newfound soulmate, Rose later learns that Jack, the man she thought had frozen to death for her to live, is still alive and has become someone she doesn’t even recognize – a violent, aggressive criminal and womanizer who is now the antithesis of everything she knew and loved about him back in the original movie.  She seeks him out, and, after finding him, confronts him about everything he’s become since they were together, challenging him with the very same ideas and words that she originally got from him during their brief fling on the ill-fated barge that brought them together years before.  Now, the sequence of events leading us here might have to be a little convoluted to make such a reunion happen, but you can imagine, at least, that such a confrontation between the two would still feel very overwhelming and intense, bringing you to the edge of your movie theater seat as you witness the reunion of characters once tied so closely together, but now cast apart by the radical, irreconcilable transformation for the worse by one of the parties.  There’s something interesting in that idea. 

Now, imagine instead, the same situation, but… written in the absolute worst way possible, and, this is a little close to Spoiler Territory, so if you’re really concerned about such things, maybe read this review again after finishing the episode… imagine instead, making Rose look cowardly, incompetent, and weak, a useless shell of herself unable to even find the words to confront Jack with as he taunts and even attacks her during the confrontation.  Even Jack himself is acting out-of-character versus what you have come to know of his new, corrupted self.  Rose can do nothing but be made a fool of by Jack, unable to even hold the emotional or moral high ground against him, as she literally stays silent against his accusations and assault.  What should have been an interesting, dramatic moment between the two once-fated life companions is cut down into something confusing and incoherent, a one-sided power struggle that results in nothing but the humiliation of the party you’re supposed to identify with, the one who is supposed to be the movie’s protagonist.  All you get to do is watch the degradation of Rose.

If you’ve watched “Part III” of Kenobi, you don’t have to imagine this.  You don’t have to imagine this at all.  You just watched it on screen while groaning inside at how painfully disappointing it was. 

Essentially, Part III of Kenobi continues the slow decline in quality that started at the very beginning of the show.  Despite having low expectations going into the series, I was surprised at how much I liked Part I, and, although Leia annoyed me in the show’s second outing, I liked Part II as well.  Part III is another small step down from Part II, moving from impressive or respectable territory into the realm of the just “so-so”.  Infuriatingly to Star Wars fans, however, Part III wastes one of the most interesting reunions in all of Star Wars to try to force a badly written encounter that turns out to be the most irritating part of the entire “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series to date, when it should have been the highlight moment of the entire Disney+ adventure, something to be talked about for weeks if not months or years afterwards.

The first part of the episode is honestly kind of dull.  Things are happening, but few things that are genuinely exciting, beyond a few fun interactions with Obi-Wan, Leia, and those around them that also drop in quality with some later revelations in the episode.  The second half contains a confrontation between Obi-Wan Kenobi and a great enemy, one which is written so badly, and which makes Obi-Wan look so sad and weak, it’s not really enjoyable at all to watch, setting my expectations for the entire series as a whole lower from the incompetence shown with such easy-to-write material.  It’s a little challenging to go into this week’s outing without venturing into spoilers, so, I’m actually going to go into some heavy spoiler content now, something I don’t usually do in my reviews, but the frustratingly bad writing here is gnawing at me so much I feel the need, as a writer myself, to publicly call it out.  If you want to keep some mystery about the episode for yourself, I’ll just go ahead and tell you I give this episode a 6/10, and we can leave the review at that for you until you’ve watched Part III (if you even want to).  For everyone else who either doesn’t care about spoilers, or who is up-to-date on the show, I’m going to continue now into a full spoiler breakdown of several key issues I have with the episode.  Again, these are full spoilers I’m going into now – don’t say you haven’t been warned.

The highlight of Part III is the confrontation between Obi-Wan Kenobi and his former apprentice turned Dark Lord of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, which leads to Obi-Wan igniting his lightsaber again for the first time in the series before taking Vader on.  This should have been incredible, except the writers seem to have forgotten that the Obi-Wan Kenobi they’ve portrayed in the series is no match whatsoever for Darth Vader anymore, making it basically impossible to write any sort of interesting battle between the two of them.  So, instead, Obi-Wan Kenobi sees Darth Vader, lets him hurt a whole bunch of innocent people without really intervening or saying anything to him, runs away from him, is found by him anyway, runs away from him a few more times, and then stays basically silent as Darth Vader attacks him, overpowers him, and literally sets him on fire while promising to torture him.  Then, a random new character introduced in the episode, a Rebel-sympathizing Imperial named Tala, helps Obi-Wan run away again in a convoluted way, which he does, while Darth Vader seems to just let him escape instead of implementing any number of obvious solutions to keep this from happening.

Obi-Wan is completely incapable of putting up any sort of meaningful lightsaber fight against Darth Vader and has no defense whatsoever against Vader’s Force powers.  The only thing he says to Vader at all is “Look at what you’ve become.” to which Vader simply replies, “It is what YOU made me” before beating the crap out of him like an angsty, violent teenager.  Darth Vader then scatters some kind of conveniently-located… flammable something (it is not explained in the episode)… along the ground from a nearby container which he then easily ignites before raking Obi-Wan through the flames with Force Grip to burn him alive.  He doesn’t get very far with this, however, before Tala sneaks up and shoots some random machine near the fire which explodes in exactly the right way to make the fires between Vader and Obi-Wan slightly bigger, and this now is too much for Vader’s Force powers to work through for some reason, and Obi-Wan can now get away.  Keep in mind that Vader was extinguishing large swaths of flame a few minutes prior, simply by accident, while using the Force to throw Kenobi around like a rag doll, but now stands there solemnly like there is nothing at all he can do when the flames become very slightly bigger and Obi-Wan Kenobi runs away again.  Vader doesn’t try to throw dirt on the flames with the Force.  He doesn’t try to grab Obi-Wan’s body again with Force Grip.  He doesn’t try to do anything to stop Obi-Wan’s escape at all.  Frankly, I don’t understand how Tala was even able to fire a blaster bolt in Darth Vader’s general direction without being sensed by him and the blaster bolt blocked with Vader’s lightsaber, or simply stopped mid-air Kylo-Ren-style since the Sequel Trilogy is still considered canon.  The entire battle had to be written in a completely unbelievable way for Obi-Wan to survive it, and yet the writers felt the need to make it happen anyway.  It should have been saved for later on in the series when Obi-Wan was capable enough to actually hold his own in a fight with Darth Vader for more than two seconds.  What, then, should have happened in Part III?  I’m glad you asked.

Obi-Wan should have battled Reva in Part III.  Reva is obviously being built up to be the main antagonist of the show, but we know nothing about her ability level beyond her talent at leaping over the top of Tatooine buildings while doing flips.  She hasn’t had a full fight yet for us to see what she can really do, so it is difficult to actually perceive her as a threat.  This would have been an excellent opportunity to pit the old and out-of-practice Obi-Wan against the fiery, up-and-comer Reva to show the difference in their current abilities, allowing us to perceive Reva as a legitimate enemy for Obi-Wan after likely winning a much less one-sided fight against him, and the wall of flames being used again to help him escape, something that Reva would be less equipped than Vader to overcome, making for a much more believable exit for our show’s protagonist.  If he had a single brain cell working in his head at the time, Obi-Wan would have shot the probe droid that was trying to identify him at the checkpoint BEFORE it confirmed he was on the planet, so that only a random report of a Stormtrooper patrol being attacked would have reached the Empire, something that I’m sure still happens frequently only ten years after a major governmental upheaval throughout the galaxy.  Reva already suspected that Kenobi was hiding on one of several small planets on a list that included Mapuzo, so, on a hunch, she would have still gone with the Inquisitors to Mapuzo seeking our fugitive hero, but Darth Vader himself would not have dispatched to Mapuzo on a “maybe”.  Obi-Wan would have then been forced to confront Reva head-on, having to see firsthand how much his abilities as a Jedi Knight have waned, from someone who was once a match for the Force legend now known as Darth Vader, to someone who now can’t overpower a single Inquisitor subordinate of Darth Vader’s.  Reva would have been shown to be someone of legitimate combat skill and talent with the Force, well beyond what would be expected of a normal Inquisitor, while Obi-Wan would be forced to look deep inside himself after narrowly surviving this encounter in order to find a way to reawaken who he used to be, hoping it would let him win the next battle with Reva.  After all, he knows he has that power sleeping somewhere within him.  Or, at least, he used to.

The confrontation with Vader could then be saved for later on in the series, and the plot hole of Reva reaching Leia at the end of a one-way tunnel that Reva somehow teleported to the other side of ahead of Leia would be erased.  The show’s two main characters become more well-defined, and the connection between them as protagonist and antagonist is strengthened.  Instead of Obi-Wan looking like a coward and a weakling, he comes off as someone who is out of his prime, but who still has a few tricks up his sleeve, including the potential, perhaps, to become the Jedi Master he once was again.  Instead of Reva still being a blank slate character, whose abilities are unknown, we learn the extent of her talent and training with the Force, and build her identity as a threat to Obi-Wan Kenobi.  This is how the episode should have been written.  Instead, we got fan service with no substance, and one of the most interesting reunions in the entire Star Wars universe is realized in a way that has no heart and makes no sense.

If the show was really insistent on forcing in the confrontation with Vader, it at least should have been done in a way that was consistent with the established characters, and helped them each, in their own way, to shine. Imagine how powerful it would have been if Obi-Wan, watching Vader throw villagers around like toys to draw out potential Jedi, could bear watching what his former apprentice was doing no longer and, even knowing he didn’t stand a chance against the Dark Lord anymore, stepped out into the village to confront him, declaring in a loud voice, “That’s enough, Anakin!” while igniting his blue lightsaber for the first time. Anakin, having erased the instability and weakness of who he used to be as a Jedi under the cold moniker of Darth Vader, would be enraged at being scolded again by his old teacher as in the days of their apprenticeship and called again by his name as a young Jedi Knight instead of the title he now bears as the feared and tyrannical Dark Lord of the Sith. This would have led to a much more emotional and satisfying battle between the two, even if the outcome of Obi-Wan being overpowered and having to escape still played out as before. Simply having that moment of Obi-Wan stepping out into the void again to be the man he used to be, while forcing Darth Vader to look in a metaphorical mirror at himself, would have, in my book, excused a lot of bad writing and plot holes, making the whole episode easier to swallow.

Part III of Kenobi is not a terrible episode of Star Wars, but it adds nothing of any real value to the universe it takes place in.   It’s got a few fun and interesting moments scattered amidst a backdrop of boring background dialogue, empty character interactions, and rapidly-multiplying Star Wars universe plot holes.  I rated Part I of Kenobi a 8/10 and Part II of Kenobi a 7/10.  Part III, however, earns only a 6/10 from me, still better than most of “Book of Boba Fett”, but leaving me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth that I can’t quite rinse out.

“Fan service without substance, Part III of Kenobi forces character interactions that break the pacing and plot of the series, leading to a wasted confrontation with no creativity or cleverness.  Some fun moments break the tedium of mediocrity, but this is mostly a by-the-numbers episode created by people without a real eye for the universe they are trying to be a part of.”