Star Wars: Nothing But Star Wars

[sifth]

Does this show simply exist to fill in plot holes. We get why Ben calls Anakin "Darth" in ANH, we get why Ben lied to Luke, Vader tells Ben "you didn't kill Anakin, I did", we get why Leia named her son "Ben". I'm sure I missed a few.

[RumHam]

I want to know what became of Lola! At first I thought it was pretty great that Obi-Wan stole her. But then he gave her back.

[Week]

Meh overall. Would have rather it didn't exist than did. Didn't really add a lot to offset broken continuity with ANH. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Yeah, I liked this.

Spoiler

 

Kudos to Hayden for another great performance. 

ETA: There are some real scumbags on social media, particularly YouTube, who cynically generate clicks (and therefore a substantial income), by inventing nerd outrage over nerd shit.  

Prior to the start, there was a "leak" regarding season 1 of Kenobi. Specifically, that there would be a "bait and switch"; where the series would minimize the white, male lead and shift focus to the POC, female lead because, "wokeness", something, something. The finale was also supposed to frame Reva as the hero of the show. Many youtube videos were generated by these fuckwits over what is effectively sci-fi / fantasy "white replacement theory". That might be a bit uncharitable, but they're definitely feeding off the same energy.

Now that the season is over, I think it's safe to say these clowns were screeching over nothing. Whatever legitimate criticism of this series, there's no rational measure by which one could call it "Reva centric"*, or that Ewan McGregor played second fiddle. The finale certainly didn't play out the way the "leak" said it would. 

Are these clowns going to retract their outrage? Will they refund their superchat moneys? Yeah, right.

*That said, I wouldn't object to seeing more of her in Andor or something else.  

[dbunting]

2 hours ago, Underfoot said:

Maybe I wasn't paying attention enough throughout the series, but Obi-Wan's comeback in terms of general strength felt pretty unearned. Some thoughtful expressions in the span of two episodes doesn't cut it for me.

Anyways, this was probably the best episode of the season due entirely to the fight scene, but that's about all I can say. Disappointed, and now very worried about the quality of Ashoka coming up, if they couldn't get this right. 

I think they are showing us that his strength never went away, his belief did. The more he saw that people still believed in him and in good the better he was. He had to get his mind uncluttered and focused. When Qui Gon (?) appears he tells him, you just weren't ready to see me. 

And to be clear about the actress and Leia in general, I liked her and the kid playing her. I just think the scrappy rebels who wired that place should have had someone there with some basic training who could have gone in there, not some random 8 year old.

 

[Lord Varys]

Emotionally, the show delivered pretty well.

But, man, was the final episode full of holes.

How did Reva get to Tatooine with no ship and long before Obi-Wan even faced Vater? Why on earth did Obi-Wan defeat Vader but refused to kill him ... yet again? Seriously, there is no reason for this. We could have gotten an Obi-Wan who didn't want to do it, but knew he had to, to protect the children, the future, and the innocent. Vader could have gotten away and/or be saved by the Grand Inquisitor. Obi-Wan just walking away, again, just doesn't make any sense. How is it that the drop ship Obi-Wan used had a hyperdrive? And where the hell is the Star Destroyer when Obi-Wan leaves the planet?

Aside from that, the farewell between Obi-Wan and Vader was pretty good, though. There could have been more dialogue, though, Vader making it explicit that Anakin was dead long before they met on Mustafar, that he willing and gladly joined the Dark Side. Could have been something like 'You didn't kill Anakin Skywalker ... I did, when I realized what the Jedi were.' Something like that could have also helped to inspire the 'Vader killed your father' narrative. Also, Vader should have referred to himself as 'Darth Vader' more than once, to underline the fact that this was who he was.

Also, I enjoyed that Obi-Wan beat the shit out of the cripple. Vader is no unstoppable monster ... he is a cripple using his prothetics as a means of intimidation. He can do stuff, of course, but powerful people could do away with him pretty easily.

The ending with Leia was also pretty great - but it doesn't really fit all that well with ANH now. Still, though, I want more stuff featuring young Leia. The girl is really great.

I did not understand why Reva tracked down Luke. Does she know/believe the boy is Anakin's son? Why would she want to kill him if she is no longer part of the Empire? This whole thing could have worked better without the fake tension about us not knowing what she is going to do in the end ... but rather if it was pretty clear she just wanted to pay the boy a visit, figure out who he was.

That story could also have ended better if Reva and ventured with Obi-Wan in the desert, opening the door for a master-padawan relationship in the Dune Sea in a second season, causing Reva to eventually go out and play a role in the early Rebellion and/or with Leia later on.

[Leofric]

The finale was better than the last to episodes, but still filled with dumb things, such as why the debate whether to follow Kenobi or the the other ship when Vader was going to once again "face someone alone" and take his own shuttle after Kenobi 10 minutes later.  He could have done that from the start and let the Star Destroyer follow the other ship instead of letting them go.

[RumHam]

8 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I did not understand why Reva tracked down Luke. Does she know/believe the boy is Anakin's son? Why would she want to kill him if she is no longer part of the Empire? This whole thing could have worked better without the fake tension about us not knowing what she is going to do in the end ... but rather if it was pretty clear she just wanted to pay the boy a visit, figure out who he was.

That story could also have ended better if Reva and ventured with Obi-Wan in the desert, opening the door for a master-padawan relationship in the Dune Sea in a second season, causing Reva to eventually go out and play a role in the early Rebellion and/or with Leia later on.

It seems to me her plan was to avenge child murder by murdering a child, but then at the end realized that she did not want to become a child murderer. It was weird. Especially since one of the things the inquisitors do is collect force sensitive children to possibly be murdered.

Also Obi-Wan should have been concerned about how she knew where to find Luke, and that Vader had not. I get that she found the message thingy, but he doesn't know that.

Plus as you said the timeline makes no sense. That's increasingly par for the course. It could have worked a lot better if reva showed up a few weeks later and there wasn't a fight, just a tense conversation and maybe like you say them teaming up briefly.

I really hope Obi-Wan shows up on Ahsoka. There's really no reason she can't visit him, right? She already knows Yoda is hiding, I think? I don't see how her consulting with Ben Kenobi a few times about the rebellion breaks anything.

[RumHam]

14 minutes ago, Leofric said:

The finale was better than the last to episodes, but still filled with dumb things, such as why the debate whether to follow Kenobi or the the other ship when Vader was going to once again "face someone alone" and take his own shuttle after Kenobi 10 minutes later.  He could have done that from the start and let the Star Destroyer follow the other ship instead of letting them go.

Can't the star destroyer also deploy like tons of ties?

What I wouldn't give to see Vader doing the walk of shame back to his bacta tank with the broken helmet and chest peice. Just force choking anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path.

[Lord Varys]

23 minutes ago, RumHam said:

It seems to me her plan was to avenge child murder by murdering a child, but then at the end realized that she did not want to become a child murderer. It was weird. Especially since one of the things the inquisitors do is collect force sensitive children to possibly be murdered.

Yeah, didn't make much sense. This was one of the moments where it would have been better to tell rather than show - just giving us some flashback images doesn't explain anything. It is like Ben Affleck acting all weird because somebody else has a mother named 'Martha'.

In context, it must also have been clear from the start that they were hiding the child from Vader, so killing it would have literally no meaning/relevance for Vader ... and wouldn't hurt him at all.

23 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Also Obi-Wan should have been concerned about how she knew where to find Luke, and that Vader had not. I get that she found the message thingy, but he doesn't know that.

Yes, that's something good writers could have included in the Vader-Obi-Wan duel - Obi-Wan could have talked to Vader, figuring out what Vader knew by asking him/taunting him about the Third Sister and how the Sith were never able to instill loyalty in their apprentices, etc.

23 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Plus as you said the timeline makes no sense. That's increasingly par for the course. It could have worked a lot better if reva showed up a few weeks later and there wasn't a fight, just a tense conversation and maybe like you say them teaming up briefly.

Yeah, a little big of rearranging could have worked wonders there - put all the Vader/Obi-Wan stuff in the first half of the episode, and then have a battered Reva show up on Tatooine after Obi-Wan's return as a kind of weird, and possibly dangerous epilogue. Intercutting this was not good idea.

23 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I really hope Obi-Wan shows up on Ahsoka. There's really no reason she can't visit him, right? She already knows Yoda is hiding, I think? I don't see how her consulting with Ben Kenobi a few times about the rebellion breaks anything.

Can Obi-Wan show up there? Doesn't Ahsoka take place after ROTJ, following her quest to find Thrawn and Ezra?

But I guess they are going to make more Obi-Wan stuff - or at least pick up elements from there and make a new show about that. Chronicling Leia's life would be a great idea ... and they also have Reva as a character now.

Leia's ending was kind of interesting, but you also see there that they didn't put as much thought in that as they could have. It should have ended with Bail realizing that the time to shield her from the world was over, we could have seen Mon Mothma showing up to take her under her wing for a visit to the Imperial Senate (or at least Chandrila). Not to mention that Leia herself could have had a line telling what she wanted her life to be about.

Must say - whoever came up with the silly 'Vader lives on Mustafar' idea has a lot to answer for. It was so silly for the Emperor to give him a phone call rather than, you know, Vader kneeling to his master in person.

By doing that, this Vader is quite officially an apolitical joke. He is like Tiberius on Rhodes. Not matter how many people he jokes, they will always laugh behind his back.

[RumHam]

4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Can Obi-Wan show up there? Doesn't Ahsoka take place after ROTJ, following her quest to find Thrawn and Ezra?

I believe it is about that. But there's still this huge gap in her life between the two animated shows. Then another after Ezra cheats and saves her before she shows up again. I expect flashbacks. I expect Christiansian to show up and say "snips" at least.

Also he could be a force ghost. Maybe they show up how you remember them? It's not like it made sense before.

[Slurktan]

59 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Also he could be a force ghost. Maybe they show up how you remember them? It's not like it made sense before.

The editing ending of Jedi shows that Anakin is a ghost as he was prior to turning to Vader, just with a white shirt instead of black.

[IFR]

52 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

But I guess they are going to make more Obi-Wan stuff - or at least pick up elements from there and make a new show about that. Chronicling Leia's life would be a great idea

I honestly would start watching again if Disney would embrace the absurdity and let self-awareness motivate the bad writing.

Season 2 of Obi-Wan could be the Inquisitors capturing Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker. Bail and Leia find out about this and together go on a rescue mission. They sneak pass Vader's forces and rescue Kenobi and Skywalker...but it's a trap! Vader himself appears and Kenobi is too weak to do anything. How will our heroes escape? Bail takes up a lightsaber and manages to hold Vader off briefly, but the Senator is no match for the strength of the mighty Sith. He is disarmed, and Vader is about to strike the fatal blow...until 10 year old Leia intervenes, grabs Bail's lightsaber and holds off Vader's attack. Little did Vader know that the Sith is no match for sassy little kid plot armor, and he's put on the defensive as Leia strikes one fierce blow after another, allowing Skywalker, Kenobi and Organa to escape. Vader desperately attempts to regain the advantage, but Leia Yoda flips over him, and having the high ground, savagely decapitates him.

 I feel like this writing is basically on par with what I watched, and at least it would be very entertaining for me.

[felice]

7 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Edit, yep, she was 8.  b-day is June 2, so she's 10 now.

I can't believe the writing on this thing was so half-assed. If the best actor to play Leia was an 8-year-old (and I thought she did a great job), why not just set it 8 years after RotS?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Glad I'm a casual fan. The series was fine and I'll forget it quickly. Some of the Vader stuff was cool, but otherwise I think this was below BoBF. McGregor did a solid job, no faults to him, and some of the other performances were good too, but I have a hard time calling this a show worth rewatching. 

[Rubicante]

With the exception of episode 4, I quite liked the show.  I know they did something similar in Rebels, but I thought the Vader with broken helmet scene talking as both Anakin and Vader was both heart breaking and horrifying.  Ewan and Hayden both sold it so well.

I also thought the show did a great job of making Owen a much more respectable character.  Him and Beru clearly love Luke, and it makes their death scene in A New Hope a lot tougher to take.  Even if Owen knew where R2D2 was, there was no way they would say, because they would rather give their lives than allow any chance of the Empire getting closer to Luke.

The Star Destroyer mystically not being there is dumb, but these non sensical things happen all the time, even in the original trilogy.  Why is it that when Luke escapes Hoth, the Imperial Fleet is nowhere to be seen?  Yet when the Falcon leaves, the whole fleet is on them?  Or the stupidity of the Falcon flying past the bridge window and attaching to the back of the Star Destroyer in like 3 seconds? Or at the end of the film for some reason the Star Destroyer not being able to activate the tractor beam, despite the Falcon being literally right beside the ship.

To be clear, Empire is my favourite movie of all time.  But even it has its moments where you just have to shrug  your shoulders and ignore it because the narrative is so strong. 
 

 

[Heartofice]

That last episode was a big improvement on what came before, and was frustrating in the same way Revenge of the Sith is frustrating. What I mean is that I don't know why I had to sit through 5 other episodes of filler just to get to the part of the story that was interesting or important. 

This episode was closer to what I wanted to see from this show; the internal struggle Obi Wan is having with the events of the past, his guilt and trauma, and how he tries to deal with it. 

I know the show has been 'trying' to tell that story, and also frustratingly, there is a good story in there. It's just that for most of the run time the writing has been lazy and borderline incompetent. I'm just not sure why I needed to endure 283 escape sequences to get to this point. The writers obviously knew the story they wanted to tell, well the end point, and the themes they wanted to explore, but they just didn't seem to know how to do that in a 6 episode arc, and so they just shovelled in a lot of unwanted content to pad it out a bit.

I'm also still not entirely clear on what it was that 'fixed' Obi Wan. My take I think is that Leia has given him hope and allowed him to see the good in the world again, and to give him some sort of purpose. I like that, but it's just how he got to that point is what is so annoying.  It also felt a little sudden and unexplained and only loosely explored.

As ever it's McGregor who really holds this entire show on his shoulders, and every scene where gets to act reminds you that this could have been a great show. I loved all the small scenes with him and Leia, they really do hit you. I just wish the show had spent more time exploring what is going on in his head rather than rushing from one crappy set piece to another. 

And the Reva character was a total dead end. On paper it makes sense to write in a vengeful youngling, but so much of the execution around that character was flawed. She is clearly a good actress, but she was given some real turds to work with here. All of the Inquisitors look ridiculous and pretty much everything they do was a joke. Oh well.

I also really just need to get my head around how this show affects my enjoyment of ANH. I can't tell yet if it kind of spoils it or not. There was something powerful about the idea that Ben Kenobi had been hiding out in the desert since Order 66, not doing much and that he hadn't seen Vader since then. Then knowing that the events of ANH woke him up. Does adding in this plot ruin that a bit, knowing they pretty much just saw each other when Vader cuts him down? I dunno. It certainly changes it, but I can't yet tell whether its a good or a bad thing. 

I also can't tell whether this show spoils Vader again. Watching him be mostly rubbish against Obi Wan takes away a little bit from the sense he is all powerful now hes on the dark side. Sure the show makes a point of saying this is the turning point for him and he goes all in on being Vader from then, but is that necessary? I haven't watched enough of Clone Wars or Rebels to know if it affects that too.

Either way, there is something about Star Wars filling in gaps that didn't need filling that tends to make viewing original movies worse. 

Overall, a good last episode that really just highlighted what this show could have been. It's just that 80% of it was really really bad. 

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, RumHam said:

Can't the star destroyer also deploy like tons of ties?

What I wouldn't give to see Vader doing the walk of shame back to his bacta tank with the broken helmet and chest peice. Just force choking anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path.

TIEs are short-range fighters without hyperdrives, so dropping them to chase one or other ship isn't much good if the destroyer is going to have to jump to lightspeed (which they don't know is going to be the case or not). They either leave the TIEs stranded for a while or they have to stop to pick them up.

[Heartofice]

11 minutes ago, Werthead said:

TIEs are short-range fighters without hyperdrives, so dropping them to chase one or other ship isn't much good if the destroyer is going to have to jump to lightspeed (which they don't know is going to be the case or not). They either leave the TIEs stranded for a while or they have to stop to pick them up.

It really wouldn't have been a big loss to send out a handful of TIEs to deal with the ship, even if it did jump.. which it didn't seem to be doing. I think it was just plot armour really, another one of those things in the show they hope you don't think too hard about.

[mormont]

There were some genuinely good things in this series. The final confrontation between Vader and Kenobi is affecting, and the line 'I am not your failure, Obi-Wan. You didn't kill Anakin Skywalker. I did' is a worthy climax to their encounter. It works with the themes of the series, it's delivered and set up well, it's insightful. I also love that Reva gets to set aside the lightsaber and honestly, I hope that's all we ever find out of her story, because it's rare we see a traumatised character get to put away violence and actually begin to heal. 

But these moments are all mixed up in writing where I would say I found 80% of the decisions to be genuinely baffling. Like, it would have been just as easy to do something that doesn't raise so many questions and inconsistencies as the choices they did make, which just made it harder and harder to accept that this series could possibly fit into canon. (And also that some of the things that happened made any internal sense.) I said this last week, but it looks like the writers went with their first idea every time, and the director went with the first take every time. That's good enough, let's move on. 

Which leads to some great actors delivering a paper thin plot and some occasionally terrible dialogue, which I guess we can at least say puts it firmly in the Star Wars tradition?