Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022-)

Title:  Obi-Wan Kenobi

Year: 2022

Genre:  Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi |

Seasons: 1 |

Runtime: 50 min/ episode

Creator: Deborah Chow

Starring:  Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Rupert Friend

7.2/10

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi has to save young Leia after she is kidnapped, all the while being pursued by Imperial Inquisitors and his former Padawan, now known as Darth Vader.

POINTLESS AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE

Whenever Disney are trying to cramp in a news story in an already established franchise, there’s a significant risk that it feels forced and underwhelming. It has happened before. With Obi-Wan Kenobi aka Ben, it tries to fill the gap in-between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. It tries to fill a void that wasn’t necessary, but we still got it. It tries to connect a bond between Ben and Leia, the young princess at ten but at the same time, he struggles with the aftermath of his relationship with Anakin Skywalker. We also follow the struggle inside the Empire as a B-story. The scene is only exciting when Darth Vader comes in place to rule or to fight Kenobi in a worthless fight. No one important dies in this series and there is no real stake at hand. Neither is anything new at hand.

We get to see the beginning of the relationship between Leia Organa and Kenobi, which is both sweet and tedious. As there is a lot about the Princess, there’s nothing new under the sun. We get to know and watch young Luke Skywalker, but it ends in a forced anticlimactic battle. This series, with Deborah Chow in the lead, tries to bridge over the old and the new in a formative and a nuanced way, which strikes as off-beat and no story that’s gripping or charming enough to exhilarate you from start to end.

This move from Disney showcases the desperation of never leaving anything untold whether it’s the aftermath of episode six or after episode 3 in the Skywalker Saga. It was put to an end with nine episodes of big feature films that gained over a billion at the box office, reaching a new momentum for the series overall. But this series doesn’t fill the gap or the story that strived for. The Book of Boba Fett provides a similar dilemma. Unlike these series, The Mandalorian is the only one that shapes something interesting in the glorious and passionate world of Star Wars.

Even if they try to revive Obi-Wan to what he once was, this series doesn’t deserve him that well. Although the series is named after him, there’s no emotional captivating enigma behind this. Ewan McGregor is wonderful and charming as always in his return to the iconic character just like Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. There’s a void here that the showrunner Chow has knowingly avoided making this series watchable. Moses Ingram’s Reva storyline should have been cut out completely out of the series and didn’t serve the series in the right direction, mostly because of her overacting.

The series has a big budget, but mostly all the scenes are plotted with awful CGI and a grandeur landscape where the sharp contrast between character and background is clearly visible. Then, maybe they put hundred of dollars into the production to make it feel exclusive. But the result makes one reconsider why we should pay for their subscription when the result doesn’t deliver high enough for the audience to be satisfied? At least James Earl Jones returns as his iconic Darth Vader voice but sadly the authenticity is what’s missing here, and the emotion dives deep and never reconnects with the series. It’s a bland, poverty try to make Obi-Wan Kenobi an important character but he’s barely in it.