I liked it, that was better for that scene.

The slower imperial march should play during their battle, not the whole track, just the beginning and mix the original in, then back to the theme again once Vader tips over that cart.

I think if you could add a rumble sound effect into the battle it wouldn’t feel flat and boring.

If I had to defend Reeva, I’d say she fits the pathologically mediocre and robotic personality type of a bureaucrat/government worker. Especially one you’d expect working for an oppressive regime. Her style of smugness stands out as too modern, though, for the setting that’s based on a 1977 fairytale. And that’s where the problem is. I wish she’d just lean into it - just act, react, make a face, nibble on that scenery at least a little bit, ANYTHING. She could be a cool new villain that you love to hate. But every shot of her is the same expression. I’m just not feeling anything. Bad acting, they say, is the director’s fault, so I’m not sure how much the actress can be blamed. I mean, the prequels - I’ve seen all of those actors do good work in other movies, for example, but they were barely hanging in there under George.

Besides that, I’m embarrassed to admit I fanboy’d out a bit at the Vader scenes in the third episode. So much so I remembered I had an account here and wanted to inform any SW fans I could find about my feels. Yes, the fight looked like an improvised shindig at a cosplay convention and a bed wetting version of Obi Wan is hardly acceptable, and this indeed deflates both the ROTS and ANH duels, but still… they got me. This was the first time in the Disney SW era where I was grinning and not cause of cringe. And if I had to defend the poor quality of the fight - my biggest problem with Disney SW is that, cause of their preference for the OT era, they’re taking old designs, locations, props, puppets that worked with and were complimented by the technology of their time and humiliating them by trying to present them all flashy in the new movies. It just looks off. Morally outdated. So I’m kinda fine with them toning it down a bit for anything that’s closer to OT.

Ultimately, I don’t care if there’s a cheap cricket monster in the background in front of a cardboard wall - the story is what matters and… unfortunately, I’m skipping through most of it. Adventures of little Leia? Yeah, nah. Life’s too short for that. Most of this I’m gliding through and nope’ing out of.

I do sense a neat little fan edit out of all of this, though. Don’t watch Disney SW as part of my SW marathons and still consider most of the legacy storylines as canon (including Dark Forces), but this could result into an explosive 20-30 minutes of pure Obi Wan/Vader stuff. Maybe even jam those Roozh One scenes in there somewhere.

Anyway, whoever is enjoying this - power to you. Don’t wanna parade on your piss. While it’s not for me, I still got a nugget of joy out of this and that’s, frankly, more than I ever hoped for.

jedi_bendu said:

I don’t like how this episode looked (as well as other scenes in the previous episodes) but I don’t want to blame the crew members because I think it’s more than likely a budget issue. Deborah Chow and Chung-hoon Chung have proven themselves to be fantastic in their field in the past. I just don’t think this series, which was always going to be a big deal, has a big enough budget to make it work.

For example, I love the idea of travelling to a once-beautiful planet which has been ruined by the Empire and I think that’s a great, grim setting for an Obi-wan vs Vader duel. However it feels like they didn’t have the budget to really make it imaginative or expressive enough. Compare it with Corvus from The Mandalorian, which might be my favourite location from the Star Wars Disney+ shows so far. It’s particularly jarring since we were just at Daiyu, which mostly looks great.

It’s definitely a budget issue. And it makes me wonder how the budgets and Disney subscription buys look as they’re chucking their wad with these TV series. It started out grandiose with Mando but now with this and Bobber Fett - combined with the other upcoming series - it seems like Disney are Roger Corman’ing the same Tatooine sets till the wheels come off. Is it cause the budgets are decreasing? If so, the longer this goes on, the lesser the production values might become. We might even look back at this as still one of the better ones. Who knows.

Again, though, I’ve enjoyed fan films and read SW comics with lesser art - as long as the writing is good, the characters are fun - I’m willing to look passed decreased production values.

jedi_bendu said:

The rumours of a season 2, or some other kind of Kenobi story be it a movie or a spiritual sequel in any way, have me very worried. Surely they can’t involve Vader or have Obi-wan leave Tatooine again, once was already pushing it. And it also means a return to all the people asking for Maul to appear, even for Rebels to be de-canonised.

Ewan and Deborah Chow have stated over and over that this show is a contained story with a beginning, middle and end. Ewan even refers to it as a satisfying character arc that transitions him perfectly into the ANH Obi-Wan. Just because the actor has stated in press junkets that he would love to play the character again doesn’t mean they sabotaged this show to squeeze out another season. It’s only six episodes, if they wanted MORE out of him then they missed their chance.

After having watched the first three episodes…personally I’m not entirely sure this is what we asked for in the first place. We certainly don’t need more if it’s all going to be like this with low production visuals and lackluster side characters.

MalaStrana#2 said:

Okay…

« Years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars. Well not really but a bit. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. You also helped me 9 years ago when I was kidnapped by inquisitor weirdos. I regret that I am unable to present my father’s request to you in person, but I have been sent on a battlefield even though the plans could have been beamed from a distance. So Vader totally saw us and now I’m about to have a strange dialogue with him where both of us are going to pretend we were not in the heart of a battle literally 5 minutes ago.
Anyway help me and stop thinking about continuity. And I think you had a droid once btw »

Exactly lol

“I haven’t heard the name Obi Wan in a long time… about 9 years, maybe a little less actually.”

MalaStrana#2 said:
This all crusade against a so called « Fandom menace » is just a way to prevent any legitimate criticism.

It absolutely isn’t, but go ahead. You all do you. I’ve said my piece.

I’m really enjoying this show - and I’m pretty ruthless these days re Star Wars canon. To me it is (so far) bridging the gap between eps 3 and 4 in a way that makes the transition smoother. When I used to marathon the 6 films, it never felt like eps 3 and 4 were in the same universe, irrespective of the Tantive as a bookend. To me this series is just prequel-ish enough to emerge from ep 3 and just OT enough to slide into ep 4. It seems to me that such matters as the understated lightsaber duels, the measured pacing, and the not-as-eleborate-as-the-prequels environments are simply a stylistic choice to make this transition really work whilst also providing some of the emotional beats (ie a stronger tension between Obi Wan and Owen) that the prequels lacked. Of course the saga is a continuity shambles in general, so I’m curious as to how it will all hold up (at least in my mind) when this series is done…

Servii said:

I haven’t watched the show yet. But from what I’m hearing about it, I definitely wish it had been a 2-hour movie, instead. A movie would have less filler and higher production value, and it would complete an anthology film “trilogy.” I’m interested to see what fan editors are able to do with this show.

I wish Disney and Lucasfilm hadn’t abandoned the anthology film format.

True. “Kenobi: A Star Wars Story” or something like that would’ve been neat enough.

Shopping Maul said:

I’m really enjoying this show - and I’m pretty ruthless these days re Star Wars canon. To me it is (so far) bridging the gap between eps 3 and 4 in a way that makes the transition smoother. When I used to marathon the 6 films, it never felt like eps 3 and 4 were in the same universe, irrespective of the Tantive as a bookend. To me this series is just prequel-ish enough to emerge from ep 3 and just OT enough to slide into ep 4. It seems to me that such matters as the understated lightsaber duels, the measured pacing, and the not-as-eleborate-as-the-prequels environments are simply a stylistic choice to make this transition really work whilst also providing some of the emotional beats (ie a stronger tension between Obi Wan and Owen) that the prequels lacked. Of course the saga is a continuity shambles in general, so I’m curious as to how it will all hold up (at least in my mind) when this series is done…

I agree with this, too, for the most part. I don’t think the cheapness isn’t a budgetary cope, but it being more toned down does help the transition. I’m hoping there’s enough here to make a fun fan edit out of cause it’s not all bad.

Anchorhead said:

I’m of two minds on Movie vs TV as well.

I like the less rushed format of TV. Most of episode 3 was exactly what I was hoping for with this series (Ben with a day job and Ben & little Leia). However, all that I enjoyed so much this week, the lengthy walk through the mining colony and the safe house, would have been lost or severely trimmed for time in a two-hour film. You just couldn’t burn a quarter of a film on that character depth and deeper pace. I’m fine with the lesser production value because for me, story comes first.

In defense of a film, we would have bigger better production values but how much better? Enough to sacrifice depth and story? Maybe not and as I just mentioned above, not for me. After the mess that was Solo, I think we’re years away from a theatrical event in the franchise. That may not be a bad thing.

Well, Star Wars movies - with the possible exception of Rise of Skywalker - aren’t exactly Michael Bay’s Transformers. There’s plenty of slow scenes and stuff that gets called boring. The first chunk of ANH, for example, is just two droids wandering through a desert. And the double edged sword of TV series is, while they might have material for 4 hours, if they need to fill out 8 hours then water gets dumped in and it’s hard to argue this show isn’t watered down.

But true, bombing of Solo might be the reason for more series and less movies. With Darth Maul cameoing there and Vader in Rogue One, I expected those two to come together and work as set ups for the content in the Kenobi movie that was being developed. Thought maybe Vader, in this movie continuity, was responsible for cyborging Maul back into fighting shape and we’d see two of the most visually iconic baddies together on screen vs Obi Wan. Anyway, trialing off here.

Yeah, series vs film. Everything has its upsides and it’s usually based on the type of conflict you’re exploring. McKee explains it better within the first minute here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMrPdxLqIlU

I think I fall on a middle ground. I really enjoyed episodes 1 and 2, they’re certainly my favorite thing to have come out of SW TV, but three was… weird.

I really, really liked the first half of the episode as well. Leia is so Leia about it all, Ben is so Ben about it all, Freck is one of the best characters in Star Wars, the minimalistic setting works wonders. All was well.

But then the Vader stuff happened. Even early on, the scene where he speaks with holo-Reva looks off. Cheap. Again, like the sort of thing I’d see in the Star Wars Theory YouTube channel. And the fight, too, was very bad. It pains me to say that I think the biggest person to blame for the shortcomings of this Episode 3 is the director.

The writing is sound - minus some dialogue from Vader which sounded weird to me - the characters are all great, their interactions great, motivations great. It’s certainly not perfect - I’m not the biggest fan of the Leia plot not being over yet, at this point it does feel like they’re mostly chasing their own tail just to stretch this out to six parts as opposed to a 150min thing - but for the most part very good. Reva is great, Vader is mostly great, Ben is great, the rest of the characters are great.

But the staging, blocking, lighting, heck, even the choreography of that duel… reminded me strongly of the atrocious Sc. 38 Reimagined. That is not a good thing. As mentioned previously, tons of “cool” Vader shots end up making none of them weighty and even a bit cringy sometimes. It’s so weird that this happened all of a sudden, Chow was arguably the strongest point in the first two but doubtlessly the worst part of this one.

But even with this uneven episode, I still have high hopes for the final three - especially when the latter half of this episode felt so much like a “tease”, which, again, is certainly not a good thing and is evidence of the show starting to go in circles, which is bad, but is the promise of good things to come.