The Kenobi Movie Show (Spoilers) — Page 41

I’m coming to the conclusion that the pacing of the show is the real issue that I have.

I always had in my own mind that this series was going to help bridge the 18-19 year gap between ROTS and ANH and play out across that time period - see Obi-Wan through the years of how he became settled where he is, what those early years were like after the Jedi Order had collapsed etc and then how he came to watch over Luke (not Leia). 4 episodes in and it appears that we’re going to be about a week in the life of ol’ Ben instead and by the end of the show we’ll wonder what happened for the next 10 years until he shows up again.

I enjoyed Episode 4, but considering its a 6 episode show, it did not seem to move any of the storyline forward and didn’t give me anymore insights into how we got to ANH than I had the episode before.

Although it a show about Obi-Wan, i don’t think it needs to be all about him. They could have still shown the story of Leia growing up in the background and taking on the role she plays as an adult - Obi-Wan didn’t need to be involved and generally how the Empire came to be during that time and they’re development as an ‘organisation’.

I don’t understand why Disney, with all the resources they have, does this to the fans. Instead of exploring Anakin struggles with the Emperor, his remorse in losing Padmé and his attempts to resurrect her, his dark force powers promised by Palpatine, his relationship with Obi-Wan, clone wars flashbacks… All story beats that continues the plot of ROTS… They gave us weak storylines and Reva. They are really disconnected with what the fans wants.

I agree with most of the criticisms levied against this episode. I did forget about all of that for the briefest moment, though, when Leia held Obi-Wan’s hand.

timdiggerm said:

They’re clearly saving Reva’s backstory for a later confrontation with Kenobi.

The kid playing Leia did a great job in this episode.

The change of heart about helping Ben was a little too quick, but Wade’s death was not about the audience caring about Wade as a character (we don’t, and that’s fine), it was about his death’s effect on the characters, some of whom are now seeing just how much their personal involvement in the Path can cost, others feeling unworthy of having had someone give up their life to save them.

Vader’s confrontation with Reva, at least in the closeups, was definitely Hayden in the suit. Something about the body language was very PT-Ani.

Wade certainly will become a meme, that’s for sure.

Liked the first episode quite a lot (8/10), thought the second was oke (6/10), found the first confrontation between Obi-Wan and Vader to be simultaneously cool, and underwhelming (7/10). However, this fourth episode is just plain bad:

1. Episode doesn’t move the story along one bit, instead giving us the second Leia rescue in four episodes. The infiltration of an Imperial base or something similar has been done too many times already.
2. There’s hardly any character development.
3. The base nobody would be stupid enough to attempt to invade doesn’t have a simple thing as radar to detect incoming ships in Vader’s personal corner of the galaxy of all places.
4. Imperial traitor lady (I forgot her name, but like the actress and the character, despite the plot armor she has in this episode) is acting very suspiciously in plain sight, and the only guy noticing it gets killed in the same room a few feet away from other officers with nobody noticing.
5. Reva, remains extremely one note and uninteresting as a character, despite the show’s weird fetish with her. The fifth brother is even worse.
6. Reva kills the guy from The Path in the previous episode, but thinks a little kid, who was thrust into this situation by Reva herself, can provide brilliant insight into the workings of The Path and the Jedi.
7. Leia apparently was already on the radar of the Empire at 10 years old as a Jedi sympathiser, and should have been identified as being strong with the Force after resisting Reva’s mind probe (whos job it is to kill Jedi and kids with Force potential), but still manages to become a Senator and a covert leader of the Rebellion.
8. Reva calls old Ben Obi-Wan to Leia’s face, so there can be no doubt she has a strong personal relationship with Obi-Wan Kenobi, despite ANH clearly suggesting she only knows General Kenobi as a former associate of her adopted father.
9. Imperial traitor lady conveniently escapes from Reva by literally slapping a Stormtrooper unconscious, a new low for Stormtrooper competence.
10. The good guys escape while the base is on high alert with Leia hidden under a coat walking past hundreds of troops and officers without getting noticed. Are you kidding me?
11. One of the most important imperial bases can be almost destroyed by cracking one window with a single blaster shot.
12. I hoped Vader let Obi-Wan escape on purpose in the last episode, but I guess not, since he was clearly very pissed when Reva let Obi-Wan get away in this episode. This ruins the ending of the last episode, because vader could have easily grabbed Obi-Wan with the Force, or put out the fire as he did moments before. So, now Vader is incompetent as well.

Overall a very disappointing episode (4/10).

Rewatched the episode last night. And yes, Wade’s death was to show how it affected others but, again, like I said, even Wade and the rest of the crew being a symbol doesn’t help them. We don’t care about them helping the Path, or that guy’s wife, or how their lives are impacted by it, or about Wade.

Conversely, we care about Porkins’ death, or Red Leader’s death, or Dak’s death because they clearly care something about Luke cares. We’re in it with them, they’re our group now, and their deaths are impactful in that sense. Another good example is Paige in TLJ. We care about her even if we just met her. Wade and new crew was one of the worst attempts I’ve ever seen at this, and unfortunately the Wade mourning moments had me cringing. Imagine if we had ten seconds of random characters we just met crying over Dak’s death? All we have is a couple seconds from Luke which is way more effective. Heck, the Rancor keeper crying in ROTJ was more effective. Really bad stuff.

Another note: a good scene/episode/etc. is used to move the plot and character along at the same time. This last episode did neither. I still liked it, mind you, but it’s straight up skippable, and it’s made clear that 3 is as well. We could go straight from the escape at the end of 2 to wherever we end up in 5, and we wouldn’t miss a thing.

Anchorhead said:

DrDre said:

6. Reva kills the guy from The Path in the previous episode, but thinks a little kid, who was thrust into this situation by Reva herself, can provide brilliant insight into the workings of The Path and the Jedi.

Valid points all, whether I agree or not, but I think this may be off. I suspect she wants Leia because she’s a direct connection to Obi Wan. She might be tangentially interested in The Path, but I doubt it’s a focus for her other than it possibly being another way to get to Obi Wan.

They’ve hinted that she’s so driven to find him that it’s a distraction to their larger work. With only two episodes left, we should get some history on why she hates him so much.

Sure, but the only link Leia has with Obi-Wan is the one Reva herself created. However, in the episode she throws the symbol of the Rebellion, which she ripped out of the wall on the table as if it should mean something to a ten year old. Additionally she starts to question Leia about the Path, and Obi-Wan as if a ten year old would have any clue about the locations she was in, and the people she briefly met while being hauled around the galaxy involuntarily.

The whole scene makes very little sense. It would be much more logical for Reva to present herself as a friendly face, and a representative of the Empire put in charge of bringing Leia to the safety of her parents, in hopes of getting at least some information. All Leia knows is, that she was taken by some pirates, and then apparently rescued by a former Jedi, who themselves are wanted criminals. There’s no subtlety in Reva’s character. She’s just a one note villain, who’s inept at interrogating a little kid, fails to recognize her innate Force ability (which is her job), and wants to torture her for information, she likely doesn’t have. Presenting a friendly face would make the Reva character more interesting, and competent, being able to do more than just yell and scowl. These Inquisitors are supposed to be the best, the brightest and most powerful agents of the Empire. So far, the only intelligent one was seemingly killed off in the second episode.

Watching this series is giving me that same familiar feeling I had while watching Book of Boba Fett. There’s only X episodes left and yet very little is really happening… feels like the show is spinning its wheels. (How hilarious would it be if Episode 5 of Obi-Wan is just a Season-3 Mando episode again?)

Also, I feel like a lot of the writing is sort of… ad hoc, or just made up as they went along and not properly planned or structured. For example, in A New Hope, after they escape the Death Star, it’s revealed that the Empire purposely let them go and is now tracking them. And this is in fact hinted at earlier, when we see a squad of Stormtroopers guarding the Millennium Falcon mysteriously just abandon their post moments before Luke and the others come into the hangar bay. There’s even a line (I forget, I think Han says it) like “where’d everyone go?”.

But in Obi-Wan Episode 4, we find out Reva is tracking them - but moments before she nearly prevented them from escaping and almost killed them. So was the tracking thing just a backup plan? I guess… so I guess she knew there were incoming speeders trying to rescue Kenobi/Leia? But it seems nobody else in the Inquisitor base knew about this… like the 5th Brother obviously didn’t know. At the very least, it’s pretty confusing exactly what happened here.

Then again… in A New Hope they did send out those TIE fighters to attack the Falcon - so I guess those TIE fighter pilots were instructed to not actually destroy the Falcon? (Vader must have told them: “Now just kind of fly around menacingly but don’t actually shoot them too much. Yeah… you’ll probably all die.”)

MalaStrana#2 said:

rocknroll41 said:

Kinda surprised it’s been getting mixed reception.

Probably because if a few of us wanted to see OWK rescuing Leia from an Imperial base we would just rather rewatch ANH than a watered down version undermining it.

An immense galaxy of storytelling shrunk to something with Skywalkers and their repetitive adventures…

I mean it’s okay to have it be around the Skywalkers because the main characters are supposed to be Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. What doesn’t make sense is including Leia as a main character for every episode and repeating plot concepts 1:1 from the original movie.

DrDre said:

Liked the first episode quite a lot (8/10), thought the second was oke (6/10), found the first confrontation between Obi-Wan and Vader to be simultaneously cool, and underwhelming (7/10). However, this fourth episode is just plain bad:

1. Episode doesn’t move the story along one bit, instead giving us the second Leia rescue in four episodes. The infiltration of an Imperial base or something similar has been done too many times already.
2. There’s hardly any character development.
3. The base nobody would be stupid enough to attempt to invade doesn’t have a simple thing as radar to detect incoming ships in Vader’s personal corner of the galaxy of all places.
4. Imperial traitor lady (I forgot her name, but like the actress and the character, despite the plot armor she has in this episode) is acting very suspiciously in plain sight, and the only guy noticing it gets killed in the same room a few feet away from other officers with nobody noticing.
5. Reva, remains extremely one note and uninteresting as a character, despite the show’s weird fetish with her. The fifth brother is even worse.
6. Reva kills the guy from The Path in the previous episode, but thinks a little kid, who was thrust into this situation by Reva herself, can provide brilliant insight into the workings of The Path and the Jedi.
7. Leia apparently was already on the radar of the Empire at 10 years old as a Jedi sympathiser, and should have been identified as being strong with the Force after resisting Reva’s mind probe (whos job it is to kill Jedi and kids with Force potential), but still manages to become a Senator and a covert leader of the Rebellion.
8. Reva calls old Ben Obi-Wan to Leia’s face, so there can be no doubt she has a strong personal relationship with Obi-Wan Kenobi, despite ANH clearly suggesting she only knows General Kenobi as a former associate of her adopted father.
9. Imperial traitor lady conveniently escapes from Reva by literally slapping a Stormtrooper unconscious, a new low for Stormtrooper competence.
10. The good guys escape while the base is on high alert with Leia hidden under a coat walking past hundreds of troops and officers without getting noticed. Are you kidding me?
11. One of the most important imperial bases can be almost destroyed by cracking one window with a single blaster shot.
12. I hoped Vader let Obi-Wan escape on purpose in the last episode, but I guess not, since he was clearly very pissed when Reva let Obi-Wan get away in this episode. This ruins the ending of the last episode, because vader could have easily grabbed Obi-Wan with the Force, or put out the fire as he did moments before. So, now Vader is incompetent as well.

Overall a very disappointing episode (4/10).

Right on every point