I won’t start by saying “Hello,” because you’ll hear a lot of “Hello” over the next few weeks. Just over three months after the last Star Wars streaming series named after a character in the original trilogy starring a prequel actor, The Book of Boba Fett, has ended its first season, another is about to begin. This time, Obi-Wan Kenobi is back, perhaps to greet someone with his cheeky slogan for the third time.
In case you’ve been living on the planet farthest from the bright center of the universe and missed the two trailers, Obi-Wan Kenobi will arrive this week. The miniseries is set 10 years after episode III and nine years before episode IV and focuses on Obi-Wan’s adventures on Tatooine and beyond as he tries to safeguard a 10-year-old Luke Skywalker and evade detection. and the destruction by the Jedi hunt of the Empire. Inquisitors. Ewan McGregor will reprise his prequel role as the bearded, gentle Jedi who first played Alec Guinness; Hayden Christensen, who played teenage Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, will be back in Darth Vader’s costume; and a Mark Hamill, seriously aged in CGI, will play little Luke. (Joke, joke: Luke is played by a real kid, Grant Feely.) The series is written by Edge of Tomorrow, Underground and John Wick producer: Chapter 3 Joby-Wan Harold, who also acts as a showrunner, while l acclaimed director Deborah Chow, who directed two featured episodes of season 1 of The Mandalorian, will be behind the camera all the time.
The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi will premiere at Disney + on Friday, which will coincide with the first Star Wars in-person celebration since 2019. The timing is even more important: this month marks the 45th anniversary of ‘Obi-Wan and Darth Vader’s Debuts in Episode IV, as well as McGregor and Christensen’s 20th Anniversary Sharing Screen for the First Time in Episode II. The peak season of Star Wars is just around the corner and the exaggeration is strong with this series, so let’s review some pointers to prepare for the latest release and potentially better in a busy year for Star Wars on the small screen.
What makes this miniseries so exciting?
Ewan. Hayden. Edgerton. Enter a new John Williams theme, a blank slate on the screen of the Star Wars timeline: No other movie or show has previously delved into the five-year gap between Solo and Rebels (and the upcoming Andor) and habitual speculation. about connections and crossovers, and all the pieces are in place for a good part of Star Wars.
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s record attracts fans of all ages: you have a main character with a family name, several Skywalkers, a conflict between Jedi and Sith and the Empire and future rebels, and this old pillar, Tatooine. (But hopefully there aren’t too many Tatooine, as the trailers suggest that Kenobi will fortunately spend a lot of time off the planet.) There are no barriers to entry for fans who may be discouraged by the animation or be back in the background story outside of the Skywalker saga. This is Lucasfilm playing at its base.
Which isn’t to say that this series is exclusively for Star Wars casual people. Not only is it of interest to lovers of tradition because it covers a fairly undocumented part of the Star Wars timeline, but in the years since The Revenge of the Sith, many Star Wars fans (including Christensen! ) have gained greater recognition for the relationship. between Obi-Wan and Anakin (and only for Obi) through the animation work of Dave Filoni. This series can be almost as much a heartbreaking gift for the deepest divers who have seen and watched The Clone Wars (and to a lesser extent, Rebels) as, for example, next year’s Ahsoka.
Another reason why Obi-Wan’s appetite is bottomless is that the database I mentioned earlier has different demographics than the last time Star Wars fans saw the live action of Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan. Fans who were kids when the prequels came out (raise your hand) are now somewhere in the middle of the sweet spot between the ages of 18 and 49 that the creators of the culture attend to, and Obi-Wan is both a beneficiary and a source of increase. nostalgia for the prequel, which the “Fairy Duel” brought out in the first capitalized trailer.
McGregor’s turn as Obi-Wan was one of the highlights of the long-slandered trilogy, so the prospect of seeing him in a robe and saber brings warm feelings to the hearts of Star Wars fans who can remember. the turn of the century as a more civilized age. And while Christensen’s performance was wild for some at the time, the intervening decades have seen much of the blame for Episode II’s most nasty and petulant lines go to the direction and writing of George Lucas, who has prepared the fan base for a Christensensance. Apparently, the actor has leaned towards the tailor-made redemption narrative, expressing that the hug of the younger fans “has been very touching … I guess the moral of the story is patience.” As Obi-Wan once said, “Skill is the son of patience,” so Christensen may be able to delve deeper into Vader than when he began sacrificing young people, both for his own age and experience. because Vader, like Obi-Wan, has evolved (or transgressed) over the decade since episode III.
Speaking of which: Obi-Wan presumably doesn’t know that his former apprentice is still running around in the scary suit. Although he saw security footage of Palpatine calling the Anakin “Lord Vader,” he left that crunchy-looking Vader on the shores of a lava lake, and has been isolated ever since. If Obi-Wan knows there’s a Vader out there, he might assume someone else is in the suit, and he may not know it at all. The Emperor’s man-machine right-hand man is not necessarily a galactic celebrity, and even if he were, Obi-Wan probably wouldn’t have a big HoloNet News reception in his hut. At some point in this series, Obi-Wan discovers with horror that Mr. Sith fka Anakin is alive, and that the brother he loved is still doing the extermination work that began with Mace Windu. Not only will he have to relive the anguish of Anakin’s downfall, but he will have to count on his dubious decision to leave Vader for dead, or, as the novel Revenge of the Sith says, “leave him in the lurch. the will of the Forces “, instead of ending it. I don’t care if they fight, there is no point in their epic clash with Mustafar.
What took so long?
If the stars are so aligned for Obi-Wan to satisfy the fans, why not before? Not because of Lucasfilm’s lack of trying: an Obi-Wan project has been going on for years, first as a film and then as an earlier version of the series it turned out to be. Former Disney CEO Bob Iger announced plans for Star Wars-derived films in early 2013, and although Han Solo and Boba Fett were the first characters mentioned in connection with the new initiative, Obi-Wan was next. Obi-Wan was the “overwhelming winner” of a 2016 Hollywood Reporter fan poll about which character deserved a spin-off, and after McGregor expressed interest in returning to the character in several interviews, Lucasfilm left. approach him to see if he was going seriously. It was, and in 2017 there was a film in the works, with Stephen Daldry assistant director and writer Hossein Amini soon joining to produce the screenplay.
When Solo failed (by Star Wars standards) in 2018, plans for future spin-offs collapsed or became television projects. Boba Fett’s upcoming film was transformed into Book of Boba, and Obi-Wan: A Star Wars Story became Obi-Wan Kenobi, but not overnight. McGregor has been scheduled to star in the series since mid-2019, and Chow was selected to direct it in September, with filming scheduled to begin next summer. Even before COVID could derail production, the series was suspended and the crew was sent home due to Kathleen Kennedy’s dissatisfaction with Amini’s scripts.
If there’s one constant in the Disney Star Wars era, it’s the difficult births, a subject Obi-Wan has some experience with. Few live-action Star Wars projects from The Force Awakens have been completed without significant creative differences, rewriting and / or filming, or replacing directors or screenwriters. Obi-Wan is no exception; he did not go through the hell of development (or the development of Mustafar), but his great leaps forward often required taking two steps back. The scripts for the Amini episodes, adopted from the script for his film, were drastically discarded or reworked, apparently due to concerns expressed by Filoni and Jon Favreau about the similarities with The Mandalorian (whose story is Lone Wolf). and Club echoed the protection of Young Luke from Obi-Wan). ). Favreau and Filoni also suggested that the series “is bigger.” The original scripts may also not have been delivered when it came to Kennedy’s desire to tell a “hopeful and uplifting story” despite the tragic circumstances that placed Obi-Wan in Tatooine.
Amini was out and Harold was there, with the support of several co-authors. Some reports suggested that Darth Maul, who had appeared at the end of Solo, had also been expelled, although Chow denied that he had ever been there. Obi-Wan in Season 3 of Rebels, which takes place in Tatooine seven years after Obi-Wan Kenobi.) Independently, Vader was the new big bad, backed by the Inquisitors, an imperial band of Jedi hunters who used the side dark under Vader. command that were first introduced to the Disney Star Wars timeline by the Filoni Rebels (although they had existed in the ancient expanded universe long before) and later appeared in the 2017 Marvel Darth Vader comics and Jedi: Fallen Order of 2019. With redesigned scripts in hand, Obi-Wan’s production began in April 2021. Thirteen months later, …