There has always been something sitting at the back of my mind, quietly incredibly excited. The advent of the Star Wars live action TV shows started with a bang in The Mandalorian and i truly believed we were about to get the Star Wars i wanted (the cartoons were good and the games excellent, but they didn’t feel real.) The Mandalorian S2 took things to a new level with some needed injection of outright nostalgia. Book of Boba Fett trudged an unsettling line between okayish and unsatisfying, still delivering some excellence but also…well, being a bit boring. Not rubbish, by any standards. Just boring.
Obi Wan Kenobi comes along…what am i to think? Ewan McGregor has always inhabited a special part of my young adulthood for being Obi-Wan, but also because i just like the guy. He’s inspired me in life and in movies – i particularly love Christopher Robin, unashamedly. And Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.
I want to be excited, i want to look forwards to it, but i’m not sure.
“Master Yoda told me to mindful of the future.” – Obi Wan
“But not at the expense of the moment.” – Qui Gon
Damn it Neeson you’re right. I’m damned excited about this show and i’m not afraid to say it. Getting the original cast in to play their characters is spot on, and we get Jimmy Smits, Joel Edgerton and even Hayden fricking Christensen (but the latter not quite yet). Who knows who might turn up. I’ve already seen rumours, so lets just see.
You don’t need to know the plot, do you? Surely you know. I mean, is a non-Star Wars fan going to be watching this? Surely not? Oh, if you insist.
Tasked with ‘keeping an eye’ on Luke, son of Anakin Skywalker, left for dead on Mustafa, Obi Wan has taken on the moniker of Ben and is living a quiet, mundane life on Tatooine, heckled hilariously by this awesome Jawa and stealing food for his ugly anteater-camel. Uncle Owen just wants to raise Luke as his own and believes Ben’s presence is a danger itself. Jedi hunters come to town and all of a sudden things are just as bad as they ever were. Because one of the Inquistors has made her personal mission to take down old Obi-Wan… and there’s not just the one Skywalker child to threaten.
The show takes a turn i did not expect AT ALL by following Leia. Whoever came up with that idea needs a medal, because it caught me off guard. Well done.
There are four main points of note in this opening pair of episodes that has me glued to the rest of the series, hands down. So at this point the conclusion is thus: its brilliant. I loved it. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen it yet…
Point one: the characters. Okay so i didn’t like that guy from the Eternals. He looked too un-Star Warsy (kind of like that guy from Line of Duty turning up in Rogue One). But from the Jawa to the three / four Inquisitors, oh yes. Particularly Moses Ingram’s obviously unstable killer. And Sung Kang harrah! And Rupert Friend’s Grand Inquisitor, what a series villain he’s going to be…WTF???
Point two: She just killed the Grand Inquisitor???
Point three: Needles from Back to the Future 2 / 3. Oh, i hope there is more casting like this. I love this sort of thing.
Point four: that moment, that emotional punch in the gut when Obi-Wan Kenobi is told that Anakin survived. Oh god. It hadn’t even occured to me that he wouldn’t have known. This huge reveal…its massive. We’ve all known, we’ve ALWAYS known, i guess, most of us, that Darth Vader is alive and…well, as well as well can be… but Obi Wan didn’t. Not until THAT moment. My heart stopped. It was phenomenal.
So, its brilliant. I think it is, anyway.
And if they don’t have Qui-Gon’s force ghost turn up before the end i will eat my lightsabre (which happens to be a replica of Obi-Wans, haha).
Oh and did you spot the wee Temeura Morrison cameo? Sweet.
the FANGG of HORROR ROCK 