Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) - Review
Obi-Wan Kenobi repeats the trend of quality with Disney plus shows. The production value is good, the performances are great, the pace is fast, but we never get enough time to breath and explore these characters properly.
The show goes from plot point to plot point but never gives us time to show these characters grow, rather they tell us. This makes the actors do a lot of the heavy lifting to get us invested, so it is a testament to Ewan McGregor, Moses Ingram, and Hayden Christianson that their arcs work at all. The last episode especially bring up the series a lot, the character moments were on point and the action was good, but I wish the rest of the series had that. The journey of Obi-Wan was told to us rather than shown, we are told Leia and Luke are the reason Obi-Wan now believes in the future and begin to let go of his past, but what moments did Leia and him really have with each other? They really didn’t have a lot of time to interact and grow with each other. Think of TLOU or Logan, and the amount of moments the surrogate father and daughter have to grow with each other are plentiful and well written. In Kenobi, there isn’t much.
A lot of the bad writing and plot contrivances come from prioritizing fan service over anything else. We gotta see Vader rip shit apart and look cool, so instead of Reva interrupting Vader to let the ship escape, she attacks after like an idiot. Instead of making the Second brother (I think that is the Asian inquisitor) the grand inquisitor, making Reva and his bickering the whole series payoff, they bring back the old Grand Inquisitor with no explanation how he survived the Stab because people know him and they’ll get excited. Reva survives getting stabbed (twice!) so that we can go back to Tatoonie to see Owen and Beru kick butt! It is so blantant that these moments are fan service only, making people with clap and Stan these moments online rather than tell an effective story.
Obi-Wan still works overall for me, providing character moments carried by the actors’ performances, a fast pace that never allows for a dull moment and some great action, even if it’s writing as a whole is a bit on the lazier side.