The Star Wars Cinematic Universe

[Neon Ignition]

I'll add though, whilst some have struggled with Obi Wan the prequels definitely helped me enjoy it more

[prinnysquad]

I agree - they’d not get much recognition without the OT. The first would have bombed like John Carter. I’ve just enjoyed them a lot more than I remember.

Funny you should say that - I watched one episode of Obi Wan and it fell slightly flat. I felt the need to watch the prequels to contextualise it. I begrudgingly started to watch them, and… I’ve enjoyed them.

[Neon Ignition]

Obi does feel a bit like that at times, we just watched the third ep tonight and it's picking up but it's not really Obi Wan doing all the heavy lifting atm.

[dataDave]

Obi Wank Enobi.

[Neon Ignition]

Finished it last night, it's not perfect but overall we enjoyed it

Obi > Ep3 > Ep2 > Ep1

[Neon Ignition]

Beattie Talks Scuttled "Obi-Wan" Films - Dark Horizons
The writer of the cancelled Star Wars: Obi Wan movie discusses how a lot of its script was used for the series. He also describes how the film was intended on being a trilogy that would cover similar events to the series in the first entry, Obi Wan confronting his own mortality in the second and setting him up so that it gave pre-determined context to the scene in Episode IV where Kenobi clearly permits Vader to kill him.

[Dogg Thang]

Given where things are with Star Wars, I can understand them not pushing the button on an Obi-Wan film trilogy.

[MartyG]

The thing that I thought hurt Obi-Wan most of all was that 1) it couldn't divert from its pre-determined point of ending due to episode IV & 2) the villains were so 2 dimensionally pantomime they were pretty much irrelevant to the plot

->Open Spoiler<-

If it wasn't for Vadar having to be in episodes IV-VI Obi-Wan wouldn't have walked away

[Dogg Thang]

See also all the prequels and the Solo film too.

[fishbowlhead]

Well I enjoyed it on the whole, it was solid, epp 6 was a massive jump in quality.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, it was Mandalorian but with Vader, a more likeable child and I could see the leads face

[Neon Ignition]

"Star Wars: Andor" S2 To Span Several Years - Dark Horizons
Star Wars: Andor will run for two seasons. The show will be delivered with twelve episodes per season and the first season will cover events spanning a year. The second season will then cover events across the following four years that lead to Rogue One.

[Asura]

I think I realised why I didn't really feel much for Obi-Wan, despite liking some of the stuff it did.

As a bit of fiction, I don't think it had anything interesting to say, nor did it widen that topic for Star Wars in general. People have pointed to all sorts of things, like how so much of the show is predestined that it affects what they could do, but I think they could've wrung more out of that.

This issue is more fundamental. Star Wars has never been a series with a subtle political message ("Fascism is bad, don't do fascism" isn't exactly a controversial take) but it had some things, like how Lucas believed the Rebellion reflected his feelings about the Vietcong, or in the prequels about how blindly trusting in the engine of government can lead to ruin.

But I'd argue Obi-Wan lacks even this. All of its allusions to grander things were vague and not really explored.

When we saw the start, and saw how the Inquisitors ended up, I really hoped we were finally going to get a bit of Star Wars media that outright criticised the Jedi for the way they used to, effectively, kidnap children and thrust them into their religious order. The intro seemed to set up that this was a direction they might take it, and it came up in the show but it was really kinda glossed over. Given the situation over real-world religious orders this decade, this might've been a really interesting direction to take the show. You could've had Obi-wan realise that as the last Master Jedi outside of Yoda (who could've been unreachable), the present situation is ultimately of his doing, and he has to do what he can to fix it.

You could've ran this alongside a subplot of him always hovering over the idea of stealing away Luke to train himself, because he disapproves of how Owen Lars is raising him. This could've tied into a personal struggle about "continuing the cycle", of how Obi-wan has to realise that if he does this, he's only perpetuating a problem, and he has to let Luke be with his "family". Obi-wan could've spoken to Qui-gon, and they could've argued; Qui-gon still believes he was right to recruit Anakin, while Obi-wan has started to question that wisdom.

You could still've had the confrontation with Vader, but seeing what Anakin has become could've helped cement his decision not to take Luke for his padawan until his hand was forced.

I just feel something like this would've had more emotional weight. The final story was "too light".

[Dogg Thang]

Yep. I agree with all of that. I think there are a few reasons why that didn't happen but they're all tied into the same thing - most Star Wars fans don't remotely want to think about stuff. They just want everything to be badass. When The Last Jedi shone a light on certain (pretty obvious) muddy aspects of Star Wars, especially around the Jedi but also around other elements like where the weapons come from, vocal fans did not like that at all. The reaction to old Luke was especially telling because it was a perfect reading of the character following the lessons he learned in Return of the Jedi but many fans, possibly because they were kids when RotJ came out, seemed to have missed those lessons and just wanted him kicking ass and tearing armies down, exactly the opposite of that RotJ character arc.

So when we got to the end of season 2 of Mandalorian and saw pretty much exactly that, it went down great. Most Star Wars fans just want people kicking ass. Nothing deeper than that. And the current TV output seems designed to give them exactly that for the most part.

[Asura]

Most Star Wars fans just want people kicking ass. Nothing deeper than that

True, but admittedly, if they're gonna do that, they need to do that well, and I don't think the show delivered there either.