Obi-Wan Kenobi Review

Read the Empire Movie review of Obi-Wan Kenobi. A promising start, this shows a solid understanding of its hero and hints at an exciting new...

Obi-Wan Kenobi Review

Streaming on: Disney+

Episodes viewed: 2 of 6

We’re halfway between the Star Wars prequel trilogy and A New Hope in this new show, and Ewan McGregor still looks a hell of a lot younger than Alec Guinness did at 63, aka ten years after this series is set. Still, the first episodes of_Obi-Wan Kenobi_feature scares and stress enough to age anyone, and more importantly some effective connective tissue between the tone of the two trilogies.

As we meet Obi-Wan Kenobi again, he is cunningly disguised as “Ben” Kenobi, a desert fishmonger who is busy keeping his head down and a distant eye on Luke Skywalker, with or without the approval of the latter’s uncle Owen (Joel Edgerton). Then Imperial Inquisitors turn up on the planet, looking for escaped Jedi.

There’s an effectively nasty premise in the cat-and-mouse game between Inquisitors and Jedi here: Jedi can’t help but help people, so all the Inquisitors have to do is threaten literally anyone, and any nearby Jedi will feel compelled to intervene. It’s a grubby, real-world totalitarian tactic that is designed to pide and intimidate. Any fellow feeling becomes suspect; any tie is used to bind; and good people are destroyed whatever they do – because if a Jedi like Obi-Wan truly looks away from such evil to keep himself safe, is he still a Jedi? Or has his very nature been corrupted? Such effective nastiness is then amplified by theatrical sneering, in Rupert Friend’s Grand Inquisitor, and single-minded obsession, in Moses Ingram’s fanatical Reva, to hugely entertaining effect. If Sung Kang’s Fifth Brother seems to have a little more restraint, it’s not yet clear that it will translate to any real pity.

Against this backdrop, Obi-Wan receives a call from an old friend begging for help, and must decide whether to risk his hiding place, Luke’s safety and the spiritual mission that Yoda gave him in order to answer it. No prizes for guessing which way he goes, but the show establishes stakes high enough that you will doubt it for a moment.

Showrunner Joby Harold (Army Of The Dead) and director Deborah Chow effectively manage to make this look and feel like a bit of connective tissue between the flat glitz of the prequel trilogy and the grubby weariness of the original trilogy, with a despairing, wary McGregor as the missing link between the two. His adventures here may offer a chance at redemption not just for his character but that entire under-loved era of Star Wars, cherrypicking the bits that worked and leaving aside the embarrassing Gungans and terrible screenwriting (at least so far). Sure, you could call it fan service and you’d probably be right, given the number of familiar characters here, but here’s a prequel character interacting with baddies who feel thoroughly Imperial, and a tired world that still features traces of neon and cities that span planets.

Whether the show can truly redeem the prequels without relying too heavily on embroidering the stories of characters we already know remains to be seen, but it’s a great pleasure to see an older, wiser McGregor back in this role. He became more at ease with his character with each film of the prequels, and now these remarkably Jedi-looking old robes seem entirely comfortable – even if Obi-Wan himself has never been more at sea. We can only hope he regains the high ground by the time it wraps up.

A promising start, this shows a solid understanding of its hero and hints at an exciting new adventure in those missing decades of his life. It’s a very welcome return to form after the misfiring Boba Fett.