Posted in: Disney+, Star Wars, TV | Tagged: disney, Ewan McGregor, Moses Ingram, Obi Wan Kenobi, star wars, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi

Obi-Wan Kenobi Storytelling Succeeds Where Prequels Couldn't

While Disney+ releasing its first couple of episodes of Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi, we're already getting the kind of quality storytelling from director Deborah Chow that was sorely missed near 20 years ago from the theatrical prequels- everything from its presentation, the way it uses existing canon to the series' pacing. Prior to the show's premiere, we already saw masterful editing that made the events from The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005) more palatable. Sure all the elements we get in our recap form the precursor to the narrative that is to come as the first two episodes show us what the franchise's primary protagonists from the original trilogy in Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), Luke and Leia have been up to since Sith.

In Obi-Wan, the dialogue and actions drive each scene and the greater narrative. Director Deborah Chow, as she did in The Mandalorian does a far better job showing rather than telling which George Lucas notoriously did during the prequels. When we're reintroduced to Obi-Wan living his life as a butcher at a market reluctant to ever use his Force abilities, it parallels what we have seen in a film like James Mangold's Logan.

Obi-Wan, as we saw in 1977's A New Hope, is overly cautious to the point of paranoia. He's also very careful and far from the cavalier gung-ho attitudes that were familiar with the Jedi in the prequels. It's consistent with Alec Guinness' performance in the 1977 original. Like Hugh Jackman's character in the 2017 film, McGregor scrounges up whatever courage he has to do one more good deed in a galaxy that's largely turned on him. The series in its first episodes already do so much in so little time making the audience understand his motivation without having to drag out his trauma or being overly reliant on flashbacks. Even handling a young character like Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair) has been handled better than the way Jake Lloyd's Anakin was in TPM because again, the TV series is showing us who she is with the narrative rather than telling us in plodding exposition.

The storytelling and pacing don't only affect the main hero, but we also see it in the narrative between the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend) and Reva (Moses Ingram). If Lucas was in charge, I wouldn't be so sure that Reva would stand up for herself in the way she did this soon in episode two. We would probably have gotten more build-up in the form of plodding dialogue scenes and teases until a climactic moment similar to when Anakin turned his back on the Jedi in Sith. I can actually appreciate Reva's turn because it also pseudo-reinforces the narrative of how the Dark Side is often driven by ambition rather than patience.

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