Obi-Wan Kenobi, starring Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, released its first two episodes today, and they aren’t great, but they aren’t terrible either. This review will also be mostly spoiler-free besides the naming of characters.
This may be surprising coming from the reviews I made for The Book of Boba Fett, which I said broke my love for Star Wars. However, there are a lot of things to like about Kenobi. The CGI in a Disney+ show is actually decent again beside a few shots of Alderaan. It was clear that The Book of Boba Fett had little time or budget which made it look cheap. However, Kenobi looks as good as the movies that came before it. The music is also extremely well-produced as it is composed by Natalie Holt, who did the same for Loki, resultantly making it one of the best soundtracks of any Disney property.
On top of that, this show is not made by Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, both of who created the other live-action Star Wars shows. Both Filoni and Favreau are “hacks” when it comes to creating movies and TV shows. They rely on nostalgia bait (as seen by Favreau directing most of the live-action Disney remakes) to pump their shows up. Thankfully Deborah Chow, director for the first two Kenobi episodes, is using all of the recycled characters in line with the established canon.
But with any show, Kenobi has problems. Two of them are Reva (The Third Sister), and the child Leia. Both actors are overly comical in their performance and sometimes completely annoying. I also hope we focus more on Kenobi instead of Reva as she continually brings the show, down, every time she does something stupid.
There are also a lot of plot holes, especially in the second episode. Without spoiling anything, a character gives spice to Kenobi for no reason and for no price. This is because Kenobi needs a way to escape in a later situation. The same thing happens with a different character, a scammer who pretends to be a Jedi. When this criminal randomly becomes a good guy to help Kenobi, it yet again feels contrived.
The plot of this story is so far very by the books, which is to be expected as they can’t make Kenobi do anything radical due to the situation. I said in my trailer review that Kenobi was Star Wars’ last chance with their fans when writing legacy characters. Disney had to have known this because it seems they actually put a lot of care into telling this story without pissing off fans.
Overall, if you enjoy Star Wars at all then you will probably like this show. Unless they mess it up drastically, this show will be regarded as the best one for Star Wars.
Rating: 4/5
