If you’re interested in watching the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series but haven’t started yet: The first two episodes are up on Disney+ now. I highly recommend skipping the first 6 minutes.
After a 4-minute recap of the prequel trilogy (which you can skip with the “skip recap” button) we’re treated to an unnecessary scene in which stormtroopers executing Order 66 barge in on a class of Jedi younglings, guns blazing. I think most people are better off skipping that right now. After that, we get the opening title at the 6 minute mark, and then the show occurs 10 years after that unfortunate scene.
Thanks for the warning. I know Hollywood is going through a phase of thinking that shock value is better than a decent script, but that is… beyond tasteless.
The recap is worth watching because it’s hard evidence for those who subscribe to the theory that those first three prequels could’ve been edited down to one good movie.
Have you ever seen The Phantom Edit? It’s a fan re-editing of the first prequel. It doesn’t make it a great film, but it makes it at least a tolerable film.
Tbf the scene doesn’t involve any children being killed. If you want to know the context: Their instructor protects them from the clone troopers and helps them escape pretty far through the temple before she herself is shot, and then it pans to a wider view of the children running through the main temple area while we see many Jedi engaged in battle with the clones. The scene’s implication is that some Jedi— including younglings— did escape the massacre. To an audience already familiar with the prequels, I wouldn’t say it’s any more shocking of a scene than when Anakin drew his lightsaber on that room full of younglings in RotS (which was…pretty awful. I’d say that scene is worse overall because it’s a beloved character and a greater sense of horror. I don’t feel this new one is as heavy.) .However given recent events, I can totally understand why some people would rather not see that sort of thing on their TV right now
Unless this series contains a scene where Obi-Wan and Yoda have an intense argument over whether or not to lie their heads off to Luke, I’m not interested.
Yeah. The point of the scene is that the kids survive, which likely explains where some of the new characters came from and possibly explains why one of them has particular feelings about Obi-Wan. But there’s already a line of dialog later in the episode which basically covers that, and it’s not hard to fill in the blanks.
I don’t have a connection to the kids in Texas and I’ve been doing okay processing the news. But I did not expect the show to open like that, and it hit me pretty hard seeing a class of kids peacefully doing tai-chi interrupted by two gunmen bursting into the classroom, causing them to flee, watch their teacher die defending them, and find themselves in the middle of a battlefield where their other teachers are getting slaughtered. It wasn’t necessary, and I expect there are a lot of viewers who expected to escape the reality of the news for a while with a bit of fun adventure, only to be sucker punched right at the very beginning by a scene that hits too close to home.
So I just figured I’d spread a warning in case it helped anyone.
No Yoda so far. Pretty sure he’s off on Degobah, presumed dead. Maybe we’ll see him at some point, but I doubt it. We do, however, get a scene of Obi-Wan arguing with Uncle Owen about that, which was pretty good. But the show’s focus seems to be on a precocious young girl named Leia, and that’s been what’s made it worth watching for me.
I think it was the new Star Trek “Wrath of Khan” (Into Darkness?) remake where they crashed a ship into the city when I realized, “Oh, I see, we’re far enough out that 9/11 callbacks are cool.” And it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it but just when I realized I’d seen it an awful lot lately.
I don’t really have a horse in the “Star Wars” race but I feel like Lucas totally screwed up Vader (among everything else he screwed up in the prequels) with that. Like, Kane Hodder, when he took over playing Jason put in some rules: No killing kids or animals. Lucas would’ve done well to follow that and some other basics.
Vader was fun because he was a badass who did unspecified bad things, but even so was still salvageable. Making him a whiny emo with psychopathic outbursts really diminished him. Give me a Ricardo Montalban or, hell, a Sid Haig for my popcorn movie evil, not some loser.
Lucas needed to go back and check out The Phantom Creeps and Flash Gordon and the like. Can you imagine Bela Lugosi doing half the stuff poor Hayden Christianson had to do?
lol. I’ll write the ultimate cancel-worthy take and submit that I’m anti-prequel for just about everything. Inevitably, whatever origins I cook up in my head are firmly in place by the time a prequel appears. No matter what’s in the official version, I find myself disappointed.
I think there’s something to be said for leaving most things to the fans’ imagination. Sketch in just enough to ground your “present-day” narrative and then move on.
This also saves you from endless terrible retcons due to your memory being so awful. Or due to you being so insulated by yes-people that no one has the nerve to tell you that you got it wrong.
Most of this board probably wasn’t even born yet when I had my biggest prequel disappointments. (Which I won’t share, because I just want to grumble without actually ruining anyone else’s good time. )
I have watched three of the episodes and it’s enjoyable, but my knowing what is going to happen to many of the characters makes it a lot less so to me. I understand why they went with Pike’s crew after their appearance on Discovery, but they should have done a completely new ship.
I might just be a freak or something. When it comes to literature, I usually like short stories better than novels. So when it comes to universes, maybe I’m just the kind of person who likes a dunk rather than a long swim.
This is a book rather than a movie, but I liked Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsdawn showing the origins of the dragons, the Thread and the colonists. It was written after the first two trilogies and I found it very interesting.
Prequels in general are hard to do because the audience knows how the story is going to end before it even begins. You know who lives and who dies and what emotional scars they bear and so on. It’s hard to tell a good story when, right at the outset, you’ve given up most of the suspense.
Star Wars is even harder because technology and moviemaking advanced so much in the 20+ years between when they made A New Hope and The Phantom Menace. So you end up with these huge disparities. Obi-Wan’s final duel against Vader (back when the writers thought “Darth” was his first name rather than his title, and that he’d literally killed Anakin Skywalker) never looked that spectacular in the first place. (Especially that weird spin move he does that’s supposed to look powerful but just makes it look like he’s twirling for no reason, exposing his back to the enemy?) But it looks even worse when you compare it to the lightsaber fights in the prequels. And Artoo can fly, but they just never repaired his rocket boosters?
Not to mention: George Lucas is a terrible filmmaker. He gets these ideas that he thinks are awesome and instead it’s just… nuking the fridge. It’s the people around him who held him back, recut things, said “Okay, that’s neat, but wouldn’t it be better if…?”, and so on… those are the ones who made the movies as good as they are. Once he was given free rein without those people around, well, you see what we get. The movies after he left were a mixed bag, depending on who was at the helm, but I think they were better without his direct involvement. He creates really cool worlds and then he doesn’t know what to do with them. I’m grateful we have this playground, thanks to him, but I’m glad he retired.
On the other hand, there’s $$$ to be made! EXPLOIT ALL THE THINGS!
Lucas did that to himself and the world is greatly impoverished by this fact, both in terms of what the good people who made the first two movies worthwhile contributed, and the fact that his real genius was always production but having claimed sole authorship of a social phenomenon, he could never really match it again.
Tantalizing.
I love short stories, novellas… Lately I’ve kind of been on this kick of reading the old paperbacks—not short stories, but manage to do so much in 50K words where modern books are 100K or more.
I like longer works as well, but I can’t help but notice some books (and short stories) manage to create a more epic feel than some of these bunker busters.
Glad they did that. Obviously the scene was filmed well before that happened, so it was too late to change anything, but it’s good that they put a warning up
)
When it comes to literature, I usually like short stories better than novels. So when it comes to universes, maybe I’m just the kind of person who likes a dunk rather than a long swim. 
