Obi-Wan Kenobi season 1(?)

 2022, d. Deborah Chou - 6 episodes - Disney+

Besides the return of Star Wars to theatres with Episode VII, no Star Wars offering has been as demanded, as hotly anticipated as Ewan McGregor's return to the role of Obi-Wan. The kids who grew up on the Prequels and the Clone Wars are now adults, and they've been wanting more of McGregor's Jedi.  Even the bitter old-heads, poo-pooers of the Prequels, had to admit McGregor's Obi-Wan was a highlight, and his return would be most welcome.  

It was supposed to be a movie, part of Disney's "A Star Wars Story" slate, but the failure of Solo basically killed that dream.  But the rumours swirled for a long time that the dream would be resurrected as "content" for Disney+.

Upon its arrival, like most everything Star Wars these days, Obi-Wan Kenobi was met with the same mixed bag of reactions - from genuine excitement to mild disappointment to the unfortunate subculture of internet trolls and their extremely loud vehement racism.  

There's much to be said about the culture surrounding Star Wars, but I'm not reviewing fandom, I'm reviewing the show... and watching the show, two very specific things quickly became clear: the budget just isn't there to be able to make a live action series still feel movie quality, and the Volume video-soundstage is showing its limitations.

The Star Wars viewer has been *mostly* spoiled by how seemingly limitless the budget for Star Wars films has been (quickly forgetting the low budgets of The Star Wars Holiday Special and two live-action Ewoks TV movies), and while it seemed The Mandalorian had a hefty investment to start, the level of investment has diminshed with each subsequent release (as Disney+ subscribership must have stabilized by now). 

In that reduced budget also is probably a mandate to rely more and more upon the Volume (the Disney-developed soundstage featuring a 360 degree digital backdrop that is effectively a very high-tech version of matte painting) which, when used correctly can really enhance a set and look quite wonderful.  However, when used incorrectly, it does enter a sort of uncanny landscape, where you know something's not right, but can't quite peg it.  When used incorrectly, or pushed to its limits, as it has been in all the Star Wars shows and even in Thor: Love and Thunder, it makes a scene -- no matter how large its intended to appear -- feel very confined.  And a lot of Obi-Wan feels very confined.

Where The Book of Boba Fett was a mess in its story construction, Obi-Wan is at least its better in telling a more linear and cohesive story, providing a stronger character arc. We really don't know much about what the character was up to between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.  There have been a couple comic books that touch upon what the old wizard gets up to in the deserts of Tattooine watching over a young Luke, and also one outstanding sequence in Star Wars Rebels where Obi-Wan faces a vengeful Darth Maul for a second duel.  Here, we find him right in the middle of the 20 year stretch between Episode III and IV.  Obi-Wan has cut himself off from the force, he's toiling away processing meat from some massive, beached beast (how long is that meat going to remain good sitting out in that desert heat I wonder).  He's avoiding conflicts and calling any attention to himself because there is a clan of feared not-quite-Sith called the Inquisitors serving Darth Vader by hunting down Jedi and the Force sensitive across the galaxy.

Two Inquisitors, Reva the Third Sister (Moses Ingram, [The Queen's Gambit]) and the unnamed Fifth Brother (Sung Kang [The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift]) have come to Tattoine, not in search of Kenobi, but another Jedi who hasn't left the path of helping people, trying to do right and resolve conflict.  While the Inquisitors are there to find this rogue Jedi, the rogue Jedi is there to find Obi-Wan, which he does.  But instead of finding a ally, a friend, a brother-in-arms, he just finds a broken, aging man who doesn't at all resemble the once great hero he was.  The Obi-Wan sends the Jedi away, and he's found and killed.  

Obi-Wan tries to absolve his guilt by reminding himself of his higher mission, protecting Luke, but even that seems empty.  And when his old friend, Senator Bail Organa calls, telling him Leia has been kidnapped, Obi-Wan is lured out of his island of solitude and on a rescue adventure which will see him encounter the Inquisitors, find the underground railroad for Jedi, infiltrate an Imperial base, find out the true fate of his old Padawan, and face off against Darth Vader not once, but twice.  Of course, along the journey he will rediscover what it means to be a Jedi, to let go of guilt, and find a new hope, just not where he originally thought it might be.

I think in a condensed form, this would have been incredible.  Were this a movie, 2- to 2 1/2 hours, yes, I think it really would have been great, with the usual Star Wars budget placed behind it.

In its current form, it...well, it meanders.  It has some really great quiet moments, giving some insight into Obi-Wan, or Reva, or Vader's states of mind, giving us bits of back story or hints at old wounds coming to the surface.  These are some of the better moments in the show, actually.  But then there are other quiet moments that seem to serve mainly as reinforcement of things we already know, or bits of unnecessary world expansion/fan service, or even just cute asides.  Filler.  We get new allies for Obi-Wan in the form of Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Maya Erskine and O'Shea Jackson Jr. who either get too much attention for what minimal role they play, or not enough.  Even the opponents Obi-Wan faces, the Inquisitors or even Luke's Uncle Owen (Joel Edgerton) are given too much time so as to dilute their overall impact.  Tightening the story, slimming it down would make all of these characters pop in a way that doesn't work when doing a Disney Plus-style limited series (the D+ limited series is not quite movie, not quite TV show, but in most cases so far hasn't effectively figured out how to operate as its own distinct narrative).

The budget limitations are kind of brutal in this.  The sets vary between gorgeous and thrifty, with more than a few quarry-like environments (some of which have their scale confined by the Volume) to underwhelm.  Even on some of the better sets, the extras feel out of place or uncertain of their position (one particular scene of an infantry of Stormtroopers assembling in front of a large blast door looks more like a Comic Con cosplay gathering for a photo shoot).  Some CGI effects feel on part with CW Arrowverse programming, which suits them just fine, but it's a far cry from what we expect from Star Wars.

But the biggest side effect of the budget limitations and expanded length is how it impacts the logical storytelling.  The siege in episode 5 feels like a budgetary necessity, where instead a sort of "space siege" in an asteroid field or something could have happened.  There's not a lot of logic to why a Star Destroy can't just blast them from the sky.   In some cases, if there had been less time to draw out these sequences, there would be less time to think about all the different ways they could go down.  In other cases more money could have led to more impressive action and effects and that kind of dazzle and pop can go a long way to distract from illogical storytelling.

Within Obi-Wan however, I got something I now love in Star Wars that I never even considered before, which is what Leia as a child was like, and what her life on Alderaan was like.  This series exploration, and the casting of Vivian Lyra Blair, was close to note perfect.  Blair's Leia feels appropriate (and the wardrobe nods to various Leia outfits from the original trilogy were subtle visual cues that helped build the bridge).  I don't know that I want "Young Leia Adventures" series now, but I was very delighted by how she was portrayed here.  Star Wars has had a prickly past with youth casting, so nice to see them get it right.

It's a weird thing to see Obi-Wan, now Ben, as he is throughout the majority of this series.  Much in the same way *some* people were disappointed (/vehemently angry) with Luke's mopey old man portrayal in The Last Jedi I was kind of sad to find Ben here so far past his glory.  With Luke, his glory was pretty much just an extrapolation.  He was just becoming a self-taught Jedi Knight who's dad let him win when bashing their lazer swords together, he was never that impressive.  We only hoped he would eventually become a grand badass Jedi (the old Expanded Universe also delivered on that).  We already knew Obi-Wan was an amazing Jedi, so returning to him to find he can barely flick his lightsaber on is really a let down...but it does create some special moments, especially his first encounter with Vader.  McGregor performs the role well, but we can't help but miss the glint in the eye and the wry smile, that doesn't come until late.

Speaking of which, I was worried that Vader, and a returning Hayden Christiansen, would be too much, even further diminishing the potency of Vader as a chilling and dark character, but it was in fact the opposite  Like two very amazing comic book series baring his name and his appearances in Rogue One and Rebels, the series only managed to enhance his complexity and our understanding of both his inner demons and motivations.

In the end, it's a net positive experience, but I think there's still probably a way to edit this into a movie (and bolster the effects).  I've caught wind that someone has done that online but I think Disney could offer it as two flavours...the expanded experience of as series or a slimmed down movie experience.  Why not?

A festival of Rewatch

10 Things I Hate About You -- 1999, d. Gil Junger (DVD)
Scrooged -- 1988, d. Richard Donner (Netflix)
Back to the Future -- 1985, d. Robert Zemeckis (TV)
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace -- 1999, d. George Lucas (DVD)
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones -- 2002, d. George Lucas (DVD)
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith -- 2005, d. George Lucas (DVD)

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I like many romantic comedies and certain teen comedies, but I wasn't always so open and welcoming of these genres of film making.  As a teen and 20-something, romantic comedies were "girl stuff"(obviously overlooking the fact that seeing them with girls was totally the point), while teen comedies seemed so crass and patronizing.  As I matured in my film viewing, embracing indie, foreign, horror, short, documentary and other marginalized genres, I came to accept that even rom coms and teen movies in the right hands can be quality viewing.  Of course, quality instances are few and far between... and to actually wade through all the bad ones to discover the good ones is a special circle of hell (or perhaps fodder for a Satellite of Love? Teen Rom Com Theatre 3000 anyone?)

10 Things I Hate About You I passed up in a big way back in 1999.  I was 23, so a teen romantic comedy just didn't seem made for me.  Looking at its promotion, poised around its handsome young star, Heath Ledger, you could tell he was being poised as the next teen heartthrob (and it worked).  No, this wasn't something for me at all.  Years later, an ex-girlfriend put it in the DVD player, and I, being a good boyfriend, didn't object (I was learning), and to my surprise found myself invested and amused, but the experience was largely forgotten.

Years later, my wife (not that same ex-girlfriend) requested a copy of it.  I puzzled as to why until she clarified that it was an adaptation of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, and she's a bit of a Shakespeare nut.  Having since seen at least one or two other performances of Taming of the Shrew, the film does indeed take on additional relevance, but I also appreciate it for a few other things, primarily the strong-willed sisters Kat  (Julia Stiles) and Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), although quite differently so.  Kat is very intelligent, headstrong, a proto-feminist, and confidently against-the-herd, leaving her a bit of an outcast in high school and apathetic about it.  Bianca on the other hand is the pretty, popular, boy-crazy cheerleader type who feels under her sisters shadow, largely because her overbearing single father holds Kat up as an example to live by.  Despite Bianca's rebellion and her animosity towards Kat, I see either of them as role models for my own daughter.

The film doesn't shy away from frank sex talk, although the relatively sterile upper-class high school environment the film is set in is probably its biggest weakness.  But then again, Shakespeare didn't really dabble in much class clashing in his original play, so it's mainly the source to blame.  The culmination of the film at the prom or spring formal or whatever it is is such a hoary teen movie staple, but at the same time, the film rather works by playing into conventions (the egregiously 1990's live band excepted).  There's some solid laughs as well as some incredibly forced ones (most delivered either David Krumholtz's dialogue or physical comedy), which should be awful but remain kind of charming, just like the entirety of the film as well as its cast.

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Oh, the holiday season is upon us.  I don't have many holiday films that are a must watch each year... in fact I don't think I have any.  Most of my "must see" of the season stem from television.  My wife and I run through all the Community Christmas episodes on Christmas Eve, and I try to plug in Father Ted's "A Christmassy Ted" most years too.  I have to get the Muppets Family Christmas in as well (thanks youtube), but no film has endeared itself to me as a "must watch" every year.

Scrooged I've seen a handful of times over the years, like 10 Things I Hate About You, it's a "modern" adaptation of a classic story ... Dicken's A Christmas Carol if you hadn't guessed.  I put "modern" in quotes, because, well, 1988 hasn't aged very well.  Within Richard Donner's Scrooged is a skewering of 1980's entertainment and big commerce, but its skewering is so broad and cartoonish that it extends beyond reality.  The film opens with a fake-out, an absurd production where Santa's North Pole workshop is under attack by a black-suited swat team, only to be bailed out by a rugged Lee Majors.  The fourth wall is broken and the soundstage is revealed.  It's a pretty ridiculous and sharp opening which summarizes the excesses of '80's entertainment quite well, but it falters beyond that.

Bill Murray plays Frank Cross, a programming executive at a fictional major network.  He's solely numbers focused -- viewership and money -- and he doesn't take well to contrary opinions.  As Christmas approaches his network is prepping a live rendition of A Christmas Carol (starring Buddy Hackett, Jamie Farr, and Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim) which takes a charming air of prescience with NBC's now annual foray into live musicals.  I don't know if it's 80's film stock, costuming, or just the overall atmosphere, but the film is grimy from head to toe.  For a holiday film it's dark, dark, dark, but it's not a dark comedy, it's just gross looking.

Frank is visited by his dead mentor (John Forsythe) who warns him of impending ghostly visitations.  Through manipulations of the plot he gets back in touch with his ex-girlfriend of 15-years past, played by the always radiant Karen Allen.  She still seeds the seed of humanity in Cross' dead heart, but he's unable to see it himself.  The ghosts visit, starting with a grimy cab driver Buster Poindexter (ahem David Johansen) taking him through his past sad Christmases.  Carol Kane turns up as the sadistic fairy of Christmas present, and steals the entire movie.  It's a short journey through the present day, but Kane's cartoonish, Bugs Bunny-esque performance is howlingly funny still (did this inspire Harley Quinn from Batman?).  Finally it ends with a grim reaper like ghost who takes Frank on a brief journey to his morbid future where he comes face to face with his own death which turns him around immediately, and unbelievably.

There's no real excuse for Frank to become the man he is (particularly when we see how well-adjusted his brother is) so our sympathies never lie with him, which makes his turnabout even more unbelievable. Add to it Frank's interruption of the live performance so that he can wing a feel good speech at the audience which gets even his irate boss dancing in his living room, and it becomes one of those unearned, saccharine endings that the 80's often would deliver.  The cartoonish levels of absurdity are hard to let go of.  The ghost are an expected suspension of disbelief, but Bobcat Goldthwait's one-day descent into misery and attempted murder is problematic, particularly in Frank's subsequent manipulation of this character into taking hostage the control booth.  There needs to be a film documenting the fallout of Frank's actions, starting with his career suicide, followed by his accessory to kidnapping.

I don't hate this film, not by a longshot, but wow, is it ever a product of its time.

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Even though Scrooged time-traveled with the Ghost of Christmas Past bringing Bill Murray to his 1950's childhood and 1970's early adult life, but it never felt production-wise or stylistically that it left 1988.  Back to the Future, on the other hand, lives in two eras, 1985 and 1955 and at once feels at home in both and yet makes them both its own.  The 1985 Marty McFly starts the film in is identifiably 1985 in many respects, but there's also hints of another reality at play, making Back to the Future a universe of its own: Doc Brown's place with it's Rube Goldberg dog food dispenser and his cuckoo clock collection and his giant speaker system are utterly surreal, but from the onset they inject us into the fantasy of the film, that there's something other going on here.

Marty is your average 20-something-looking teenager who is best friends with the town's resident nutball, has a solid relationship that's going to the next level (sexually), and, despite his size, he's not afraid to stand up to bullies (probably after watching his nerd/wimp father be oppressed for so long).  Michael J. Fox seeps both charm and confidence as Marty, he's such a winning protagonist.  Nobody else could wear his "life preserver" vest.

Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown, meanwhile, finds the perfect balance between genius and lunacy, ably providing comic relief without making the character the film's jester.  Likewise, Crispin Glover's George McFly provides the perfect blend of helpless, nerdy pathos and weirdness that he transcends being a punchline.  Even Tom Wilson's singularly one-note bully Biff embraces the cliche and embodies it fully.  Then you have Lea Thompson, so fetching as young Lorraine, with wide, batting eyes that betray her lack of innocence.  The uncomfortable ease with which she seduces Marty is perfect for the film, and Fox's awkward reactions in those moments is so note perfect, conveying surprise (because in the future his mom is such a prude), horror at his mother's romantic advances, and even a little confusion over it all (because she is indeed so alluring).

Sure, it's a film from 1985, and yet, its adventure remains timeless.  It subtly addresses sexuality, bullies, rape and racism without ever patronizing, and there's nary a note wrong throughout the entire picture.  Its effects are so deceptively simple that they have barely aged, and it's so easy buying into every conceit the film presents.

I hadn't seen the film since the early 1990's, and I'm a dozen years into swearing off Robert Zemeckis films.  What Lies Beneath, Castaway, Forrest Gump and so many other Zemeckis pictures are so cloying, obvious, manipulative, and patronizing that I just couldn't take it anymore.  I had written Back to the Future off.  But, having just rewatched it on a random TV airing, none of those Zemeckis-isms are present in Back to the Future; it's virtually flawless.  I was drawn in by nostalgia at first but very, very quickly the film's sense of spirit, humor, adventure, and sheer wonder absorbed me completely.  It's so entertaining.  If there's one flaw, and it is a minor one, it's the 1985 make-up job to make Biff, George and Lorraine look 30 years older.  Aging make-up today is rarely successful, so 1985 aging make-up is pretty crummy.  But, again, it's such a small, small thing to quibble about over an otherwise pristine production.

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Oh boy, here we go.  The Star Wars prequels.  *deep breath*
I don`t hate these movies.  I never have.  They`re incredibly flawed, unbearably so at times, but at the same time, I genuinely love elements of the films.  I love how they expanded the Star Wars universe without necessarily doing so in telling a story that advances anything.  There were drawbacks to those universe expansions, so many limitations the films were bound by since they had a predetermined ending, in some respects they`re just filling in the blanks.  But those blanks, they did not exist before.  We had no real concept of what the republic looked like before A New Hope.  We only knew the Empire.


With The Phantom Menace we were introduced to a galaxy of politics, a counsel of Jedi Masters, and all manner of new space ships, alien creatures and weapons technology.  We were also introduced to George Lucas' inability to get a good performance out of his actors, but at the same time the incredible advances in CGI and blue screening make a galaxy teem with life, where it seemed pretty cold and desolate before.

Of the three, The Phantom Menace is the weakest.  Lucas' first directorial effort in decades finds a man unsure of how to negotiate characters with story, and it's evident his interest was far more in using the technology to tell the story than the people.  His story outline isn't the problem, but his execution of it is dire.  All of the actors in all three of the prequels I give a pass to, because it's quite clear that Lucas just didn't care about how they were delivering their lines, instead more focused on ensuring they find their marks and that they get the words right, not the tone.  Actors like Ewen McGregor and Liam Neeson are people that can carry films in spite of their directors, they know what they're doing.  Natalie Portman, though already a veteran by this point, needed guidance, and young Jake Lloyd absolutely needed some.

The thing about The Phantom Menace I realized in this latest watching is it's a kids movie.  My daughter was already a Jar Jar fan before even seeing the film, and upon seeing the podracing sequence, we watched it four times over before advancing to the rest of the film.  The larger political ramblings are a drastic misstep for a kids movie, but the bulk of the action (a bloodless CGI war of clumsy battle droids versus clumsy Gungans is totally meant to appeal to children).  I was 4 or 5 when I first saw Star Wars, and I watched it dozens of times on video before I was 10, so it's always had that appeal.  Childhood nostalgia carried my, and many others' interest in the original trilogy and its off-shoots for decades, so why would it not stand to reason that a new generation's Star Wars should do the same?

Watching The Phantom Menace with my daughter, watching it as a kids movie, it made it much easier to forgive it for its tepid adventure, and to see someone actually appreciate Jar Jar made me dislike him and the Gungans quite a bit less.  Still its fatal flaw still is supremely irksome, the introduction of "midichlorians" demystifies the Force in a manner that continues to slap any fan in the face every time it's mentioned.


Episode II: Attack of the Clones is leaps and bounds a better film than its predecessor, for two acts at least.  The film opens with an attempted assassination that eventually leads to a dynamic chase sequence through the city-planet of Coruscant.  Obi-Wan dons his noir-ish detective hat as he tries to track down the bounty hunter, which leads to the discovery of a missing planet in the Jedi archives, which leads to the discovery of the cloning facility secretly building an army for the republic.  It's an incredible journey with fantastic set pieces, and McGregor own the role and delights in the task before him.  The cloning facility, its exotic operators,  and its rainy, watery planet provide one of Star Wars' most unique environments, the perfect setting for a face off between one of the galaxy's preeminent Jedi and likewise preeminent bounty hunters.

At the same time, Anakin (now played with dead-eyed, monotone anti-charisma by Hayden Christiansen) is assigned to protect Senator Padme Amidala, the older woman he was crushing on 10 years earlier as a mere boy.  The age disparity seems far less than it did in Episode I but at the same time Portman had advanced in prominence as an actress and held some weight in her role, while Christiansen desperately needed direction and received precious little.  The flurry of confused emotions and all the manipulation Anakin faced needed far more nuance than Christiansen provided (and nothing I've seen him in since even indicated he was capable of it).  Christiansen does nail the odd scene, as when he's meant to provide arrogance or menace, he does it ably, but it's the softer touches that escape him.  His romance with Padme is stillborn, there's absolutely no life.  He creeps her out initially, and with good reason.  How he ever wins her over is never satisfactorily shown.  The film tells us she has feelings for him, but we never clearly understand why.  When they go to Tattooine in search of Schmee, Anakin's mother, Christiansen does an admittedly decent job of conveying not only his stress but outrage at her passing, but Padme's consolation after he murders an entire clan of Tusken Raiders seems off.  Where there should be more concern, there's only sympathy, and it doesn't ring true.

The two threads merge in the third act, as Anakin and Padme set out for an ill equipped rescue of Obi-Wan on the planet Genosis.  This leads to a painful video-game challenge sequence in the battle droid factory (with banal physical comedy from R2-D2 and C-3PO) and ultimately Anakin and Padme's capture. They're left strung up in a gladiatorial arena (again, the film noir, the gladiator sequence... Lucas overtly displays his homages and influences) where giant creatures are pushed out from behind gates to go and eat them.  But the Jedi prove to be more of a challenge, and then the cavalry come to the rescue, first a couple dozen Jedi knights and masters, and then the Clone Army.  The fighting is dull, poorly staged, and tedious.  The actors look like LARPers more than skilled warriors as they square off against green screen constructs.  The closing duel between Count Dooku, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and, most surprisingly, Yoda, is better, but still has its share of problems.

Most of Attack of the Clones' first two acts  is on par with the best Star Wars has to offer, Christiansen's awkward delivery, and bland romantic chemistry with Portman notwithstanding,  It leads into the Clone Wars cartoon which manages to redeem Anakin as a character (the voice performance giving the character much more nuance and even making him likeable, something Christiansen never achieved).  In fact, Clone Wars in many ways validates and redeems the trilogy by expanding the galaxy even further, giving the background Jedi more prominence and even introducing some new characters that never appear in the films (Ahsoka, Rex, Ventress) that make Star Wars a better place.  By bridging the second and third movies, the Clone Wars actually make Episode III even more engaging viewing.


Revenge of the Sith opens with a fantastic and dizzying space battle the likes we haven't ever seen in Star Wars (or, really, any other sci-fi to that point).  There's all manner of ships of all different sizes engaging with one another, and it's just inspired.  Lucas' characters may often fall flat, but he knows how to stage sequences like this extremely well.  Anakin and Obi-Wan, more partners than master and student now, five years later, are on a mission to rescue Chancellor Palpatine, who has been kidnapped by Count Dooku's droid army leader, an asthmatic cyborg called General Grievous. The repeat showdown between the Jedi and Dooku displays Anakin's growth in skill, but also his embracing of the Dark Side, with Palpatine goading him on.  Not the kiddie fare of the first film, nor the uneven tone of the second, Anakin has Dooku at his mercy and takes off his head, with Palpatine grinning as he looks on.  The conflict with Grievous that follows is tremendous fun...I have a lot of affection for the wheezy robot man.  The R2-D2 antics that occur concurrently fall too close to unnecessary slapstic, though not the painful comic relief of Jar Jar in the first film, or C-3PO in the second.

Episode III is a lot darker and a lot more nuanced than any Star Wars film before it.  With the Clone Wars cartoon backing it, one understand the dynamic between Dooku, Grievous, and Palpatine much more, and Palpatine's manipulations, his long con, bear the fruit he's sought all along.  There's actually an epic story in the fall of the republic at the hands of a maniacal scheming Sith lord, it's just unfortunate it takes back seat to the inevitable and largely mishandled fall of Anakin to the dark side.  Episode III negotiates this unevenly, but at times believably.  The additional attention to Palpatine's manipulation of Anakin was sorely missing in prior films (and even doesn't have enough prominence in The Clone Wars) but a valiant effort to make up for it here is made.  While the fall of the Jedi at the hands of the Clones ("Order 66") is such utter poppycock and a brutal shorthand to force the story to wind up where it has to by the end of movie, the climax of Obi-Wan and Anakin's showdown is heart-rendering, with McGregor's aching disappointment the most tangible feeling of any of these three films.  Obi-Wan, for his often cold exterior towards Anakin, had such love, hope and promise for him, that his betrayal, one which he had desperately been trying to avoid, hurts tremendously.  He can't bring himself to kill him outright, nor can he in good conscience save him.

The closing moments, again, shorthanded to get the film to a place where it needs to be for the original trilogy to start, are clunky and take away from a largely well made film (it seems any time a montage is used in Star Wars, it's always unnecessary and always poorly done).

For a lot of people, the Prequels were not just hugely disappointing, but soul crushing.  Years of investment were destroyed by some very poor choices on the part of its creator.  But I can't help but see the positive elements through the weaker ones.  I can't help but marvel at some of the lavish settings and costuming, admiring those actors able to shine in the face of an apathetic director (Ian McDiarmid is great as Palpatine throughout, and McGregor rarely has a false move), and enjoy all the universe expanding bits that get lost amid the cartoonier parts of the films.

Star Wars: Andor Season1

2022, Disney+ - 12 episodes
created by Tony Gilroy

Back in 2016 when Rogue One hit the theatres, I was in the pocket for Gareth Edwards.  I had quite enjoyed Monsters and I thought his Godzilla was pretty great. The rumours that swirled around the trouble behind the scenes of Rogue One I thought, certainly, were in spite of his efforts, and that the film that resulted was still largely his film.  But the rumour was that Tony Gilroy, screenwriter of the Bourne Series and writer/director of Michael Clayton, had extensively rewritten and reshot the film, and that it was largely a success because of his efforts.  I thought Gilroy an imposter.  I had heard he wasn't a Star Wars fan, that this was just a dispassionate work-for-hire gig for him, and so there's no way this guy, with no great love for the property, could have contributed anything great, right? 

Feed me all your crow, I'm ready to eat it.

Gilroy has masterminded not just an amazing Star Wars show, but a mature drama that's a perfect entry for the new golden age of television. It's a sweeping ensemble drama that could very well be an Earth-based political thriller but with half the intensity and likely a fraction of the viewership.  There's something very potent about using something like the Star Wars universe as a platform to tell a story about fascism, tyranny, oppression, complacency, subversion, resistance, and rebellion, and the impact such dramatic systems have on so many different types of people affected by them.

Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is our titular character, and the de-facto lead, but there are so many other characters who have their own journeys that never directly engage with him.  Cassian, searching for his long lost sister, runs afoul of local law enforcement.  Their harassment leads to the accidental death of one officer, and then the outright murder of the other.  The death of these officers is the first domino in a chain reaction that splits off into muliple factions that spiral and climb and zigzag in such surprising directions all while examining the reality of what the Star Wars galaxy was like just as the Empire was at it's height, 5 years before A New Hope came along.

Cassisan's friend Bix (Adria Arjona) has been a fence for his stolen Imperial goods for years.  He's caught the attention of Luthen (Stellan Skarsgard), who is sort of the secret puppeteer of the rebellion behind closed doors.  Not yet a definite collective force against the Emprie, but rather a series of independent operators, Luthen is maybe the only one who knows who all these players are.  He wants Cassian as a new recruit, but Cass is too jaded, and a little to self-reflexive, so instead he's hired as part of a crew for a job, which is to steal a regional cachet of credits from the Empire.  

While Cassian meets his new crew, all as wary of him as he is of them, and they sort of put each other through their paces in preparing for the job, things back home are getting worse.  An attempt to capture Cassian by the regional security force went horribly awry. Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), the morally righteous deputy inspector who led the assault, finds himself severly tested when he loses everything as the Empire takes over and the entire security force is shut down.  Syril goes back to living with his mother (Kathryn Hunter) who approaches Syril with sugar in one hand and lye in the other.  Their scenes together, perhaps the most gloriously pedestrian ever in a Star Wars production, are also some of the series best.  It just goes to show that, for all the high drama of family dynamics of the Skywalker Saga, there are just normal parent/adult child relationships in this universe, full of backhanded compliments, bitter truths, and sarcasm.  Plus in these scenes with Syril and his mom, we get to see just every day mundanity in Star Wars...what people eat, how they act when they're just getting on with life, making do in this shitty galaxy.

Syril's debacle on Ferrix yields one small nugget, a stolen piece of technology which catches the attention of the Imperial Security Bureau, the special investigative service of the Empire that sniff out the problems big and small for the Empire, and crush them... a galactic KGB if you will.  One agent, Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) has to navigate fierce competition within the bureau, as well as some intense bureaucratic protocols that make it really hard to do her job, but she's piecing together that maybe a lot of the small acts of sedition against the Empire on different planets across the galaxy are perhaps not unrelated, and that the thief Cassian Andor may be the key to unravelling it all.

On the other side, senator Mon Mothma (a returning Genevieve O'Reilly), an opulent, erudite crusader for the well being of not just her constituents, but all of the galaxy, is more than aware that the senate is just a farce, with many of her colleagues utter toadies of the Emperor's and whatever resistance she puts on in Senate chambers is merely a show that is being allowed to happen, so that it can't be said the other side is not represented.  She, however, is back-channel funding resistance fighting through Lucien, but is finding moving her money around much more difficult with further Imperial lockdown as a result of the heist upon the Imperial reservoir Cassian was involved in.

The heist at the mid-point of the series, is an intense climax to a slow-burn lead-in.  From Cassian's perspective, it did not go well, but he got out alive.  From Lucien's perspective, it was a success whether or not it succeeded.  Just the mere attempt would result in a over-reactive response, which Lucien knows will further tamp down on individual rights and freedoms and shake people out of their complacency about the Empire and the evil its spilling across the galaxy.  If Lucien wants to build a serious rebellion, he's going to need people who are motivated to fight, bodies to throw at the front lines and smarter bodies to do the dirty work that needs doing in the background.

Star Wars, for years, had been so black-and-white, good guys versus bad guys.  The prequels introduced the ideas of a political reality that lead to this structure, a political nature where one man saw a broken system and was conniving enough to exploits the cracks to ultimate power.  Slowly over time, things change, the grip tightens and control becomes ultimate. But those structures are not simple ones, it's not just the oppressed and the oppressors, rulers and resisters... there's whole systems of middlepersons who grease the wheels and keep the machines of rule and rebellion going.  Nothing happens without money, without conviction, without belief in their causes.

There's no doubt that the Empire is full of work-a-day people just doing jobs, fearing for their life if they don't perform up to snuff.  But there are also believers, those that think that no matter how the work is done and costs that result, it's justified, a cause of galactic peace and order worth every sacrifice, including one's own conscience.  And we see the same in the mirror of the rebellion, of men and women who know that the only avenue to defeating the enemy and liberating the people from their tyranny is by relieving themselves of their conscience in order to meet them on their own playing field.

Gilroy understands the human side of this star war and he drills right down into it.  He wants us not to focus on the biggest picture, but the mosaic that makes up the bigger picture.  There's only so many small stories he can tell in the time he's given, but his ancillary characters all seem to have an inner life in a way that so many peripheral characters in Obi-Wan Kenobi or Book of Boba Fett did not.  Those other Disney+ series struggled with their storytelling, which felt like stretching a film over multipe hours and episodes to no superior effect, and no additional rewards in their telling.  Like Oshea Jackson Jr. turned up in many scenes in Obi-Wan but there was no character there, no sense that he exists outside of those moments that need him to exist.  Here, every character feels a part of something, living a life outside of the story or stories that intersect or impede upon what they were doing.

The sprawling nature of the show comes at an expense, and that's a dramatic lack of elaborate aliens.  There's not the usual diaspora of life in this Star Wars entry as we're used to, and there's multiple ways to think about that.  It's an opulent, expensive show...it looks fantastic and can not have been cheap to construct all those sets, all those wardrobes , and all those extras (the Volume, the 360 degree digital screen environment built for The Mandalorian, which seemed to confine Obi-Wan extensively and much of Boba Fett, seems absent here, and if it is used, is not at all obvious), so the concession was likely a drastic reduction in the number of creatures and special effects needed.  There are a few of each, but sparing.  At the same time, this is a very human tale, and a lack of aliens really roots it in that humanity.  Sometimes in-story there is a logical reason for it to be all humans (prisoners separate by their homeland, for instance, to reduce conflict and communication problems) as well as the never-spoken-but-we-all-know-it fact that the Empire, space Nazis that they are, believe a human race the superior race and have no problem with genocide.  If anything, the lack of aliens raises awareness of the lack of aliens..it's noticeable, and should be noted.

I cannot gush enough about this series.  Each episode left me wanting more, and eagerly anticipating the following Wednesday when more would come.  I would sit watching with a big, dumb smile on my face, reveling in the little details but also the joy of having a really adult Star Wars show that has something to say about these human, political and economic structures that confine us.  There's a definite rise in fascistic mentality in the world in recent years, a lot of fear displaced into reactionary conservative politics, handing power over to people incapable of utilizing if for the betterment of anyone but themselves.  For all the efforts of The Force Awakens, that type of simplistic revisionism that descends into and action and spectacle heavy production doesn't inspire one to think too much about the structures that lead to tyranny and complacency about tyranny.  Here, it's front and center, in every moment...the parallels to real life can be drawn at almost any moment.  Hopefully it's inspiring, but at the very least it's thoroughly compelling.

A second/final season is in pre-production and can't come fast enough.  This may not be STAR WARS of the flash-bang space-wizard laser-sword variety, but it definitely has its place.  The hope is that this is just the first of stories like this, not the only.  More than any other Star Wars, it's the riskiest endeavour, its most challenging to the status quo of what we Star Wars fans know and will accept, and I will happily take more.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

 2026, d. Jon Favreau - in theatre

Has there ever been a TV show that had a theatrical movie continuing its character's journeys where the movie was effectively self-contained and new-audience accessible, plus felt like a proper movie and also did very well at the box office? (Like, I know the Sex and the City films and the Downton Abbey films were pretty big commercial hits, but were they accessible for new audiences? And the Firefly continuation Serenity was perhaps the most accessible, but it failed to draw much of a new audience).

I bring this up, because coming out of The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first Star Wars movie to hit theatres in 7 years, my brain was wracked with thoughts trying to figure out what was the dividing line between a TV show and a movie. With this film, the line is so blurry as to be almost imperceptible as a line.

In 2019, when The Mandalorian hit tv screens, and the first notes of (3-time Oscar winner) Ludwig Göransson's Morricone-inspired score whistled out, shivers went up my spine. We were finally getting live action Star Wars on our TV, and money was being spent so as to make it cinematic quality. The line was already starting to blur. And between three seasons of The Mandalorian, and other shows like The Book of Boba Fett, The Acolyte, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Skeleton Crew, within 7 years live-action Star Wars on our TV screens had eclipsed the runtime of all the theatrical Star Wars feature films released over almost 50 years.

Disney needed Star Wars and Marvel to launch and hook subscribers to its Disney+ service, and it worked, but at the same time, the rapid expansion of the franchise(s) diluted both of them, fatiguing the audience on the MCU, and also losing their nerve when it came to making new Star Wars for the big screen. So many Star Wars movie projects were announced that never materialized - a new trilogy from Rian Johnson, a trilogy from the Game of Thrones guys, a Kathryn Bigelow Top Gun-but-with-X-Wings movie, a Boba Fett film, an Obi-Wan film, something from Taika Waititi and so many more.

That a cinematic sequel to The Mandalorian would be the first return to the big screen for Star Wars (with billion-dollar filmmaker and creator of the titular Mandalorian Jon Favreau at the helm) seemed like such a safe bet, that it made sense why Disney would choose that path. The only problem is it's too safe of a bet that it's not all that exciting.

Leading up to The Mandalorian and Grogu's release I failed to muster any real energy for the film. The trailers were fine but revealed nothing about the plot, and, frankly, looked like more of the same from the TV show...a show I loved, need I remind you. 

If you're of a certain age, you will know what it's like to sit in a theatre, have that 20th Century Fox fanfare blast at you, the screen go dark, and the title card "A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away..." hit your eyes, and the jarring horn blast of John Williams' legendary score punch you so hard in the gut that you uncontrollably yelp with surprise and excitement. Any time you watch a Star Wars film, that horn blast will transport you back to the theatre and raise that uncontrollable sense of excitement.

Unfortunately Göransson's The Mandalorian and Grogu theme, as amazing as it is, when the pulsating duh-dunn kicks in, well...it transports me back to sitting in front of my TV screen in 2019 (and, even more unfortunately, the pandemic-era seasons of the show). This is not something you want out of the theatrical experience, to be reminded of sitting in front of your TV. And I coudn't shake that feeling through The Mandalorian and Grogu's 2 hour and 14 minute run-time.

I enjoyed the movie... but... I enjoyed the movie like I would enjoy binge watching a season of The Mandalorian, and that's kind of the experience the film brings. It doesn’t feel right.

It's a very segmented movie, one that feels episodic not cinematic, even though it is telling one complete story.

The film opens with a big action sequence prologue, sort of James Bond-style (credit to critic Alonso Duralde for pointing out the somewhat Bond-ian nature of this film), that finds Din Djarin and his baby-Yoda adopted (50-year-old) son Grogu hunting down an Imperial warlord on an ice planet. It starts out like scenes that we've seen in The Mandalorian before, Mando moving through the shadows, exterminating Stormtroopers with ruthless efficiency, but it escalates into something fairly big, with Mando taking on a trio of AT-ATs.

And throughout the fim, yes, there are elements that felt intimately familiar, and not too dissimilar to what we saw on TV, but there were also the flourishes that announced itself as a big-screen motion feature, such as the Mandalorian entering the head of the Imperial Walker and navigating his way into the back of it, eliminating all the imperials within in heated gunplay and fighting, and then retreating back out through the head, all in a one-shot. For a Star Wars nerd like me, moving through the interior of an AT-AT is just something I've been wanting to see most of my life. Things like that make the galaxy of Star Wars feel that much more tangible.

Mando is now an contracted agent for the New Republic, with Sigourney Weaver as handler of his assignments. His new assignment is to meet with the siblings of deceased crime lord Jabba the Hutt. They alone seem to hold the whereabouts of a specific Imperial warlord that fallen off the radar. We get to see swampy Nal Hutta, the home planet of the Hutts, as well as the structures they live in and the gross living conditions they have.  the tour into the belly of the Hutt twins' "palace" borders on stomach-churning...all that writhing ("mommy, what are the slug-people doing?" "They're just eating dear.")l. One longs for the arid dryness of Tattoine. At least the sand looked clean.

The Hutts will give Mando the information he seeks, but first he must rescue their nephew, Jabba's son, Rotta the Hutt. He "fell into a bad crowd" and has been taken captive on a remote planet outside the New Republic's jurisdicion. There he finds Rotta is a champion pit-fighter, and if you've ever wondered what a jacked-up Hutt looks like, well wonder no more. Rotta, I'm guessing by design, looks like a beefcaked version of Jabba from the Star Wars: A New Hope Special Edition, where the CGI Jabba looked nothing like the Jabba from Return of the Jedi.

I won't step through all the beats of the film but lest to say, Mando frees Rotta, gets the Targeted imperial warlord, and returns home with his little green boy to relax. And that's the half-way point. But he's crossed the Hutts and they want their revenge. This time Mando gets kidnapped by a bounty hunter, and it's up to Grogu and some tiny friends (the Anzellans, a diminutive race that were the only good thing to come out of The Rise of Skywalker) to rescue him.

There's surprisingly, a long quiet stretch in this third act that is far from boring, but also far from feeling like a big Star Wars feature film. This kind of quiet interlude isn't necessarily unwelcome or by default un-cinematic, but it feels like a moment The Mandalorian TV show would permit itself in an 8-episode season versus slowing the pace of a feature film down to a crawl for 20 minutes.  Once this sequence resolves, it's a propulsive escalation back into Star Wars feature film territory, and despite my glee at many moments of this it just never quite felt big enough.

Star Wars films are space opera. There's "fate of the galaxy" at stake in every one of them, even Solo to some degree. But The Mandalorian and Grogu is contained, constrained. There's only "the job" and while "the job" gets complicated, and then backfires on our hero, there's little more else to it. This isn't a personal quest for Din Djarin or Grogu, and so there's no real arc for these characters. Where our heroes are at the beginning is where our heroes are at the end, except Grogu, I guess, has proven himself a bit more resourceful than we thought (they definitely leveled up the Grogu puppetry here, to an impressive extent)

It's an incredibly small cast for a Star Wars film, with Mando and Grogu, Mando's mission buddy Zeb Orrelios, Sigourney Weaver's Ward, the Hutt twins, Embo the bounty hunter, the Blofeld-esque warlord (Jonny Coyne), the Anzellans (all voiced magnificently by Shirley Henderson), a food vendor capably voiced by Martin Scorsese, and a kindly catfish-man Grogu meets in the swamp. 

My muted anticipation for The Mandalorian and Grogu had me hoping it would find some space operatic reason to exist. Something large and consequential in the lore of the Galaxy to make for a worthy big screen entry. At the same time I worried that the logic of a bounty hunter being part some sweeping space opera would put the character out of place. I also worried that a Mandalorian movie would get too lost in Star Wars lore, especially given that Zeb is a main character from the Star Wars: Rebels cartoon, Embo is a featured character from The Clone Wars series, the Hutt Twins first appeared in The Book of Boba Fett (a cold shiver went up my spine a the thought of Boba Fett cropping up in this movie, which he mercifully does not), and Rotta the Hutt's first appearance was in The Clone Wars animated movie that kicked off the series.  Thankfully, none of these characters requires any prior familiarity to enjoy their appearance here, there is that.

Overall The Mandalorian and Grogu looks pretty good. It looks big budget, certainly bigger budget than the TV show, for which the Volume digital backdrop was created and used heavily. Having just watched Mortal Kombat II, a very Volume-dependent film, I couldn't detect any obvious volume usage here.  The limits to Volume use on the various Star Wars TV shows seems lifted here, and it's nice to see characters move through much larger spaces (or even confined spaces that seem like sets, not digital backdrops).

Göransson is one of my favourite film and television score composers working today. He typically brings a lot of creativity and innovation to his scores, experimenting with sounds but to the benefit of whats on screen. His scoring for The Mandalorian tv show was integral to that show's success, to the point that I feel the third season of the series, though it has its faults in story structure, is mainly let down by Göransson's absence. His return here, then, is very welcome, and yet, unfortunately, it doesn't feel like trademark Göransson . It's rehashing the themes from the show and he doesn't seem to have escalated the sounds to something grander, although there are stadout segments where Göransson does shine, mostly when he deviates from the style of music he's otherwise been working with.

In the end I think that there was no winning with this film. Despite being quite entertaining, it doesn't go big enough to feel like the Star Wars cinematic experience we know, and therefore can't do much but disappoint. I can't help but think that, perhaps, the decision to bring the series to the big screen was the wrong choice for Star Wars' return to cinemas.

Star Wars Episode VII: The Last Jedi

2017, d. Rian Johnson - in theatre (2 viewings)

[Non-Spoiler Section]

At this stage there's such a legion of Star Wars fans, two entirely different generations in fact, that no single Star Wars movie is going to service everyone.  A film catering exclusively to fans will alienate the general populace and likely met with critical apathy, a film too generic will bore the fanbase and critics alike, while a film built for critical favor could leave the fans feeling rejected and target the wrong general crowd.  It's a crazy tightrope to walk.  All Kathleen Kennedy and company can do is their best to bring the right teams together to make the best movies that try their damnedest to do all these things.  No matter what, people are going to complain on the internet, because that's what the internet is there to do, and despite whatever resoundingly positive favor there is out there, the negative voices will always get a chance to cut through the clamor and have a voice of their own.  It's the "Fair and Balanced" world that Fox News built, afterall.

But I say ignore those who complain loudly about their disappointment.  The Last Jedi is a Star Wars film through and through, and not just a damn good Star Wars film, but a damn good film overall.  One of the best Star Wars films and one of the best movies of the year.  It's not perfect, but, what it does is reinvigorate the franchise with a bold message about moving forward and not obsessing about the past.




The loudest complaining voices are those of people obsessed with the past.  They want their Star Wars to be Luke, Han and Leia almost exclusively.  Director Rian Johnson is clearly a fan, just as much as Rogue One director Gareth Edwards is, but where Rogue One was a love letter to the time and place and style of the original Star Wars, The Last Jedi pays its respects to the past, but barrels headlong into the future.  Johnson did not want to wallow in the past, not even the recent past of Episode VII.

I can see why some people are upset.  There was a lot of stock put into the mysteries of The Force Awakens...not that Lucasfilm spent a lot of effort to fuel the speculation about Snoke's origin or Rey's parentage, but a lot of people put a lot of their brainspace over the past two years into thinking about these mysteries.  Johnson's answers may be less than satisfying to some, a lack of payoff in their investment.  Likewise, the grand return of Luke Skywalker, now a Jedi Master and hero of the Rebellion against the Empire, a legend... he returns, but not as some may have hoped, even Mark Hamill had reservations about Luke's portrayal here (but Hamill kills it!  An amazing performance).  These combined seem to be the key elements of a great many disappointments, but looking past that is a film with more than a few things to say within a bold, exciting, character-heavy action/adventure/space opera franchise film.

If I'm being generous, The Force Awakens was about things repeating in cycles... if I'm being cynical it was just retelling Star Wars again.  The Last Jedi similarly takes a few of the structural elements of The Empire Strikes Back trilogy twin, but only enough to give a barely tangible sense of familiarity while Johnson remolds everything else around it.  Here Kylo Ren, Rey, Finn and Poe all grow as characters.  They don't end as the same people they were in the Force Awakens.  Likewise, series holdovers Luke and Leia aren't the same characters they were 35 years ago when Return of the Jedi ended.  Johnson uses that time and space to give the characters new life and meaning, which can be hard for people wanting to see them live in the same old light, or be more grandiose extensions of who we knew them to be.  Johnson creates interesting people here, not superheroes.  And if he's creating heroes, it's because of what people choose to do, the actions they take, not whatever abilities they have or what rank they hold or what family they came from.  A hero can come from anywhere.

The opening line of the title crawl states "The First Order reigns."  The Order's military might is highlighted here by Johnson, but always with the caveat that they are not infallible or unbeatable.  Their quest for galactic dominance has all but been secured, it's just the simmering revolution of the Resistance that plagues them.  They are the dark shadow over the galaxy and the Resistance is the fading light.  What the Resistance needs in this film is hope.  It's why they sought out Luke Skywalker, not because he's Leia's brother, but because his monumental triumphs over tyranny and evil have cache.  If he comes back, people will believe there's a chance, they will fight.  Luke, however, has other thoughts about who he is, and what he can contribute.

Little Orphan Rey is looking for her place, and for parental figures.  Her own parents left her young, and the briefly supplemental father in Han Solo was taken away from her by Kylo Ren.  So in Luke she seeks so much.

Finn, meanwhile, must face his own lesser instincts.  His cowardice, his reluctance, and his selfishness.  Most of this comes in the face of Rose, a technician who joins him on a quest that could be the difference between renewed hope and utter annihilation for the Resistance.  Rose sees Finn as a hero of Starkiller Base, like Rey sees Luke as a hero of legend, but over time both must accept the humanity of the men beneath the stories, weighing the truth of their past against the reality before them.

Poe Dameron, meanwhile, has adopted too much swagger, gotten too confident, to the point that what he sees as successes are anything but.  Leia puts him on a path to learn to lead, as opposed to just succeeding by pointing and shooting.  He has good instincts but doesn't think or plan too well.  Lessons will be learned.

Kylo is the product of failure and disappointment.  Every authority figure -- Han, Luke, Snoke -- underestimated him, if not failed him, repeatedly.  Likewise, he fails himself, repeatedly.  Kylo is a man who hates everything because he hates himself.  His conflict is similar to Anakin's, and to Luke's... the light side, the dark side - temptation from both ends.  What is the right path?  Who can show him the way?  He thinks, perhaps, with Rey, they can figure it out together.  And Rey, much to her horror, finds herself connected to Kylo...to Ben.  And like with Luke, she sees a myth, a monster built in her head, but must learn to accept the man beneath.

Facades. Idols. Heroes. Monsters. Death. Hope. Rebirth. Growth. Failure. Disappointment. More than just the battle of light and dark, The Last Jedi is deep and complex looking for the middle ground in between and what drives people to either end of the spectrum.   I suppose some were simply looking for more action, and adding more dense layers of intricacy to the Star Wars franchise, but what Johnson says here, quite unequivocally, is that these films need to be able to stand on their own, without being burdened by living up to the past.  There's a whole new cast of characters Johnson is determined to have stand out on their own (and he even introduces a couple more), not just as potential offspring of -- or stand-ins for -- Luke, Leia and Han.

What I've enjoyed about Star Wars since Disney took over is that the films are not built around set pieces.  Events don't happen just so that they can lead to an action sequence...an action sequence happens because of the events in the film.  Here, because of the way the story is told, there's almost a relentless pressure.  Perhaps borrowing conceptually from Battlestar Galactica (the snake eats its own tail) the great ongoing series premiere "33" - one where the fleet must keep jumping away from their enemy only to face them again every 33 minutes - the Resistance similarly here is on the ropes against the First Order, and, it seems, out of options.  But this is what makes the film so enjoyable.  The more dire the odds that the Resistance and its team faces, the more it looks like they're going to lose, the greater the triumph will be when they don't, in spite of it all.  It's rather exhilarating.

But even with my overwhelming appreciation for the film, there still is a little disappointment...

[SPOILER SECTION]

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I mean I would be lying if I said I wasn't expecting something terribly cool, and terribly powerful out of Luke Skywalker.  I dunno, something like toppling AT-ATs with Force pushes or hauling Tie Fighters out of the sky, or taking down Snoke's flagship in just an X-Wing.  But, as I said, creating superheroes wasn't on Johnson's plate.  And what he does with Luke here is far more interesting on a character level.

What Luke does wind up doing is the stuff of legend regardless, taking the bombardment of the First Order's entire ground assault team and surviving (even though he wasn't really there).  Despite the fact that strain and effort to Force project himself across the galaxy killed him, other than Rey and Leia, nobody knows for a fact that he's moved on to the next phase of Force life and so this legendary figure who already was bordering on myth is now something even greater.  And the fact is, despite Luke passing peacefully, he can return in the next film.  We know so little about the afterlife in the Force that if JJ Abrams and company do decide to use Luke as a Force ghost (and they'd be kind of crazy not to), they have an almost blank slate with which to work with and define the rules of.  It's actually more interesting, and exciting if we finally learn the meaning of Obi-Wan's words in Episode 4 "Strike me down and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine".  That "power" Obi-Wan mentions never truly manifested in the original trilogy beyond him guiding Luke here and there.

The death of Luke is sad, primarily because we see him here at his lowest point.  He refuses to train Rey, he's disconnected himself from the Force, and he's pretty much given up on himself and the galaxy at large.  He thinks he has nothing of merit to contribute.  The legend people look for in him he does not see himself.  He's a Jedi Master by default, because there's nobody else around to become one, and he failed so spectacularly at it.  It takes a wizened Jedi Master, with Yoda's Force ghost returning, to council "young Skywalker" that failure -- and learning from that failure -- is what makes us stronger.  Yoda failed to learn about the presence of a Sith Lord in his midst and did the same thing Luke did, ran and hid away on an isolated planet.  Both Obi-Wan and Yoda were reluctant to train another Jedi in case it went awry again.  So scarred they were by Anakin turning to the Dark Side that they didn't want Luke to be another gone wrong.  Luke had the same experience with Kylo/Ben, and now treats Rey like he himself was treated, as yet another possible failure.  But Luke's arc in The Last Jedi is a redemptive one.  He knew he couldn't take on the entire First Order with just a laser sword, he needed to do something grander, and Leia in her most desperate hour, found her only hope had returned.  (Artoo even reminds Luke earlier that he was indeed the hope she and the Rebellion needed).

Am I disappointed that we don't learn anything of Snoke's origins?  Not at all.  Did we know anything about Emperor Palpatine when he cropped up in Empire, or again in Jedi?  No, no we did not.  And did it matter?  Not in the slightest.  The Emperor was just the greater evil, the grandmaster of the Empire, the Big Bad.  I'm not sure why we thought there was some big mystery to Snoke in the Force Awakens.  I suppose it's because of the way George Lucas structured the Original Trilogy and the Prequels, we've been trained to expect everything to be connected.  Darth Vader is Luke's dad.  Leia is his sister.  C-3PO was made by his dad.  R2-D2 used to be his mom's droid.  Everything seems to orbit around him.  That Snoke's past never comes to light (I bet it will in a novel or comic series, but I digress) doesn't really matter.  What we see from him is what we need to know, he has tremendous power (he's able to use the Force across vast distances), and tremendous ego.  Unlike Palpatine who was a master manipulator, Snoke is far more clumsy, not seeing that his abuse of Kylo Ren will be the cause of his pupil's betrayal, and believing his great power is enough to stop it should it happen.  And it happens so spectacularly.

Because we've been trained to see connections between everything Star Wars, the mystery of Rey's parentage was actually more of a tease.  Even in this film, Luke asks Rey twice over "Who are you?"  To have Rey's parentage be ultimately revealed (by Kylo Ren, so take anything he might say lightly) as a desperate couple who sold her for water, it's actually a good break from the whole prophesized lineage that the prequels thrust upon us, and that retroactively caused Luke's destiny to be somewhat foretold as well.  Rey is a nobody from nowhere, on her way to being the first of a new generation of Jedi.  A boy Finn and Rose met on Canto Bight we see again at the very end of the movie pulls a broom towards himself with the force, hitting home that the next generation of heroes for Star Wars can come from anywhere.  That's a very purposeful statement that needs to be made.  This Galaxy is huge, for everyone important to come from one narrow band of lineage and short connective threads becomes more implausible the longer it persists.

Speaking of Canto Bight, if there's anything that seems out of place in the film, this is it.  Finn and Rose go on this side adventure to find the Master Codebreaker (a cameo appearance from Justin Thereaux), but everything goes wrong, and they wind up with Benicio Del Toro's DJ instead.  It's not the search for the Master Codebreaker, nor DJ, nor any of the message about how the rich and wealthy of Canto Bight became rich and wealthy (arms dealers, selling to both sides, profiting from war) that bother me...it's the almost prequel-esque, unnecessary (and, to be honest, unexciting) chase sequence through the casino city.  I think what we're supposed to get out of this sequence is that Rose starts to fall for Finn in that moment (as much later she reveals her love for him), but it doesn't come across particularly well (so that reveal is a bit out of nowhere when it happens) and Finn seems generally oblivious, and still fixated on Rey.

I like the idea of friendship in Star Wars more than romance... for Rey and Finn have both led pretty lonely lives, so their connection isn't a romantic one necessarily.  Same with Finn and Po.  And given that The Last Jedi picks up immediately after The Force Awakens pretty much any congenial humanoid contact (that isn't barking orders or controlling them) is still rather meaningful to Finn and Rey.  That's why the Resistance matters, because these are people connected to each other by more than just a systemic ranking structure or taking advantage of their desperation.  Leia and Vice Admiral Holdo (an overwhelmingly awesome Laura Dern) share a moment at one point which conveys so much history that we may not ever know, but we catch the weight of it regardless.  Even Leia and Luke are more dear friends than family, and their reunion is fantastic, the connection between them, a lifetime of adventures shared, all conveyed without any specific words. "I know what you're going to say... I changed my hair."

There's so much that is great with this movie on a deeper level that I'm forgetting the surface level, which is just as amazing... the fight sequence with Rey and Kylo against the Praetorian Guards, Holdo's bold sacrifice, the opening bombing sequence, the final battle on Crait, Luke's last stand...it's all as epic as anything we've seen in Star Wars.  It's not an upping-the-ante, per se, but it creates exciting sequences that are story (and sometimes character) driven.  The fact that from moment one, the Resistance's fleet is on the decline, from one scene to the next more lives are lost, it's a palpable sense of dread and urgency every step of the way.  As Hux says, the First Order have them on a string.  Even their escape plan finds them penned in with no help on the way and nowhere to go.  It's as dire as Rogue One only Johnson's tone always offers the glimmer of hope, where Edwards was far more fatalistic.

Johnson also imbues The Last Jedi with a surprising amount of humour.  Poe Dameron's wisecracking in the opening moments at Hux's expense start as the two defining moments for these characters in the film.  Hux's self-seriousness gets the better of him and we learn that, despite his rank, people look down on him for it (Snoke teaches Kylo the importance of having someone like Hux in such a role).  Snoke tosses Hux around like a rag doll on the bridge of his own ship at one point, in front of all the crew at one point (I'm wondering if the lesson is that no matter how ridiculous someone may seem, don't forget how dangerous they can be *cough*Trump*cough*).  Luke is very sardonic, not a goofy little bean like Yoda became on Dagobah, but a surly old miser with a deadpan wit that could give two fucks.  There's physical comedy, wordplay, situational comedy...and it's mostly funny too (the drunken alien mistaking BB8 for a slot machine on Canto Bight was another good bit which has payoff later).  It's not that Star Wars hasn't had comedy before, but it's almost always been incidental, whereas here there's comedy moments, in place exactly for that purpose (Chewie having to face a flock of Porgs while he's about to eat a roasted one... unnecessary, yet still funny and charming).

Ultimately, the point of The Last Jedi is to show what a creator with a strong personal vision can do within the confines of a big franchise, just as Taika Waititi showed with Thor Ragnarok  this year.  As much as Abrams and Edwards tried to ape what Lucas did with their films, this to me seems much more in keeping with the George Lucas auteur way of making a film, specifically a Star Wars film.

 To be honest I was wondering if The Last Jedi was going to flame me out on Star Wars, too samey-samey, repeating patterns, but it's done the opposite.  It's reinvigorated my fandom, made me see that what's still ahead of me is the possibility of surprise.  There's always so much discourse over a new movie while it's in production and so much dissemination of trailers before it's release, that by the time we get to it we think we have a pretty good snapshot of what we're in for.  It's so damn nice (and FUN!) to be surprised.  As Luke said in the trailers "This isn't going to go how you think it will."

Ahsoka Season 1

 2023, d. Dave Filoni, Steph Green, Peter Ramsey, Jennifer Getzinger, Geeta Vasant Patel, Rick Famiyuma - 8 episodes
Series written and created by Dave Filoni

I'm in too deep on this one. I can't see the forest for the trees.

I love Ahsoka as a character. She is my favourite in the entire pantheon. So I am already biased.

Star Wars Rebels, the Dave Filoni-created animated series, of which this is a sequel to, is perhaps my favourite Star War of all the Star Wars. I'm really, really in the pocket for this one.

This series also picks at threads of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the series where Ahsoka originated as Anakin Skywalker's padawan.  The Clone Wars was made with Filoni as showrunner under the direct guidance of George Lucas. You might say that Filoni was Lucas' padawan, but instead of having a silly side braid, he had a big ol' Stetson on his head.  I'm a fan of The Clone Wars too, so this show, right here, just sings to me with an alluring siren call that I cannot resist.  

I loved it, every damn minute, even when I wanted to start picking at things, my brain would justify away any of those nitpicks. You're not going to ruin this for me, brain.

I cannot put myself in the place of an outsider on this one. I cannot establish a "casual Star Wars viewer" perspective. I know too much. I feel too much. I get the warm fuzzies every time I see Ahsoka, Sabine, Hera, Chopper, Ezra, and Thrawn on screen. These are important characters to me. They are also Filoni's babies, so they are treated and handle with both respect and love.

I have no idea what it's like to be a viewer encountering these characters for the first time. Will this show make any sense? Will people who don't already love these characters care at all about them?

If I'm to criticize -- which, as we've established, my brain is fighting me on -- it's that this series is, perhaps, misnamed. Ahsoka is the focal character of maybe one episode but otherwise it's almost more of Sabine's journey, than Ahsoka's. If I'm to further quibble, the sub-plot for Hera was a little too thin for my liking, and erratically paced. Like other Star Wars series and the way they handle tertiary characters, I think maybe Hera here wasn't given enough to do, nor enough characterization for the newbies.

Filoni's experience has largely been writing for and directing animation. He's recently had his hand in a few episodes of The Mandalorian, but it is a different beast.  In animation there are short cuts that get taken in storytelling, acceptable short cuts that maybe don't work as well (or can't happen at all) with live productions. But at the same time, the D+ experience allows him more liberty, not constrained to 20-ish minutes, which means he can add in some breathing room.

The main complaint I've been hearing about Ahsoka is indeed the pacing. Many find it slow or arduous, and that some scenes feel unnecessary or like "stalling".  I rewatched Obi-Wan Kenobi recently and this kind of roundabout pacing is pretty egregious there, full of a lot of sequences that are just filling out the episode order with stuff happening. Nothing in Ahsoka, to me, felt like stuff happening. Everything seemed to largely have a point, whether it was exploring/enhancing/developing character, world/galaxy building, or advancing plot. Nothing in Ahsoka, unlike every other live action Star Wars Disney+ show (except Andor) makes me pull out my hair saying "why did they do that!" or "that wasn't needed!".  I could see Obi-Wan Kenobi or The Book of Boba Fett re-edited and condensed into a 2-to-2.5 hour film. With Ahsoka I'm pretty happy getting everything I got.

But perhaps it comes to expectations.... For me it's wanting to spend time with the characters, not powering through plot. But if you don't know these characters, you're probably wanting the plot to accelerate and to draw out the characters in the process, which it does, but in its own time.

If you're a Star Wars nerd and following the behind-the-scenes, there was definitely some ambiguity about what exactly Ahsoka is.  Is it a mini-series? Is it an ongoing series? Is it the set-up for a film/film series. These questions became even more pressing by the end of Episode 7, when it seems like the Series isn't even close to wrapping anything up.  Episode 8, however, seems to be the set up for a second season, given where our characters wind up.

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Characters and Performers

Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka. I love Ashley Eckstein's vocal performance in the cartoons, and yes, she will always be the primary Ahsoka in my head, but in bringing this character to live action she needs the starpower of Rosario Dawson, and, frankly, there's no other choice. There was a lot of talk early in the season if Dawson's Ahsoka is too muted, too underplayed, but to me we're seeing a character who has, for lack of a better term, seniority. If she was, say, 14 when she became Anakin's padawan at the start of The Clone Wars, that's almost 10 years until Order 66, 20 years to Battle of Yavin, another 6 or 7 to the Battle of Endor, another 6 or 7 to where this show picks up. That put the character at, liberally, 55. The math might not be exact, but she's been doing her thing for a long, long time, and I think that's what Dawson brings to it, that sense of experience.

Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine. What I realized when trying to figure out if I liked Bordizzo's portrayal was that I don't think Sabine was the most well defined character in Rebels. This gives Filoni and Bordizzo a lot of room here, and I really enjoyed the character's journey. She's a very charismatic performer.  It did drive me mad that Sabine left her jetpack behind, though. I really liked the combination of Jedi/Mandalorian fighting, but it took too long for the character to really find the balance (it wasn't specifically a part of her training, which it should have been). I figure Sabine to be pushing about 30 here, but she still seems young and impetuous. Can't take the rebel out of a Rebel, I guess.

David Tennant as Huyang. This droid has been helping Jedi craft their lightsabers for centuries, and he appeared in a Clone Wars arc way back when. How he came to be aide to Ahsoka isn't clear, but a sassy droid is always welcome. Tennant brings both charm and pithiness to the character which serves him well as a figure who is way older than anyone else around him.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera. Maybe my favourite Rebels character (besides Ahsoka), and here, it feels like Winstead didn't exactly do her homework. Granted, she is (by my count) about a dozen years older, has been both a single parent and a general, with all the responsibilities those demand, so if she does act a bit more steadfast then it does make some sense. I don't dislike Winstead in the role I just don't think, as written in this show, there's enough of the character.

Diana Lee Inosanto as Morgan Elsbeth. Returning from Ahsoka's first appearance in The Mandalorian, Morgan Elsbeth is revealed to be a part of the Night Sisters which ties her in with some deep Clone Wars lore. She's a witch. Inosanto doesn't seem like the most natural performer, but then she's still far less stilted than most of the main players of the Prequels, so there's that. When she finally gets to show off some stunt fighting (her background is as a stunt performer) she's incredible.

Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll. The breakout character of the show, and the most heartbreaking aspect of it all. Stevenson passed away between the filming and its release, and it's clear by the series end that the story of Baylan Skoll was just beginning. Stevenson brings a sense of power and calm, danger and familiarity to the role. He just feels like he's been a part of this universe for a long time. There's so much more to explore with the character, and it's the way the final episode closes with him that hits the hardest that there's definitely another season planned. As much as it pains me to say it, Skoll will have to be recast.  There's not another Stevenson out there... but maybe someone like Liam Cunningham (Davos from Game of Thrones) as my wife suggested. He's not as physically imposing, but seems in the right tenor.

Ivanna Sakhno as Shin Hati. Balen Skoll's apprentice is as much a mystery as Balen himself. Where Balen is clearly an ex-Jedi, he's training Shin both as a Jedi disciple but also letting emotion control her like a Sith. That both wield orange blades indicates sort of a not-quite-Sith penchant. Sakhno does a lot with a little with Shin. She doesn't have many lines, and she's mainly emoting, but doing so very effectively.

Lars Mikkelsen as Grand Admiral Thrawn. Thrawn comes to us from the first expansion of the Star Wars universe in 1992, when the first "official follow-up" novel, Heir To The Empire by Timothy Zahn, was released.  For a generation of us, Thrawn is the biggest deal Star Wars character that the masses have never heard of.  Back when Thrawn was originally announced for Rebels Lady Kent and I wondered who the best possible performer for Thrawn would be, and settled on Mads Mikkelsen.  Sadly, Star Wars used up their dose of Mads on Rogue One, so brother Lars was a very curious, very apt substitute. Mikkelsen's vocal performance for the character in Rebels was note perfect, and probably even better than I could have hoped.  It's a little off-putting seeing Mikkelsen as Thrawn in live action, because Thrawn is so much about demeanor...cold, calculating, reserved... but you expect a cinematic big bad to be much more grandiose. Mikkelsen delivers 90% of the performance in his slithering hiss of a voice and it's just as perfect as it ever was. Physically he's even more reserved. Thrawn barely moves, generally standing Grandpa-style with his hands behind his back. We know from the books Thrawn is a dangerous physical adversary, and while that's not what the role's calling for (yet), he doesn't exactly cut an imposing profile. But that voice...it really is all you need to make the character work, and Mikkelsen works it.

Eman Esfandi as Ezra Bridger. I was worried that Ezra was going to become a maguffin for the series, but those worries were unfounded. As well, the fact that 75% of the show rests on the balance of Sabine finding Ezra, it puts a lot of weight onto both the character and actor to deliver.  And boy does Esfandi deliver. The show comes alive when he joins.  Ezra was the plucky youth on Rebels and while he's no longer a youth, he's still full of pluck. He's basically survived in a whole other galaxy far, far away on his own (with a little help from his shelled friends) which has brought a maturity to him, but he's still the fun, excitable character we knew. Once Sabine is reunited with him, the two of them together really drew out the old Rebels vibes.

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Yes, toys of that please

Part of the Star Wars experience for me is toys. They are symbiotically linked in my mind. I cannot watch Star Wars without thinking about toys, little plastic representations of the awesomeness on screen.

Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and The Book of Boba Fett weren't what you'd call "toyetic" shows. They didn't feature a lot of new characters, costumes, aliens, spaceships or set-pieces that just screamed to be replicated and played with (even Boba Fett riding a ranco was...meh). They felt...recycled. Ahsoka is so, so different. There are so many new characters, vehicles, and surroundings (and great variant takes on existing versions thereof) that I want recreated in toy form. It seemed like every other new scene had something amazing.  Tops of them all is Ahsoka in her blue space suit. Coolest damn thing ever. Thrawn's Troopers, too cool. Ahsoka's spaceship, yes please.  The hyena steeds? Yes. The crustacean natives? YES! A flipping purrgil? SURE! Even in the last 10 minutes of the season, out pops a new weapon the likes we've never seen in Star Wars (or have we?) and it filled me with a giddy glee.

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Music

Kevin Kiner did all of the music for The Clone Wars, Rebels, and The Bad Batch.  While Ludwig Goransson made a decisive impact on Star Wars soundtracks with The Mandalorian, it could, and should be argued that Kiner is the heir apparent to the franchise post-Williams. Kiner's The Clone Wars work during its original run was underwhelming, but starting with Rebels his work started to find its only paths to follow, ones that didn't adhere to the traditional orchestral score John Williams established. It was the Season 7 revival of The Clone Wars that solidified his genius for me, a real synth and tone-fuelled soundscape that borrows from Tangerine Dream far more than Williams. Kiner has also been working with Clint Mansell on the Doom Patrol series for the past 5 years, and you can feel Kiner finding more and more grooves to inhabit as a result of that partnership.  His score here is great. It's not his most ear-capturing work, but it works really really well.

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The Future

Again, I'm oozing bias over here, but I think Ahsoka was a rousing but not exactly flawless success. I definitely want so much more.  Nothing's been announced outside of a tentative Thrawn-related crossover that would bridge Ahsoka, Boba Fett and Mando in one theatrically released film.  But there's so much groundwork laid here that it's not just a film's worth, but instead at least another season's worth, or maybe not even a second season, just, you know, part 2 of this one.  It isn't a complete production, and if it didn't satisfy fully, then it definitely whetted the appetite.