'Obi-Wan Kenobi' (Disney+) - The first episodes

SPOILERS AHEAD….

 

Presenting its status as a television series, the premiere episode opens with a skippable recap showing a montage of clips from the prequel movies establishing the relationship between Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), the latter’s fall to the dark side, and Kenobi’s subsequent exile along with Anakin’s kids.

 

Ten years later, we find Kenobi going by the name of Ben and living in a cave and working in a meat factory (did any of us imagine Obi-Wan might’ve had to have a job?). We see his day-to-day routine of working the production-line, going home on what’s basically a flying bus and cooking for himself at home in a scene not unlike Rey’s introduction on Jakku in The Force Awakens. But as it transpires, he’s not the only Jedi on Tattooine when some fascistic “inquisitors” arrive on the hunt. Not having yet seen the animated series Rebels, I didn’t feel I’d missed out when these new villains – led by the Grand Inquisitor – are introduced. Said Jedi may well be one of the “younglings” that escapes the massacre of Order 66 in the Jedi Temple in the opening scene (perhaps unfortunate timing for the release, given recent the latest tragedy in America). When Kenobi isn’t working, he’s keeping a distant eye on young Luke Skywalker and, rather like Father Christmas, delivers him a toy overnight.  Uncle Owen (Joel Edgerton) pays him a visit to warn him to stay away.

 

Meanwhile, we cut across the galaxy to Alderaan and meet the child incarnation of Princess Leia, played by Vivien Lyra Blair, who fittingly somewhat brings to mind Natalie Portman in Leon.  At this point, it almost feels like a whole other show or film (a Princess Leia origins movie wouldn’t have been a bad idea) but soon it provides a contrivance to get Kenobi to interrupt his exile and go off-world (I’d have otherwise been content with the thought that he spent the near-two decades piddling around in the desert). Kenobi soon faces a choice not unlike the one later faced by Luke as he eventually reluctantly accepts a call for help but it takes a death to get him there.

 

Part II concerns his trip to a planet that recalls the “ground level” of Coruscant in Attack of the Clones as he tries to evade the inquisitors whilst he goes on his mission.  Eventually, he learns a terrible truth about someone from his past (no prizes for guessing whom) and we end on a haunting final twenty seconds that leaves us signing up for Part III. 

 

It’s all pretty engaging stuff and hopefully won’t turn out to be a slog like both seasons of Star Trek: Picard, another show that brought back another fan favourite out of retirement.  This, however, feels like it’s made by people who love and respect the mythos and in some ways is managing to rehabilitate the prequels.

 

Welcome back, Ewan McGregor.  It’s been a long time. 

 

A long time.

Review: What If? & Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Over a year ago, I started watching the Defenders shows on Netflix in prep for the upcoming Spider-Man film and at time of writing I’ve about three-and-a-half seasons left.  In light of the imminent release of the new Doctor Strange film, I skipped ahead to the “Phase 4” shows on Disney+ from WandaVision to What If?  The latter is a nine-part animated series of roughly half-an-hour each and seemingly follows on from the ending of Loki Season One with the Marvel Cinematic Universe branching out into various alternate timelines (in light of Spider-Man: No Way Home, seemingly a way of explaining the various screen incarnations of Marvel heroes over the decades).  Each episode starts off with a premise asking “what if” – for example – Agent Carter became the hero that Captain America originally was.  As it turns out, the episodes aren’t entirely self-contained and they all eventually pay off in a two-part finale in which our various heroes across the dimensions are rounded up for a showdown with the Big Bag – and a very, VERY, cosmically Big Bad it is too (the moment the arch-villain breaks the literal fourth wall is one of the scariest I can recall in the MCU’s history).  In some way, the series is better served by animation rather than the usual CGI spectacles.  The universe has never been more imperilled and the onscreen destruction has never been more epic.  I’m not a fan of the melding of traditional hand-drawn 2D animation with 3D movement, which has an uncanny valley-like effect like CGI humans.  It generally makes for an enjoyably disposable Saturday morning cartoon.

 

Saturday morning is probably the best time to see the new Doctor Strange film.  Original director Scott Derrickson (whose first film I enjoyed) now sits as an exec producer and Sam Raimi returns to the director’s chair, fifteen years after Spider-Man 3.  After a teasing opening sequence, the film becomes rather like one of his Spider-Man trilogy with our hero (Benedict Cumberbatch) seeing his would-be love interest being married off to someone else (there’s no turnaround fleeing the altar this time) before an action sequence with a bug-eyed monster storming the city that recalls last year’s The Suicide Squad from DC.  Here, the good doctor and his sidekick Wong (Benedict Wong) run into the mysterious America Chavaz (Xochitl Gomez), a girl whose superpower is that she can jump across the various dimensions of the multiverse.  She comes to the attention of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), whom we last saw becoming the Scarlet Witch in TV’s WandaVision.  She wants to use Chavez’s power to find the universe where her imagined sons from the TV series are living real lives and assume her role as their mother.  It’s up to Strange and Wong to protect Chavez and this leads to a trip across various timelines, dark magic, and trans-dimensional bodily possession.  One particular sequence sees a trailer-teased crossover with another Marvel property and some all-to-brief cameos from characters old and new.

 

My initial problem with the MCU had been how every film seemed like a homework assignment in that you had to see everything in order to understand how it all paid off down the line.  With this – having seen most of the films only once at time of writing – it gets harder to keep track of all the characters and events so I’d start struggling to place returning faces.  I also retain a nostalgic preference for two thirds of Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy in which the characters felt like real people facing real-life problems rather than cartoon characters on a production line.  It’s generally good fun though and its transition into PG-13-friendly horror (more Drag Me to Hell than Evil Dead) just about nudges it into four-star territory.  And it has the best post-credits bit since Spider-Man: Homecoming.