Star Wars: The Disney+ Empire Strikes Again and Again and...

I liked the cutoff dialogue when they were talking about what happened to the Grand Inquisitor, since the other inquisitors seem to think he's dead

I'm pretty sure he ain't dead yet!

btw there's some theorizing that like they did with Mark Hamill the Jones voice is deepfaked, which if true is pretty astounding; thought it sounded perfect

i'm finding this really underwritten (despite four credited screenwriters). every scene between obi-wan and leia just kinda repeats the same beats... he's SO wiped out and washed up and grumpy that he can't even muster interesting tidbits about the Force, or unique ways to establish that she needs to lay low and be quiet again, or clever cover stories when dealing with bad dudes.

idk, i'd just like a little pizzazz, a glint of specialness. the big confrontation this episode should be a HUGE moment but he has nothing to say there either. all the dialogue just feels very plot-functional to me.

Totally disagree! I liked their choice to have Obi-Wan have few lines and mostly physical emotive acting - he just found out a few hours ago that his lifelong surrogate son - who he STILL feels terrible guilt for murdering 20 years ago - survived as a hideous monster far more powerful than when he died and hellbent on revenge. He's utterly shell-shocked and basically gave up his life as a sacrifice play. I wonder how far they'll take Obi-Wan's growth by the end of the series.

The Vader appearance was brutal - neck snaps galore! - and just a notch or two below his Rogue One appearance

Oops, that ending hidden tag should've come after the second line. Or maybe not at all i dunno

The worst bits so far: a chest high tree branch impedes a kidnapper, a laser gate between two small hills must be destroyed for Ben and Leia to pass on foot, a fire between two mounds of rubble impedes a whole garrison that could split to cover each side

That last one made me lol. Again felt very much like a cheesy TV-episode-conclusion --- Wellp, dangit, I guess he made it over the county line. We'll get 'im next time, don't you worry!

Nhex, I do agree that Obi-Wan's characterization makes sense for where he's at. I've just found all the scenes between him and Leia, from the moment of their meeting, oddly inert... idk.

"they're very slowly getting away!"

i wonder if it's implied that vader has some sort of the-Hound-from-GoT aversion to fire now after mustafar

i am enjoying this even though it is very slight & there’s not a whole lot to it

vader’s dialogue felt kinda rehashed? but the ott rage & cruelty was pretty well done. i do like mcgregor a lot, he always has this exhausted look like “god again with all this? i wish i was chopping monster steaks” like he really does feel genuinely shutdown in a way that is quite genuine

the only thing i dont support is the ADULT ditching A CHILD like oh she said she’ll be fine & that i should go help ObiWan SHE IS A CHILD AND HE IS A GROWNASS JEDI ..,I REALLY DO THINK YOU SHOULD HELP HER FFS

I rewatched that bit and Leia seems to be the one telling her to go!

that’s what i mean! she’s a kid! if she insists you go you say “thats nice of you but no i’m not leaving you to navigate a tunnel network alone to meet someone you dont know”

so Leia continues to call him Ben, even though she ostensibly heard Reva call her Obi-Wan. Please tell me she didn't hear that, and like Luke, thinks Ben Kenobi and Obi-Wan Kenobi are two different people like in A New Hope.

"nah, that's my cousin. I'm Mike Kenobi, this is my brother Kyle Kenobi"

(I mean Leia *as an adult* thinks the Ben Kenobi she met years ago was not the same as Obi-Wan Kenobi that her daddy told her about)

Zach Braff is Freck? meh

If you want to do a mind-twisting retcon here, it’d make sense for Leia to act like her father hadn’t been in contact with Obi-Wan since the republic days in case she was captured. She could claim she was part of the rebellion and her senator father had no part in it, and he surely hadn’t talked to any Jedi since those days

They’re definitely taking advantage of the fact Leia and Obi-Wan never spoke on the Death Star

"Hi Ben!"

"Leia, shut up!"

my prediction is a force mind wipe of leia at some point

that's my suspicion too, though it would be incredibly lazy and lame if they went this route

They did do it at the end of Revenge of the Sith, so there’s precedent

...yeah but to a droid.

Just watched this, after not reading anything about it – more out of disinterest, than a desire to avoid spoilers (also haven't been following the thread, apologies).

I think it's even a little worse than I was expecting... and makes me appreciate the heavy fan-service approach of the other series more, in retrospect; at least those had a real "Star Wars" flavor. This just feels like sort of a pedestrian TV show, cheap-looking, acting/directing not particularly good, etc.

The Muppet Baby Leia adventure also doesn't work for me, and not just b/c the kid doesn't seem much like Leia – it just feels like a bad idea. And, yes, it also immediately raises the question I see is discussed above. (The plot also weakens other aspects of ANH – like when Vader says, "I sense a presence I haven't felt since...," he means "...oh, 8 or 9 years ago"?)

I do like a few moments – like Obi-Wan reminiscing about Padme, and Leia asking if he's her real father. I did NOT like when Vader randomly kills a child on the street – is that really his style(?) I haven't read the Vader comics or anything, maybe it is. Honestly, this series feels like it should have just been a comic.

never really knew Vader to be much of a merciful person, regardless of the age of his victims. he would be an HR nightmare, you dont' get fired for failing, you get choked to death.

Yeah, but none of those were civilians? He wasn't fighting anyone in that scene, just terrorizing the populace...

I thought Vader was doing it because he knew Obi-Wan would show himself if he kept killing the villagers?

I mean as Anakin he did also slaughter an entire village of Tusken Raiders.

And yes that was due to hate/vengeance, but I felt like Vader and Reva were pissed that he was hiding and nobody was fessing up as to where he was so he took things to the next level to draw him out

He also killed the younglings in Ep. 3, of course

It all plays into thing of how "questionable" it is that Anakin gets to chill in eternity as a Force Ghost if he's a cold-blooded murderer.

it's the whole Xtian allegory, he 'asked forgiveness' shortly before he died so all is kosher now.

A few other bits I liked were: (a) the Clone Veteran, and (b) Obi-Wan waking up in a cold sweat after suffering thru a nightmare montage of the prequels' shittiest moments (that had to be tongue-in-cheek, right?)

just terrorizing the populace...

this is his job

tis true, that's what the HR posting said.

I don't think you ever see him around civilians in any of the movies? (but again, I haven't read/watched the other stuff)

I thought his basic job was to serve as Palpatine's eyes/ears/muscle in the halls of the Empire itself

in the comics he light sabers a gun in Rineau, just to watch him die

*guy

Darth Vader stole my multiball bonus

I feel like Obi-Wan gestures toward the "aging hero reluctantly pulled out of retirement" trope, but doesn't want to commit fully to it – which is actually kind of interesting, but also makes the show feel weirdly hollow... like even the scene where goes John Wick and digs up his lifesabers doesn't trigger any emotion (and doesn't seem meant to). Obi-Wan just seems depressed... and you already know he can't get TOO much of his mojo back, since he just ends up going off the grid even further.

(I meant Life Savers, the candy, obv)

It's a bridge between what the jedi were and what they need to become, imo

Obi-Wan's not back, he's just doing the right thing for an old friend. He's not going back to being a jedi because he's adrift and doesn't know what being a jedi means anymore. We're getting the middle piece between him being mentally and emotionally wrecked after he left his best friend to die and his order was slaughtered and the calm, resolute Obi-Wan we first saw.

Maybe Qui-Gon picks up the force phone at some point in this series, or he figures out it's not the number of jedi using the force, it's the endless force that just needs one jedi to stand alone

so glad Zack Braff got beat up

didn't realize that was Hayden Christiansen beneath the suit in the last ep. had no reason to think it was, considering he only appeared as him in the transformation scene in ROTS and usually he's played by built dudes/stunt dudes.

(partial body shots/seated shots only, obv - no stunt work or full body shots with helmet on. but the Hayds was Vader for a few scenes!)

mh – I like that...

(I can't believe James Earl Jones is still doing Vader's voice!)

deepfakes baby

Ep. 4 has some good scenes of Obi-Wan getting his lightsaber on.

De-aging technology still has some way to go

lol yeah Hayden definitely looked much older than in prequels

I watched five seconds of that opening scene and turned the show off.

I have to admire their gutsiness in wanting to front-and-center the "Darth Vader is the same person as Anakin Skywalker" aspect of this whole universe/saga/whatever. It makes obvious narrative sense to do so, but has this problem where the three movies devoted to making the Anakin-Vader transition actually left me less convinced, emotionally speaking, that the murderous death robot voiced by James Earl Jones was once a whiny, angsty youth played by Hayden Christensen. It's a huge huge journey for this guy to have taken, but it's never felt real to me. And it's so important to Obi-Wan's motivations and feelings in this show!

Maybe if Anakin had been a young man in the first one, half-man half-machine in the second, and mostly Vader in the third, or something.... oh well. I don't think it's something they can really solve at this point, although maybe people who read the comic books or novels have other stuff filling those gaps.

I've always felt the prequels should have started w/Anakin as a young man, and taken place over a shorter period of time (like the OT). The events of TPM bring almost nothing to the table, other than showing you the roots of Palpatine's long game (which really don't matter).