This is a flawed addition to the Star Wars canon that takes some decent ideas and an interesting period in galactic history and fumbles them. Nevertheless, there's enough in it to make it worth a watch for fans, and younger viewers and those who recall The Phantom Menace and its two successors with more fondness than I do are likely to find things to enjoy.
We start with a recap of scenes from those three films, which culminated in the fall to the dark side of Jedi master Obi-Wan's student, Anakin Skywalker, and the death of Anakin's wife, Padme, after secretly giving birth to a twin boy and girl. The girl, Leia, is adopted by Senator Bail Organa, and the boy, Luke, sent to Tatooine to live with his aunt and uncle.
We then jump forward ten years to find a disillusioned Obi-Wan living on Tatooine, his Jedi skills rusty and his connection to the Force apparently weakened by the guilt he feels for failing to prevent Anakin's fall. He works a menial job (cutting up large chunks of meat very slowly then leaving them lying around) and keeps an eye on Luke from afar. This humdrum existence is initially interrupted by the arrival of Inquistors, whose role is to chase down remaining Jedi, and then by Bail Organa who arrives to beg for Obi-Wan's help to rescue Leia, who has been kidnapped. The rest of the series follows the quest to return Leia home and Obi-Wan's journey of reconciliation to his mistakes of the past.
Ewan McGregor reprises his role as Obi-Wan with convincing inner pain and, when given a chance, gentle humour. Overall, I'd say he succeeds in his stated aim of bridging the transition of his Obi-Wan from the first trilogy of the Skywalker Saga to that played by Alec Guinness in the second.
Young Vivien Lyra Blair, when not forced into inconsistent brattishness by the scriptwriters, does a truly astonishing job as ten-going-on-sixty Leia. Her interactions with her adoptive parents and snotty cousin are a particular joy. She's totally believable as someone who will grow up not only into the Carrie Fisher of A New Hope, but also the Carrie Fisher of the final trilogy.
I'm sure Hayden Christensen relished the opportunity to play Darth Vader after playing Anakin in the first trilogy, and he does a decent job, particularly in the final showdown, but isn't given much to work with. The first meeting between Obi-Wan, who had believed his former student dead, and Vader was unfortunately torpedoed by poor writing and plotting though that's not Christensen's fault. At least he gets the opportunity to display a bit more range in flashbacks to Obi-Wan and Anakin training together.
We also get some engaging new characters, such as Kumail Nanjiani as con-man Haja Estree, and Indira Varma as disillusioned imperial officer Tala, as well as other supporting characters.
The Inquisitors apparently made their screen debut in one of the animated series I've not seen. They're a nice idea and they're pretty cool-looking villains, but the execution lacks depth. Moses Ingram does as good a job as possible with Inquisitor Reva/Third Sister given the limitations of the script she has to work with, and hers is a potentially interesting character who feels disappointingly thrown away in the course of the shoddy plotting that is unfortunately characteristic of the series.
And that's the problem. All these competent performances can't save a plot that is clunking and nonsensical by turns. It's also disappointingly unoriginal, rehashing recognisable Star Wars elements into a not particularly new whole. Of course, we want Star Wars to be Star Wars, but there is surely some scope for new takes without losing the essence, particularly now there are just so many films and series.
A story that made sense would be my first priority, but I'd also hoped to see more insight into the slide into totalitarianism and the role that ordinary people played in this political upheaval. Representations of this weren't completely missing of course, but with the odd exception such as a scene-stealing appearance from Zach-Braff-voiced transport driver and Empire sympathiser Freck, they were trite and uninteresting.
To be fair to this show, its flaws aren't peculiar to it within the Star Wars universe, much as I love it. In fact, I don't think this series is significantly worse than The Phantom Menace and its two successors, to which it is much more a sequel in style and spirit, as well as in its disappointments, than it is a prequel to the 1970s/80s films. I'd just hoped that, with all the years, experience, successes and mistakes since those were released, we'd get something better.
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