The upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi limited series is set to be a fascinating prequel about a classic fan-favorite character. The series was originally written by Hossein Amini of Drive fame, but Disney reportedly called in some additional scribes, because the original take on the project was too dark.
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Obi-Wan Kenobi finds the iconic hero immediately after the events of Revenge of the Sith, entering the long exile that Luke found him in. Order 66 has already decimated the Jedi Order, and Obi-Wan’s failure to see the evil in his own apprentice places some percentage of the blame on him. He’s a broken man, and his journey is at its darkest point. The tone of that moment in Obi-Wan’s journey wouldn’t logically be particularly upbeat. The fact that the first take on the script was too dark for Disney isn’t shocking, but it does speak to the fear of risk that Disney still approaches the franchise with. No matter if it’s a heartwarming coming-of-age story, an amoral western, or the tragic tale of a man grappling with his past mistakes, it still needs to have the same lightness of tone.
Star Wars once felt like a single adventure set in a reality that could contain infinite new stories. A galaxy that could serve as a setting and stage for any story one could think of, with endless interesting details that could interweave. As it turns out, the modern incarnation of the franchise is mostly dull retreads of stories that were groundbreaking over forty years ago. When the series does threaten innovation, it does so by distancing itself by light-years from the existing canon. Much has been made about the fact that every Star Wars story winds up attached to the Skywalker of the hour. The series can rarely get away from lightsabers, Jedi, and the Force, no matter how unrelated it is from the premise. When a work in the series functions separately from the big overarching light side vs dark side duel, the studio will find a way to shoehorn elements of it in. It’s part of one of the most irritating parts of the galaxy far, far away.
Every work in the Star Wars canon must be carefully crafted to fit in with the forty years of previous canon and the millennium of planned future canon. For it all to flow as one tapestry, and for it all to force in the necessary ads for future material, it all needs to feel achingly similar. This is a problem with franchise-based IP-driven media, which has healthily consumed most of the cinema industry, but Star Wars may have the worst case of it. Marvel and DC have sprawling cinematic universes that sometimes awkwardly interrupt otherwise decent projects to advertise later tie-ins, but at least they are allowed to vary wildly in tone and presentation. An Iron Man film feels different from a Thor film. A Shazam film feels different from a Batman film. Solo may have different characters, but it still feels essentially identical to the average Star Wars adventure.
The live-action series once felt like an escape from this issue, but that era only lasted until Luke Skywalker started popping up in The Mandalorian. The show was originally a fresh, intelligent, and immensely popular look at the Star Wars universe from a perspective fans had never seen. It was impressive, it drew in viewers with no previous interest in Star Wars. Sheer quality was obviously the big draw of the show, but it also featured a level of novelty that changed the franchise. Unfortunately, the show ran back to the same well that it has already run dry. The immediate follow-up The Book of Boba Fett was a monument to the problems of the franchise. A season and change of excellent TV came out of the franchise and the studio collectively agreed that the only solution was to add in all the stuff that ruined everything.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was, like The Book of Boba Fett, originally pitched as a film, but dragged down to Disney+ after the commercial failure of Solo. The film held the aforementioned intensely grim script, but the new iteration has been somewhat reigned in. The show could be excellent, a ton of entries in the franchise are, but the studio seems determined to keep it from being too original. The darker tone of the story should’ve been obvious, anyone aware of what happens before and after would assume a rough period for the beloved Jedi. Cutting the emotional tension to make the series flow better throughout the franchise is yet another example of Disney being afraid to let creators add their spin on their work. Hopefully, the franchise will loosen the reign on future creators, so that the series can grow and stay interesting.
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