Leonardo Genzon

I hate to give this such a low rating since, Obi-Wan is one of my favorite characters and, I’ve been waiting for this series with the excitement of a kid before Christmas but alas it does not merit anything higher. The good. Ewan McGregor deftly reprises his role from the prequels and makes the most of a very soft script. Young Leia, played by Viviene Lyra Blair, is a bright spot and although it totally breaks canon that she wouldn’t later remember Obi-Wan her youthful presence and spunky disposition are a welcomed surprise. The bad. The story. Through three episodes I’m barely interested in what’s happened. If your gonna pull a classic character out of storage it’s got to be for something better than an obvious twist on the Mandalorian. There are multiple scenes that add very little value and some that are just plain repetitive. Furthermore, I don’t understand why Disney insists on turning classic heroes into bitter old men with nothing to look forward to. Do they not understand it’s a huge turn off? The blocking and choreography remind me of my days in film school. When Leia is chased by multiple bad guys in episode 1 I laughed out loud at how bad the scene played. The fight between Vader and Obi-Wan in episode 3 was especially hard to watch. Total amateur hour. The CGI is plain bad. It makes the Prequels from the 1990s look like masterpieces by comparison. To those that would argue that it’s too hard or too expensive to do great CGI on a series I say you could either use less of it, by building some actual sets, or work on the quality of each shot a little more. “The Boys” from Amazon Video. which is releasing on the same schedule as Obi-Wan, is also an effects heavy series and those shots look like a million bucks by comparison. At the end of the day Obi-Wan is little more than badly executed fan service. So disappointed.