Films & Fiction Weekly #2

The more I think about the Obi-Wan Kenobi show, the more I’m convinced it should never have been made, and never could have been good. It’s my least-favourite of all the Star Wars Disney+ shows, but while I can think of ways to improve most of them, at least a little bit, I really can’t think of a way to make Kenobi watchable.

It seems to me that it’s based on a flawed premise right from the start. There’s no way that Obi-Wan can leave Tatooine; his whole purpose there is to protect Luke, and every second he spends off world puts him in danger. Bail Organa calling him for help makes that character into an idiot, and there’s no logical reason for him to help the rebellion, as he refuses to do this in season three of Rebels.

The whole purpose of the show is to lead to another (completely unnecessary) confrontation between Obi-Wan and Vader, but even that doesn’t make sense. After their duel, Kenobi leaves Vader alive, allowing him to continue his reign of terror even though he could have finished him. I can buy he left him on Mustafar, because he was as good as dead, and in A New Hope, he realises he can’t defeat his old pupil, but in the show there was no excuse.

He runs off and allows Vader to continue to terrorise the galaxy, and kill hundreds more people. You could say that’s some sort of Force thing, where he realised that Anakin would still bring balance to the Force, except that in Return of the Jedi, Yoda and Obi-Wan try to bully Luke into killing his own father, after keeping the truth from him.

Essentially Kenobi was too weak to kill Vader when he had the chance, and decided to leave that up to Luke, which makes his sacrifice in ANH look weak too.

Just another way this show makes a mockery of the greatest Jedi master.

A Pirate’s Life (Again)

Variety has said that Disney is working on another Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not surprising, but I don’t have high hopes. The last movie, released in 2017, was a bit of a bore, and it feels like the franchise is out of ideas. On top of this, they’ll have to work out their differences with Johnny Depp if he’s to return as the face of the franchise.

What I expect will happen (if anything happens at all) is that this movie will go full nostalgia, bringing back Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, maybe even Bill Nighy, for their roles, and filling it with plenty of references similar to Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Jurassic World: Dominion.

It’s around the 20-25 year mark where nostalgia kicks in, so POTC is in a good position to take advantage of that in the next couple of years, and the first two films were the high mark of the franchise, so expect a nostalgia storm on the horizon.

Alien: Where?

If anything, the third episode of Alien: Earth is worse than the first two. This series really doesn’t want to be an Alien show, it’s much more interested in its Peter Pan allegory. The problem is it’s taking down the Xenomorphs with it. I don’t know how it’s managed, but it’s made one of cinema’s most terrifying creatures into a bore. None of its scenes are scary and it feels like an unwelcome addition, like an awkward celebrity cameo stuffed into a movie for the sake of it. What should be the centre of the story is a side plot, that jumps out occasionally to smash things up and kill some people.

Return of the Hobbit

Ian McKellen has announced that both Gandalf and Frodo will be appearing in the Hunt for Gollum movie set to release potentially at some point, after losing its 2026 release date. This makes it even more confusing. It’s already a stretch to imagine how they’ll make an entire feature-length movie from what’s literally a couple of paragraphs in Fellowship of the Ring. That will require a lot of padding and original material, which didn’t work out so well in the Hobbit trilogy.

But more to the point, how will Frodo fit into the story? Will it just be as a cameo, perhaps showing him when Gandalf returns to the Shire with the knowledge of the Ring and Gollum’s history? Who knows, but however it’s done, I still don’t have high hopes for this movie, which seems like a desperate attempt to wring more life from a franchise that’s done its best work, and could very well finish up damaging the reputation of the greatest cinematic trilogy ever made.