Star Wars’ “New Hope” is Starting to Feel Less “New”

So Disney is finally starting to roll out marketing for the next big Disney+ Star Wars series, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Personally, I’ve been waiting for this kind of project for roughly my entire life. Obi-Wan has been my favorite Star Wars character since I saw The Phantom Menace at the ripe old age of one year old. I had a special infant word that I used when my mouth wasn’t developed enough to say his name. I took every opportunity I could find as a kid to shoehorn Obi-Wan representation into school art projects, time with friends, and my general identity. Trust me, I have the bona fides when it comes to fandom of specifically this character. I even read the Obi-Wan centric novel by Ryder Wyndham in 2008! So, when I say this new series has me skeptical, know that it comes with a lot of good will and excitement packaged in.

The recently released trailer and stills are promising a moody 6 episodes of intrigue, fear, darkness, and hope. The trailer is full of dangerous Inquisitors, figures in the newly explored period between episodes III and IV that, despite black outfits, capes, use of the force, employment as Jedi hunters, and red lightsabers, are NOT SITH. It features a robe-clad Kenobi ducking into alleys and being generally depressed about the state of things. The villains monologue about the Jedi and their incessant need to help innocent people.

SIDENOTE: When is Disney going to make up their mind about the Jedi? George Lucas used them effectively as a critique of neo-liberal complacency in the Clinton/Bush era of politics and ended Episode III with a pretty definitive case for their justified downfall. Then projects like The Clone Wars and Rebels furthered this notion of the Jedi as something in need of either reinvention or radical reform. Then Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi tripled down on the Jedi as a flawed sect that needed to learn and grow to continue seeding hope in the galaxy. Since then, the Jedi have been re-deified in projects like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and The Rise of Skywalker. Suddenly, the word Jedi just means “good guy” again. What’s up with that? Even Ahsoka, the poster-child for not trusting the outdated ways of the Jedi, is suddenly back on Team Jedi and not even rejecting the title anymore. Weird.

Anyway, all of this setup for the Obi-Wan series is fine, I guess. It feels like exactly what we’ve always imagined was happening for Kenobi between films, if a little more action-packed. But it also feels…familiar? It’s a feeling I’ve not had since…

November 2019. When Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was released. If you haven’t played it or heard about it in the last 2 years, I’ll catch you up. Fallen Order is a canon video game set in between episodes III and IV in which a Jedi is in hiding from the new Galactic Empire but can’t resist helping people. So, he is quickly discovered by the Inquisitors and must go on the run, fighting not only to stay alive, but to protect the future of the Jedi, a solemn task only he and those very close to him even have knowledge of.

Ouch.

Come to think of it, this is quite a lot like the first couple seasons of Star Wars: Rebels, too. Like Kanan’s whole deal is that he is drawn out of hiding by his need to protect and train Ezra, then the Inquisitors get involved. Oh hey, both sets of Jedi have brief and scary run-ins with Darth Vader too! Wait, what’s that? Obi-Wan is also going to run into Darth Vader again? Huh. Weird.

This pattern baffles me. It is mildly frustrating that Disney is basically changing the names in one script that they’ve had since 2016, but what’s insane is the retroactive changes this makes to the original trilogy. I’m no OT purist, not by a long shot, but if we think about this for even a minute, things quickly go off the rails.

To begin with, this template of story is pretty good when seen from the heroes’ perspective. It offers a lot of opportunities for action and suspense and drama. It is cool to see a washed up hero come back into play to protect people. But when you look at it from the perspective of the villains, its maddening. The gap between III and IV is canonically 19 years. Of course, given some context clues, we can place Rebels at year 14 of that gap, Fallen Order at year 2 of that gap, and Kenobi at year 10 of that gap. That means that at a rough average of every five years, Vader and the Inquisitors stumble onto a Jedi and spend a couple of years trying to kill them. And of course, those are just the ones who don’t immediately die. There are a wealth of Jedi who just get absolutely murdered to death offscreen. Disney should really greenlight a series about the Inquisitors in the vein of The Office in which they sit around throwing paper airplanes at each other until a new Jedi shows up.

Further, this pattern really undermines a lot of the important beats of Episode IV. By the time Luke gets drawn into this story, people are walking around saying that they think the Jedi were a myth that never actually existed. Sure, the Empire was devoting massive resources to killing living, breathing, lightsaber wielding Jedi as recently as a few years ago, but they must be a fairy tale. Vader is this mysterious religious freak to the other Imperials on the Death Star. They mock the force and theorize that its either made-up or extremely useless. Never mind the large scale battles in which force-users decimate Imperial forces less than 5 years prior to that conversation, Vader must be a kook. Most importantly, the reunion of Vader and Obi-Wan, a tense, weighty moment that was given so much import by the prequels and The Clone Wars. Now, it’ll be a bi-yearly meet up for drinks and a sword fight. It just so happens to be the one where Kenobi dies. Wild.

I say all this not as one of those bitter “leave my precious childhood bible movies alone” kind of jabs. I’m someone who is quite truly on board with Disney Star Wars (until 2019 anyway). I watched and loved Rebels, I played and liked Fallen Order, and if you don’t think that the child in me hit the fucking ceiling when that music kicked in in the Obi-Wan trailer, you’re dead fucking wrong. But the truth is, the story only has room for so much of this.

There is weight and import given to the Empire’s reign. And there should be. The Rebels’ victory in VI should feel like a massive weight has been lifted from the shoulders of the galaxy. The tyranny and oppression of the Empire should be huge, terrifying, and oppressively present in all stories set during it. The Return of the Jedi should be a RETURN, not a check-in. Luke is significant because he is just a farmboy who comes along and tears down an Empire with nothing but some friends and a hell of a lot of hope. There are stories to tell in this chunk of the timeline. There are stories of oppression, revolt, escape, tragedy, struggle, and loss that are just waiting to be told.

Instead, we get the same story over and over. And every time that story is told, it scoots in on Luke’s territory. Why is it important to keep Luke safe if Ezra Bridger is a hop, a skip, and a lightspeed jump away? How is the sequel to Fallen Order going to improvise a reason for Cal to disappear just in time for A New Hope? What will be the slant rhyme the writers deploy to make Vader’s lines about Obi-Wan still “technically” true? How long until watching Episode IV starts to feel like watching a ton of characters entirely misrepresent 20 years of their own history? How large will the YouTube channels of lore knowers get once they’ve exhausted their supply of Wookiepedia reasons for Han Solo to think the force is made up and Obi-Wan to describe the galaxy as he does? How many times will Disney pull a “from a certain point of view”?

Look, I know George Lucas is famous for this stuff, and I know that the exact specifics of tiny details in the universe don’t actually matter. But this stuff is starting to affect the THEMES of the movies. R2-D2 not telling everyone all the stuff he knows about the entire series is a funny thing to bring up while drunk with friends, not a plot-hole. But the notion that the galaxy lost all hope and the heroes lost all knowledge of an entire chunk of their history in the fifteen minutes before A New Hope actively changes the story. How “New” is this Hope?

In all honesty, the biggest loss in all of this is the mystery of that time period. Look at it this way: in Episode IV, Old Ben Kenobi mentions that he fought with Anakin Skywalker in “The Clone Wars”. Prior to 2002, that was a massive question mark dangling over the galaxy. What’s a “Clone War”? There are clones in this universe? Obi-Wan is a veteran? At the time, the closest comparison would be WWII as a prior conflict to Vietnam. Luke is about to jump into a new war and Obi-Wan has perspective on the old one. Kenobi is a veteran, so is Anakin, they had a bond because of that, Kenobi is clearly troubled by that time in his life. Interesting take on a Merlin character. Then, in the prequels, we see the very beginning of the war and the very end of it. Lucas deliberately sidesteps the conflict and shows us what he thinks is important: the conditions that create war (greed, corruption, fascism) and results of “winning” a war (more greed, more corruption, way more fascism). So there was this glorious mystery about what those years looked like. What turned Anakin and Obi-Wan into great friends and war-weary generals? Where did those scars come from? How have these two grown and changed?

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Uhm, they made a whole seven season TV show about everything that happened in those years. There’s no mystery anymore, why are you complaining?” That’s a solid point. Except for a few things. First, that show was overseen by Lucas, and as such, it has his particular brand of off-beat digressions sewn into its fabric. He has stated publicly that his favorite arc of the show is the one about a team of droids done in a beep-boop Wall-E style. Not exactly hyper-detailed gap-filling content. Second, The Clone Wars is an endlessly innovative show, never treading the same ground twice, always providing fresh perspective and circumstances to the conflict. Third, the stated and achieved goal of the show is a subversive and exciting one, that being to humanize the clones and give massive weight to the conflict as a result. The secondary goal of the show (demonstrating the corrupting influence of the dark side as it draws the Jedi into a military role that they should never have taken) is critical to Lucas’ overall vision of the series. In short, The Clone Wars reinforces the themes of Episode IV and gives weight to Obi-Wan’s emotional journey.

These repeated Rogue Jedi stories undermine him and make him just the fourth Jedi master to try restarting the Order under the Empire. That he happens to succeed becomes less and less impactful every time.

At the end of the day, I’m excited for the new show. Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen have deserved another shot at these characters since the minute filming wrapped on Revenge of the Sith. Obi-Wan is central to who I am as a person. How could I not be excited to get 6 more hours of screentime with him? I just wish that these personal victories wouldn’t come bundled with some over-zealous writing that does damage to the thematic fabric of these stories. The reason I’m so excited to see Kenobi again isn’t because I recognize him from other things, it’s because I find his emotional journey compelling, relatable, and emotionally resonant. I’d really like to keep it that way.

SIDENOTE: Jesus Christ, please don’t let this show be another 6 episodes of cameo-of-the-week style nonsense. Nobody cares what’s up with Ventress. I’d like Jar-Jar though. That would be sweet.