Thursday, March 28

Star Wars now only knows how to count its nostalgia: the return of Darth Vader to ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ is bad news


There are two indisputable facts about ‘Star Wars’ in which both defenders and detractors of the Disney franchise can agree: first, Darth Vader is the franchise’s most memorable and iconic villain, if not directly the most significant character. Of the same. Not only does he star in the most important reveal of the saga, but the increasingly claimed prequels of the nineties gave him a background that goes far beyond the typical nemesis of the hero.

On the other hand, and as series after series, film after film shows, the saga is a slave to its own heritage. Nostalgia has gone from mere fan service to be the true raison d’être of the series. The most recent movie trilogy is built around that dependency, and Disney products are most satisfying when they manage to escape that shadow of the franchise’s legacy (‘The Mandalorian’, ‘Rogue One’, ‘The Last Jedi’). .

Therefore, the presence of Darth Vader in the next ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ is both the worst and the best news. The charisma of the villain, embodiment of pure evil, is the perfect counterpoint to Obi-Wan Kenobi., a seamless jedi, that is, a pristine hero. Both are embodied by two charismatic interpreters, Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, who at the time gave many nuances to both characters, and at a very interesting point in the chronology of both.

And on the other hand, it confirms what we already feared: the series will be centered on the sometimes immobile navel-gazing of the worst products in the series. Which does not necessarily predict a bad series, but already in the first trailer, presented a few days ago, we see nods to nothing less than a childish Luke Skywalker and, of course, the setting on Tatooine that has marked part of ‘The Mandalorian’ and all of ‘The Boba Fett Book’. It is true what is said in the saga: it is difficult to escape from that planet.

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'The Boba Fett Book': all the good and bad of fan-service and the nostalgia in which 'Star Wars' lives submerged

“More powerful than ever”

In an interview with ‘Entertainment Weekly’, which has also revealed the first image of the character in the series, Christensen has advanced, apart from the fact that he cannot reveal if we will see Vader without a helmet (although as it is a case similar to ‘The book of Boba Fett’, the rare thing will be to see him with him), that the villain will be more powerful than ever. An interesting additive that will have to be checked if it is enough to distance this incarnation from a mere rehash.

Our colleague Jorge Loser tells Espinof, about the need for ‘Star Wars’ to continuously return to Luke Skywalker, that “Mark Hamill did not record any dialogue for ‘The Book of Boba Fett’. His voice was generated by an AI that collected information from archives of several decades. What great magic that we no longer even have Luke’s soul within Luke himself.” And the entire franchise is a bit like that, with Luke or with Vader, recreating mythical moments and using state-of-the-art technology to evoke sensations from thirty years ago. A dead end to which technical neatness does not end up functioning as a sheet metal and paint session.

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