fevered.earth

Category: Article

  • Obi-wan (Episode 2)

    Last time, I got culture shock at a montage of prequel scenes as we rejoin the story of Obi-wan Kenobi.

    Loved this guy, who’s just a raptor with a gun.

    A theory starts to suggest itself, fairly or unfairly. At the beginning of A New Hope, Vader’s position within the Empire seems diminished compared to what we might have expected from his vaunted position at the Emperor’s side during the final fall of the republic. Previously I might have considered this to be a reflection of Vader’s loss of physical capability following him becoming char-grilled on Mustafar. In this new story, informed by the first two episodes of Obi-wan, I’m starting to wonder if he’s brought low by the lingering embarrassment for everyone involved with the Inquisitors.

    The episode starts out all well and good, with Obi-wan tracking the kidnappers from the previous episode down to the Blade Runner planet, which naturally gets introduced with another one of those interminable market square scenes where an oddly low number of people mill about for whatever reason around some stalls in the middle of the night. The unrefined writing from the previous episode hasn’t gone away, with a charming young waif turning directly to the camera and saying “I am representation of the ill future plausible for our kidnapped child protagonist”.

    It’s slightly weird that Obi-wan does his Deckard-hunt through the future slums to find Leia, who he’s there to save, given that Deckard is hunting to kill.

    Ewan McGregor is the pure quality component of all this, his Obi-wan voice not diminished in the slightest by the years, along with a brief uneven character role for Kumail Nanjiani of ‘Kingo’ fame. In hopefully not a sign of things to come, his contribution to the episode is trimmed down to exactly three moments, one where we find he’s a villain with a heart of gold, one where he considers being just a villain, and one where he still has the heart of gold. It’s so terse that we don’t even see him reconsider, he just walks out of one frame holding a gun and enters the next scene a reformed man.

    But those Inquisitors! The episode’s shabby treatment of them is typified by the extended, somewhat dull rooftop shootout where Obi-wan remains pinned down with Leia in peril as we see intercut shots of the third sister, played by Moses Ingram, bouncing along like Ezio Auditore on her way to cut down the trapped Jedi. Except the scene ends and Obi-wan walks off with Leia, then we cut back to her and she’s still jumping about. She was no-where near! All this builds up to the grand finale where she murders her commander in a dispute over who gets to claim credit for capturing Obi-wan, a feat neither of them have yet managed. There’s a fourth one this episode who looks like a shit Borg.

    They look slightly less outlandish here than they did in the previous episode, but they’re still walking in formation.

    All of which is just to say that as a villain faction, not much effort is being put into making them a threat. Perhaps the rest of them are going to melt away and Ingram’s Third Sister will become the sole antagonist, hopefully in a better fitting costume.

    The rest of the episode reaches the ‘fine’ mark once more. Getting to see Obi-wan go places and do things is still a grand novelty, for now.

    Ranking, best to worst:

    1. Flashback recap of the prequel trilogy
    2. Obi-wan: Episode 1
    3. Obi-wan: Episode 2

    If you like my writing, please subscribe to my Letterboxd reviews or watch Sixteen attempts to talk to you about ‘Suicide Squad’, available on Youtube now. Previously I watched and wrote-up season 1 of ‘Invincible’, in reverse order.

  • Obi-wan (Episode 1)

    If you like my writing, please subscribe to my Letterboxd reviews or watch Sixteen attempts to talk to you about ‘Suicide Squad’, available on Youtube now. Previously I watched and wrote-up season 1 of ‘Invincible’, in reverse order.

    It’s been years since I watched episodes 1, 2 and 3, and I was not ready for the sharp, disorientating culture shock I got from seeing them appear as the ‘previously on’ here; both conceptually in seeing a sort of professional fan cam version of Obi-wan’s origins and culturally, in seeing scenes that I associate so heavily with the arch, dramatic style Lucas put together for the Star Wars prequels replaced with the ruthlessly efficient edit style of modern TV and the bassy, minimalist music style these Star Wars Disney+ series are all bundled with. It felt wrong, but a little exciting.

    And they say George Lucas didn’t give the people what they want.

    The excitement drained slightly as we moved into another one of those bloody market square sequences. Rogue One was packed full of them and they’re shit. Skipping ahead, part of the challenge I think the show faces is integrating the dramatic, theatrical dialogue style of the prequels with the necessities of quick-turnaround TV writing, and the introduction of the Inquisitors is the worst of both worlds — artless, dramaless bloviating punctuated by nonsensical personal revelations. They look ridiculous, marching in formation scowling as they walk down the street. These are the avatars of Imperial power, untouchable by mere mortals by virtue of the system they represent — so why are they also crude outlaws rolling into town?

    Not exactly Peter Cushing, are they.

    Ewan McGregor and Joel Edgerton are both delightful reprisals, and their scene together really shines. Tatooine is a dull, dark place that mostly looks like a Jakku set and I could have done with one less shot of Obi-wan riding his camel beast across the sands. Obi-wan’s life and his house and his interactions don’t tell us a great deal, another victim of the brutally efficient script if nothing else. A Jawa is stealing from him, he’s secreting away slices of fish monster to eat, and he has nightmares.

    Leia’s Alderaan is where things get interesting, at least. The style of the prequels for the height of the republic is captured in at least a passing fashion, with a really nice nod to Padme’s habit of dressing her subordinates up as the Queen. This makes the tension between the critically-wounded old republic and the incoming matte drear of the Empire both textual and aesthetic, in the process somewhat justifying the latter (the single grey air traffic control tower silhouetted in the not-Mos Eisley that Obi-wan visits is mirrored by the rotunda that Bail Organa receives his guests in). The mercenaries who kidnapp Leia also have a modicum of actual menace that the inquisitors lacked.

    Alderaan has a glorious prequel vibe to it.

    All in all, as a first episode I would say “fine”. I’m willing to see where this one goes. My unfair demand for these new Star Wars is that they have the same passion and attention to detail that George Lucas put into the prequels — it is hard to imagine he would have signed off on the opening ‘escape from the Jedi temple’ sequence, which closes with children sneaking off down a bridge set against a background of indeterminate clashes between murky troopers and illuminated Jedi, tiny little figures facing off in small groups over a grid. I reckon Lucas would have had a tidal wave of crisp, brilliant white troopers marching in formation right to left, sweeping all opposition aside as the kids make their way into the shadows.

    Ranking, best to worst:

    1. Flashback recap of the prequel trilogy
    2. Obi-wan: Episode 1

    If you like my writing, please subscribe to my Letterboxd reviews or watch Sixteen attempts to talk to you about ‘Suicide Squad’, available on Youtube now. Previously I watched and wrote-up season 1 of ‘Invincible’, in reverse order.

  • Inside

    He’s tall and I’m short, and I don’t sing quite so well, but otherwise there was an unnerving amount of myself to see in Bo Burnham’s chronicle of his year indoors. I too spent most of the last year in a box room surrounded by tech kit. I too took the opportunity to grow a dubious beard that didn’t suit me. And I too used the lockdown period to shepherd a big long meandering video project through to its conclusion. I even, unknowingly, made a sock puppet.

    It wasn’t the most difficult pandemic experience, and in many ways it’s the preferable one — the ability to seclude oneself, to work from home, to live in a box like that, is a privilege not everyone shares. But that doesn’t mean it’s fun, or a natural state of being. I don’t live in as grandiose a house as I’m sure the international celebrity Bo Burnham does, but I spent the year of lockdown being able to work in one room, relax in another, and sleep in a third — this too is a privilege. I was able, as Burnham surely was, to go for walks in the local area — another privilege by no means universal.

    But these advantages don’t — or rather didn’t — free me, or presumably Burnham. They mitigate. They are things everyone ought to have access to even if not everyone does. But they don’t free you from the weight of boxing up your life, of not seeing your friends and loved ones, of attaching a risk assessment to every human interaction.

    Unlike Bo Burnham, my video project didn’t start during the pandemic. My video project started in 2017 when I was writing up my PhD thesis. Again, I had very good fortune in being able to do a PhD and very good fortune in being able to see it through to its conclusion. But that conclusion was a miserable experience. Finishing a thesis (for me, I guess) was working twelve hours a day for weeks on end in near-complete seclusion, chasing a goal that ultimately becomes only relevant to you. I put my personal belongings in storage and moved back to the university; I imagined packing up elements of myself and putting them in storage too. Hobbies, interests, friends — all in cardboard boxes and up on a shelf.

    It took a long time to unpack everything again. Some things may never have come back, forgotten deep in a mental storage locker. And some new things learned in that time have proven difficult to shake. But for COVID, and lockdown, this prepared me — somewhat. Putting things back in boxes, and getting them out again when safe. Taking solace in online relationships when interacting in person was unavailable. And taking the opportunity to finish my video project.

    All of which is to say, I found ‘Inside’ far too familiar to comfortably assess. Burnham’s ticks, Burnham’s fixations — shots of his head on a pillow, shots of himself in his pants — Burnham’s packaging of unfinished thoughts, unfinished gags, unfunny songs representing his choking inability to find solace in creativity. These all have an intensely personal response in a way that would make saying “Oh the internet song was funny” seem beyond facile.

    Following Stewart Lee, who Burnham occasionally channels in this: ‘Was it funny?’ ‘No, but I agreed the hell out of it.’

  • Tenet

    Tempting to say “Inception done right”, if that’s fair. Your tolerance may vary based on how able you are to keep up with the near-incessant rattling off of plot details in low voices — which comes to an apparently intentional breaking point in the finale — but if all else fails it’ll definitely support a rewatch. John David Washington and Robert Pattinson are up to the challenge of keeping it ticking over, both with a sort of pleasant, easy charisma, and they’re aided by a relentless, frenetic pace to the action for the bulk of the film.

    Inception is increasingly hamstrung as it goes along by Nolan’s bloody-minded refusal to approach camp or psychedelia in his film entirely about dream-worlds. Which is not to say he refuses to get silly with it, just that what Dark Knight Rises does for “some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb”, Inception does for all of dreams. The world of Tenet, pegged as it is to the world of James Bond spy thrillers, is a much better match for Nolan’s pared-down aesthetic.

    The video-game overtones of Inception make a reappearance here too, with the first pass through the tax haven vault following impeccable video game logic, up to the dispensing of a dual boss fight against a mysterious opponent. The motif makes a slightly less successful appearance at the climax of the film, where we’re forced to wait at a locked grille while the villain monologues over a PA.

    The film’s commitment to the forwards/backwards theme is complete, with Branagh’s villain beginning the film attempting to have the protagonist killed, progressing from there to being deceived into having him to dinner, and departing the film as the image of the consummate family man (billionaire). Are we meant to think that his silver suicide pill is identical to the one that does not kill the protagonist at the start of the film? In that case, it’s only the presence of Debicki’s vengeful wife which allows him to be killed at all.

    The most significant complaint I’d level is that the final action sequence is both a little confused — a showcase for forward/backward thinking that doesn’t quite linger long enough on the logic of any given part, and centred around the progress of protagonists who are difficult to pick out under their military gear. I assume it all makes sense in retrospect, but it lacks the finely tuned amping up that characterises the earlier action sequences — drip feeding a logical progression of increase in scope as we move from backwards bullets to backwards guns to backwards people to backwards plans.

    It’s all very (brace for it) Steven Moffat, and one wonders about the link there — not least the extremely Doctor Who finale for Pattinson’s character. Who and Bond have a long history of mixing and matching that’s too interesting to explain here but it’s absolutely a sensible leap for someone making a sci-fi Bond. And of course they do little else the whole film long than reversing the polarity of things.

    The costuming is pristine at every point, as you might hope. Special mention as well to the perfectly scored stamp on a cello in the opening sequence. It would have been nice to see this in a cinema — hopefully the opportunity will present itself at some point in a post-COVID world.