The (side)-villain problem of Obi-Wan Kenobi

It's difficult to know exactly what the general public thinks of the Disney + miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi. From what I've seen, the reception has been mixed, and has depended on the expectations you had going in. If you were determined to like the series, you probably did like it all the way through, and felt especially vindicated by the strong finale. If you were determined to find that The Mouse "doesn't know Star Wars" and the studio was bound to screw things up, you might see the finale as too little too late, or even a tone-deaf attempt at fan service that didn't really understand the lore. The average fan, if I can take a guess, would probably find the beginning of the series slow but be won over by the last or the two last episodes, and find themselves reasonably satisfied at the end. I'm guessing this because I'm an average fan myself, and this is more or less where I landed.

I may be leaning a bit towards the over-positive side to be honest, because although I acknowledge that the build-up of the series was slow, I enjoyed this part too – at least, most of it. There were some storylines that fans weren't very happy with but which I gobbled up without complaint, while understanding their position. One was Obi-Wan's own role in the series. 

I think I've finally stumbled upon at least one reason why so many resent the portrayal of Luke in The Last Jedi. There are some characters you just don't want to get caught up in a Broken Hero story arc. This arc features someone who has been a hero once (or has the potential to be one) but who has become disillusioned and disheartened and doesn't want to enter the fray because he (it's mostly a he) thinks there's nothing he can do to make things better, and he may actually make things worse. As the story progresses, the Broken Hero learns to have faith in himself again, and finally he's strong enough to save the day. I had no problem seeing Luke go through the BH story arc in The Last Jedi or Obi-Wan going through it here, but I understand those who aren't too pleased, and who would rather see these characters at the peak of their heroic powers. They've been through and learned a lot already, do they really have to go on another hero's journey? 

I had pretty much the same feeling when watching the first three episodes of the latest Around the World in 80 Days and then giving up on it, in spite of having looked forward to a chance to see it. There were many reasons why, but one of them was the depiction of Phileas Fogg as a poor fish who had to be brought up to the mark by his companions. I can buy Fogg as an emotional cripple, but not as an emotional wreck. He should own the stage and not be a Broken Hero.

But, as I said, personally I didn't mind a broken Obi-Wan, especially as Ewan McGregor gave a stellar performance throughout as the haunted Jedi whose former Padawan now terrorises the galaxy. I also had no objections to the focus on young Leia, and the bond growing between her and Obi-Wan as he has to step in and rescue her (twice). Yes, it's strange that they don't seem to know each other at all in the Original Trilogy after having been on adventures together, but I think the series managed to explain that pretty neatly, and after all Leia later calls her son Ben, presumably after Obi-Wan's alias. There are already continuity problems between the OG trilogy and the Star Wars prequels, and in my opinion this series doesn't make them much worse.

However, I did mind the sometimes rushed storytelling where you weren't given explanations of things you really needed to know. How does Reva (I'll get to her) know Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader are the same person? How can Obi-Wan be unaware that Vader (whom he knows to be Anakin) is still alive until Reva tells him? How does Leia know that the strange guy calling himself Ben is really Obi-Wan Kenobi? How does Reva survive two stab wounds with a light sabre, one when she's just a child? How does the Grand Inquisitor survive a stab wound (his species is supposed to have two stomachs, but this is never spelled out in the series)? How does Reva guess that Luke is really Vader's son, and if she didn't guess, then why did she want to kill him?

The other problem for me is the way the character of Reva is written. A member of the Inquisitors, a Force-sensitive group tasked by the Emperor to hunt down surviving Jedi, it's clear from the first – all too clear – that she has her own agenda. Moses Ingram, who plays Reva, is a good actor and does her best. She manages to put Reva's emotions across well enough during the easy-to-foresee story developments in the final two episodes to make her go from annoying to passable. But she can't do anything about the script, and in my opinion, Reva is a badly written character.

It might have been different if the series had allowed the viewer to take a sterner view of what is, in essence, a side villain, and see her as an example of everything that is wrong with the Sith creed. From the first, she is seething with resentment and wants to get "what I'm owed". So here we have a character who really is fuelled by anger, hate and vindictiveness, emotions the Emperor seeks to encourage in his followers, and they do her no good. But instead of highlighting this, the series gave at least me the impression that I was supposed to sympathise with Reva to a certain extent, to find it unfair when she is sneered at by the Grand Inquisitor when her methods, though brutal and unsubtle, give results, and to admire her badassery. I wasn't prepared to play ball here. The line between interesting bitterness in a villain and irritating self-pity can be a fine one, and for my money Reva crossed it with her constant hints at her own trauma (for instance during her interrogation of Leia) and blindness to just how much damage she caused in pursuit of "justice", i.e. her own revenge. Perhaps a corrective view where Obi-Wan or someone else pointed out how much she has gone astray would have helped, but as it is only other bad guys are allowed to criticise or question Reva, and we're not supposed to listen to them.

I would much rather have seen more of Rupert Friend's Grand Inquisitor, a cold, calculating and precise side-villain who could have filled the role of "major threat besides Vader" better than his emotion-ridden, disgruntled employee. In the end, though, and in spite of the fears of some fans, Obi-Wan remains the hero of his own series, and isn't elbowed out by Reva or any other character. And those waiting for an impressive showdown between Obi-Wan and Vader, leading to a highly charged emotional moment which allows Obi-Wan to move on from his guilt over "failing" Anakin, will not be disappointed. Just hang on in there.

A prime example of Franchise Fatigue – Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

It's been almost a month since I blogged, but believe me, there have been reasons, including health-related ones. However, since I'm now convalescing, it's time to get back in the saddle. There has been no lack of material on the nerdy spectrum of culture consumption lately. I'll start with a comparatively unambitious subject: the latest Fantastic Beasts film.

I really should have seen coming that this part of the Harry Potter franchise would run out of steam, fast. When the first film in this series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, was announced, it did seem like they were scraping the Wizarding World barrel, and I was all set to be scathing about it. As it happened, though, this film won me over, and I didn't even balk at the studio's ambition of making five films based on the flimsiest of material. However, the series already lost its way in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald with its many, overcomplicated plot strands, and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, while easier to follow, was decidedly underwhelming. So where did the Fantastic Beasts films go wrong? Was the franchise doomed from the start?

With hindsight, I would argue that there was little chance of pulling off a Fantastic Beasts quintology. There simply aren't enough exciting adventures you could send Newt Scamander, awkward magic zoologist and ostensible hero of the franchise, on. Many commentators have noted how the Fantastic Beasts films have tried to push together two wildly differing storylines in the same film series – one about Newt Scamander's attempts to protect magic wildlife and keep them in check; one about the rise of evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald and the problems facing chief goody Albus Dumbledore when he tries to stem these dark developments without confronting Grindelwald head-on (they made a blood pact once which prevents them from directly going up against each other). The solution to Fantastic Beasts' problems, it has been suggested, would have been to pick a plot. Let the Fantastic Beasts films be about fantastic beasts, and Newt, and leave Wizarding World politics out of it. Possibly, the Dumbledore-Grindelwald relationship could form its own spin-off series, without Newt in it.

I see the merit of this argument. Even if Dumbledore is fond of picking champions with no personal ambitions, the bungling Newt does become increasingly implausible as Dumbledore's agent and the Wizarding World's Big Hope. He cares about his animals most of all, and though his knowledge of magic beasts sometimes comes in handy, you do wonder why Dumbledore couldn't have chosen some other luckless wizard to do his bidding. However, I understand why J.K. Rowling and the studio tried to combine the Fantastic Beasts plot with the Grindelwald vs Dumbledore plot – I'm not sure there is enough material in either of these plot lines to fill a trilogy of films on its own, let alone a quintology. As Newt's adventures take place at the same time as Grindelwald is trying to take over the Wizarding World, it makes sense to try to combine the two storylines. Also, I have to admit that at the end of the day, I find Grindelwald's and Dumbledore's relationship more interesting than magic critters. For someone who hasn't read the Harry Potter books, this part of Harry Potter lore was always puzzling as the films didn't offer much of an explanation of who this Grindelwald fellow was or just how close he was to Dumbledore.

Nevertheless, the execution has been lacking, as the Fantastic Beasts franchise has failed to make the most of what was best in the two storylines. What chiefly charmed me in the first film was the new quartet of main characters: Newt himself, his love interest Tina (who's almost as awkward as he is), non-magical baker and general good guy Jacob Kowalski and Queenie, Tina's blonde bombshell sister who endearingly falls for Jacob. In Crimes of Grindelwald, we still get a goodish bit of interaction between these four characters. In Secrets of Dumbledore, though, they are split up on different side quests most of the time. We hardly get to see anything of Tina who's apparently too "busy" to help stop the super-dangerous Grindelwald. Queenie, who's joined Grindelwald's side in the hope that he will legalise marriages between magic and non-magic folk (as opposed to killing all the "no-majes", as seems to be his real plan), spends most of the film isolated and being torn. Side characters are thrown in to make up for the lack of quartet interaction, but it doesn't really come off (what was Yusuf's part of the plan again?). Other relationships it could have been interesting to explore, such as the sibling rivalry between Newt and his brother Theseus, are also underdeveloped.

As for the Grindelwald-Dumbledore part of the plot, we do get one scene between them where they reminisce about old times, which is nice. Mads Mikkelsen does his best as a new version of Grindelwald, and is believable enough as an old flame of Jude Law's Dumbledore and as someone who does one-on-one persuasions well. Now, I liked Johnny Depp as Grindelwald in The Crimes of Grindelwald – I'd say he was one of that film's saving graces – but he was so weirdly made up, he never had the chance to pull off the "Dumbledore's ex-boyfriend" part of the character, though he was a convincing demagogue. It was easier to think "I get you, Albus" when the not-weirdly-made-up Mikkelsen was doing his stuff. The main problem with the switch (from an on-screen perspective) was that you never got the impression that Depp's Grindelwald and Mikkelsen's Grindelwald were one and the same person.

But what was worse was that they decided to go down the most boring route imaginable when it came to Grindelwald – that of the Hitler parallel. Real Nazis are dull enough in a fictional context, as there's no nuance or other side of the argument to be had: they're just evil. Arguably, though, it's even worse from a dramatic point of view to use some kind of I-can't-believe-it's-not-Nazis antagonists, where we are supposed to transfer our negative feelings about Nazis onto the fictional antagonists because, huh, we can see it's the same kind of thing, right? I didn't care for the "Spice is drugs" shorthand in The Book of Boba Fett, and I don't care for these analogies either. Let villains be condemned on their own merits. In The Secrets of Dumbledore, the German wizard-in-charge Vogel decides to let Grindelwald take part in an election, arguing that he'll never gather enough support to win it, and Dumbledore laments that Vogel decided to do "the easy thing rather than the right one". Really? Blocking Grindelwald from running would have been "the right thing"? Isn't that rather "the easy thing"?

For all the criticism that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald got, I had the feeling (I only saw it once, with a pair of ill-functioning 3-D glasses that made me giddy) that it was more creatively bad than Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. It had some interesting ideas, even if they didn't go anywhere. The Secrets of Dumbledore just felt tired. I'm afraid it's time to put this magic beast of a spin-off franchise to sleep.