After years of rumors, Ewan McGregor confirmed today that he would be reprising his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in a new series for Disney+.
Word broke earlier this week that McGregory was in talks to return to the franchise for a TV series, reprising the role from the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The series is set to shoot next year, but Lucasfilm didn’t announce a title, plot, or release date.
We have seen the character in the years since he appeared in the films: he was a fixture in The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels animated shows (where he was voiced by James Arnold Taylor). In the latter, we saw him living on Tatooine, where he had a final confrontation with his long-standing nemesis, Darth Maul, five years prior to the events of A New Hope.
The show will be the third live-action series to debut on the platform, after The Mandalorian (which releases later this year), and the untitled Cassian Andor / Rogue One prequel series.
General Kenobi!
I am so stupidly excited for this.
Hello there.
this is wonderful news, Ewan is how we know the younger Obi-Wan![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
@3/space-ghost: For me, James Arnold Taylor is mainly how I know the younger Obi-Wan. Between The Clone Wars and Rebels, he’s played Obi-Wan in far more hours’ worth of screen content than Guinness and McGregor combined. When I read books or comics from that era, it’s Taylor’s voice I hear as Obi-Wan rather than McGregor’s (although of course it’s Taylor doing a McGregor impression with shades of Guinness).
At this point, there are over 85 hours’ worth of canonical animated Star Wars content vs. only 20-odd hours’ worth of feature films. And that’s not counting all the LEGO stuff. I’m convinced that there’s now a whole generation of kids who think of Star Wars as an animated TV franchise that has occasional live-action movies.
I can look at Ewan MacGregor forever. :-D
#4 – nothing wrong with that impression. Almost all of the animated material is of seriously higher quality than over half of the movies. Only ANH, ESB & R1 match the animated shows.
My relationship with the animated series is … complicated, because they have really good, hard-hitting episodes and then they have Michigan J. Frog, Jedi Master riding around in his converted R2 unit, and apparently it’s all supposed to be canonical.
Finally!
@7/hoopmanjh: Star Wars was originally made for kids, or for adults nostalgic for their childhood. It was an homage to the adventure films and serials Lucas had loved as a child. It was never meant to be some grim, serious thing; indeed, what made it so revolutionary and transformative was that it brought a sense of fun, adventure, and whimsy back to SF/fantasy films at a time when they tended to be solemn, sterile, and dystopian. Indeed, back then, many film critics scoffed at the Star Wars films (and other films in similar veins by Lucas, Spielberg, and their many imitators) and dismissed them as frivolous, lowbrow, and childish, unworthy of serious attention. So it’s always weird to me to see modern Star Wars fans complaining about anything fun or whimsical in the franchise, dismissing the animated shows in the same terms that ’70s and ’80s critics used to dismiss the original movies.
Granted, certainly the story arc you’re referring to was the absolute low point of The Clone Wars. But not because it was whimsical or cartoony, just because it was boring and not at all fun. Star Wars is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be made for childlike sensibilities, and to reawaken those sensibilities in its adult viewers.
@7 I died laughing at that.
I haven’t watched Resistance yet (I’m sure I’ll check it out, it just hasn’t been a big draw for me based on what I’ve seen of the previews) but I actually really loved Rebels. Clone Wars was a lot more hit or miss for me, in part because the movie just really didn’t do it for me, and it took me a long time to warm up for Ahsoka (and, I think it took the show awhile to really develop her into something more than ‘precocious youngling’ – I just wasn’t into all the ‘Skyguy’ and ‘Artoo-y’ stuff). I tended to be more interested in the clones and Anakin/Obi-Wan, at least at first. But the latter seasons were great (and I’m looking forward to seeing some closure in the arcs with the new season). I can appreciate that they might try to do something different every now and then even if it means they drop the ball every now and then. Even the Maul plot, which I was really skeptical of, ended up being pretty good. And if we get more Ventress I would be over the moon (although I think her story actually got wrapped up in a book I’ve yet to read…).
That said, the bits I’ve seen of the live action series look incredible.
@9 — Yeah, I don’t object to fun or whimsy or anything like that in Star Wars in general, but for me, at least, parts of the Clone Wars series weren’t hitting the balance I would have preferred.
This is the Star Wars project that excites me the most. McGregor has been superb in the role, and despite the fact that a lot of Kenobi’s story has been told, especially in the animated features, there is still plenty of room for lots of other adventures.
@11/hoopmanjh: Sure, TCW had imperfections, but it’s a non sequitur to blame that on the fact that it was animated. The live-action productions have their share of imperfections too. A story’s a story, regardless of whether it’s drawn or photographed or just told in words on a page.
Star Wars does whimsical humor best when it’s kept short and simple, like R2 standing in the rain and tip-toeing to see inside Yoda’s home, or all the snark between Han and Leia, or the conversations between the droids. [Hopeful whistle] “No, I don’t like you either.” [Sad whistle]
It’s when they try outrageous COMEDY! they tend to get into trouble.
@13 — Sorry — I wasn’t objecting to the series because it was animated, and I agree completely with what you’re saying. I also had similar problems with, well, pretty much the entire Artoo & Threepio in the Geonosian droid foundry sequence at the end of AotC, and much of the Artoo slapstick in the opening section of Revenge of the Sith.
@15/hoopmanjh: The question is, did kids like those sequences? They’re ultimately the primary target audience for the franchise, and adult fans are too prone to forget that.
My young son loves Ahsoka, which, admittedly, is part of what softened my heart a bit, lol. I also remember my (then) 5 year old sister really enjoying Jar Jar in TPM and we used to quote some of his lines back and forth to each other in silly circumstances (prequelmeming before it was cool).
That said I am in agreement with you on the droid foundry (although I like Artoo’s scenes in RotS) as well as the poop joke in TPM ;) You could probably argue that there’s a way to include kid friendly material in a better way that isn’t quite so lowbrow – but I don’t begrudge the franchise for continuing to appeal to kids, either. I do agree that sometimes adult fans try a little too much to make things dark/grown up. Although it does look like the Mandalorian will scratch that itch.
There’s something for everybody – there’s such a wealth of (good) Star Wars material now out there, it’s okay if not all of it is exactly to my taste ;)
A ‘kids movie’ doesn’t necessarily have to make dumb easy jokes to appeal to kids. They can even be smartly written and appeal to a broader audience, as Pixar has proven on several occasions.