ORIGINAL MOVIES or prequels? Which you prefer depends greatly on your own point of view - or at the very least, when you were born. Nonetheless, there's one character who straddles both eras of Star Wars storytelling like a bearded colossus, a Jedi Master who had front row seats while the limelight-hogging Skywalkers were busy either falling from grace or taking their first step into a larger world.
At risk of stretching a metaphor to the point where millions of voices cry out in terror, he's the energy field binding two trilogies together, and his new eponymously titled Disney+ show is set to fill in some crucial gaps of canon from those two decades between Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope.
"We're 10 years after Revenge Of The Sith and it's quite a dark period," Obi-Wan Kenobi director and executive producer Deborah Chow tells SFX, with understatement. "Obviously, Order 66 has happened, so many of the Jedi are either dead or in hiding, and the Empire is fully in ascendance. And for Obi-Wan personally, there's obviously all the feelings towards Anakin and what happened in Revenge Of The Sith, so there's a lot of stuff for him to deal with at the start of the show."
"Certainly one of the things that appealed to me is that the Obi-Wan we left at the end of Episode III is very different to the Sir Alec Guinness interpretation of the character," adds writer and executive producer Joby Harold. "At the end of Episode III, Obi-Wan is quite emotionally torn up in regards to what's happened with him and Anakin, and then in Episode IV he's comparatively at peace. That always felt like an untold story to me. How he became that zen Jedi master having seen his brother burn in front of him on Mustafar, there's a clear arc to a story between those two moments. It's very much the connective tissue between the prequels and the original trilogy."
This story is from the June 2022 edition of SFX.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the June 2022 edition of SFX.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Spooks Ghouls & Freaks Fools
WITH ITS ECLECTIC cast, broad comedy and supernatural farce, Rentaghost was a mainstay of BBC children’s TV from the late ’70s to the mid-’80s and like nothing else.
LOST IN THE SHADOWS
THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS OF INTERDIEW WITH THE DAMPIRE DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF LESTAT, LOUIS, CLAUDIA AND WHERE THE ANNE RICE UNIVERSE IS HEADING
NINE LIVES
ON SET FOR THE FINAL SERIES OF INSIDE NO 9. STEVE PEMBERTON AND REECE SHEARSMITH REFLECT ON THE TYRANNY OF THE TWIST
NOA'S ARC
CAESAR'S STORY MAY BE DONE AND DUSTED, BUT AS HIS CREATORS RICK JAFFA AND AMANDA SILVER TELL US, THERE'S STILL PLENTY OF TERRAIN TO EXPLORE IN - KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
TICKET TO RIDE
DIRECTOR BEN CHESSELL TAKES THE TARDIS BACK IN TIME IN HIS TWO EPISODES
SERVING FACE
HAIR AND MAKE-UP DESIGNER CLAIRE WILLIAMS ON NEW LOOKS
BABY BOOM
The TARDIS lands on a spaceship. It was very, very hard to shoot. We used real babies! I like to do things that I’ve never done before and sometimes that’s quite hard, with such a long career as mine.
BOXING CLEVER
DOCTOR WHO IS BACK AND THIS TIME IT'S TAKING OVER THE PLANET
WELCOME HOME
THE CREATIVE MINDS BEHIND THE LIVE-ACTION ADAPTATION OF THE FALLOUT GAME SERIES EXPLAIN THEIR ORIGINAL TAKE ON BETHESDA'S POST-APOCALYPTIC WORLD
MONSTERS INC
THE TITANS UNITE IN HOT COLLAB GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE