Star Words: Episode III, Part 18

[matril]

During the second half of Episode III, things get very dark very quickly. So it's nice to have a few lighter moments as we're leading up to the heartbreak and tragedy. Obi-Wan provides a number of these during his mission to take down General Grievous. As I've pointed out before, Grievous is never meant to be a truly horrifying threat. He's a distraction to mask the identity of the true mastermind, and to misdirect Jedi like Obi-Wan away from the real danger happening on Coruscant.

Obi-Wan, it appears, isn't too concerned by the threat of Grievous either. He's counting on the clonetroopers arriving as backup, true, but it's still pretty reckless to jump down and confront Grievous and his hordes of battle droids all by himself. (Reckless....hmmm....remember how Obi-Wan acknowledged this shortcoming during a conversation with Yoda in Episode V?)

"Hello there."

First off, a great echo of his first line in Episode IV. Second, it's a marvelously flippant thing to say in such a perilous situation. Putting on a show of bravado to throw Grievous off guard, or just genuinely fearless? Either way, being "a bold one," as Grievous calls it, seems to pay off. Obi-Wan will emerge victorious.

It's really quite intriguing to see a young Obi-Wan after we were first introduced to him as a mysterious old mentor in the original trilogy. He's wiser and sadder by then, but in many respects he's still the same. Still that wry sense of humor. Still ready to charge into action when necessary, maybe with a wink and a witty one-liner.

Next, the Jedi have a inkling of their impending doom, but too little too late....

Comments

[krpalmer]

I hadn't noticed this regular post on my Dreamwidth reading list, and had started to wonder when I finally realised I just hadn't scrolled far enough down past someone else's post. That embarrassing admission past, while I'd been imagining something from just a little earlier in the movie based on what you'd said last time the analysis was amusing here. The connection to Episode IV I've seen made; making a link to something from The Empire Strikes Back was a surprise. (That does, though, remind me of having to convert old suppositions of Yoda training someone surely "twenty or a little younger" from scratch to imagining a "reckless" child, and of supposing there'd be people incapable of that conversion...)

[matril]

Well, it was posted late this week because I was out of town!

I think that brief mention of "Obi-Wan used to be reckless" could be interpreted so many different ways, that everyone filled in the blanks their own way over the years and would almost inevitably be disappointed when it was portrayed differently. For some reason I never really filled in the blanks with much detail myself, so I was satisfied with how the prequels did it.

[krpalmer]

I know that at some point after I knew there were going to be new Star Wars movies, I stopped speculating about what "must" have happened in them to the extent I had before, perhaps even convinced speculation would set me up for trouble. I'm also a little aware "you just had your own beliefs about what would happen" could be turned back against me with the Disney space movies, though...