Review Detail

Obi-Wan Kenobi felt bloated from the get-go, its length padded out with amateurish action, bad foot races, and needless fan service. Unsurprisingly, it works wayyyy better as a 2.5 movie, and Spence does a professional job of building a three-act structure that still hits every critical plot point. Removing all the flashbacks helps the pacing dramatically and brings more life and swashbuckling to the proceedings. Tasteful cuts also help mask the limitations of the Volume for action sequences, pulling away from certain scenes when they become laughable and leaving it to your imagination. The inter-cutting of Obi-Wan and Anakin in bacta tanks is a fun addition that feels right. The only edit that sticks out as a bit jarring is the smash-to-black during the water-planet escape, and the smash cut after Leia is kidnapped (though this does save us the pain of that awful foot race from the original).

There's only so much an edit can do, however. The visuals are cheap-looking and poorly lit; no amount of restructuring will fix that. Reva is still incredibly grating, though the cuts fix her motivation, leaving her ultimate fate ambiguous. The Disney Wars touch of forced jokes and glow-bat lightsabers always irritates me, and Vader's AI voice is weirdly paced and intonated. A recast will always be better than this algorithm-generated crap or a CGI facemask.

The entire premise of this show doesn't really work within the context of Episodes 3 and 4 without some significant mental gymnastics, and its production is rather sloppy. But if you're going to watch Obi-Wan Kenobi, an edit like this is the way to do it. Nothing of importance was lost in cutting over 3 hours of material, which is damning for Lucasfilm and a win for fans.