Latest / Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast / Issue 321: Obi-Wan Wonderings

Transcript

Issue 321: Obi-Wan Wonderings · Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast

0:05
Welcome to the note polity. Hi, this is Nick Nastasu, story editor
0:12
on Star Wars, the Clone Wars and Star Wars bad Batch and you are
0:17
listening to aggressive negotiations. Hello, and welcome to aggressive negotiations coming out yah
0:30
from somewhere outside Harishi Mays and I am just one of your hosts here Matthew
0:36
rushing Anne with me as he is every single week, the one and only,
0:42
incredibly brilliant Jedi Master John Mills. And don't tell anybody I said that
0:47
I'm no noe. See, the original Jedi Master John Mills was not brilliant.
0:52
I am his clone, John Mills, and the cloning the Cama Noans
0:59
tweaked everything. That's what made me brilliant. Also cost me all of my
1:03
hair, though the original John Mills head hair. Sadly, you know you
1:07
got to make a trade off, right, so you know, would you
1:11
rather have hair or be brilliant? It's you know, it's not really a
1:14
tough call if you ask me, I don't know. It's a tougher call
1:15
than you think, really a tougher call than you think. Well, we
1:19
are so excited as always to be here to talk some Star Wars with you
1:23
this week. I'm really excited because I've actually got a surprise question for John,
1:30
which I love when we surprise one another. But before we do that,
1:34
of course, you could find us wherever podcasts can be listened to,
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it. But John, so I know that both you and I were able
2:55
to go see Return of the Jedi and theaters fortieth anniversary. Oh now,
3:01
I'm super intrigued what this question is going to be now? And so as
3:07
I'm watching the film, something kind of percolates in my brain about Obi Wan
3:16
Kenobi the series. Okay, and it's this. So in Return of the
3:25
Jedi, of course, we learn that there are parts of the story that
3:31
Luke doesn't know, right because nobody's told him, and you know, instead
3:39
of sitting down and telling him a four hour story or whatever, you know,
3:45
he's just been given the gist. And it made me think, you
3:50
know, one of the things about the Obi Wan Kenobi series that felt kind
3:57
of like a stickler for me was the fact that Kenobi and Vader have this
4:04
showdown and Obi Wan well, i mean, let's be honest, kicks Vader's
4:14
ass in the end, right, And that kind of feeling like a little
4:20
bit of a stickler to me, m and I think to you as well.
4:27
So my thought process there it could be a stickler. But I was
4:34
also thinking, in Star Wars, not everybody knows all the stories, and
4:43
so I was thinking to myself, this feels like one of those things that
4:48
Anakin as Vader would have experienced and he would have told nobody about and would
4:57
basically have pretended like it never happened, and so that nobody knew what happened
5:04
between him and Obi Wan in the fight, and he never really talks about
5:11
the fact that it was obi Wan to anyone, and so everybody then would
5:14
just assume by the time we get to a new Hope, oh, he
5:17
must be dead by now. And that really kind of stuck with me because
5:24
it just reminded me that, yes, we who watch everything, of course
5:29
we know every part of the story, but not every character in the Star
5:32
Wars series knows everything that's ever happened in the Star Wars universe. And so
5:38
that was just something that helped me kind of almost think, well, well
5:42
not almost, but think that, well, that makes a lot of sense
5:46
as to how this could kind of fit in with the overall saga and not
5:55
necessarily interrupt anything or make anything not work. I'll come at it from two
6:01
different angles here. One I agree with you absolutely. I think that the
6:08
problem with the way that we as an audience have been trained by movies as
6:14
a whole is there's a transference factor that when a character learns it, well,
6:20
when the audience learns it, we've been trained to immediately presume everybody else
6:26
knows it too. Case in point, and I think it's a It's a
6:30
very very pertinent example. In The Breakfast Club, jug Nelson's character has a
6:39
very humanizing moment that happens, and then at the end he and the Molly
6:46
Ringwald character get together, and we as the audience are okay with it because
6:50
we've seen him have this humanizing moment. But if you think about it for
6:55
a second, she never witnessed it, and we never saw him tell her,
7:00
we never saw her discover it, but we still transfer it and we
7:03
still say it happened because we witnessed it. The way that works against an
7:10
audience is we say, well, we witnessed this, Obviously these other characters
7:14
know it as well, and to your point, not necessarily. So I
7:17
think that's a completely valid I think it's a great read of it. Vader
7:21
kept us to himself. Vader never said, oh, hey I fought Obi.
7:25
Hey, Target. You know, it's not like they were sitting down
7:27
in the Death Star canteen and Vader's like, well, you know, there
7:30
was one time where I fought Hobie wanted he kind of mopped the floor with
7:34
me. You remember Lego Star Wars where the Emperor's like, uh, let's
7:44
play the tape and they watch, all right, Vader go I have you
7:47
now and then like oh, He's like, let's rewind that, right,
7:53
have you now? Yep? Yeah, it's well, unfortunately that makes me
7:58
start thinking of the robot chicken Emperor stuff, and that's even better. Yes,
8:01
well that's kind of what I'm thinking, like this idea that again everybody
8:05
automatic, Yeah, I'm aware of everything. Dude, I haven't finished paying
8:11
that off yet. Do you have any idea what this is going to do?
8:13
To my credit, oh, just build another one. But my sticking
8:24
point for it because now that we've opened this up, and I think we've
8:26
talked about this on six or two club when we talked about the series or
8:30
something like that, I always subscribed in my brain that Obi Wan and Vader
8:35
had met between the trilogies, because Vader says, obi Wan once thought as
8:41
you do exactly exactly. My question is, with the obi Wan series and
8:46
now rewatching Return of the Jedi, do you think A that the Obi Wan
8:52
series we got do you believe that Vader got that impression from obi Wan?
8:58
Or B do you think that that's our opening for another obi Wan season is
9:01
to have obi Wan find out he's alive and go over and say, wait,
9:05
maybe I should just try to redeem him. Tables turn, Vader mops
9:11
the floor with obi Wan, and that's why everybody thinks that obi Wan must
9:15
be dead. I think it is interesting, and I do wish that I
9:18
had gone back, and I apologize to listeners for not going back and just
9:22
rewatching that final fight between them. But I think the way it has written
9:30
is that that final fight, Anakin is very clear that there is no salvation
9:37
for him, that the choice that he has made is the choice that he's
9:43
made, and he's sticking with it. And so it is in that moment
9:50
that you know obi Wan feels that he can do no more for Anakin other
9:58
than beat him an escape so that when the time comes he's ready to train
10:05
Luke and so, and that I think is an interesting place because you know,
10:13
it does leave a lot of ambiguity to you know, why wouldn't why
10:20
wouldn't Obi One just kill Vader at the time. And the more that I've
10:24
thought about that question as well has led me to think if Obi One had
10:33
done that, it exposes himself very clearly to the Emperor. He would know
10:39
that Vader has died, and wouldn't that mean that then Vade that the Emperor
10:46
would very ardently be then searching for another prentice, And then that put a
10:54
target maybe on Leia and Luke's back much sooner than they would ever be ready
11:01
for, and or any other possible Jedi that he could you know, corrupt
11:07
that might be left. And so therefore, you know, obi Wan is
11:11
trusting in the fact that the force and the plan that he and Yoda have
11:16
is to wait until Luke is ready, which, of course I don't know
11:22
how differently it plays in that in the deleted scene that we eventually found out
11:28
about, where Yoda says, you know, hey, Obi Wan wanted to
11:31
tell you. I told him not to um interesting in and of itself,
11:35
but let me turn this around though, because we're talking about that fight and
11:39
this is this is the interesting thing that I'll say before I get to this,
11:45
this sort of like counter question thing. Um a great topic by the
11:48
way, like because I think it's rich and I think that the Obi Wan
11:52
series is one of those ones where I'm always going to grapple with it because
11:56
there are always going to be things I don't like about it, and there
11:58
are gonna be things that it's technical storytelling issues that I'm always going to have
12:03
with it because that's the type of person I am, and I'm gonna come
12:07
at it. I'm gonna be like this, this wasn't the best story choice,
12:11
or this beat should have gone differently, Like just the other day I
12:13
was thinking about it. I was like the escape scene where they have like
12:18
the two ships. I know how I would have done that differently, yea.
12:24
But I think that the counter question I want to bring to you is
12:31
rooted in the fact that even though I had these problems with the obi Wan
12:35
series, the underlying premise of it is strong enough that I go back and
12:39
I can and I still think about it and I still try to work through
12:43
story points that I liked from it. So let me pose this question to
12:50
you. What if obi one had redeemed Vader, not redeemed, but made
12:56
Vader repent in that moment, what does that wind up looking like? If
13:01
if Obi Wan offers the hand to Vader and says, you're still Anakin,
13:09
you can choose to come out of this, and Anakin says, you know
13:13
what, You're right, this was all my fault. I have to make
13:16
things right again, what does that look like. I think that's an really
13:26
interesting what if question, because obviously, you know that's that's something that the
13:35
series, I think you know, does have in the back of his it's
13:39
mind almost in the sense that I don't think wand wants to have to fight
13:43
an again again. And I think he would love to see that there was
13:48
some sort of remorse in Anakin, because that's the character that he knew,
13:54
right, That's the person that he knew he had helped raise, he had
13:58
helped train, and that obstinence and Anakin um is you know, not only
14:09
disheartening, but I think um in many ways it allows Obi Wan to basically
14:16
say in his heart, Anakin is dead, and the good man that was
14:24
your father died, and so Anakin turning. You know, I think what
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that would look like is that Anakin finding a way to confront the Emperor,
14:54
this time with obi Wan by his side and replaying the Dooku fight, but
15:01
doing it together. Here's a question, though, wouldn't the Emperor have sensed
15:07
that shift immediately? Or was the Emperor so prideful? Was the dark side
15:13
so strong with the inquisitorious, with the Empire being dominant, with you know,
15:20
the the the Jedi trapped in amber that are there all of these different
15:26
things going on? Could Anakin turning have flown under the radar long enough for
15:31
that to happen? Because I agree with you. I think that it winds
15:35
up being a thing where Vader fakes capturing obi Wan and says I have a
15:41
prisoner to take back to the Emperor, and they spring it on him at
15:46
that moment and say we're going to take him out. Yeah, I think
15:54
it's it's it's a great question that you're asking, because really it comes down
15:58
to, you know, how well can Anakin Skywalker control his emotions? You
16:03
know, um, you know, uh, we your feelings betray you,
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but they could be made to serve the emperor, is what obi Wan tells
16:15
Luke, right, your feelings do you credit? And so it makes me
16:21
wonder could Anakin control his feelings enough to pull that off? And I think
16:30
that's the thing that you would have to do right in the writing if that
16:33
was the case, right, if you're going to try and pull this off
16:37
the like and I love the idea of you know, bringing you know,
16:41
Obi one in as a prisoner, you know, parading him before the Emperor.
16:47
I think that's a phenomenal idea of of of the way to play that,
16:52
and then it turns into this showdown m a bit like and I think
16:56
also what's kind of grew great about this idea is that also harkens back to
17:00
Mall and Savage against the Emperor. And but this time, you know,
17:08
you have Obi one who is you know, by the time he fought Vader
17:18
there, he had regained all who he was, you know, and at
17:22
the height of his powers again and maybe even more so, you know,
17:27
it feels like he has absolutely taken a step towards, you know, a
17:34
level of Jedi greatness even he didn't have in episode three. And maybe it's
17:41
because there's a lot it feels like obviously by that point of the season two.
17:45
There's a lot that this character has already been through that when he's finally
17:49
able to let go, he is more calm and you know everything that a
17:56
Jedi is supposed to be at peace with oneself and so and then you have
18:03
you would have Anakin who has fully then regained all that had been lost from
18:10
him, and that it you know, he is now more powerful than he
18:18
actually was as Vader because of his turn. And so yeah, I think
18:26
I could totally see it working. You just need it to be written right
18:30
so that and and I think again, you can play with the idea of
18:34
the Emperor being overconfident in the same way that he is in Return of the
18:40
Jedi and end up with the same type of storyline right to make that work.
18:45
And so yeah, I really like all of that. And you know,
18:52
it was interesting to watch. It wasn't just fascinating to watch Return of
18:56
the Jedi and then think about Obi Wan Kenobi the series and have something there
19:03
click in my brain that like, oh, yeah, I mean I think
19:08
you were one hundred percent right. We just kind of transfer the idea that
19:14
all of our knowledge of Star Wars is all the same knowledge that everybody else
19:18
has in Star Wars, and that's not the case that you know, that's
19:25
not the case in history, and that's not the case in storytelling and the
19:29
characters that exist in whatever story we're watching, and so, and I think
19:34
we do a disservice when we pretend, like just because something happened in a
19:44
previous episode or a new version of the episode, that it's supposed to inform
19:47
other things, that that then transfers every bit of knowledge to everything else you
19:52
see. Next, one additional thing I want to hit on before we go,
19:56
because this has been a great discussion. I've really enjoyed it. I
20:00
really want to end on a super controversial note. The version of Return of
20:06
the Jedi that just played in the movie theaters is the four K version,
20:11
the last update that Lucas ever did, which includes a couple of two longtime
20:17
fans controversial changes, including fellow NERD partier Tristan Riddell hates Vader saying no now
20:25
when he throws the Emperor over. And I have my longtime friend Joey who
20:30
absolutely despises that change. He hates it so much I think that he spits
20:34
fire when he thinks about it. Now, I took my family and my
20:41
wife. Obviously we're a similar age. She barely registered the changes that had
20:48
been made. And that's because my wife is a very average moviegoer. She
20:51
doesn't obsess over anything. There was one person was the first time they ever
20:56
saw a Return of the Jedi. Two of my kids and actually one of
21:00
my kids it was her first time seeing the Return of the Jedi, and
21:03
two of my kids it was their first time seeing it in a long time.
21:06
Not a single one set a peep about effects not matching about they think
21:14
this wasn't good, this wasn't bad. Do you think that our you know,
21:21
when we talk about transference, do you think that we've all been so
21:25
close to Return of the Jedi that some people were not capable of enjoying the
21:30
four K release, this most the forty anniversary release the same way because they
21:37
obsessed about the changes. I mean, I'm sure that that's the case,
21:45
And in all honesty, I think I feel sorry for them because, you
21:56
know, I believe that, you know, any director is the arbiter of
22:03
whatever it is they've created and what the truth of that film is, right,
22:10
you know, in that film, I do think it's it's kind of
22:17
relative you know, does does Steven Spielberg have the right to go in and
22:22
change et and take out the guns? Sure, if that's what he wants
22:26
to do. Does he regret it now? And does he say he regrets
22:30
that addition of the film? And yes, he does, right, But
22:37
it's his choice, it's his movie. And so I've always felt that way
22:41
about Lucas. And you know, I think one of the things that always
22:47
allowed me to not be angry at Lucas for what he did is that he
22:52
always was very clear to the audience from the beginning that these films weren't what
23:02
he wanted them to be because of limitations put on him from the very beginning.
23:08
You know, he was never coy about the fact that from episodes you
23:15
know, fourth through six, that they just weren't what he wanted in some
23:22
ways more than others. Right. You know, Return of the Jedi has
23:23
the least amount of changes in it, I think because it's sort of caught
23:29
up between the yeah, between ninety seven and once he tinkered a little bit
23:33
more. I'll go ahead and say this, and this will be super controversial,
23:37
and I know it'll be super controversial with some people, but I've kind
23:41
of gone back and forth on the no thing. I had actually written a
23:44
blog many years ago where I said it was so weird that Return of the
23:47
Jedi was the only Star Wars movie up to that point that didn't have somebody
23:51
shouting no in it. It was the only one of the six where somebody
23:55
didn't shout no. And so when he added it, I said, I
23:57
used to make the joke, Aha, George because reads my blog. But
24:03
I was amazed with how well it played in a movie theater. And what
24:08
I sort of realized at that moment and I loved seeing Return of the Jedi
24:14
in the movie theater, is these changes play so well when you're in a
24:19
theater setting. That's what we've lost, is that we are watching these changes
24:27
in a small home environment. But if we encountered them in a big screening
24:34
room or a sound stage sort of thing, and we saw them, probably
24:42
the way Lucas encountered these changes was the moment where he said, yeah,
24:48
that works. We see it on our TV and we're like, oh,
24:52
I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna critique it. Whereas if we had been
24:55
sitting there with him in the screening room, we'd just said, Okay,
25:00
that might not have been my first choice, but that does work, and
25:02
it works well well. And I think that what you're saying there is something
25:07
that it's very fascinating to see that. Kathy Kennedy just came out and said
25:11
that one of the things that they've realized about the Star Wars films is they
25:15
need to eventize them again, make them events. Yep. And I think
25:19
we would all agree with her right that Star Wars films were meant to be
25:25
event films. They weren't meant to come out every single year. They were
25:30
meant to be these things that you're and she even talked about this idea.
25:33
Your anticipation builds towards the fact that there's going to be a new film,
25:40
and there is something to be said about you know, absence makes the heart
25:45
grow fonder when it comes to seeing Star Wars on screen. What do we
25:48
see with the return of the Jedi? Right? The outpouring of people going
25:55
to the theater to see it was astounding. It was like number three or
25:59
something or four or that weekend at the box office and it was only in
26:03
five hundred theaters. So I think what we're seeing is that fact, right,
26:08
and I think you're you're one hundred percent right. You know, there's
26:11
something about the communal aspect of seeing Star Wars together in a theater with a
26:18
bunch of different people that creates a different milieu of seeing Star Wars. I
26:25
mean, even the sequels were that way, right, whether we liked them
26:27
or not. There's something about being in the theater with people and everybody going
26:32
oh at the same time, are oh, you know, are you know?
26:36
Whatever it is? You know that there's something about that, and it's
26:41
one of the things I think that they have also realized going back to Obi
26:45
Wan Kenobi or any of the shows that they do, they don't put them
26:48
all out at one time, right, It's a communal experience. Everybody watches
26:52
it pretty much on the same day, and then for a week, everybody's
26:56
talking about it on social media, right and with their friends and with their
26:59
family, and then you get to see the next week and then you repeat
27:04
the cycle again, right. It's so it's been interesting to kind of see
27:11
them learn that lesson of like what makes Star Wars special, and what makes
27:17
Star Wars special is that it's not something that happens every day. It's the
27:22
same thing with Christmas. Do we want Christmas every day? No, because
27:26
then it just turns into just another day funny thing. And this is something
27:30
I hit on is anytime I catch one of my kids on a streaming service
27:33
watching a Christmas episode of something, they hear me complain and complain because I
27:37
don't want to watch in Halloween. I don't want to watch in Thanksgiving.
27:41
I don't want to watching Christmas during summertime because you are taking it out of
27:45
the context and you are diminishing its specialness. And I'm glad that Kathleen Kennedy
27:52
finally caught up to the rest of us this many years later. It's never
27:56
too late, Just like it was never too late for Vader to change,
27:59
It's never too late for Disney and current Lucasfilm to catch up to the rest
28:06
of us. But if people want to catch up with you online, Matt,
28:10
where can they find you? Well, you can find me all over
28:14
social media under the name Matt Rushing zero to the places that I'm most active
28:18
are Twitter, Instagram, Letterbox, and Arrow and it's all the same name.
28:22
You can also find me here on the network with a completed show called
28:25
Owl posted with that Withrea Coffin. We talked about every single chapter of the
28:29
Harry Potter series. Over on the TFM network. I've got a bunch of
28:33
shows there. One's the six or two Club. John's a frequent guest over
28:37
there. We've got some great bonus shows that we do called Snyder Cuts,
28:40
Assembly Avengers, plus some Star Wars episodes and other things that he's helped me
28:45
do, as well as so many other shows. I mean there's almost five
28:48
I think there's over five hundred shows now, maybe in that feed close to
28:52
it. Anyway, it's a lot. You can also find me doing literary
28:55
trecks about the books and the comics of Star Trek the or about Star Trek
28:57
Deep series nine. We're five about Star Trek Enterprise, Saddle Up about Strange
29:03
New Worlds and the Artificial Tango, all about Star Trek percard. But John,
29:07
you know, maybe people are sipping back on a little bit of Grandpa's
29:11
blue milk. Where can they find you? Well, you can find me
29:15
practicing my controversial ways and my controversial views online is Kessel Junkie. The most
29:21
fun place to have me exercise those views is on Letterboxed actually, because all
29:26
you can talk about is movies, so I can't wander into dangerous territory there,
29:30
and you can find me right here on the network, co hosting a
29:33
show called Houselights with Darren Moser and Tristan Riddell, where we have a great
29:37
time talk about the works of directors. I mean, you know, hey,
29:41
it's the Internet. Go figure there's a movie podcast out there. But
29:45
trust me when I say, we do it a little bit differently. And
29:49
I highly encourage you because to listen to Houselights because we have a grand time
29:56
and every so often you hear me absolutely break down in laughter and it's it's
30:02
a lot of fun. But you know what, Actually you mentioned blue milk,
30:07
and I gotta go pick up a new case of it. So,
30:08
Master Rushing, I think it's time to close these negotiations. Well, John,
30:14
don't forget the Mandomex, and negotiations are closed. Join the revolution,
30:26
Join the nerd Party.