The fate of our nation currently hangs from threads that are eerily similar to the central themes in the lives of the lead characters of the Star Wars saga. Perhaps useful comparisons and lessons can be learned from their juxtaposition. Forgive me for entangling popular entertainment with deadly serious issues facing our nation today.
A new live-action series from the Star Wars genre will make its screen debut. Let me set the scene; the lead character is Obi-Wan Kenobi, the father figure to the saga’s main character who is the Chosen One. Neither man had a father in his life, but both became great because they fell in with An Order of Exemplary Father Figures, the Jedi. In cold blood Obi-Wan would ruthlessly slice in two the evil man who had just killed the man that was the closest thing to a father Obi-Wan ever had. Decades later, Obi-Wan would hack to near death the man whom he had all-but-raised as his own son—the saga’s central character—who then becomes Darth Vader, the greatest evil in all the galaxy. Obi-Wan then absconds with his former friend’s children goes into hiding with his son and becomes the protector and mentor. That’s not your standard character arch.
The audience’s enduring love for Kenobi testifies to the importance of the central theme of this essay; fatherhood and its failure. Obi-Wan is the character that toils to try to keep the orphaned kid on the straight and narrow, and when the prodigal son, the Chosen One, falls from grace, Obi-Wan is the one who gets to pick up the pieces and protect the offspring from being choked to death or hacked to bits by their own father. -Talk about a dysfunctional family!
Kenobi is not the lead character in the entire Star Wars saga, he’s the pivotal character, he’s the audience’s character, always a sidekick, sometimes a master, sometimes a sage, other times a pal. He’s our Sancho Panza, but also our Merlin. The saga’s dialogue is infamously clunky but the characters have been written brilliantly. It’s not a stretch to say that Kenobi’s character arch is quite possibly the best of the entire cast. He gets to be the redeemer. He saves the kid, guides the kid, and enables the kid to save his friend, the father, whom he tried to kill and left for dead.
As an aside, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader’s story is the main thread, of course, of the whole story, which is why the first six episodes are a complete set to which nothing could be added EXCEPT the story of Vader’s children. Episodes 7-9 were total betrayals primarily because they marginalized Leia and emasculated Luke. To top that betrayal, I hear that the sequel trilogy’s producer, Kathleen Kennedy, is planning on producing Godfather IV in which she’ll turn Michael Corleone into a Fredo and have Rocky’s wife kick everyone’s ass.
If the new Kenobi series is built around the manly theme of the duties and burdens of honorable fatherhood—as it was a central thread in the hugely successful Mandolorian series, I suspect Obi-Wan will be a hit. The final episode of Mando gave me hope they can recreate the magic. But I suspect Kennedy has managed to impose her ultra-feminist woke bullshit into the new series like we saw in The Last Jedi when all the men were bumbling buffoons in constant need of rescue from the stoic-but-plastic Mary Sues of the story who could do know wrong.