Obi-wan Kenobi (1 + 2)

 It's probably not a good idea to comment on a new series after only watching 2 episodes, but I'm going to do it anyway. I don't even know how many episodes there are going to be in this series / season, since the Disney+ player doesn't show you that (!) and I haven't googled it because I wanted to avoid spoilers.

Urgh. I'm disappointed. That's the spoiler-free version. Read on if you don't mind finding out some details of the plot (there isn't much).

OK, so 10 years after the Revenge of the Sith and Obi-wan is hiding in a cave on Tatooine, watching over Luke and working at an open-air meat processing factory so he can earn money to buy Luke toys (which his farmer uncle Owen doesn't allow) and buy back machine parts from Jawas that steal them from him in the first place.

This part isn't too bad. But then we see a precocious little Pricess Leia and think "oh oh" she's going to get kidnapped... just before she gets kidnapped. I wonder why? Oh, is it so the nasty Sithette lady can draw Obi-wan out and kill him? Maybe... oh, yes definitely it is, there she is, no need to wonder about that then.

Obi-wan is supposed to be learning how to commune with his late teacher Qi-gon, but instead he seems to have become terrified of using the Force in case he gives himself away. He doesn't even know that Anakin isn't dead... presumably despite Darth Vader and his sithereens sending tremors through the Force on a daily basis. (see my review of RotS for why Obi-wan absolutely should have finished off Anakin)

So instead of any Jedi fights, we get fist fights and slight of hand tricks. Nothing to do with keeping the budget down, honest? And lots of running round with little Leia, who is so switched on that you can't belive that in another 10 years time she will have completely forgotten about him when she sends the "years ago you served with my father in the clone wars" message.

The longer it went on, the less I enjoyed it. I will watch episode 3 next week and then possibly bail (at halfway?) if it doesn't improve. I didn't finish the Boba Fett series either... TBH I find myself hating everything that Disney have done with Star Wars... except The Mandalorian, which remains the one reason to keep hoping that some of the future material might be OK. Is that a way to live though? Hoping for OK?

Maybe it is time to let Star Wars go. Disney have killed it. Move on.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

 The title is a bit of a mouthful isn't it? Anyway, I finally got to see this movie about a week after it came out (long story) after carefully avoiding spoilers and reviews. Having followed up with some reviews since, I'm glad I did avoid them, as this movie had a few surprises that added a lot to its impact.

After this point there will be a lot of SPOILERS so come back later if you want.

Right, the first surprise was that Wanda / Scarlet Witch is the villain. I guess she was the kind of villain in the WandaVision series too, but then she seemed to be redeemed. Here she is back to suffering terrible grief at the loss of Vision and repeated regret at not having the two children that she invented. 

The brilliant thing about this is that we get a villain that we care about. We know a lot about her. We care about her... she's not bad, really; lots of bad things have happened to her. She's had to sacrifice a lot. Given the amount of power she has, as is said repeatedly in the dialogue, this is her "being reasonable".

Alongside the great villain (Scarlet Witch has always been my favourite character in the MCU) we get a lot of action. This is a very exciting film. The balance between showing people with huge power smashing each other about and telling the story is very well struck, I thought.

We learn a lot more about multiverses and with America Chavez get an "easy" way to move between them. Clearly this is a tool that Marvel are going to use to expand the MCU in many ways which can be contradictory without destroying the overall cohesion of the collection of movies.

Relatively short-lived appearances by Reed Richards, Black Bolt, Prof X and alternative versions of Captain America and Captain Marvel highlight this... as does the ease with which they are all brutally killed off.

I didn't have very high expectations for this film, mainly because I am not a massive Doctor Strange fan. But this is as much a Scarlet Witch film as anything else, so for that reason I loved it.

Very exciting. Also very moving at times. Excellent movie.