"Kenobi: A Star Wars Fan Film" is an American English-language movie from Christmas 2019 and the title of course makes it very obvious what to expect here. You find out about the (film) universe in which this takes place as well as about the main character. The director here is Jason Satterlund and he is also one of several writers and one of those is Jamie Costa, the one who uploaded this on Youtube. He is also a producer here and, most of all, the actor who plays the title character. No surprise because acting is really his key profession. As for Satterlund, this is not his first Star Wars fan film, but certainly the one that audiences like the best and judging from the rating here on imdb, you can certainly say that he managed to improve over the last couple years. Another one who has a history with Star Wars is of course James Arnold Taylor. I won't go into detail here about his body of work, but I guess people who are bigger Star Wars fans than myself certainly know who he is and it shows. He is maybe the main reason why I liked this film a bit and eventually decided to give it a positive recommendation in what was a really close call. The introduction in the dark early on did not do too much for me. The lengthy sequence outside was much better and made this worth seeing I suppose. In the end, we are back in the dark again, but it is a really brief epilogue after some spectacular fighting that happened before that. There are more epic characters from the Star Wars universe included here, not just the one in the title that is played by Costa. Most of all, I am obviously talking about the boy. I guess people who like Star Wars more than I do, will have a fun time watching this one. Mine wasn't too bad either admittedly, but I'll never be a big fan I guess, also because the genre is among my least favorites. But JAT makes it worth seeing with his really convincing villain performance and everybody else isn't too shabby either.
This scored millions of views already in the last three months, although that perhaps should not surprise anybody too much given the fact that this is friggin' Star Wars. It received a pretty strong reception too with some people saying this takes the franchise back to the glory days with its retro approach and some even think that this is all that the most recent Star Wars blockbuster as missing. It's probably gonna be a while until a new Star Wars film will be made in Hollywood, if at all, but this one here may help people to spend the time until then. Also pretty smart title because I am sure this is going to generate additional clicks and attention because it sounds so similar to "A Star Wars Story" and there have been several in recent years. Close call like I said, but this one gets a thumbs-up from me. 19 minutes (including a really long closing credit sequence) worth watching, even if the rating here on imdb is way too high. That good it is not, even if there is no denying it is above-average for a fan film, already if we take a look at the convincing visual quality in terms of sets, effects and costumes.
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