Folks, we are now a week away from something I thought I’d never see in my lifetime: a 6 hour, live-action series about Obi-Wan Kenobi!
If you were to travel back to 2005 and tell my 14-year-old self that this was happening, he would have laughed in your face, and then he would’ve challenged you to a lightsaber battle using appropriately-colored pool noodles.
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Because that’s what Star Wars is to us: it’s fun. Whether you’re an original trilogy boomer, a prequelite, or a sequel baby, Star Wars never fails to bring you back to your childhood. Every time it comes on, the sweeping notes of John Williams score takes you back to your favorite action figures, to hot summer afternoons stick-fighting with the neighborhood kids while repeating, “The Force is strong with this one!”
As a child of the 90s, there was nothing more thrilling, more comfortable, more FUN that hearing the Star Wars score bursting out of your tv speakers. And funny enough, the cast feel the same way.
Obi-Wan Kenobi Honors The Music And The Fun
In a recent press conference for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, actor Ewan McGregor spoke a little about what it was like to hold a lightsaber in his hands again after 17 years. The Obi-Wan actor famously made lightsaber noises while shooting fighting scenes for the prequel trilogy, and during the conference, the moderator wanted to know if he did the same thing while filming this series. “It’s impossible not to!” McGregor said with a chuckle, “And if you’re not *doing it out loud*, then you’re doing them in your head.”
Chiming in to the discussion, Obi-Wan Kenobi Executive Producer and Showrunner Deborah Chow revealed that they played a lot of John William’s music while shooting the action scenes.
“The music obviously brings an emotional element,” said Chow, “What John Williams has done is so inextricably tied to Star Wars, so if we put it on, all of a sudden I see Moses grow like 2 inches taller and everybody responds to it.”
Moses Ingram, who is a newcomer to the universe and will be playing a Sith Inquisitor in Obi-Wan Kenobi, chimed in:
“It was sicccck too! Because we would be stepping off the ship or doing something else, and the music would come on and we would feel like we’re 10 feet tall!”
THE POWER OF JOHN WILLIAMS
This is just a reminder of how fun Star Wars can be. Because for any die-hard fan out there, Ingram’s words strike a familiar chord within us. We remember humming the Imperial March as we played with our Darth Vader action figure, or listening to Duel of the Fates as we fought with our cheap, telescoping, plastic lightsabers. We remember how cool we felt. And while it may seem like such a little thing, its amazing to see that these actors feel the same way. There’s just something that happens when that John Williams score starts playing…
And after all these years, it doesn’t seem like he will ever stop. At his current age of 90, John Williams is still an absolute powerhouse who shows no signs of slowing down. He returned to the Star Wars galaxy to score the theme song for the series, which fans are dying to hear when the first episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi releases on Disney+ next Wednesday. It will be the 12th Star Wars project that he’s scored, having previously composed all 9 episodic films in the franchise, as well as the themes for “Solo: A Star Wars Story” and Disneyland’s “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” theme park.
His original score for Star Wars: A New Hope earned him an Oscar in 1977, and he went on to receive nominations for five more of the Star Wars sequels (The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker). He currently holds the record for most Oscar nominations for a living person.
There’s just nothing like a John Williams score…
Here’s just a little reminder of what it’s like to be a kid, swinging toy lightsabers around, playing the score in your head as you pretend to be Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. Because ironically enough, that’s exactly how the actors feel, whether they were in the original trilogy, the prequels, or the sequels. And how amazing is it, how FUN is it, that after seventeen years, one of them gets to come back and do it again?
What a hell of a time it is to be a Star Wars fan.
Obi-Wan Kenobi premieres on Disney+ May 25th, 2022.
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