Obi-Wan Actor Ewan McGregor On Why He Is So Excited To Return To 'Star Wars'

It is one thing to be excited for a new Star Wars series as a fan, but it is a whole different story when the actors are excited, too. 

Shooting starts in Spring of 2021 for the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series, and actor Ewan McGregor is thrilled to be returning to the role, as his last appearance onscreen in Star Wars was in 2005's Revenge of the Sith.

In a recent interview with the Empire Podcast, McGregor talked about why he is so eager to return to the role and what interests him most about coming back to Star Wars. He said that the series has been "a long time coming," which most fans can probably agree with. After all, while we have seen Obi-Wan in the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and The Clone Wars animated series, but not much is known about his time spent between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, a gap which spans something like nineteen years. There have been stories here and there, but that is a lot of time for Obi-Wan Kenobi to get up to all sorts of adventures, and we hope the series will explore some of them.

"I'm more excited about doing this one than I was doing the second and third one that we did before. I'm just excited about working with Deborah Chow [director, who also directed episodes of The Mandalorian], and the storylines are going to be really good I think. I'm just excited to play him again. It's been long enough since I played him before." 

Director Deborah Chow is a prolific filmmaker, responsible for episodes in some incredible series such as Mr. Robot, Better Call Saul, and American Gods. Most recently, she directed two episodes of The Mandalorian, a job which no doubt had a part in landing her the director's chair on the Obi-Wan series. Her episodes of The Mandalorian -- "Chapter 3: The Sin" and "Chapter 7: The Reckoning" -- were some fan favorites and land pretty high spots on ranking lists, such as this one from CinemaBlend.  

Along with working with Deborah Chow, McGregor is also excited about the prospect of working with new technology, as the series will be filmed with the newfound high-resolution video wall technology that was used on The Mandalorian. Check out this video if you'd like to learn more about that process.

"The first three [Star Wars films] I did were really at the very beginning of digital photography. Now we're going to be able to really create stuff without swathes of green-screen and blue-screen, which becomes very tedious for the actor."

While the green screen technology used on the prequels was revolutionary at the time, the films have been consistently critiqued for how "fake" the sets look, and many believe the use of CGI very much went overboard. 

In regards to this, McGregor talked about the shifting tide when it comes to fans' love (or hate) toward the prequel trilogy. It is no secret that the prequel trilogy was not well liked across the board when it came out, and it received quite a bit of backlash from fans and critics alike. However, the prequels have recently come to be more appreciated, as it seems like fans have found a balance, appreciating the flaws instead of fixating on them.

"You know, our films weren't much liked when they came out, by my generation who loved the first ones. I think people of our generation wanted to feel the way they'd felt when they saw those first three movies when they were kids, and George [Lucas] wanted to take our ones in a different direction, he had a different idea. But now, all these years later, I'm really aware of what our films meant to the generation they were made for, the children of that time. They really like them. I've met people who, they mean a lot to them, those films, more so than the original three, and I'm like, 'Are you kidding?'"

We are so excited for the Obi-Wan Kenobi show, even though it looks like it is still quite far away. We hope Ewan McGregor will have more to say as shooting begins, and that we will learn even more about what the show might entail.

Source(s): Empire