I LOVE THIS SCENE A LOT??? I mean, it’s super painful because it’s complicated for all of them–I understand why Anakin feels betrayed, because he takes everything so incredibly personally, that he has trouble parsing the difference between what Obi-Wan’s duty is versus Obi-Wan’s personal loyalty to him, that duty and saving lives might actually take precedence over that personal loyalty.
Then you have Obi-Wan who understands that this is difficult, but he can put other people’s lives above personal loyalty, that it’s never that he didn’t care, but that he saw a situation where there was something more important than how Anakin would feel about this, no matter how much he cared about Anakin’s feelings, too.
BUT IT’S ALSO A REALLY COOL LITTLE SCENE because Anakin is in full rage mode, wanting to kill the person who killed Obi-Wan, he’s ready to do some Serious Murder here and “Rako Hardeen” just absolutely wipes the floor with him. Even when Anakin gets in a few hits, Obi-Wan flips him right back over and puts him to the ground.
Which is fascinating–is Obi-Wan just that much better at hand-to-hand combat than Anakin? Is it that he knows Anakin so well that he can mop the floor with him like this? Is it that Anakin’s rage makes him sloppy and unfocused? Probably some combination of all of the above?
It always invites parallels to Mustafar for me, where Obi-Wan spends so much of the time not actually fighting back against Anakin so much as giving ground to try to give Anakin time to come to his senses. That, part of what allows him to win there is that he knows Anakin so well that he beats him in that fight, that Anakin’s powers should make him at the peak of his entire life thus far (because, in so many ways, Vader may do more grand gestures, but George Lucas was always clear that Vader NEVER reached Anakin’s true potential), but Obi-Wan won that fight pretty thoroughly.
Again, to some degree, Anakin’s rage and arrogance made him sloppy, that part of it is Obi-Wan is an incredibly disciplined Jedi who has mastered himself and his style, but a lot of it is just, yeah, holy shit, Obi-Wan is really fucking good.
It also makes me think of Naboo, where Qui-Gon was a Jedi Master and still fell to Maul’s attacks, showing that Maul was indeed a powerful and well-trained fighter.  Yet, Obi-Wan still wins that fight as well, even when he probably uses the Force through anger and hurt and suffering (the dark side), he still is good enough and disciplined enough that he ultimately wipes the floor with Maul, too.
It also makes me think of his fight against Maul and Savage at the same time, where they’ve both been established as incredibly dangerous fighters, they’ve both killed Jedi before, and Obi-Wan not only holds them both off at the same time, but he even does serious damage to them!
LOOK AT THIS SHIT, THAT’S THE HOTTEST THING EVER AND ALSO HOLY FUCK HOW DID HE NOT DIE, MUCH LESS COME OUT AHEAD IN THAT FIGHT!?
A lot of it is about the context of the fights he gets into, but also just OBI-WAN KENOBI IS REALLY FUCKING GOOD IN A FIGHT.
THIS IS A GUY WHO KNOWS HOW TO FUCKING MOVE.
YOU ALWAYSÂ WANT THIS GUY ON YOUR SIDE, HOLY SHIT.
kaledo-art
areudirty
tangentwithtanner
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
izzy806
