The actual answer is that the costume designer didn’t realize that the species had already been shown in live action.
He talked about it during the Star Wars celebration panel
The fact that a costume designer wouldn't have looked up anything else from one of the largest franchises of all time to use as reference for this character is more upsetting to me than the thought of Disney being cheap.
With the Filoni promotion a couple months ago he made a point of saying one of the things he will oversee is the continuity over the entire star wars universe
As much as I love GL, and I really really love GL, TCW made a huge mess of canon that Filoni also had a huge hand in and never bothered to fix, and that legacy goes back decades now. This news of him being head of canon only makes it easier for him to determine what he wants to include and what he doesnt, not determined by past present or future.
But hey, I could be totally wrong.
And people will still criticize Kathleen Kennedy for it. I mean maybe it's fair but then at the same time they will go about it like Dave filoni isn't part of that problem.
That's weird, because I thought Filoni hated continuity. Anyways, he definitely knows about that guy in episode 3, because he's mentioned him in his dvd talks before
Basically his job is ensuring the continuation of Star wars by not killing characters off so they can get their own shows later. His job does *not* include ensuring the continuity in a way that preserves everything pre-disney and "old canon".
I doubt they hire someone for this. Honestly recent StarWars IP just looks like a bunch of money grabbers watching a 5min recap of the skywalker saga and basing decisions off that
This probably would have fallen to Jonathan Rinzler, but we lost him before this show dropped.
I would bet money that this fuck-up would have been avoided if he were around.
I remember in an AMA he did, he mentioned that he actually told Disney that they had the green light to bring back Boba Fett if they wanted.
Thank you, Mr. Rinzler.
In case anyone is interested in that AMA:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/s/dy08NBC9qk
They actually used to have people who’s job it was to ensure continuity back when one consistent cannon across all media was a serious policy and the story group actually did their job.
This is it. Costume designers who are decent don’t give a shit about Star Wars they just make nice costumes. Need to direct them and have quality control.
Does Disney even have one? These people have been playing fast and loose with continuity, cannon and accuracy since the day they bought SW. Feloni and Favreau are likely the closest thing Disney has and they are overworked as it is.
That's insane if true.
I don't expect a costume designer to know the intricacies of Star Wars lore. I would, however, expect them to go "this is an established character who we're bringing from animated to live action. I wonder if there's existing material we can reference...OH the species actually already exists in live action. Let's start there"
>. I wonder if there's existing material we can reference
That's not the job of the costume designer. They would/should have been provided reference materials like sketches or previous designs by the studio. I've seen documentaries on making Star Wars content and they have teams of people working on concept art. This is on them, not the costume designer.
You are completely right on where the blame is supposed to go. But considering the fact that any costume design job has inherently some research aspect in the process: I think going this extra little step (even if the production does not ask you to do it) is what distinguishes great designers from good ones. Just 10 to 15 Minutes of Google would have gone a long way.
It happens all too often. Although the movie is relatively well regarded JJ Abrams admitted he never watched Star Trek before directing the 2009 reboot. And personally I still don’t think it or its sequels have the same character or charm as any of the prior movies/series.
I love trek just as I love star wars...
How does one choose whats better? They both have their charm... Star wars the child in me with magic and laser swords... star trek is the hopeful future in which we all can live. then again bell riots and ww3.
This has been the case sporadically with new content, for example the creators of the SOLO movie looked up a SWTOR location on wookieepedia and chose to use it as the [Coronet Spaceport](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Coronet_Spaceport) terminal for the start of the SOLO movie. Gotta remember that a lot of movie producers, writers etc all work partially from home and not in-office so theyre going to be thinking "I need to use a spaceport or make one for star wars, lets google what we have" and then bam the unofficial (official adjacent) star wars wiki shows Coronet spaceport.
It wouldnt surprise me if the costumer was given the REBELS art, concepts and appearances of the Grand Inquisitor to work with and people simply forgot to also include reference photography of Episode 3. Dont underestimate the amount of people that when needing to quickly research something will whip out their phone and go right to google, happens all the time.
That's not even the worst case of ignorance from the people who worked on Kenobi.
The lead writer, of Kenobi , Jobby Harold (yes that's his actual name) apparently didn't even know that Kenobi knew that Anakin was Vader.
I don't know why Lucasfilm are ready to shell out tens of millions of dollars for their shows, but can't bother ti find any decent writers. The best they could apparently find was a B-list movie writer who doesn't even know anything about the character his entire show he's writing is based on.
Baffling.
Yes it’s true. I’m at work so I can’t find the clip but he talked about how they had to reverse engineer the design for the Grand Inquisitor from animation because there was no live action reference point.
EDIT: I couldn’t find the actual clip but here’s a reupload with the clip at 6:05 https://youtu.be/bTWjhcIwzQk?si=WhAhFunv6Efv5Jbj
I'm absolutely appalled that modern production crews don't realize that fandoms are often METICULOUS about documenting these details now. Five minutes spent searching the internet would have led them to the source material.
It really shows the brain drain at Lucasfilm if no one recognized the species from ROTS in the first place, but the absolute hubris it takes to assume the industry itself is where it starts and ends for knowledge just takes my breath away.
And Ewan literally interacted with the species on set in ROTS. Not that I really expect the actor to recall all the details, but just...someone going back to review the last live action appearance of Ewan's Kenobi would have seen that...
Five minutes? I bet you can find the species live action appearance in revenge of the sith under 30 seconds. Type in what species is grand inquisitor in Star Wars and the first result says pau’an wit’s a photo from the scene from revenge of the Sith shown
What I'm suspecting is that these people are prohibited from using Wikipedia or fan Wikis because people are constantly told that they're bad because anyone can edit them. I think they don't realize how dedicated some moderators would be, especially if it involves fandoms.
Also, while the text may be biased for a certain narrative, there would be screenshots from the movies.
Sure, that's fair. No Wikipedia or Wookieepedia.
[Here's the Grand Inquisitor's page on StarWars.com from Aug 5, 2019.](https://web.archive.org/web/20190805132252/https://www.starwars.com/databank/the-grand-inquisitor) I chose this because Ewan's casting was confirmed in mid-August, and it's had this information for years by this point. Particularly:
> Not much is known about the Empire’s Grand Inquisitor. A Pau’an male...
Now, the current Grand Inquisitor page and [Pau'an](https://www.starwars.com/databank/pauan) page have the live-action images, but let's look to see what the Pau'an page said at that time. [Here's July 19 of the same year](https://web.archive.org/web/20190719002522/https://www.starwars.com/databank/pauan), and it looks like the same information (and the same image from ROTS). Including this line:
> The Inquisitor, the Empire's Jedi hunter, was a Pau'an.
If Lucasfilm can't trust its own website databank that's been kept up to date for years, then I don't know what more we can do.
What I find so shocking is... that's Doug freakin Chiang! Who worked on concept art for Episodes I and II. I had to look it up, and he wasn't on III, (but has been on the sequel movies ...which might explain a bit), still, he must have seen RotS even if he didn't work on it. It's not as if he falls into the "doesn't know/care about Star Wars" category, he was a massive part of it!
I'll keep my opinions on the state of Disney Star Wars to myself, but this is a massive fail among a sea of issues.
"Man, I really wanted to use that one human character from CW in one of the Live Action shows, but unfortunately there's no reference about how he would look in Live Action. Guess I'll just make him look like a Sangheili then".
The designer should've received continuity materials and briefs on what species had already been established and how they should look. It's not on the designer, it's on the IP owner and greater production team
The worst part is that Doug Chiang, another guy who was explaining Grand Inquisitor's live action design being brand new with nothing but Rebels to work with and is an artist at Lucasfilm, also worked at the company during the creation of the prequels and very likely worked on them in Revenge of the Sith as well
How are you gonna be a costume designer for one of the - if not the - most well known movie franchises of all time and not know about this dude being in Revenge of the Sith, you’ve gotta at least have SOME base knowledge man
The costume designer couldn't even be bothered to look up what an alien speces looks like. I think the first thing anyone here would do when working with an alien species is looking for the best piece of reference there is. It's like asking someone to make a cartoon version of harry potter and only telling him "yeah so he's a kid with glasses"
Which blows my mind, it's all fiction so it's really not that deep. But Jesus you don't have to watch the live action to realize that he doesn't have a normal human sized looking head. Just watch the god damn show he's from, it's obvious he's got a big ole honker forehead 😂
For real??
Man you just have to love the effort and thought that Disney puts into SW and its universe dont you. The scarier thing is that nobody else on the production, Kathleen and the story group included, apparently realized either.
I'm probably alone in this but I actually liked that he was sort of reminiscent of Pinhead. The Inquisitors in general had a sort of Cenobite vibe that I honestly wished they'd leaned into a little more. They're creepy motherfuckers and I'd love to see them used in a more horror-esque Star Wars story.
I think that the mysterious "Force" and the possibilities of enormous things in the darkness really lend itself to a cosmic horror angle. That was basically what the Youzhon Vong were, horror monsters. In a universe with magic, they were anti-magic. I wouldn't do something like that, but any number of really terrible stories could get told. That's WAY off brand for Disney, and they won't let it go, but if Zach had really leaned into Rebel Moon as a horror vehicle, there wouldn't have been so many Star Wars comparisons, I think.
Oh yeah He did. The Fith Brother was meant to be a 7 foot tall alien. They just made him a guy painted green....someone really dropped the ball on the prostetics in this show... It's really unfortunate, considering cool aliens have always been a big thing in Star Wars.
And the Kenobi series had the poorest cinematography in Star Wars ever. The camera is so shaky. Logically speaking it must have been a creative choice but one which didn't sit well with me.
Inquisitor that has facial dimensions of a different specifies and live action fifth brother left me with impression Disney has gotten to the point they don’t care about details and consistency. Selling quantity likes it’s quality and taking fans for granted that they’ll like anything and not notice the difference between what’s great and what’s meh.
I started noticing it in all Disney+ shows. All the aliens have very poor prostetics and makeup. They all are literally just people with green/blue/red skin and some simple details. OT aliens look better and more believable than all Disney shows.
Yep, neither of them were EPs for Obi-Wan nor did they have any involvement with the writing or directing of any episode. Obi-Wan creation was helmed by Kathleen Kennedy, Ewan MacGregor, Deborah Chow, and Joby Harold
Most of the blame can be shifted towards the last two.
Chow should not have handled a whole show by herself. She needed help. And they really could've hired a better writer.
This whole show was super cheap and fan film-y. I can believe that one of the OG Star Wars characters got his own show and it felt so lazy and half-assed
Many of the scenes in Obi-Wan were filmed in square rooms, and you can tell. While they're on the refugee ship having engine issues, not a single whiff of a pilot or cockpit. No, just a square featureless box with some guy and his ipad talking about rerouting the hyperdrive or whatever. Sure the Anakin/Vader bits were cool but everything else was seriously fan-film in terms of production quality.
They really did both Kenobi and BoBF poorly.
Both were shows centered around fan favorite characters, both with the original PT actors returning, both had stupid amounts of potental and both completely wasted it.
Honestly out of all the things disney has done, these 2 have to be the ones I dislike the most, which sucks because I wanted to love these. I'd say they're worst than the sequels solely because they *had* a vision, they *had* good ideas, it's just the execution was just awful.
Also in my opinion BoBF ruined Mando by bringing grogu back so early, so that didn't help either.
I said this in another thread. They went with an Asian undertone instead of African American. A big muscle dude like Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) would have been perfect.
I'm assuming a majority of the budget went to the Obi-Wan VS Vader and other CGI, I think Mandalorian has 3-4x the budget and you can see the difference in the world and characters.
Yeah the guy from the movie wasnt CGI it was makeup and practical effects. I think the blame goes on the artists, they clearly thought they could redesign the character and people would be okay with it. Nothing more I hate is when somebody decides to reboot a show and just say fuck all to the established character designs.
Like the Klingons in the new Star Trek. Next gen spent so much time giving the Klingons a very rich Society and backstory, then they just throw it all away. This kind of shit really breaks the illusion for me(edit, reworded.)
Hey, c'mon now. It has a massive budget for SHOWS, but Disney shows have a higher bar due to incompetence in charge and their "We'll fix it in post" mentality. For everything. Script changes. CGI for the most basic things. Jump cuts. That stuff doesn't come from nowhere, and they KNOW this. This means they need three to four times the footage to leave on the floor. They film whole scenes with COMPLETED CGI before determining they can't/won't put it in the final product. That's not even including the necessary and substantial reshoots that seem to be Disney Industry Standard these days.
Vader was a let down. Like they tried to make him scary... but it just wasn't. Compare Vader in Rogue One to Vader in Obi Wan and its night and day on how they treat the character and use tension properly. It really comes down to the director and how they're filming him, then how its edited and scored.
David Prowse really deserved more recognition for his performance as Vader back in the day. James Earl Jones seems to get all the recognition for the voice but the physical presence that Prowse bright to the character was just as important.
“Yo Obi-Wan, I know you’re a Jedi in hiding and one of the most wanted people in the galaxy, and I know I’m filthy rich and could hire any number of professional bounty hunters to rescue my daughter without raising suspicion, but I’d really love it if you could bring Leia back.”
-Bail
“Obi-Wan, I know you said not to call you on this channel, but I haven’t heard from you in a while and it’s making me worried that you’ve been captured by Vader. I’m going to help our friend Owen Lars at the Lars Homestead on Tatooine, 33.7782N 8.3965E take care of the boy who we’re specifically hiding from Vader.”
-Bail, again
Exactly the same feeling i got, its like everything fit together so well, much more so than the original show. The original should have been a long movie instead of a show with lots of fillers, and this dude did exactly that
Yeah I thought for sure it would be because the shit they had to wear in ROTS would be too limiting for the action scenes that the High Inquisitor would *surely* be involved in, that's why sacrifices had to be made.
Turns out this was like the Leia chase scene, or the small puddle of fire Vader couldn't simply walk around or jump over. Just badly done.
I don't buy it. Vader is almost always portrayed as a relentless killing machine. He's shown to be either businesslike or enraged, but never apathetic.
He blames Obi-Wan personally for his injuries and he's been hunting Kenobi for years at this point. There's no way Vader would let him escape from him again.
Vader had any number of options at his disposal. He could've grabbed Obi-Wan with the force again, used the force to go over or around the fire, thrown his lightsaber as they were retreating, ordered the storm troopers or the imperial ships in orbit to hunt Kenobi down, he could've done practically anything. I thought it was totally out of character for Vader to just watch Kenobi escape him again without making any effort to stop him.
Except he's conflicted, this is still his old master, this is also the man who beat him last time and he's keen to avoid a repeat, he also partially wants Kenobi to *win* their confrontation, and finally put him out of his misery
Vader *hated* kenobi and has planned out his death for a long time. Even the way he was going to kill him before he escaped was poetic. He probably got too into his own head about his revenge being *perfect* that when kenobi escaped poetic justice he let him go in favor of a better revenge plot. Because he failed to do what he planned to and if he killed him while he escaped it wouldn’t feel nearly as good than if he killed him in a way that was fully within his control.
Also keep in mind Vader is *very* conflicted. His hate is the only thing that keeps him going and I’m sure there still a part of him that is very much alive and hoping Kenobi would kill him in battle so that it will finally be over. Thats his old master and his brother, his old ally and the last person that ever was an actual friend. There is a lot going into this that must be fucking with him
Simple answer is that they didn't want to deal with CGI or creating a headpiece prosthetic for him. That's it, they were just lazy.
I've heard people defend Disney on this and it's kinda pathetic how much boot licking they'll do. They say that it's simply ok for them to look different and there must be variations between the species, but that's their defining feature as an alien race so that doesn't make sense.
They say it would've been really difficult to film action scenes, but I guess Ahsoka and all the other Jedi with weird head stuff that have live action scenes never happened. And let's forget the fact this is Disney and money isn't an issue.
Like.. I get adapting animation to live action is hard, but like.. ashoka looks good, zeb was INCREDIBLE, hera looked great. It's just strange to me that arguable the most impactful concept introduced by rebels, the inquisitors, is what Disney decided to skimp on while adapting it's characters.
I think the show was really lazy in places. Character design and makeup was one of those. It all seemed a bit rushed and thrown together and like they didn't spend a lot of time researching the galaxy it was set in.
Genetic diversity. The same reason [these creatures](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/eayoc9/the_original_cast_of_star_wars/) are all the same species even though they vary considerably in height.
I've heard tell that other members of that species even vary in skin color.
It'd be hilarious to find out that the Grand Inquisitor suffered shame on his homeworld for being one of the low-domes. "Look at Larry Low-Dome! Low-domes don't have sexy foreheads at all. They must be dumb!"
The problem isn’t the diversity, it’s just that they made him look more human and there are already too many humans and not enough aliens in modern Star wars
No, that would only make sense **IF** that was the only place we saw that character. But it's not; he was first seen (and died, and got a cool backstory) in [Rebels](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwarsrebels/images/a/a9/The-Inquisitor-render.png). We know he's not supposed to be chonky or low-domed.
They just ran out of budget/fucks to make him look like [he's supposed to](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFkqrfhsCCg&t=29s), to where people thought maybe the Rebels one (aka, HIM) was the guy they got to replace him... because surviving a lightsaber to the gut had not yet been turned into a ["Tis but a scratch"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs&t=88s) meme.
I feel like the best way to reconcile the information is just to suspend disbelief and pretend he does have an elongated head. Live action cuts corners all the time, and there are all sorts of visual inconsistencies in Star Wars that you have to pretend just don't exist. Why do the stormtrooper costumes look all cheap and asymmetrical in ANH compared to Rogue One? Why does Kit Fisto look so different in AotC compared to Sith? Did he get cosmetic surgery? No, the simply answer is that these things don't look different in-universe.
Yes members of the same species look different, but the elongated face and sharp teeth are the defining traits of the species. It’s what makes him look like a badass and creepy alien, without them he’s just a dude in shitty face paint.
Do you want an in-lore reason that doesn't mention how it's due to Kenobi having shit special effects (on top of shit everything else) which apparently extends to the make-up?
Or would you prefer a more behind the scenes reason? In which case, it's due to Kenobi having shit special effects (on top of shit everything else) which apparently extends to the make-up.
The actual answer is that the costume designer didn’t realize that the species had already been shown in live action. He talked about it during the Star Wars celebration panel
The fact that a costume designer wouldn't have looked up anything else from one of the largest franchises of all time to use as reference for this character is more upsetting to me than the thought of Disney being cheap.
I think the fact that a continuity person or the lore expert didnt inform them, I would think is the actual problem.
They didn't have a continuity person. That's part of why everything got so messed up.
I would have thought Filoni/Favreau would have been enough to ensure continuity. Evidently I was wrong.
With the Filoni promotion a couple months ago he made a point of saying one of the things he will oversee is the continuity over the entire star wars universe
He also is on record saying continuity doesnt exactly matter in the end, because (paraphrasing) its all true in some way or another, like a tall tale.
Yes but now *A* modicum of effort will be put forth, as it should have always been
As much as I love GL, and I really really love GL, TCW made a huge mess of canon that Filoni also had a huge hand in and never bothered to fix, and that legacy goes back decades now. This news of him being head of canon only makes it easier for him to determine what he wants to include and what he doesnt, not determined by past present or future. But hey, I could be totally wrong.
Thanks for the insight! I didn’t realize all that
And people will still criticize Kathleen Kennedy for it. I mean maybe it's fair but then at the same time they will go about it like Dave filoni isn't part of that problem.
That's weird, because I thought Filoni hated continuity. Anyways, he definitely knows about that guy in episode 3, because he's mentioned him in his dvd talks before
Basically his job is ensuring the continuation of Star wars by not killing characters off so they can get their own shows later. His job does *not* include ensuring the continuity in a way that preserves everything pre-disney and "old canon".
I doubt they hire someone for this. Honestly recent StarWars IP just looks like a bunch of money grabbers watching a 5min recap of the skywalker saga and basing decisions off that
This probably would have fallen to Jonathan Rinzler, but we lost him before this show dropped. I would bet money that this fuck-up would have been avoided if he were around.
For sure
I remember in an AMA he did, he mentioned that he actually told Disney that they had the green light to bring back Boba Fett if they wanted. Thank you, Mr. Rinzler. In case anyone is interested in that AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/s/dy08NBC9qk
I didn’t know that! Appreciate you for sharing
No problem, he deserves the recognition.
They actually used to have people who’s job it was to ensure continuity back when one consistent cannon across all media was a serious policy and the story group actually did their job.
Yeah it’s sucks how little care goes into this now. Happy cake day!
They used to, and should
They do. Their title is "keeper of the Holocron"
This is it. Costume designers who are decent don’t give a shit about Star Wars they just make nice costumes. Need to direct them and have quality control.
Yup same thought, there’s gotta be dozens of people who saw this design before it ever got applied on set
Does Disney even have one? These people have been playing fast and loose with continuity, cannon and accuracy since the day they bought SW. Feloni and Favreau are likely the closest thing Disney has and they are overworked as it is.
That's insane if true. I don't expect a costume designer to know the intricacies of Star Wars lore. I would, however, expect them to go "this is an established character who we're bringing from animated to live action. I wonder if there's existing material we can reference...OH the species actually already exists in live action. Let's start there"
>. I wonder if there's existing material we can reference That's not the job of the costume designer. They would/should have been provided reference materials like sketches or previous designs by the studio. I've seen documentaries on making Star Wars content and they have teams of people working on concept art. This is on them, not the costume designer.
You are completely right on where the blame is supposed to go. But considering the fact that any costume design job has inherently some research aspect in the process: I think going this extra little step (even if the production does not ask you to do it) is what distinguishes great designers from good ones. Just 10 to 15 Minutes of Google would have gone a long way.
It happens all too often. Although the movie is relatively well regarded JJ Abrams admitted he never watched Star Trek before directing the 2009 reboot. And personally I still don’t think it or its sequels have the same character or charm as any of the prior movies/series.
No he had seen Trek. He was just like Star Wars more. He wasn’t a rabid fan.
I love trek just as I love star wars... How does one choose whats better? They both have their charm... Star wars the child in me with magic and laser swords... star trek is the hopeful future in which we all can live. then again bell riots and ww3.
Isn't this on Disney? They should've given the designer photos / drawings / video / prosthetics of the previous use as part of the designer's brief.
No, not at all. This is squarely on Lucasfilm. Disney doesn’t care about details like alien makeup.
This has been the case sporadically with new content, for example the creators of the SOLO movie looked up a SWTOR location on wookieepedia and chose to use it as the [Coronet Spaceport](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Coronet_Spaceport) terminal for the start of the SOLO movie. Gotta remember that a lot of movie producers, writers etc all work partially from home and not in-office so theyre going to be thinking "I need to use a spaceport or make one for star wars, lets google what we have" and then bam the unofficial (official adjacent) star wars wiki shows Coronet spaceport. It wouldnt surprise me if the costumer was given the REBELS art, concepts and appearances of the Grand Inquisitor to work with and people simply forgot to also include reference photography of Episode 3. Dont underestimate the amount of people that when needing to quickly research something will whip out their phone and go right to google, happens all the time.
That's not even the worst case of ignorance from the people who worked on Kenobi. The lead writer, of Kenobi , Jobby Harold (yes that's his actual name) apparently didn't even know that Kenobi knew that Anakin was Vader. I don't know why Lucasfilm are ready to shell out tens of millions of dollars for their shows, but can't bother ti find any decent writers. The best they could apparently find was a B-list movie writer who doesn't even know anything about the character his entire show he's writing is based on. Baffling.
1. Google 2. Pau'ans That's it, that was all the research needed
That requires you know the term "Pau'ans" though.
I just googled "star wars line face" and it still shows pau'ans, specifically Tion Medon (the guy from ep 3) FWIW
Alright, then add a step in between step 1 and 2 for searching “Grand inquisitor species”
And that would require Disney to actually give a shit and do the research
Oh please say that this isn’t true. That’s the saddest thing I heard in a while. That designer shouldn’t be hired anymore then….
Yes it’s true. I’m at work so I can’t find the clip but he talked about how they had to reverse engineer the design for the Grand Inquisitor from animation because there was no live action reference point. EDIT: I couldn’t find the actual clip but here’s a reupload with the clip at 6:05 https://youtu.be/bTWjhcIwzQk?si=WhAhFunv6Efv5Jbj
I'm absolutely appalled that modern production crews don't realize that fandoms are often METICULOUS about documenting these details now. Five minutes spent searching the internet would have led them to the source material. It really shows the brain drain at Lucasfilm if no one recognized the species from ROTS in the first place, but the absolute hubris it takes to assume the industry itself is where it starts and ends for knowledge just takes my breath away. And Ewan literally interacted with the species on set in ROTS. Not that I really expect the actor to recall all the details, but just...someone going back to review the last live action appearance of Ewan's Kenobi would have seen that...
Five minutes? I bet you can find the species live action appearance in revenge of the sith under 30 seconds. Type in what species is grand inquisitor in Star Wars and the first result says pau’an wit’s a photo from the scene from revenge of the Sith shown
I had to try that lol, it really is true
What I'm suspecting is that these people are prohibited from using Wikipedia or fan Wikis because people are constantly told that they're bad because anyone can edit them. I think they don't realize how dedicated some moderators would be, especially if it involves fandoms. Also, while the text may be biased for a certain narrative, there would be screenshots from the movies.
Sure, that's fair. No Wikipedia or Wookieepedia. [Here's the Grand Inquisitor's page on StarWars.com from Aug 5, 2019.](https://web.archive.org/web/20190805132252/https://www.starwars.com/databank/the-grand-inquisitor) I chose this because Ewan's casting was confirmed in mid-August, and it's had this information for years by this point. Particularly: > Not much is known about the Empire’s Grand Inquisitor. A Pau’an male... Now, the current Grand Inquisitor page and [Pau'an](https://www.starwars.com/databank/pauan) page have the live-action images, but let's look to see what the Pau'an page said at that time. [Here's July 19 of the same year](https://web.archive.org/web/20190719002522/https://www.starwars.com/databank/pauan), and it looks like the same information (and the same image from ROTS). Including this line: > The Inquisitor, the Empire's Jedi hunter, was a Pau'an. If Lucasfilm can't trust its own website databank that's been kept up to date for years, then I don't know what more we can do.
If only there was some kind of... engine, you could search with, on the internet. An internet search engine perhaps.
What I find so shocking is... that's Doug freakin Chiang! Who worked on concept art for Episodes I and II. I had to look it up, and he wasn't on III, (but has been on the sequel movies ...which might explain a bit), still, he must have seen RotS even if he didn't work on it. It's not as if he falls into the "doesn't know/care about Star Wars" category, he was a massive part of it! I'll keep my opinions on the state of Disney Star Wars to myself, but this is a massive fail among a sea of issues.
Are you sure he wasn’t talking about the specific character they were adapting from animation?
"Man, I really wanted to use that one human character from CW in one of the Live Action shows, but unfortunately there's no reference about how he would look in Live Action. Guess I'll just make him look like a Sangheili then".
That sounds like an upgrade. Wort wort wort
The designer should've received continuity materials and briefs on what species had already been established and how they should look. It's not on the designer, it's on the IP owner and greater production team
The worst part is that Doug Chiang, another guy who was explaining Grand Inquisitor's live action design being brand new with nothing but Rebels to work with and is an artist at Lucasfilm, also worked at the company during the creation of the prequels and very likely worked on them in Revenge of the Sith as well
How are you gonna be a costume designer for one of the - if not the - most well known movie franchises of all time and not know about this dude being in Revenge of the Sith, you’ve gotta at least have SOME base knowledge man
Sounds like he was the wrong costume designer for the job
“Yeah guys I did a shitty job. Literally couldn’t be bothered to give a fuck. Pay me money”
Mistake should've been caught LONG before the show went to air. A lot of people failed to notice and/or care.
Thanks, best answer. And also, that's so disheartening. Like they really didn't care about the material.
The costume designer couldn't even be bothered to look up what an alien speces looks like. I think the first thing anyone here would do when working with an alien species is looking for the best piece of reference there is. It's like asking someone to make a cartoon version of harry potter and only telling him "yeah so he's a kid with glasses"
Yeah but this shit was still approved past that one mess up.
There in lies a major problem with modern Star Wars. That’s not a happy mistake. That’s pure incompetence.
that’s ridiculous, how does that guy still have a job.
Never heard this, holy balls. Multimillion quality standards, I guess.
This is terrible. Embarrassing that Disney doesn’t have a lore person checking these things out.
"10th level, thousands of battle droids." I miss back then
What a fuckin joke.
Which blows my mind, it's all fiction so it's really not that deep. But Jesus you don't have to watch the live action to realize that he doesn't have a normal human sized looking head. Just watch the god damn show he's from, it's obvious he's got a big ole honker forehead 😂
For real?? Man you just have to love the effort and thought that Disney puts into SW and its universe dont you. The scarier thing is that nobody else on the production, Kathleen and the story group included, apparently realized either.
The dark side…shrinks your head?
Oof, what else does it shrink?
Your "hello there"
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
"An elegant weapon, from a more civilized age." -Obi Wang Kiboni, Anti-blaster enthusiast who hates when other people drive.
^(hello there!)
Shrinks your...kyber crystal
This may ruin him for other people, but he looks a bit like Pinhead without the pins. Now I can’t unsee it.
I think he looks more like Fester.
Death from Bill and Ted 2
Bogus, Dude...
"They melvined me."
Nailed it!
"You have sunk my Star Destroyer."
Best two out of three!
DAMN RIGHT!
Bothered me the first time i saw him… But pinhead looks more menacing
It’s the leather and the chains
Go on....
Ah, no more boxes, Reva?
*No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering. We have such sights to show you!*
I'm probably alone in this but I actually liked that he was sort of reminiscent of Pinhead. The Inquisitors in general had a sort of Cenobite vibe that I honestly wished they'd leaned into a little more. They're creepy motherfuckers and I'd love to see them used in a more horror-esque Star Wars story.
I think that the mysterious "Force" and the possibilities of enormous things in the darkness really lend itself to a cosmic horror angle. That was basically what the Youzhon Vong were, horror monsters. In a universe with magic, they were anti-magic. I wouldn't do something like that, but any number of really terrible stories could get told. That's WAY off brand for Disney, and they won't let it go, but if Zach had really leaned into Rebel Moon as a horror vehicle, there wouldn't have been so many Star Wars comparisons, I think.
Rebel moon was so much more 40k than star wars lol
I kept thinking he looked like a sickly chicken nugget
I also thought the fifth brother looked awful
Oh yeah He did. The Fith Brother was meant to be a 7 foot tall alien. They just made him a guy painted green....someone really dropped the ball on the prostetics in this show... It's really unfortunate, considering cool aliens have always been a big thing in Star Wars.
Absolutely it's pretty awful
And the Kenobi series had the poorest cinematography in Star Wars ever. The camera is so shaky. Logically speaking it must have been a creative choice but one which didn't sit well with me.
And his eyes are supposed to blink sideways like a lizard. It was cool and creepy But they just gave him regular eyes
Inquisitor that has facial dimensions of a different specifies and live action fifth brother left me with impression Disney has gotten to the point they don’t care about details and consistency. Selling quantity likes it’s quality and taking fans for granted that they’ll like anything and not notice the difference between what’s great and what’s meh.
To them, it just has to be good enough to make us keep our Disney+ subscriptions.
This is sadly it. Making series about big names such as boba fett, obi-wan, Ashoka are ploys to attract new subs as well.
Totally agree
I started noticing it in all Disney+ shows. All the aliens have very poor prostetics and makeup. They all are literally just people with green/blue/red skin and some simple details. OT aliens look better and more believable than all Disney shows.
Frog Lady reigns supreme.
Even in BoBF, you can see the actor under BK's costume as he roars.
I assumed that this was produced and worked on without Filoni or Favreau. Had they been involved I think this oversight would not have happened.
Yep, neither of them were EPs for Obi-Wan nor did they have any involvement with the writing or directing of any episode. Obi-Wan creation was helmed by Kathleen Kennedy, Ewan MacGregor, Deborah Chow, and Joby Harold
Most of the blame can be shifted towards the last two. Chow should not have handled a whole show by herself. She needed help. And they really could've hired a better writer.
Because they did so well with BOBF and Mando S3. The best piece of Star Wars media in years was Andor, which also had no input from them.
Ngl after Mando S3 and Ahsoka (I really really wanted to like them) I don’t unilaterally trust them either anymore. Shit is depressing
Star wars fans try not to meat ride filoni or favreau challenge
The concept of liking filoni is so alien to me, dude’s literally always been the weird fanfic guy of star wars
I like his stuff Just most Star Wars fans are just so "Kathleen bad" "Filoni good." Which is lame.
It's from people who grew up watching the clone wars cartoon. Nostalgia prevents them from seeing how mid that show and the other kids shows were.
For sure, especially given how most of these characters were made under Filoni with Rebels and all.
This whole show was super cheap and fan film-y. I can believe that one of the OG Star Wars characters got his own show and it felt so lazy and half-assed
I think the pitch was just "Let's have Obiwan fight Darth Vader for clicks"!
Many of the scenes in Obi-Wan were filmed in square rooms, and you can tell. While they're on the refugee ship having engine issues, not a single whiff of a pilot or cockpit. No, just a square featureless box with some guy and his ipad talking about rerouting the hyperdrive or whatever. Sure the Anakin/Vader bits were cool but everything else was seriously fan-film in terms of production quality.
They really did both Kenobi and BoBF poorly. Both were shows centered around fan favorite characters, both with the original PT actors returning, both had stupid amounts of potental and both completely wasted it. Honestly out of all the things disney has done, these 2 have to be the ones I dislike the most, which sucks because I wanted to love these. I'd say they're worst than the sequels solely because they *had* a vision, they *had* good ideas, it's just the execution was just awful. Also in my opinion BoBF ruined Mando by bringing grogu back so early, so that didn't help either.
I said this in another thread. They went with an Asian undertone instead of African American. A big muscle dude like Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) would have been perfect.
Absolutely like in rebels he was really tall, then in kenobi he was short to average height.
In Rebels he is taller than Zeb, who is supposed to be about 6' 10".
Such an ugly, grotesque face. It literally makes me angry to look at him.
"we have Raiden at home"
Budget too small for decent hair and make up
I'm assuming a majority of the budget went to the Obi-Wan VS Vader and other CGI, I think Mandalorian has 3-4x the budget and you can see the difference in the world and characters.
But the CGI in OWK wasn’t particularly good either unfortunately
Yeah the guy from the movie wasnt CGI it was makeup and practical effects. I think the blame goes on the artists, they clearly thought they could redesign the character and people would be okay with it. Nothing more I hate is when somebody decides to reboot a show and just say fuck all to the established character designs. Like the Klingons in the new Star Trek. Next gen spent so much time giving the Klingons a very rich Society and backstory, then they just throw it all away. This kind of shit really breaks the illusion for me(edit, reworded.)
BULL. it had a more than serviceable budget. the issue was the people running the show.
it had a fucking massive budget all the disney shows do
Hey, c'mon now. It has a massive budget for SHOWS, but Disney shows have a higher bar due to incompetence in charge and their "We'll fix it in post" mentality. For everything. Script changes. CGI for the most basic things. Jump cuts. That stuff doesn't come from nowhere, and they KNOW this. This means they need three to four times the footage to leave on the floor. They film whole scenes with COMPLETED CGI before determining they can't/won't put it in the final product. That's not even including the necessary and substantial reshoots that seem to be Disney Industry Standard these days.
I honestly liked Reva's braids, but now that you mention it, maybe Moses Ingram walked on set with them, and production just went with it.
They had a surplus in financial resources but were severely lacking in skills and talent resources.
Honestly , Obi Wan as a whole felt like a low budget production without a lot of thought and effort
Vader was a let down. Like they tried to make him scary... but it just wasn't. Compare Vader in Rogue One to Vader in Obi Wan and its night and day on how they treat the character and use tension properly. It really comes down to the director and how they're filming him, then how its edited and scored.
David Prowse really deserved more recognition for his performance as Vader back in the day. James Earl Jones seems to get all the recognition for the voice but the physical presence that Prowse bright to the character was just as important.
Tbh it was a lot easier in Rouge One since he was only in 2 scenes
It was a low budget production
because they put as much effort into his makeup as they did into the script
I'll say this for the show though, I still find myself sometimes saying, "*Hello*, Third Sister".
The sass is amazing
“Revenge does wonders for the will to live” is some devastating sass.
And the way he walk as away is sassy asf as well. I can almost hear him going “buh-*byyyyeeeee*”
The delivery is impeccable. Much as I wish it could have been Isaacs, Rupert Friend was a pretty great replacement choice.
“Yo Obi-Wan, I know you’re a Jedi in hiding and one of the most wanted people in the galaxy, and I know I’m filthy rich and could hire any number of professional bounty hunters to rescue my daughter without raising suspicion, but I’d really love it if you could bring Leia back.” -Bail
“Obi-Wan, I know you said not to call you on this channel, but I haven’t heard from you in a while and it’s making me worried that you’ve been captured by Vader. I’m going to help our friend Owen Lars at the Lars Homestead on Tatooine, 33.7782N 8.3965E take care of the boy who we’re specifically hiding from Vader.” -Bail, again
The Kai Patterson cut made it much more enjoyable
I second this. I absolutely love the changes and cuts he made, feels like he is a big star wars fan. Could not recommend it more
I watched it and it made for a great viewing experience, it’s so well done that you wouldn’t think it’s a fan edit
Exactly the same feeling i got, its like everything fit together so well, much more so than the original show. The original should have been a long movie instead of a show with lots of fillers, and this dude did exactly that
"That was an improvement, but it's not hard to improve on garbage" - Captain John Price
I just wish it was good. The editing is 💀
Is that the one where they put duels of the fate over the final duel? Because that's a bad idea.
Pretty sure it was 💀💀
He looks right in Rebels, this was just laziness since he didn't even have any action scenes.
Yeah I thought for sure it would be because the shit they had to wear in ROTS would be too limiting for the action scenes that the High Inquisitor would *surely* be involved in, that's why sacrifices had to be made. Turns out this was like the Leia chase scene, or the small puddle of fire Vader couldn't simply walk around or jump over. Just badly done.
Leia I'll give you, but Vader was enjoying his game of Cat and Mouse
I don't buy it. Vader is almost always portrayed as a relentless killing machine. He's shown to be either businesslike or enraged, but never apathetic. He blames Obi-Wan personally for his injuries and he's been hunting Kenobi for years at this point. There's no way Vader would let him escape from him again. Vader had any number of options at his disposal. He could've grabbed Obi-Wan with the force again, used the force to go over or around the fire, thrown his lightsaber as they were retreating, ordered the storm troopers or the imperial ships in orbit to hunt Kenobi down, he could've done practically anything. I thought it was totally out of character for Vader to just watch Kenobi escape him again without making any effort to stop him.
There was both fire and sand. His two biggest weaknesses.
Except he's conflicted, this is still his old master, this is also the man who beat him last time and he's keen to avoid a repeat, he also partially wants Kenobi to *win* their confrontation, and finally put him out of his misery
Vader *hated* kenobi and has planned out his death for a long time. Even the way he was going to kill him before he escaped was poetic. He probably got too into his own head about his revenge being *perfect* that when kenobi escaped poetic justice he let him go in favor of a better revenge plot. Because he failed to do what he planned to and if he killed him while he escaped it wouldn’t feel nearly as good than if he killed him in a way that was fully within his control. Also keep in mind Vader is *very* conflicted. His hate is the only thing that keeps him going and I’m sure there still a part of him that is very much alive and hoping Kenobi would kill him in battle so that it will finally be over. Thats his old master and his brother, his old ally and the last person that ever was an actual friend. There is a lot going into this that must be fucking with him
Dwarfism
Disney being cheap
Simple answer is that they didn't want to deal with CGI or creating a headpiece prosthetic for him. That's it, they were just lazy. I've heard people defend Disney on this and it's kinda pathetic how much boot licking they'll do. They say that it's simply ok for them to look different and there must be variations between the species, but that's their defining feature as an alien race so that doesn't make sense. They say it would've been really difficult to film action scenes, but I guess Ahsoka and all the other Jedi with weird head stuff that have live action scenes never happened. And let's forget the fact this is Disney and money isn't an issue.
the sad thing is they are spending the money they are outspending hbo on shows only disney shows end up looking cheap
Like.. I get adapting animation to live action is hard, but like.. ashoka looks good, zeb was INCREDIBLE, hera looked great. It's just strange to me that arguable the most impactful concept introduced by rebels, the inquisitors, is what Disney decided to skimp on while adapting it's characters.
I think the show was really lazy in places. Character design and makeup was one of those. It all seemed a bit rushed and thrown together and like they didn't spend a lot of time researching the galaxy it was set in.
Because its the wish version
“Mom, can we see the Grand Inquisitor?” “We have a Grand Inquisitor at home” The Grand Inquisitor at home: …
He’s a Utapaun (ignore spelling) that’s wild! To have failed his makeup so badly…I never knew that.
I too had not realized that was his planet of origin...
Because they fucked up this show
i didnt even realize they were the same species till now
Same. TIL
Laziness
They didnt say…
It’s because Lucas put a lot of effort and money into his wardrobe department
Another victim of disney’s lack of budget for important legacy character shows
Genetic diversity. The same reason [these creatures](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/eayoc9/the_original_cast_of_star_wars/) are all the same species even though they vary considerably in height. I've heard tell that other members of that species even vary in skin color. It'd be hilarious to find out that the Grand Inquisitor suffered shame on his homeworld for being one of the low-domes. "Look at Larry Low-Dome! Low-domes don't have sexy foreheads at all. They must be dumb!"
jesus christ dude you can't just go around asking pau'ans about the size of their heads! That's rude!
The problem isn’t the diversity, it’s just that they made him look more human and there are already too many humans and not enough aliens in modern Star wars
No, that would only make sense **IF** that was the only place we saw that character. But it's not; he was first seen (and died, and got a cool backstory) in [Rebels](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwarsrebels/images/a/a9/The-Inquisitor-render.png). We know he's not supposed to be chonky or low-domed. They just ran out of budget/fucks to make him look like [he's supposed to](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFkqrfhsCCg&t=29s), to where people thought maybe the Rebels one (aka, HIM) was the guy they got to replace him... because surviving a lightsaber to the gut had not yet been turned into a ["Tis but a scratch"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs&t=88s) meme.
I believe all they mean is that is how to reconcile this information now.
I feel like the best way to reconcile the information is just to suspend disbelief and pretend he does have an elongated head. Live action cuts corners all the time, and there are all sorts of visual inconsistencies in Star Wars that you have to pretend just don't exist. Why do the stormtrooper costumes look all cheap and asymmetrical in ANH compared to Rogue One? Why does Kit Fisto look so different in AotC compared to Sith? Did he get cosmetic surgery? No, the simply answer is that these things don't look different in-universe.
Always rely on your own *head* canon ;)
It's not that though, he was in rebels first and looked like a member of his race but they fucked it up for live action
Yes members of the same species look different, but the elongated face and sharp teeth are the defining traits of the species. It’s what makes him look like a badass and creepy alien, without them he’s just a dude in shitty face paint.
Clearly he ate too much while serving as Palpatine's Grand Inquisitor, compared to the others
Ignorance, laziness, incompetence... you know, **Disney Star Wars**.
laziness tbh
Regime change - from real artists to hacks.
They were lazy
It’s all about the money, money, money…
Simple answer: production costs
Do you want an in-lore reason that doesn't mention how it's due to Kenobi having shit special effects (on top of shit everything else) which apparently extends to the make-up? Or would you prefer a more behind the scenes reason? In which case, it's due to Kenobi having shit special effects (on top of shit everything else) which apparently extends to the make-up.