Star Wars Review: Jedi Temple Challenge


This week, on Wednesday June, 10th, the first two episodes of Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge. The show, produced by and Starring Ahmed Best, who formerly played Jar Jar Binks in the prequels, is formatted like a kids game show, where children face a variety of tests and challenges in order to earn the title of Jedi night. Despite it's young target audience, JTC scratches the itch for fun, simple, wholesome Star Wars content, and has appeal for all ages.

The show is clearly crafted with love. Despite being put up on YouTube for free, as a way of reaching wide audiences, the production quality is sky high. The sets are nothing short of beautiful for a reality TV competition show, and even the CGI for the space portions is extremely compelling.  Furthermore, Ahmed Best is such a charming presence on screen, and brings a strong wholesomeness to the show. The kid contestants are... well, kids. For some older audiences they might come off as irritating, especially if you're not the type who likes kids. But thats hardly their fault. In these first two episodes the contestants joy and energy in my opinion more then overrides and age related quirks.

Another excellent addition to the show, both thematically and in terms of game design, is Sam Witwer acting as the voice of the dark side. During timed challenges, the dark side will offer contestants the opportunity to skip the challenge, at the cost of making future challenges harder. Its a wonderful adaptation of Star Wars' themes. The dark side is literally the quick and easy path, but one which comes at great personal cost. Furthermore, from a pure game design perspective, the voice of the dark side provides an interesting late game challenge for the contestants, and contributes to keep the game interesting for audiences.

I am somewhat concerned about the nature of the challenges. In these first two episodes, the challenges the contestants face are identical. If there's no variance or change I could see the show getting dry fairly fast. Of course budget limitations may come into play here, but if they can afford to change up the challenges, it would go a long way to keeping the show fresh.

Lastly, obviously the show is very loose canon wise. We know from external reports that Kelleran Beq (Ahmed Best's Jedi Master) is a canon character, so clearly there are elements of the show which fit into canon. The show doesn't fit perfectly, though. For instance, the child contestants are commonly referred to as Padawans, and upon completing their challenges are knighted as Jedi Knights. However, given the children's ages, and what we know about Jedi learning progression, the contestants and trials would fit more comfortably into the transition between Jedi Initiates and Jedi Padawans, before they train full time with masters. Of course this is ludicrously minor, and is easily ignored. It does nothing to water down the quality of the show.

Jedi Temple Challenge is a campy, loose canon, wholesome, charming kids game show. It's exactly what it tries to be and nothing more. It deserves a lot of credit for that. I urge anyone to give it a watch. It won't be for everyone, especially older fans, but if you're younger, or have younger kids, or are just looking for a fun, simple wholesome time in the Star Wars galaxy, Jedi Temple Challenge might be the show for you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Series Review Knight of Ren (Vicrul)

Image
Yesterday I purchased the Star Wars Black Series: Knight of Ren figure, which depicts the Knight of Ren identified as Vicrul. The figure overall is great, with only a few small issues. Since I like to end on a positive note, let's start with the Negatives. Probably my biggest complaint is with the arm joints. One big issue is that the design of the sleeve on the upper arm somewhat constricts movement and prevents the arm from extending all the way, but this is a minor complaint, and frankly I'm glad they were unwilling to sacrifice Screen Accuracy. The Elbow joints are also a little stiff, but thats hardly a major issue. Far bigger then the elbow is the wrist joints, which have a very small connection point compared to the overall figure. The joints on mine are also a little looser then normal. The right hand is sculpted to hold the gun, although the gun is very loose in his hands, and moves vertically on a hinge, and the left hand is sculpted to hold the sickle. ...
Read more

A Brief Cultural History of the Mandalorians

 Hello and good to see you all again, its been a while. I've been a bit busy what with, well, *gestures broadly at everything*. I probably won't be hitting anywhere near what had been my intention of weekly posts, as I've found that that sort of pressure is difficult. So for now I'll just post when I have something interesting to say or I'm inspired to write. But today, I'm very inspired, and in my excitement for season 2 of the Mandalorian, I figured I would share a brief overview of the history of the Mandalorians in canon. What we know, what puzzle pieces have yet to be provided, and what the narrative I think our limited amount of information might point to. I'll try to keep a solid division between what we know to be true from canon about Mandalorian History and Culture, and the overarching historical narrative that those individual snippets point to. A lot of this will be conjecture, but if I'm doing my job it's well substantiated conjecture. W...
Read more

All Sith Lords in Star Wars Canon: A Currently Complete List

There have been a variety of Sith Lords, in both Canon and Legends Star Wars. Though they're all different, we all have our favorites. Here's complete (currently) list of all Sith Lords that have been mentioned or reference in the Star Wars canon. Holders of the Darth Title:  Darth Sidious Born Sheev Palpatine on the planet Naboo. Taught by Darth Plagueis. Taught Darth Maul, Darth Tyrannus, and Darth Vader. The last of the Banite sith, Palpatine brought the Sith’s grand plan to fruition by executing the Jedi and establishing the Galactic Empire. After 23 years of rule, Sidious was betrayed and defeated by Darth Vader. He returned through the use of cloning, but was finally defeated on the Sith planet of Exegol by his Granddaughter Rey. The Emperor was first mentioned in 1977s A New Hope , first seen in 1983s Return of the Jedi, and first identified as Darth Sidious in 1999’s The Phantom Menace Darth Maul Born on the planet Dathomir, Maul was taken from the N...
Read more