Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge

Jedi Temple Challenge is the latest attempt by Star Wars to advertise to children...by ripping off a Nickelodeon kids game show from the 90s. If you haven't heard of Jedi Temple Challenge, no one will blame you. Remember Legends of the Hidden Temple? Here it is again in an inferior format; only this time it's got Star Wars slapped on it. It's got cheap styrofoam sets, kindergarten level production value, and a budget smaller than an episode of Scooby-Doo. Legends was an iconic show for its time. I'm sure every kid who grew up in the 90s remembered it. Whether it was the sets, the challenges, or the teams, every single thing was worth remembering. Most importantly...I remember it was hard, with fun sets, puzzles, and great production design. Jedi Temple Challenge is more like a game show for babies; with puzzles that weren't even worthy of being called puzzles, and challenges that any kid could complete in their backyard. Ahmed Best, who is most known for his oh-so memorable role of Jar Jar Binks, is an awkward host, clearly trying his best, but lacks the charm of Jeff Probst or Phil Keoghan. His awkward banter is too embarrassing to watch with a protocol droid that looks like it was built in an hour. It doesn't help that said droid keeps yelling dad jokes that even dads would be ashamed of. Everything looks more like a Star Wars playground for children, and all of it feels like no money or effort was put into it. Some cut set pieces aren't enough to save it, it's too boring to watch, the kids can't complete the most basic of tasks. They did the laziest job in differentiating the teams; all you get is blue team, red team, red fish, blue fish. Even Hidden Temple had the Purple Parrots, the Red Jaguars, the Silver Snakes, the Orange Iguanas, the Blue Barracudas, and the Green Monkeys. It's more fun to watch Survivor or reruns of Hidden Temple instead of this.

Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge is a kids' game show that is yet another attempt to aim the Star Wars franchise towards kids, and it's basically a Star Wars copy of Legends Of The Hidden Temple.

Each episode, Jedi Master Kelleran Beq (played by Ahmed Best, who is famous, or to certain fans, infamous, as the actor who played Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace), along with his two droids, AD-3 and LX-R5, have three teams, each composed of two kids, through the trials. The first, The Strength Trial, has the three teams working together to get through the many obstacles, with each one completed granting a lightsaber piece. The first two teams who finish their lightsabers move on to the Knowledge Trial, where they hear a tale (mostly made for the show) and one team member must find panels to answer questions about the story to fill a Jedi Holocrom. The first team to do so moves on to the final challenge, the Jedi Temple, where they must face challenges to get the kyber crystals to power their Lightsabers, but a voice belonging to the Dark Side will tempt the kids to take the easy way out of a challenge, at the cost of making the next challenge harder.

Seeing a few episodes, I can see this is basically Legends Of The Hidden Temple, only Star Wars-themed. Ahmed Best is always in character, and is even nice to even the losing teams and gives them words of encouragement (in one episode, he tells a team not to let the day feel like a defeat, as the path to become a Jedi Knight is long, and from what he saw today, he thinks they have what it takes, before sending them back to the Jedi Order to continue their training). AD-3 (or Aidee) is basically there to be comic relief, as she tells some jokes during the games and even interacts with LX-R5, although she can be childish at times (one episode, she almost interrupts the Knowledge Trial to tell the team about her lost diary, which Master Beq tells her it's not the time for). The trials are basically like the segments of LOTHT (the Strength Trial is the Temple Games, the Knowledge Trial has a similar apporach to the Steps of Knowledge, as the teams answer questions based on a tale told by Aidee, and the Jedi Temple is like the Temple Run), but with some minor differences (the Jedi Temple is a start-to-finish event with multiple challenges that both team members must work together to clear, and the Knowledge Trial is done differently, as the two teams choose who wants to be a pilot and who wants to be an engineer, with questions being aimed at each role). I think this is a neat idea, and despite its lack of variety and jokes that are hit-or-miss.