ST Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) in the ST

In addition, I think he's going to find the throne very lonely without Rey to share it with in IX and that he'll likely be overthrown (possibly by some new bad within the KoR if they return and Hux) and that the realization that the power is empty and was misleading and his feelings for Rey will ultimately be the things that lead him to realizing his regrets and seeking to help Rey and the Resistance overthrow the FO as a wild card anti-hero by the midway point of IX through the end where his efforts will give him the chance to live on in the EU and continue to express regrets over his earlier actions now and then while becoming sort of a ronin Jedi out in the galaxy.

 

@Ender_and_Bean, I don’t have a lot of time to respond to your recent posts right now, but I will just say that we will likely need to agree to disagree about Luke Skywalker in TLJ. I do believe that the character as we knew him in the OT WAS destroyed in TLJ. That character is completely different in personality, basic character traits , beliefs, and even basic integrity. Mark Hamill, who calls the character Jake Skywalker, seems to agree with me.

No, I did not want to see my favorite character in all of cinema deconstructed and degraded that way. I go to movies to be entertained, not to be disgusted. If they couldn’t respect Luke’s character, then they shouldn’t have used Luke’s character. They could have taken this story a hundred years into the future where Luke and his legacy wouldn’t have been impacted. Or, they could have had Luke die defending his students in the temple massacre between trilogies. I would have preferred that to having Luke changed from a hero to a cowardly, do nothing jerk.

Luke’s major accomplishment of the entire OT, returning his father to the light, becomes meaningless, because he has been blamed by the new filmmakers for being the catalyst that started Kylo on the road to villainy. He thus becomes partially responsible for all the death and destruction that Kylo caused. Why purposely turn a beloved hero of over 40 years into a near villain? Why take away all of his accomplishments and leave him with absolutely nothing? It’s truly sad that because of TLJ, it would have been better if Luke had not survived the Death Star in rotj.

The happy ending of the OT characters was ripped away from them by the sequel trilogy. I knew that there would need to be problems in the galaxy in order to make a sequel trilogy in the first place, but not everything needed to be destroyed. There could have been some survivors of the Jedi massacre. The new republic didn’t need to be totally annihilated, and above all, the OT characters didn’t need to be partly responsible for the new problems in the galaxy, and the only new skywalker character didn’t need to be the primary villain.

I also disagree that Luke was “ Obi-Wan “ in this film. Luke taught no one in this movie. He didn’t have a positive impact on rey. They had only an adversarial relationship. This means that Luke was never her mentor/ teacher, and he never successfully trained a single Jedi.

You mentioned that Luke was “retired” and didn’t he deserve that.? Well, no. Luke would have been about 47 when he went into “retirement “, and he was only about 53 in TLJ. How many people do you know who retire at 47? I don’t know anyone. Besides, why would Luke retire? He never accomplished his life’s work of bringing Jedi into the galaxy. Yoda was still training students when he was nearly 900 years old. Jedi don’t seem to “retire” .

 

Almost every soldier I know retired from warfare well before the age of 40.

I basically disagree with all aspects of what you said @ChildOfWinds except for this. I do agree that we will likely disagree.

Anakin Skywalker wasn’t ruined as a character when he changed following the temple massacre that he executed himself. His “name” changed during his dark period too. If Mark views the beginning of TLJ in a similar way where the following the temple massacre for motivation as an actor then it still sort of checks between father and son and the changes both endured following the temple massacres they were involved in.

We’d never seen how Luke would handle a situation as catastrophic as that which occurred because of a choice he regretted that killed so many people he knew and trained. We’d never seen his big, emotional heart corrupted by shame and regret. It feels different because we’d never seen Luke in a situation like this. You didn’t know Luke as well as you thought from the 4 years of University you spent with him via the OT. You’d never seen him deal with this and the sense of all of the work he’d done being undone.

Johnson found the last and most challenging test for Luke in Campbell’s hero’s journey where his decision-making couldn’t be guided by his desire to be with his father and where no Force ghosts could counsel him as they had before. It was the hardest test he’s perhaps faced since the last moment where the test in TESB seemed similarly unwinnable to such an extent that Luke retreated from battle and tried to kill himself. Something unimaginable for other heroes. When Luke makes up his mind that something is for the best it usually happens. Often it works out but in unexpected ways.

And in a way his theory that in the absence of Jedi the light would find others actually did happen. The Force did awaken in Rey (and also Broom Boy) and a new person did find a way to help others without being formally trained by Jedi. Light side use and the Jedi truly are separate things as TLJ showed.

The eureka moment for Luke though was the realization that that the actions of some in this religion do not reflect on all of the religion because all students eventually feel they’ve grown beyond what their teachers were and start making independent choices (good and sometimes awful). Once that light bulb went on and Luke also realized how he could better incorporate failure of the past into teaching in the future he also saw what Yoda saw. That was the path forward for the Jedi. The thing he hadn’t done and should have. Lose Rey to the Dark Side... they must not. From there he was in full Kenobi mode and he gave his life to save more lives (the heroes of episode IX) and may have helped inspire the future alliances that will help take the FO down. My guess/hope is that both Yoda and Luke will guide Rey more than ever before from beyond.

 

Before seeing TLJ, I would have said this is a terrible idea. It is, however, 100% better than what actually occurred.

 

So... AFTER seeing TLJ, I would have said this is a GREAT idea. It ISN'T, however, 100% WORSE than what actually occurred? Is that what you think I should have said?

Also, this line really irked me b/c it doesn't sound the least bit like Luke, to me. It sounds like Rian Johnson lecturing an audience he apparently hates.

 

You know, quite frankly, why does anyone care if Rey goes to the dark side? I don't know her enough to care. Why not have her go dark, if half this fandom is going to scream at me about how Kylo HAS TO BE redeemed!! HAS TO BE! Because it's what Luke, Han and Leia wanted and you don't love them if you don't want it, and the Skywalkers won't have a legacy....

Yeah, see the fallacy there? They don't have a legacy because of Kylo Ren.

Because if he didn't, Vader was going to turn him to the dark side. That's not exactly retreating from battle, that's winning it. Whether he was trying to kill himself or hoping for a miracle, he was making his own choice.

I'd pull out Han's "that's not how the Force works" but I really think I need that commercial about "that's not how any of this works" - that's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There's no "bad guy created, so good guy created" in Star Wars - unless we're going to get into some tortured reading of Anakin and Palpatine, which doesn't work. Rey was born when Kylo was 10. So, he was dark then? Or was he dark when Luke tried to kill him? Or did Luke trying to kill him make him dark? Or was it Snoke? Or was it because Han and Leia didn't spend every waking moment with him? The Force awakens in Rey - why? She downloads her skills from Kylo, how? All of this in contravention to all the known lore we've had from Star Wars, and hey, who cares if she can fight or has the Force? Her magic love for Kylo is going to turn everything right! Why does she need to fight? She's Bella Swan 2.0.

"He's going to find the throne very lonely" - well, poor poor Kylo. After all he's done, who in the world would trust him to walk a little old lady across a street, let alone run around the galaxy with a lightsaber? "Regrets over his earlier actions" - that waste of skin killed his father, his mother, and his uncle, ran off to the space fascists and stood by while they destroyed planets - like his own mother and grandparents' planets were destroyed, tortured people like his mother and father were tortured - he has regrets? Great. He can contemplate them in a jail cell. Ronin Jedi? I thought we'd established that the Jedi were bad and should be gotten rid of because Luke somehow learned they were bad - for all 1000 years of their existence, from books he didn't read, and Obi Wan, Anakin and Yoda couldn't be tasked to come talk to him.

>>Quote that won't work from Ender_and_Bean again<<I'm betting if we'd gotten what some of you wanted it would have become Star Trek the Final Frontier and been a fan-servicey mess of a film that critics would have graded harshly, history wouldn't have been kind to, that only connected strongest with many of the hardcore fans who hate the ST for not being that, who admittedly would have ate it up like candy like the DC fans do Snyder's critical/general audience duds.<<<

I'd rather watch Final Frontier again than JJ's Star Trek. I'd rather see it than TFA or TLJ. The critics went gaga over JJ's remix of A New Hope, so whatever and who really cares what the critics think anyway - gone back and looked at the contemporaneous reviews of New Hope lately? Plus Final Frontier has one of my favorite Trek lines ever: "What does God need with a starship?"

But you know what a Star Trek movie looks like that honors the characters that came before, that has a message about honor and getting old in it?

Wrath of Khan. Wherein Kirk and the gang aren't tied into knots and regressed. Their foibles and triumphs and history together are used to make a great movie. A movie that doesn't destroy Kirk's character, or Spock's or any of them. That has an actual villain, not Darth Emo with his sad eyes. A villain that you feel bad about seeing die because he has goals and motives and is interesting and well acted. When Kylo Ren dies in a pitiful heap, people will applaud.

 

Would've been much more interesting and still divided the audience (Which was RJ's goal.) Imagine Rey taking Kylo's hand and joining the First Order, end of film, cut to credits.... The reactions alone would've been worth the price of admission for me. They already decided to have Luke be a failure so why not add letting Rey turn dark to the list, have him survive TLJ to be the only hope against Rey and Kylo in 9, to have him take responsibility for his mistakes.

 

There are some aspects of 1980s family filmmaking that will never be improved upon in a remake. Back to the Future. The Breakfast Club. The Empire Strikes Back. Wrath of Khan isn’t one of them.

Star Trek Into Darkness beat Wrath of Khan at its own game.







You can’t just be turned to the dark side no matter what. There’s no spell cast.

It does seem Lucasfilm is changing up the lore. I prefer it to midichlorians and count comparisons enormously.

Luke jumped because he quit the fight then in what he perceived to be an unwinnable situation and made a choice that he felt was better. He did the same following the temple massacre.

Han and Leia’s legacies are in tact from the the OT. The efforts of the greatest solders of WWI didn’t become any less incredible because they got old, some had kids, and issues later in life. The Road Hogs/Space Cowboys/Reds/Final frontier gimmick of the old gang being back together and too old to do some of the things they used to do but learning from the odd past mistake or throwing out old lines is candy. It’s empty. It’s kind of sad. Comes off more like a special reunion super bowl ad than a movie. Almost pathetic in a way. Like how Blue Oyster Cult apparently play Don’t fear the reaper as many as 3 tines during their concerts because it’s what the people want. We’ve been there. Done that. They were even cooler and sexier before when they did it. What are you showing us new about these people? What would Han be like appealing to someone else’s heart in a fatherly role? IX was supposed to be Leia’s so we won’t know what they had in store for her but from the EU I imagine she was going to express some of her regret for not teaching Ben about Anakin’s fall and telling him who his grandfather was in her own way before Snoke could. What’s the biggest challenge Luke could face yet that we haven’t seen him face? How could his big hear handle feeling like the villain?

As for the real villain... we’ll see where things go in IX. Anakin did awful things to Obi-Wan, Padme, children, his daughter, his son, and millions more and yet ROTJ made millions like him more. Even before the PT. IX may do the same for Ben Solo. Maybe not. Maybe he will become more evil and just fully give in to his anger entirely and use the Dark Side in ways we haven’t seen yet. I’m intrigued to find out.

 

I agree with this but it's all about execution, they could've made Luke grumpy and cynical and have it be more believable within the context of the original character.

That's pretty much what I think is going to happen and should, it sticks to the positive message Star Wars has always pushed and gives us a happy ending for the Skywalker bloodline.

This, while may be different to the Star Wars saga is not different to movies outside of it. Having Kylo be some mustache twirling villain in 9 would throw away everything JJ and RJ did with the character in TFA and TLJ and would make 9 a very very boring film IMO.

 

Well that, my friend? Is proof positive that we will never agree on anything, not even the sun rising in the east. JJ's cheap imitation/ripoff of Wrath of Khan is better than the original? Yeah, not so much. Just like Into Darkness, the ST is a cynical rehash, focus grouped into existence, and done to a turn by a group of writers and directors who don't have a tenth of the imagination of Lucas or Roddenberry.

 

The greats are exactly that for that reason. Add Rod Serling to that list. Doesn’t change the fact that the new Apes trilogy is better than the original either.

Execution matters too. Acting matters. Screenplay improvements matter.

 

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not a Trek diehard, and I thought JJ’s Trek reboot was amazing,l (and I adored TFA, ofc) but Into Darkness just didn’t touch Wrath of Kahn imo. It was prettier, but pretty doesn’t impress me too much.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Yes, I agree. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen a scenario where Luke died between the two trilogies before I saw TLJ. I would have been greatly disappointed, no doubt about it. However, after seeing TLJ, it would have been far preferable if Luke had died trying to protect his students, because that would have been very in- character for Luke, dying trying to save those he cared about.

Plus, if Luke would have died between trilogies, he would have remained an iconic hero. His integrity and his personality and his characterization and his dignity would have remained intact. I could have remained proud of the character, instead of actually feeling embarrassed for him. Plus, fellow posters wouldn’t be equating Luke with his father, Anakin/ Vader. Luke should never be considered similar to his father. That’s just wrong. Sadly though, Luke’s failure with Kylo ending up causing just about as much death and destruction in the galaxy as Anakin/Vader caused.

It really does make me angry that the hero of my early years has been disrespected this way and twisted into someone he was never supposed to be. I really do feel sorry for Mark Hamill, and especially for George Lucas, who created this fantastic character, who until now withstood the test of time, beloved by many generations for over 40 years. I am sure that George Lucas never planned to have his namesake/alter ego turned into a complete and utter failure who died leaving no accomplishments, and without successfully training even one Jedi, but instead, was partly responsible for the deaths of countless people because of his mistake with Kylo.

It’s a truly sad and profoundly unsatisfying conclusion to a more than 40 year old story.

And I really want to see Kylo pay for his crimes with either death or life in a maximum security prison . No happily ever after for Kylo. He caused untold grief and death to Han and Luke ( and probably Leia) as well as causing death and destruction throughout the galaxy, so he doesn’t deserve to live a free and happy life. Why should he end up happy and satisfied when he was the reason why no one else ended up happy and satisfied....and even alive?

 

I agree that there was a lack of care and understanding in Johnson and LFL's handling of Luke, and a lot of it just doesn't add up, as people above have explained. My main critique is in the assumption that Luke even needed to be deconstructed at all. He didn't end ROTJ in the mold of a classic warrior hero who uses violence to solve all their problems -- that's the kind of character that deserves a deconstruction -- rather, Luke already deconstructed the classic hero by throwing his lightsaber down and appealing to his father's goodness with love. That right there was the greatest deconstruction of the violent hero we could ever have, and it's what made SW and Luke special for so many of us.

And instead of using this super interesting aspect of Luke's character and developing it for the ST story, they pick what I find to be a much duller, more predictable and already traveled aspect, for a reason I can't really fathom except lack of time or understanding, a lack of narrative care and due diligence.

Well, the upshot for Anakin fans like me is that there's a chance now in E9 that he will have the spotlight on him again, now that Luke has been diminished and failed to restart the Jedi (he's served a useful purpose, but he's not the destined hero Rey is) I believe the plan (hopefully) is to have Anakin pass the baton on to Rey in some symbolic or even plot-related way. But I would have rather had this happen by having Kylo and Snoke defeat Luke, setting Kylo up properly to be a true threat to Rey. Right now, E9 has to do more to make us fear that Kylo will defeat Rey -- as a Rey fan, I don't fear Kylo at all, and that's a shame.

 

I don't think there was a lack of care or understanding. I just think the understanding was of a different nature and some people did not like the take chosen at all. I think the path RJ took was way more interesting and resonant than the more obvious "fan pleasing" paths might have been. I think it's fair to not like or even despise what they did with Luke. What I reject is the notion that RJ taking a different path means there was a lack of narrative diligence, care or respect. I think he was taking the utmost in all three in the path he took - he just took a bold one that some people have rejected.

 

It was not the "bold one", it was simply against Luke's character. It felt like Mother Theresa quitting and joining Goldman Sachs.
It was not only the path but as well the behavior. It simply did not fit

 

Look - you felt it was against his character, plenty of others felt it was not. Unfortunately for you, RJ was in the opinion that it was within the realms of where that character could go - and I and plenty of others agree with him. You can dislike it without bringing in bad faith accusations against the guy who believed in that path.

 

What, precisely, do you believe should or would have fitted?

 

Exactly what Mark Hamill said in his "Jake Skywalker" interview

 

Please enlighten me what you mean and relate it please to my post above.
IDK what you are referring to

 

So you selectively disagree with Hamill on this part then.

The supposed alternate to the Jake Skywalker isn't even a character. It's just Hamill's reaction to finding out that Luke's not pro-active in the Episodes IV-V-VI mode.

It's funny how people ignore the fact that, rescuing Han and shooting down a couple of scouts troopers aside, the Alliance destroyed the Death Star II with the Emperor on board, without Luke barely taking an active role in that plot. Luke went AWOL on a personal quest. One that almost turned him to the dark side.

 

If I read “fan pleasing” or “fan service” used as some sort of “ you stupid peasant, you aren’t intelligent enough to understand the brilliant points these auteurs are trying to make” comment one more time, I’m going to scream. What is wrong with making a movie for fans? What would have been wrong with reuniting Luke, Han and Leia and having them as older, recognizable versions of themselves? Still heroes, not “deconstructed” wrecks for plot devices? NOTHING. I could have given you almost the same plot - if that’s what LFL wanted - doing that.

Why did LFL do this to them? It isn’t for some grand point about heroes living to long or whatever nonsense has been in vogue since Dark Knight, it’s because they wanted a “conflicted” villain, their own bargain basement Loki or Edward the Sparkly Vampire and they twisted three indelible heroes to get there. It’s pretty evident to me that most of the fans defending what’s been done to the OT 3 love Kylo Ren and want him to be Ben Solo again and that includes Abrams and Johnson (Kasdan just got his chance to finally do the ending to ROTJ he wanted).

So they trashed away three of the best characters in film and threw out three actors who are, whether anyone likes it or not, one of the primary reasons there is a Star Wars franchise, so they could have their very own “better than Vader” villain. I am thrilled it’s blowing up in their faces.

 

Funny, because TFA received those complaints and it didn't seem to bother people who hate that film's supposed "fan service" and the large cross section that includes people who hate what TLJ didn't do with Luke.

I have my earplugs in by the way so screaming won't make any difference.