ST Did You Like TLJ's Characterization of Luke Skywalker?

Yes.

https://www.google.co.jp/amp/s/amp....ring_up_some_misconceptions_about_the_art_of/

 

Rian Johnson ain't no Star Wars fan. He's a fraud.

 

1. Yep, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s tragic
2. He doesn’t go into exile because Kylo turns evil, he goes into exile because Kylo turns evil and destroys everything he had been building for years. You say post-ROTJ Luke wouldn’t do that, but that’s not true. Luke has never been tested like that in canon.

Your criticism is still informed by the belief that Luke is a flawless paragon of enlightenment, and not a flawed human.

 

Yes.

https://www.google.co.jp/amp/s/amp....ring_up_some_misconceptions_about_the_art_of/

 

I like this version of Luke is not perfect but i think is great and Luke's death is very emotional
I consider the movie a good movie but I think you enjoy it more if you consider the movie as a Alternative continuation of Return of the Jedi

However i prefer the Luke Skywalker from the Expanded Universe

 

Yes, it was heartbreakingly out-of-character for Luke to contemplate killing Ben. Fortunately, Luke thinks so too. I always said I don't care how many setbacks Luke encounters along the way so long as he ends his journey in the right place. And now he's more powerful than you can possibly imagine, and managed to save his loved ones, Ben included, in the process. Works for me.

 

I don't have too much of an issue with Luke Skywalker's characterization in the Sequel Trilogy as a whole. His storyline takes an immediate and permanent downturn after ROTJ. Throwing down his saber and redeeming his father was the most important thing he did.

I say this because he failed at everything else he attempted afterwards. He didn't pass on what he had learned, he didn't revive the Jedi Order as a force for good. He had thirty years of peace and achieved nothing in it. To me, it seems that Luke's true purpose was to redeem his father, the Chosen One.

Anakin was the one that ended the horror by destroying the Sith once and for all. All Luke had to do was prevent future horrors from rising up. As a Jedi Knight, that was his only real task. The Last Jedi was a failure. In almost every sense of the word. Luke Skywalker is a pale shadow of his mentors and his role in the tale is over. Hopefully Rey can succeed where he failed and bring the Jedi Order back as a proactive force for good in the Galaxy.


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The divide is not as sharp as is being presented. The RT audience score is being brigaded and manipulated. Cinemascore, which uses some actual scientific polling technique gives it an audience score of "A." ANYONE can log onto RT or IMDB with any account they have and post a rating. And as demonstrated by the Screenrant article, some people are doing just that.

On Luke's reaction..... In order for Luke to feel shame of enough magnitude that he felt the need to go into exile, I think the lightsaber was necessary. From a visual point of view, even more.

 

Not initially but it makes sense. What happened was traumatizing and he felt responsible for what Kylo became.

 

Genuinely surprised there's such a backlash to what was probably the single best part of the movie to me, and one of the best parts of Star Wars ever. They made Luke flawed in ways that clearly grow from who he was in the Original Trilogy but also preserve his inherent goodness.

I also loved the way they subtly suggested that his mistake with Kylo was born of his efforts to redeem the failure of the prequel-era Jedi, and especially Obi-Wan. He knew that Obi-Wan had failed with his father, and he was desperate to prevent the cycle from repeating - but in the moment that he thought about doing that, he accidentally caused it to do so. In seeking to avoid the mistake of the old Jedi, he made a whole new mistake of its own - which is exactly the point of both this movie, and of Yoda's speech especially.

And of course his reunion with Leia was just note-perfect. So much that passed between them clearly unsaid.

To me the whole movie honestly felt like above all else a love letter to the character of Luke Skywalker, which is why I'm taken aback by people who saw it as the opposite.

 

There are a lot of people who either don't understand Luke Skywalker or have forgotten who Luke is.

Luke was never perfect. "Much anger in him. Like his father." Even in ROTJ he's force choking guards, and he batters off Vader's hand in sheer rage. But at the vital moment, he was able to overcome the darkness inside himself.

Decades later, gripped by sudden fear for everything that he had built, he ignited his saber. And he overcame that darkness too. The tragedy is that he was one second too late.

 

Rey: "Listen, Ben gutted Han like a fish and Leia is trapped on a cruiser with what remains of the Resistance with little to no fuel whilst being pursued by a First Order fleet that has them outnumbered and outgunned. We need your help."
Luke: "Nah."

 

More like Luke: 'The Jedi always make things worse and they fail every time. They were in control of everything and they caused the creation of Darth Vader and the destruction of the Republic. Then I helped 'save the day' once and ended up failing my own nephew despite my sister trusting me, and I caused him to be lost and destroy everything I had built. Maybe I could swan in with my laser sword now but I know it would end up making things worse because that's what always happens. Since the Light will exist anyway, it's better for everyone that I *don't* just jump in, and let the Jedi's record of failure end.'

He ends up being wrong, of course, but not because he's selfish or doesn't care.

 

But he was certainly going to let his sister and the Resistance die for his mistakes. Gotta love that inherent goodness.

 

Everything about Luke's arc rang true for me, and I love that his showdown with Kylo Ren was ultimately an act of nonviolence, entirely aligned with him defiantly tossing the lightsaber aside in ROTJ.

 

The whole point is that he doesn't think him going back WOULD save them; he thinks it would make things worse because that's what Jedi always do.

But I can't imagine where Luke would get the idea that running off to save Leia might actually end up not helping at all but making things worse...

 

You must have missed the scene where "Luke" -- I use the quotes because this non-canon for me -- considered murdering his young nephew in his sleep. Did you see that part? You don't consider that character assassination? At what point in which of the Original Trilogy films did we establish Luke Skywalker as a murderer? Or as a coward who runs away after a mistake rather than fixing his mess?

Character assassination. It's fine if you disagree or just don't see it that way, but don't tell me I am making things up either.

I agree with you, Luke turning flips like Dooku and Sidious would have been silly, but using The Force in battle or a lightsaber in a realistic way? If Disney/KK/LFL can't do that without it looking silly, they need to consider NOT making these film or letting someone do it who knows what the hell they are doing.

 

Luke's characterization, more than any of the other greats things about The Last Jedi, is what made this film feel like something truly special, and to me it really boils down to how his death was handled, which was oddly cathartic and uplifting. In his final moments, Luke had regained the hope he held as a young man, the hope for a better tomorrow just beyond the horizon, a hope he had lost with age as he made the same mistakes as his predecessors, as we're all destined to do in one way or another. However, this better tomorrow no longer belonged to him; it belonged to a younger generation who would look at the successes and failures of the past and forge their own way forward in response, just as Luke's generation had done. The reclamation of this hope coupled with the acceptance of the things he had done, good and bad, and his role in the large narrative, was beautifully visualized by the binary sunset.

To see him become one with the Force in peace was really stirring, especially as it immediately followed the Kylo/Luke sequence, a "fight" which was so much more powerful because Luke wasn't there. He sent out the idealized, unkillable legend of himself that had become idolized and mythologized over the years to "take on the whole First Order," an idea he scoffed at earlier in the film, and it allowed Luke to non-violently confront his wayward nephew, completely keeping in character with the decisions he made at the end of Return of the Jedi. Flesh-and-blood Luke, a man with flaws and shortcomings, tearable flesh and breakable bone, couldn't have done that. But the myth of Luke? That's someone who could stand underneath a barrage of heavy firepower and wipe the dirt off his shoulder afterwards, someone who couldn't be killed or even hurt, someone who couldn't be tarnished. As Luke passed into the Force, he really did become more powerful than anyone could possibly imagine; he became an idea, a pure figure of inspiration and hope that had long since outgrown the accomplishments and failures of the man himself.

 

Loved it.

Fresher, stronger, and more interesting than any of the crap many fans desired, and the crap I imagined before TFA was released.

I felt relevant, not just reverent.

 

Luke’s deification bothers me because it’s undeserved. RJ made everything his fault. At the very end, when all hope is lost thanks in very large part to Luke, and almost every last person that fought for the republic Luke helped save is dead, Luke dies to save a dozen people. In the process he inspires them with his fake godliness so they can go tell stories about the great Luke Skywalker. I could make a cynical joke about this being a pretty realistic depiction of religion generally, but SW isn’t supposed to be cynical.

At the end of the day, Anakin Skywalker made the Jedi purge way more successful than it ever would have been without him, Luke wasn’t needed because any Jedi could have taken out Vader and the Emperor, and Luke created Kylo and passed on nothing to Rey, let alone any other Jedi. The Skywalkers are the force’s practical joke on the galaxy.

 

She didn't know about the Resistance being in a sublight chase with the FO. She had left long before this happened...

 

Luke was no murderer. Never. But he was not perfect either. I think it is expressed pretty well in the movie: the success of his past achievements left him complacent and he detected Ben's dark way too late. To ignite his lightsaber while the kid was asleep became his biggest failure, for sure. And that is the reason why his "duel" in Crait was so powerful: his plan never was to kill Ren. He showed him how powerful a Jedi could be without hurting anybody. And, by giving some time to the rebels to escape, he redeemed himself (the "I'm sorry" line to Leia was so poignant, BTW.)

So Old-Luke was very much human, suffering from his own decisions and bad moves. Consequences. He was not a coward but he believed that he was becoming a burden. Of course, at the end, thanks to Rey presence on the island and Yoda "visit-surprise", Old-Luke became Young-Luke once again, for the last time. And he rose to the occasion.
IMO, it's epic on every way.

 

I've not seen it better framed than this, and I doubt I will.

Kudos. You nailed it, killed it, buried it, and resurrected it.