ST The Island: A "Luke in TLJ" Teeth Gnashers Perspective (see warning on page 9 before posting)

Sorry but I think your reaching to an insane degree here, unless your obsessed with some christian ban on suicide I really cannot see how Luke's actions in ESB could be viewed as "weak", choosing death over becoming an agent of evil yourself is surely the supreme moral choice? I cannot see how that relates at all to what we see in TLJ were Luke is seen to have avoided conflict and given in to total defeatism despite clearly have the means to fight against Kylo and the FO which he does not have against Vader in ESB.

The problem again for me is that I think Johnson does a very poor job in both setting up a believable failure for Luke(considering murdering his neophew in his sleep for thought crime) and a believable reaction to that failure(total defeatism). Spending more time showing Luke's failure with Ben in a more sublte fashion that doesn't involve such an out of character reaction would almost certainly have not gotten the same reaction.

Again I think Johnson really missed the potential for a much more realistic and dramatic story with Luke's isolation. Imagine Rey meets Luke and he does seem like everything he should be, he's spent his time advancing his abilities/philosophy yet when it comes to the crunch he won't re-join the fight believing its not the right time. Luke suffering from self delusion, thinking he's isolated himself for a worthwhile reason yet is ultimately also driven to avoid facing his failure to me is a MUCH more believable situation than Luke simply giving up.

That to me would be storytelling more inline with ESB for me where Luke's story is significant more complex than TLJ, there are clear sympathetic reasons why he acts the way he does in ESB even if we see the end result in choosing to face Vader is questionable.

 

I'm not sure how you arrive at that conclusion. Regardless of what's said by Luke it is still that moment which causes ben to leave and become Kylo ren.

The conflict is reiterated numerous times, it is what the character is in The Force Awakens. It is why the climax between Han and Ben is so powerful.

I don't understand how you can say that Kylos conflict does not exist when it is a major theme in the force awakens.

It is clearly part of the story and those events took place AFTER those with Luke.

**this is still act II**

 

The above statement can be true about Kylo and the entire ST can still hinge upon that one misunderstanding, IMO. It can still be a misunderstanding on Luke's part. It still is a misunderstanding, basically.

This is important, but what would have been better is a set up of plot exposition in the form of progression scenes detailing key moments in Ben's turn. Otherwise it's just a tale that we weren't there to witness as the audience, and otherwise Ben hasn't committed any damning actions yet worthy of being threatened with physical harm, by anyone, least of all Luke. I get it - Luke felt undying shame after. I also really do not care if Luke felt shame or not...the tale leading up to that moment doesn't properly expose Ben or explain Luke.

 

this should have been more the style of Luke in the final Kylo confrontation:

 

And how does this work against what is said and happens in the Force Awakens?

 

This whole debate about Kylo being bad before he’s done anything bad just sums up this bad movie to me. What a terrible moral for a story, even discounting how specifically out of place it is in the gffa. It’s not what you do that counts. It’s what you think.

 

Recruiting a group of followers in the equivalent of a school is not evil. It’s obnoxious, bratty, they were probably even bullying their peers. Still not evil though. Unless they had already murdered or maimed someone, but Luke was pretty explicit that that hadn’t happened yet.

And if they were as close to that as we are meant to believe, Luke’s an idiot and his students deserved better.

 

**just within the scene itself**

... And yet Luke refers to "a moment of pure instinct?". He could sense all that in Kylo yet could not in other students he had already turned? So let me get this straight, according to Han, Luke tries to save Kylo ren. So he goes to train with him, knowing there is turmoil already. Ben turns all Luke's students under his watchful eye. And, Luke goes to Kylo ON PURE INSTINCT? Roflmfao. Cmon now.

 

what happened to "always in motion is the future " ?

 

Yes, with what little we were given about the backstory of the Jedi school, it looks like a big failure on Luke`s part either way. If you only have 12 students, how can you miss half ot them going evil?

If they ever set a story during that time, it would need some insane bending over backwards and excuses to make Luke look a little better than he does now. Even the PT Jedi had somewhat of an excuse with being busy with a war.

 

Not really sure I agree with that, but differing opinions makes the world go around. I personally think that removal of scenes like milking the thala-siren would have made plenty of time for what would not have taken much to expose these obviously very important plot elements. Important because, we've been sitting here on these forums since just before the 15th, discussing them.

 

Well and the PT Jedi were fooled by Sheev. I mean, he’s the ultimate mastermind villain. Luke was fooled by Ben Solo and a handful of kids, apparently.

 

He could have fought Vader with every amount of fight he had left. Whatever guarantee that existed that Vader could turn him into an agent of evil is magnified here because he’s truly caught himself in a Dark Side daze. Even the look on his face is similar to Anakin in ROTS and that’s what worried him. Rather than kill himself as he tried to before facing a similar situation he does what many old Masters before him have done. He chooses exile to contemplate and live out his days and figure this out. He’s 100% back at Empire Luke here right down to the X-Wing being submerged. Only this time he likely did that himself to ensure he can’t escape in case the fear over becoming Vader leads to Anger because he knows what happened to his father after that. Suffering. A lot of suffering from his father who didn’t deal with this and ended up making a lot of people suffer. Luke shuts himself off from the Force itself. He doesn’t trust himself and he’s probably remembering Obi-Wan and Yoda’s teaching about staying removed from the action if he believes in what they fight for. They knew he wasn’t ready to face Vader. He knows he’s not in the right state of mind to face Kylo Ren. For the same reasons he was at risk of turning Vader he is at risk here in a showdown versus Snoke or Kylo Ren until he comes to terms with his darkness and accepts his mistake.

 

I assume this is a rhetorical question given how silly it is.

Those students were kids following around a bully. In normal gffa, you haven’t turned to the dark side by having bad thoughts. That doesn’t even make sense.

I’m glad you brought up law enforcement. Absolutely when there’s a credible threat to students, one should act to protect those students. That’s what the instinct should be from get go. An instructor should have thought of that and planned for it and taken some kind of preventative action.

 

That would have reminded me of Monty Python with the Black Knight, where his limbs keep getting hacked off and yet he screams "it`s just a flesh wound, come on". That was funny because it was so ridiculous. I wouldn`t have wanted that in Star Wars. At some point, you gotta know when you are beaten and Empire was it for Luke.

After Ben Solo fell, Luke wasn`t beaten. The situations aren`t similar.

Seeing the PT made the OT better in retrospect because Luke doesn`t repeat the mistakes of the PT Jedi. And now he has gone and repeated the worst one from Yoda and Obi Wan: the coward`s way out. That is so depressing and disappointing.

 

If Sheev can hoodwink an entire Jedi Order, I have no trouble believing that Snoke could mask his true intentions for Ben from Luke. I believe we will get more on Ben’s turn in the final act. There’s obviously more story to tell, here. As far as I’m concerned, this is the kind of ambiguity that’s almost inevitable in the middle act of a three act story.

 

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

That’s as much a concept of the GFFA as anything.

 

I`m not certain this is gonna happen. Who knows what JJ will do.

And if RJ wanted to make Kylo more sympathetic by pinning his fall on Luke or not - IMO casual viewers easily come away with this stance - to me Kylo made the most sense in the movie. He might have been evil but at least I could understand his actions and thought process. With Luke, I got explanations for his actions and state of being but on a visceral level, I could not understand him at all.

The PT Jedi were idiots in their handling of Anakin. They all but gift-wrapped him for Palpatine`s manipulations. Obi Wan actually tried his best to mediate but he, too, was caught up with the dogmatic failings of the Jedi and a lack of understanding of human passions. PT Jedi grew up in a way that they fundamentally were blind to those.

This can`t have been Luke`s problem. He and Ben grew up normal and not under any "supress your feelings" and non-attachment dogma. So, it had to have been something else.

 

He did fight Vader with everything he had but was totally defeated and rendered helpless. Now you can certainly say there might be "some" weakness in Luke at that moment faced with the terrible reality of the situation but that's vastly different from Luke desiding to back out of the fight with Kylo and the FO for many years despite clearly having the ability to do so.

Honestly playing up that Luke fears being tempting by the darkside if he were to face Kylo would have been a decent direction to take things but I see nothing along those lines in the film, Luke's shame at his failure is very clearly played up as the reason. When he actually does face Kylo as well the potential for him being tempted by the Darkside never gets mentioned or inferred.

Indeed to be that actually highlights the ironic thing about the films ending. Johnson attempts to deconstruct a simpler view of Luke's heroism yet his own climax shows Luke in exactly that fashion. His confrontation with Kylo is straight good vs bad asking us to cheer for the cool Jedi master showing amazing abilities, not at all the same level of depth as Luke's confrontations with Vader for me.

 

No that is not remotely at all what I said. I only said that I don’t buy the premise that Kylo’s soul was already lost before he acted on his dark side impulses.

Obviously one should not wait until a murder takes place before one tries to prevent murder. In the future, you can presume that that is always my position and probably 99% of people’s positions.

Nope, I’m sticking to actions are what make someone evil, not thoughts.

I have never downplayed Kylo’s culpability. You will never see me in any thread defending him.

Handing out wedgies is about the equivalent of all those kids had done when Luke ignited a lightsaber with the intent of killing Kylo in his sleep.

I never said Kylo deserved better. I was talking about the slaughtered students.

Obi wasn’t around Anakin and a bunch of other students watching and suspecting Anakin’s secret desire to murder everybody.

 

Then he could have out-thought him and pretended to join him while he put faith in his friends or planned an escape. He did neither. The same wreckless decision-making that has brought him to where he is in VIII made him think “I’m done with this fight. I’ll let others fight it” when he did his suicide jump.