ST The Last Jedi: Nihilism

No problem at all. Cheers.

 

TLJ Luke is very relatable to me. It’s the feeling of complete dejection. When something is too much to bear. You don’t want to talk. You just want to be left alone and reflect in your own time. Sometimes that’s the only way we can deal with something. I’ve felt that way a couple of times in my life. Luke says it so simply to R2 when he says “I wish I could make you understand.” It took him a long time to ‘wake up’, but that’s believable and realistic. When you’re that jaded it takes time.

 

Yes, this. @thejeditraitor

 

Not sure how that applies since Star Wars are all massively successful movies with the general audience. The simple answer is that Lucas did things a particular way and KK with JJ and RJ they simply can't do that because they aren't the visionaries that Lucas is or have the ability to tell stories like he does. He create Star Wars movies while they can only generate them off of his base.

The way Lucas built his galaxy, the worlds in it, the characters on those worlds and the stories they tell are something that they simply can't do. Lucas was about telling the story for the stories sake while the new movies are about wanting to tell stories that make lots of money (and they are so all's well in that way.)

TPM and AOTC are commercially utterly ludicrous and corporately the wrong way to making Episodes I and II but Lucas couldn't concern himself with that and instead told his story hoping that they would make enough so that he could make the PT complete.

 

I don’t think TPM and AOTC go against the grain at all. TPM, more so, is a completely safe film. I think your post is closer to describing TLJ more than those two, IMO.

 

At all? KK said she'd never think of using people as young as TPM for heroes.

Well that's the first time I've heard that. It goes against decades now of what many people expected or wanted. One of the more popular ones is that they could have been combined into one movie with all the

A movie that obviously and on the surface that uses so many things from TESB and ROTJ in terms of characters, situations never mind the entire design concept to basically take you back into the OT.

On a design basis alone TPM is radical in the extreme.

Star Wars before there was a war.

 

Anakin in TPM was too young.
TPM was not a safe film.
TLJ is not nihilist.

 

I think we all have felt that, and I think that that message could work wonderfully. I just don't come away from the movie seeing that message. I said before in the complaints thread that it makes no sense for Luke to lose faith in the Jedi, he needs to lose faith in himself. Maybe the Luke arc is just a victim of bad editing, and thats what makes it feel so nihilistic and empty to many of us; we miss key details that could really flesh out such a message.

 

Despite all his best efforts, he was the responsible for recreating the same evil he spent his life to destroy.

If that doesn't send someone into depression, nothing ever will.

 

Agreed 100%. I totally buy Luke being dejected/depressed/morose/anything along those lines. I just don't buy his 'the Jedi must end' spiel. I don't want to just keep plugging my own assessment of a more logical Luke arc (actually, I do, because I think its very well written, but I'm biased), but its pretty much just a more thorough treatment of what I said above: it makes more sense for him to lose faith in himself than in the Jedi - particularly when he is the Jedi Order.

 

Well, he just needed a push to change his mind, which he did in the end.

 

It seems to me there is a difference between characters having a somewhast nihilistic world view and the film itself being nihilistic.

There seems to be a natural tension between characters wanting to take chances in hope (Rey, Finn, Poe), and characters who are either afraid to take chances (Luke) and the counterpoint of characters taking no sides but their own and being happy for everything to be destroyed (Kylo, DJ).

But nihilism?

Luke isn't a nihilist. He's afraid, and perhsps a tad defeatist. It's cynicism if anything.

What's interesting is that he has created Kyko, amd Kylo is taking the worst of Luke's fears and living them as his truth.

Luke feared the monster he saw in Ben and perhaps in himself. Kylo labels himself a monster matter-factly out of self loathing.

If anything Luke is one side of the same coin as Kylo. If he chose he could easily even be Kylo, which is why he's a recluse, fighting those demons. He's doing tbat precisely because he's NOT a nihilist.

Kylo probably is a nihilist, though. He sees no point in even having a balance in the Force. For him life is just chaos and pain and confusion. He just wants the world to burn.

But I think some may be taking his line about letting the past die as somehow being the underlying message of the film. It isn't. It's just a cool line for a trailer.

 

What I described is what I came away with after seeing the movie. He felt shame as a human being for letting down his sister, and that self loathing then translated into apathy for the Jedi.

 

I thin ultimately he is projecting onto the Order and emphasising their worst parts, because that's how he feels about himself. And since he is the Order he assumes that, if he can't continue then it follows that they must end.

I also think it could have been emphasised, but I think the interpretation that Rian has provided makes sense.

 

I'm not going to bother, actually.

 

Luke loses faith in himself and losing faith in the Jedi is an extension of that. He rejects everything about his legend. Everything. That's how much he can't forgive himself. But Luke is projecting his failure onto the Jedi. And his bitterness towards himself and the Jedi is understandable to me, from a certain POV (nothing he says in the temple to Rey is wrong) just as Rey is right to provide the counterpoint (nothing she says is wrong either).

(That's what makes it good writing to me. Everyone in this film has a strong perspective, often in opposition to the foils they are paired with, and all of them - to me at least - make sense in terms of their character's worldview.)

Luke has failed in the worst way imaginable, and he fears that if he trains Rey and makes the same mistake again, he compounds that. He's wrong to think pretty much everything that he thinks, but I do think it's understandable that he's so broken. A combination of hubris, vanity, shame, self-loathing and a fear of making further mistakes are what leads him down the wrong path. The film makes it pretty clear IMO that those are worse mistakes than his instinctive reaction in the Hut.

 

I think what's important is that what Luke does comes from a good place. It's clear his motivation is not cowardice, malice or apathy, but rather compassion, love and empathy. It's just that it's manifesting in the wrong way.

 

Yeah, he's mistaken no doubt, but his surliness is armour, not the real Luke, and he honestly believes (wrongly) that what he is doing is for the best.

 

Which I think makes it in-character. I also think it's something only a completely selfless and compassionate person would think about. The self is almost completely gone in his considerations. It's wrong because he doesn't understand how much his failure is an essential part of the process, but it a very Luke reaction to his failures (I'll sacrifice so that others may live).

 

That doesn`t work for me when he has to know that others WILL die on account of letting two darksiders running free. Willfully ignoring that certainty on a "may turn out better without me" is not casting a good light on him either way. If he had left and took himself out of things in a neutral environment, then I can see merit to the experiment of "lets see what happens". But when things are already unbalanced in favour of dark, I find it inacceptable and act of cowardice.

It wasn`t motivated by what we would normally associate with cowardice in terms of "I wanna hide under a table because I`m so afraid I`ll get killed" but it was still motivated by fear regardless "I might make things worse and I might fall to the darkside etc". It would be much more of a sacrifice, more compassionate and thinking about others to step up to the plate right from the start and not think someone better will come in to clean up your own mess.

I don`t think it`s necessarily nihilistic what he did but to me certainly despiccable. Comparatively it`s my moment like with Anakin when he stepped into the council chamber with the hiding younglings, I find it that bad.

 

He did leave in a time of relative peace though - the First Order only revealed themselves as a threat that could overrun the galaxy in TFA.

By your logic ObiWan and Yoda are also just as bad, because they knew not doing something or 20 years meant people would die. They lost the battle to win the war - which is often the morally correct thing to do.

And you're acting like Luke was only half certain it would work. I think he was sure and he was proved correct by the awakening of Rey.

 

Not force-wise, he knew Snoke was out there, now evil-Ben was out there and half of his previous evil students. That`s 8:0 if he decides to leave.

I`ve said a few times that yes, to me they are. I`m not arbitrarily applying my morals to only a few characters. They all get it equally. Though Rebels did portray Obi Wan in a bit of a better light because they emphasized the guarding factor.

Doesn`t absolve him one bit in my eyes. Since RJ pretty explicitely said the Force being an allegory for "God" here and it`s about faith and all that. I`m 100 % in the "god helps those who help themselves" camp. I find Luke`s line of thinking flat-out inacceptable in terms of morality.

 

Agree. He wasn’t at the point of being suicidal - he was living day to day and maintained a routine. He was just depressed and content to live a simple life (something akin to his Tatooine upbringing) disconnected from being LUKE SKYWALKER the LEGEND. He wanted to forget all of that. The caretakers likely didn’t know who he was, and the visual dictionary says they left him alone.

 

But what if he can't find them. He is confident someone better will rise to stop them (and they do).

I think that's an overly simplistic view of morality. If your actions will, yes, defend people in the present, but you cause more to die in the long run (because you aren't their defend them), how is that moral?

QUOTE="Alliyah Skywalker, post: 54846100, member: 1433728"]Doesn`t absolve him one bit in my eyes. Since RJ pretty explicitely said the Force being an allegory for "God" here and it`s about faith and all that. I`m 100 % in the "god helps those who help themselves" camp. I find Luke`s line of thinking flat-out inacceptable in terms of morality.[/QUOTE]


Except it's more like a natural system, so the effect of removing himself can be accurately predicted.