Lit SOS: Save Our Skywalker, Luke Skywalker (v3)

It's not that he likes Jedi, it's that he believes that Star Wars is SOLELY the story of the Jedi (if they are not based out of the temple, they don't count) and their spouses.

 

Correction, solely the jedi and Han Solo.

 

I included spouses - if Han and Leia got divorced Denning would consider him unavailable for storytelling. Unless he gets remarried to Saba or something.

 

Ah my mistake...but the Saba scenario sounds semi plausible.

 

Riv_Shiel :

I agree with that. It was certainly the absolute worst for Luke, as he killed Lumiya in a vengeance killing, and he certainly didn't go after Jacen/Caedus like a Jedi Knight when he discovered that Jacen had put Ben into the Embrace of Pain.

Exactly! I completely agree. It pretty much turned heroes into villains and made them very much out-of-character. We had Mara lose all the growth she had made over 20 years and return to her assassin roots; 13 year old Ben take after his Mom and become an assassin; Luke turn into a vengeance killer; Jacen become a Sith Lord; and Jaina become the killer of her own brother, just for starters.

And Luke Skywalker was the guy who didn't even give up on Darth Vader and always gave others multiple chances. Why would he decide that a teenager was irredeemable?

Or at least really TRY!

Yes, that was BAD!!! Saba was about the last person who should have been giving a eulogy for Mara. She hardly knew her! And she didn't even talk about Mara! She talked about JACEN! It should have been Luke, but if he was too upset to do it, it should have been Talon Karrde or Mirax.










Matt Skywalker :

Yes, her death was badly botched. I don't think Mara should have been killed anyway. She certainly didn't mean that much to Jacen, so he wasn't making a sacrifice in killing her. He should have killed Tenel Ka or his daughter. Either of those would have been a real sacrifice for him!

Of course, Jacen never should have been turned into a Sith in the first place!

Oh, I completely agree, MS!!! Those stupid faces in the water didn't work for me in FotJ, and it was disappointing to hear via Ben that Luke got to speak with Mara. I wanted to HEAR their conversation! They should have been able to communicate quite often too.

That's true they are, especially this one about Han being a co-lead with the three younger characters while Luke and Leia play supporting roles. One of the first rumors we heard was that Arndt's script was changed because Abrams wanted more of a "Skywalker focus". Now, all of a sudden, Han is supposed to have a HUGE role. The film seems to be a Han fest, with him and the kids going on some kind of a journey to "Find Luke", and that Luke will only be in the film near the end.

I wouldn't find that film interesting AT ALL!!!! In the first place, why would they need to FIND Luke??? Haven't Luke and his sister and her family been on speaking terms???? And if Luke went off to be a hermit or something (which again, makes no sense) wouldn't they at least have an address for him and a holocom number? Why would they need to search for Luke???

This story would make Luke not much of a character, but more of a destination. Instead of having his own arc and his own role to play, Luke would be "offscreen", doing who knows what while the other characters are involved in the action and adventure. Doesn't sound like my kind of film!

Another rumor says that Luke won't have a Jedi Order, but that he'll be training Boyega as his first Jedi, and that Luke won't have a family. None of this seems like this would be a good film for Luke or Luke fans, in my opinion.

But if all of this is true, not only would I not particularly like the story, but I think Disney would be limiting it's story-telling possibilities in future films and books. If Luke didn't restore the Jedi Order in those 30 to 35 years, there won't be any Jedi to write into books/films that take place between RotJ and Episde VII. There also wouldn't be any wife or children of Luke's to meet and follow in stories between those films and after Episode IX.

Maybe, but as I said, there was also that rumor that Ford wanted to approve his roles in all three sequel films, which seems to mean the SW films.

But, who knows, at this point.

What does irritate me though, is that there are so many smug "fans" on that Episode VII forum who don't mind if Luke doesn't play much of a role in Episode VII and love the fact that Han will. They also are very against Luke having kids. They say that the PT shows that Jedi are celibate and don't have families. But when one reminds them that this means that either Leia can't have a family either or she can't be a Jedi Knight, they can find ways to make THAT work. (Like: Leia would probably be more of a politician than a Jedi.)

It's all VERY annoying!








Cushing's Admirer,:

I don't either. She was quite a sneaky, manipulative person.

It was interesting though that the Fallanassi seemed to be all females. AND, if you remember, they were interested in training Leia, but NOT Luke. I didn't really like that very much. Did they have an anti-male bias?

Good points! I agre, CA!








Aleja:

I would say that the same is true of Luke as well. Luke never used his powers selfishly either. He was always using them to help or defend others. Luke has never been selfish either.

By the Emperor's darkness beating against his will and his mind, trying to control him and get him to perform evil acts. ... which Luke doesn't do.

See the audio version. It's very clear that the Emperor is trying to coerce Luke.

The mistake wasn't' that Luke accepted the dark side, but that Luke tried to take on the Emperor by himself. Luke is clear about that.

As far as I'm concerned, the story DIDN'T have a point or a theme!

Which would have been fine if it would have been hinted that Mara was WRONG, but the way it was written, we were meant to believe that Mara was RIGHT, unfortunately.

I guess I don't understand what you're saying here. If you're saying that Luke used the Force too much or too powerfully in helping others, then I disagree.

Which would be okay if we had seen many times in the course of those ten (nine) years of books that Luke didn't pick his battles and didn't ensure he was listening. However, this is not consistent with the text.

 

That's not me, CoW. However, thank you for answering about Denning.

 

Sorry about that , CA! I guess I copied too many posts and got some of the names mixed up. I'm afraid I don't know who said that...

 

That's fine just don't want people thinking I said something I didn't.

 

I did.

 

Thanks!

 

Ben was the sacrifice, not Mara.

also i liked saba's eulogy quite a bit. It honored Luke and mara and sent a message to Jacen

 

Yes, Ben's love and respect for him was his sacrifice. Biggest cop-out of the series by far.

 

As Jenari said it was Ben's love that was the sacrifice and that did not make any sense at all when the books were foreshadowing him killing his daughter....his one love he could not live without.

 

that is true. it was a copout

 

The whole 'Sith sacrifice' line was bollox from the start.

 

Don't miss that whole mess. As much as I want the OT generation out of the picture, the end of Sacrifice was a complete mess.

 

Betrayal was a Betrayal....as it was a good book that led to Invincible.

 

I don't want to derail the thread by talking more about Jacen, but I'm going to. Jacen's sacrifice made no sense. In an earlier book (or an earlier part of that book, I don't remember which and don't care to go looking for it), he is thinking about if his sacrifice might be Ben and is completely okay with it. How does his stature as a Sith change between being willing to sacrifice someone and actually doing it? His internal dialogue makes it clear there are only two options - Tenel Ka and Allana. What drives me crazy it two things. First, they had a situation where they could have their cake and eat it, too. He could have decided to sacrifice one of them and remain unwilling to sacrifice the other. He could have developed as a Sith, and still have the small part of him that cannot be corrupted. The second is that within the next couple books he destroys his relationship with Tenel Ka, anyway. So there was nothing gained in the story by him not sacrificing her.

Of course that doesn't even touch on the fact that his sacrifice isn't really a sacrifice in that he was in a situation where he had no real choice. But that is a discussion for another day.

 

Killing Tenel Ka wouldn't have the impact on readers that Mara did. I mean, it is not as though they made these decisions with the story in mind.

 

I'm not entirely sure, and this is all just speculation, but assuming I understand how fictional writing works, there has to be a beginning and end, and the journey between those two points. The way LotF was presented, it seemed like they had a beginning, but not much of an ending or middle and only vague ideas left up to the authors to decide, which is why they all focused on their areas of expertise/pet characters.

Again, just speculation, but maybe they wanted Jaina vs. Jacen for the final fight. But short of Luke getting hit on the head and tied up like Jaina was for the TUF finale (and while TUF was good, too bad Jaina's Tsavong Lah victory was already in the past by then, and it might just be me, but often it seemed like Lah's successor, Nas Choka, kept going on about what a fanatical obsessed idiot Lah had been), it'd be hard to come up with a reason for Jaina vs. Jacen instead of Luke vs. Jacen. Unfortunately, instead of simply being restrained like Jaina was during TUF, they came up with another way to sideline Luke- have him "tainted" by Mara's death and then killing Lumiya for it. So since Mara had to die, they just had Jacen kill her and use it as his accidental sacrifice.

The whole Sith sacrifice thing was silly, but then Lumiya was mostly just spouting rubbish anyway, and Jacen was always too dumb to see past it. Sure, he has to fall to stop this war... that Lumiya is igniting. Sure, in other falls there have been other "sacrifices", in terms of supposedly being past the point of no return, where there's no choice but to keep falling. Or at least as a sign of commitment, to show they've chosen the dark path and can't be reached, supposedly. Of course, Luke redeemed Vader, and while the Bantam books weren't the greatest written, at least a few times there Luke did try to show some mercy to darksiders, such as Brakiss. It wasn't consistent, but at least it popped up more than with Jacen.

If Jacen had been written as too far gone from the beginning, I still would've hated it, but instead his Darth title almost came about accidentally, as he was defending himself against Mara. In a way, Jacen's indecision about who to sacrifice to prove he's a big bad Sith now is a perfect indicator of LotF's lack of structure and planning. Killing Allana would have been really dark, but Tenel Ka maybe they could have gotten away with, although it would mean using the cliche of killing the hero (well, protagonist in Jacen's case) girlfriend for shock, drama, angst, blah, blah, a few more cliches, that kind of thing. Though its kind of funny that even when Jacen suggest other possibilities in terms of "those he has a bond with" he brings up his parents, and even Lumiya rejects that idea since Jacen could care less about them by that point.

Sacrifice was just in almost every aspect an awful book (unless you just really, really love Boba Fett, and his sub-plot had little to nothing to do with the rest of the book). Invincible really put the nail in the coffin of post-NJO potential, but Sacrifice was probably when it was clear that the series was too far gone.

Going back to Luke, TUF and the NJO in general had just built up someone who was supposed to be the Jedi Grandmaster, though NJO still does seem a bit too stretched out for me (and Luke didn't start using the Grandmaster title until the horrible DNT, though that was effectively his position already) then just for manufactured crisis they had to get rid of him without actually killing him (as can't possible touch the Big Three too much, everybody else is fair game) which led to LotF (and FotJ too) scrambling around to find some way to sideline him, without a galactic army around to keep him busy... so instead they just come up with new wars and new armies to try and keep him busy but without proper setup (and though NJO was really long, at least there was a gradual escalation of danger) the plot just feels... stupid. I do wish there had been some final fantastic book to redeem everything that had come before (or to at least end things on a high note), but oh well, its over now. Now just have to hope Luke's life never reaches such a dire state again.

 

Topics we covered:

-DE........check
-Zahn.....check
-NJO......check
-Denning.....check
-LotF-Crucible shennigans....check
-Episode 7 rumors....check, check, and check


I feel we are missing something......

 

Kar Vastor- I have known Jedi. Many, many years ago. That knowing was not a gladness for me. I believed I would never known another, and I rejoiced in that belief. But it is a gladness for me to be proven wrong. I am happy to have known you, Jedi Luke Skywalker. You are more than they were.

Luke Skywalker- That's---I mean, thanks, but I barely know anything.

Kar Vastor- So you believe. But I say to you: you are greater than the Jedi of former days.

Luke Skywalker- What makes you say that?

Kar Vastor- Because unlike the Knights of old, Jedi Luke Skywalker....you are not afraid of the dark.



Oh Stover, what's the Star Wars universe going to be without your guiding hand? To so easily grasp Luke's character in a single, small conversation, the respect others hold for him, and his own feelings of humility and doubt, and to go a step further and point out the key difference between him and his predecessors...SMH no one does it better. Needless to say this is still one of my favorite novels, and Luke's journey throughout it is just perfect.

 

Edit: Our boy looks very much like he's ready to become a Jedi Master!

 

.
Nobody:

Yes, I think you're right. They *didn't* have a plan for an ending, and they didn't seem to have much of a middle either. It was like they were meandering and making things up as they went along. It was almost like someone's bad fan fiction.

Yes, I hated that they came up with vengeance killing in order to make Luke "tainted" so he couldn't face Jacen! Frankly, they SHOULD have allowed Luke face Jacen. Maybe it would have been a better, more emotional battle. The Jacen/Jaina fight was really very "MEH". This was a brother and sister in a duel to the death, but there was a sort of "coolness", a lack of emotional resonance about it. They didn't even really talk to one another. Maybe a Master/former apprentice and uncle/nephew duel would have worked better. They "wrecked" Luke to let a twin duel go forward, and Jaina/Jacen's fight seemed like a flop to me.

And he could care less about Mara too. She was certainly no sacrifice for Jacen.

DEFINITELY!

I can't say that I"m all that pleased about the rumors I've heard so far about Episode VII though. It seems like it will be Han-centric according to some folks, and very few people think that Luke will have a wife (dead or alive) or a kid. Many don't even think he'll have a Jedi Order in Episode VII and that it will actually be the new characters who will create the Order after Luke teaches a couple.

If these end up being true, I will be SO disappointed!








DarthJenari :

Well, as I said, I didn't think those were valid claims either, as Luke didn't even find out that there was a huge problem with Exar Kun or Kyp until about the time that he was defeated and became comatose. Even if he would have found out the extent of the problem earlier, how would he have gotten the Jedi off of Yavin IV? It's been a while since I read that series, but I thought I remembered that they didn't have ships there except for Mara's , right? So, how would they have left?

Plus, if the Jedi would have left, the trainees wouldn't have been there to defeat the Sith Spirit with Luke's aid, and who knows what kind of trouble Kun may have caused in the future. Once Kun was gone, why abandon Yavin IV??? It was a perfect location for the Jedi Academy, and it had the necessary facilities too.

EXACTLY!

Right! The readers were privy to information that characters in the book didn't know about.

Exactly!

That's why I find Mara's lectures so annoying!

I agree. And she kept harping in her lecture that Luke kept trying to do too much and to do everything himself, yet here she blames him for not doing MORE to keep the kids safe. Sounds like Luke is darned if he does and darned if he doesn't with Mara! Plus, what more could Luke do? And what about the parents? Aren't they the first protectors of their children?


More another time...

 

Hmm, my image is broken? Try this.