ST Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) in the ST

Not for me and I have zero expectations anymore whatever anyone promises. The lack of a real tension after the last movie may be a bigger problem. Wo is really excited from casual audiences to see Rey vs Kylo the 3rd time?

 

Quite the contrary. The Luke act directly ties into the evolution of Rey and Ben Solo and what we thought we knew of both, revealing new aspects of character in each and expanding on the more notable weaknesses JJ & Kasdan clearly established for both in TFA.

 

very true and you can do such an approach in a tv series, because you have plenty of time to spend an episode with the focus to one character, while neglecting the other characters. A tv series can also use plenty of flashbacks to explain why the characer changes that much. You don't have this time in a trilogy of movies.

 

@godisawesome said:

And I’m glad you said this because as much as you and I can be honest with each other about a great many things I like that you can at least acknowledge — where others frequently do not — that you came into VIII with your own set of expectations for what you felt was coming and what you thought would be best.

I think most of us did on some level and I also think that those of us who guessed correctly in some of the choices formed a stronger bond with the film that’s closer to past Star Wars Episodes than those who did not and who in fact were adamant coming into VIII about some things they wanted (and didn’t get) and things they didn’t (and did get). Many of us often dance around this very human and natural aspect of bias that we all have and that we all brought with us into this movie. I acknowledge I have it. It’s natural. If I’m hoping for or predicting a story idea that happens then on a certain level I’m thinking like the creator. If I don’t then I’m not. If I get things right I’m more likely to explain why I liked them because I had thought about them, or something close, prior and if I didn’t I am upset that the idea I saw as better was chosen for the one we discussed prior that I thought was weaker. This may lead each of us to strongly worded assertions. Sloppy. Lazy. Contrived. Awful. Clever. Inspired. Brilliant. Researched. As we throw down our adverbs we share what we think and from there the truth either lands or or doesn’t. When it does we occasionally are moved enough to acknowledge that the other made a fair point.

I know that you like(d) ReySky. You know that I was less focused on parents and more on a grandfather tie-in to Kenobi. I know that you want FinnRey. Believe it or not but I want that too as the healthy option and better message, should she choose to be with someone, but I do want some danger in there to make it more complicated and interesting and less easy along the way.

If the goal was to do what you wanted them 100% Rian Johnson failed. If the story needed that mentorship in VIII and it can’t happen in IX with him now having peace and purpose then again Johnson failed on that aspect but I’m not sure either are the case.

When JJ turned Rey into Neo at the end of the Matrix without a single lesson, allowing mind tricks and saber pulls and a saber victory against the villain, and Kylo Ren made it clear he wanted to train her, then all of that seemed logical for me to continue. This put extra emphasis on a psychological weakness since she was so physically powerful. Johnson went back to her issue of her ignoring the unlikelihood of her parents returning and her talking herself into believing for 10+ years they’d be back any moment as something that had to be reapplied to other things and other areas of weakness where she would try to find the light in the darkness and convince herself that if she did what she thought would help... the positive change would occur.

Johnson wisely realized that extraordinary measures were needed for Kylo Ren to have any kind of chance with her and so begins his final lesson with an enormous assist from Snoke himself.

The Force bond is mysterious enough for both that it leads both astray.

It starts where it should though at first. She picks up right where they left off and shoots him.

Then she shouts at him.

Her anger fades the way a Light side user’s probably should.

She listens to his account of what happened to him with Luke and Luke is doing at the same time many of the things Ben Solo mentioned. He tells her he sensed my power growing and it scared him so he lost it and came to kill me. She is already shocked at how Luke is not who she hoped to see. He likens her power to Ben’s and tells her it scares him. He looms over her as she sleeps. These experiences add credibility to what Ben said, which is necessary since he wouldn’t have much without it, and it opens the door for her to ask more. He’s no longer threatening her. She’s said what she wanted to say and let her anger out. Now it’s just a couple young people with powers nobody else in the same age range around them at the moment can identify with. Luke’s reluctance to teach contrasts with Ben’s desire to. He’s the second best option to bring back if she couldn’t get Luke to change since he was a target of the last movie. Even her saber prophecy fits if she looks at it from a certain point of view. She would prefer Luke but he’s not making it easy and she takes the quicker and easier path. First with the dark side cave and later in listening and talking with him. At her emotional low Ben Solo does what men all over the world have done to young women that are upset. He consoles her and gains ground from doing so. Then we get the vision and it’s a done deal from there as per Star Wars tradition with visions. It’s the bad guy gaining ground via a weakness in the hero. Many wanted that to be physical and her losing a fight to him but instead it was internal.

I don’t think her slide is meant to feel fun but I disagree that there’s not attention to detail on it. I think he took that recruitment offer from TFA and her beating him and her weakness that she could convince herself of change if she saw some light... and slowly and methodically utilized the Campbellian end of Luke’s hero arc to contrast and allow the villain to get his claws in.

 

That’s a criticism I agree with and can find common ground on with people who hate VIII but who acknowledge that some of his ideas had potential.

I do think his ambition exceeded his writing at times and that because soooo much of VIII is him accross so many areas that he knew his script intimately and filled in blanks in his mind that he needed to flesh out more for those who weren’t in his mind or didn’t think as he does.

The deleted scene with Luke and Rey is a great example of this. I don’t understand how he possibly came to believe that cutting the scene he previously described as a pivotal was a good move. You needed more, not less.

His arthouse genre instincts combining with his realization that he’s also making a PG13 movie seemed to lead to a mix of him sometimes feeling like he needed to spell something out more (Canto Bight) and other times he leans into arthouse nuance too much (Luke).

I’m hoping VIII taught him valuable lessons for making movies for massive audiences that will benefit his trilogy because if he can continue to grow as a storyteller and not have his reach exceed his grasp and instead continue to try and be ambitious and take risks and and be bold (but with his own characters) and deliver... and perhaps some additional writing perspective to bounce ideas off and give feedback to him... it could really be a cool and interesting new Star Wars trilogy. I’m happy they’ve stuck by him so far and I think Knives Out may reassure them if it’s well received or any of them likes it.

 

Outside opinion would benefit him for sure. Ram does seem like a yes man. I agree.

 

Ram Bergman is a yes man? As in a Rick McCallum?

RJ said he was glad that he got to start writing TLJ without being able to see TFA or a rough cut of it because it made him feel more free to write his own story.

 

Obviously you can make the argument that they would both be equally traumatic, but I think you've failed to make that argument, and have merely drawn a false equivalence. In the first instance Luke's decision can't be seen in any way to be negligent and therefore he's only as responsible as the hundreds of others whose decisions led to the Stormtrooper killing his family. In the second instance Luke was not only responsible for those under his care at the Temple but he also views his moment of considering to kill Ben as the reason for the subsequent disaster. To suggest that Luke would feel equally responsible for the deaths of his aunt and uncle for playing a small role in selecting 3PO and R2 and for the massacre of his students for failing to stop Snoke, for training those who killed them and 'setting off' Kylo just seems to be improbable. It's a non-falsifiable claim suggesting that Luke may have also felt responsible for his actions aversely affecting others previously suggesting he's 'been through it before' and acted differently. I think it's obvious that both instances are vastly different however.

 

I have already clarified and explained this over numerous posts in this thread already. Yes you can argue that they are different the one thing that is irrefutable is that Luke always progressed and got back up. People are willing to accept he left with the intent to get back up eventually and people are okay with it taking years the idea that he left to hide and die is why it doesn’t work for most people. It’s not the way the character was written previously.

 

TLJ didn`t put in the work to show Luke being broken up about his students overall because it couldn`t. That would have called back to the responsibility and villainy of Bratty McIncel. Instead there was only three little Rashomon style flashbacks in the vein of "poor baby Ben, betrayed by his mean uncle" so Kylo could shine as the maybe-innocent half of the pseudo-romance of Reylo.

But that just weakens Luke`s story considerably. It seems like he could care less about any of the students and it`s all about "Ben". Which it kinda is, it`s about whitewashing him so the Reylo thing can fly. In turn that makes Luke seem more histrionic, self-centered, mean-spirited and whiny. He is that broken up about a nephew who he didn`t even seem to love or care about as evidenced by his first instinct in the hut.

Those two positions can`t really coexist in the movie. And especially not with the pseudo-"gotcha"-moment at the end. To me it didn`t work. After an entire movie of doing everything to whitewash Kylo and throw Luke under the bus for it, there is a little whimper of an ending where Kylo remains the same kind of petulant brat we`ve seen him as. I mean, we haven`t seen him struggle between dark behavioural traits and good ones because he hasn`t showed any good ones. Perpetually trembling lips - for himself - is not doing that. Meanwhile Luke is supposed to have been wrong in having been whiny, self-centered, cowardly and mean-spirited - when that is the whole impetus for the Kylo-worship-hours previously - and he shows that via a little force hologram that trolls Kylo for a few minutes.

There is putting the protagonists through the wringer and there is propping up the villain, the two are not the same and if Kylo`s character can`t hold up without that much prop work, then the problem is with that character IMO.

The Holdo/Poe arc suffers from the same "haha, gotcha" weakness set-up. Holdo appears to be secretive for no real reason other than having a smug veneer and sticking it to the man (literally and on the nose, in this case) and yet the ending is supposed to be "see, now that you have all the information, she WAS a great leader". Um, no, you can`t retcon it like that. The characters needed to be portrayed very differently before the gotcha for that to work.

At the very least Luke has a concluded hero`s journey in the OT that can be taken on its own. Now the addendum is screwed up and, if taken in conjunction, nullifies even the previous story, but if one ignore it, at least he has a full story that is good.

 

Visuals speak louder than words. We have rarely seen Luke as emotionally distraught over the senseless loss of life as this. It’s all over his face and he comes to hate himself and the Order because it was him taking a quicker and easier path the dark side presented and his own teaching and weapons that lead to this.

So, he continues the evolution of awareness he’d shown in ROTJ of being aware that his presence may be causing more harm than good for others... and retires not only personally but the last of the Jedi teachings that exist for all.







His monomythic character arc continued post ROTJ and into the last stages we observe in the ST.

I won’t derail on communication breakdowns, mistrust, and premature judgment, aspects that the Poe and Holdo arc explores because this isn’t the thread for it but I will say that in both cases there are “need to know plan” plans taking place where both sides aren’t working together the way they should but only one of them was dictated by regular chain of command structure.

If Kylo Ren does eventually change his ways before IX ends and abandons the Dark Side and helps the Light side and people we care about I suspect Luke’s apology for what happened will have played a role in that recovery among other factors. I found Luke’s words to Ben Solo more hard-hitting than even Obi-Wan’s were to Anakin in ANH and closer (but not anywhere near the same dramatic power) in emotion to Obi-Wan and Anakin in ROTS. You can sense the emotion and rage Ben Solo still has for Luke and what happened but not only did he apologize to him for where he believed he failed him he reminded him that this anger he’s holding to against Han and him isn’t going to bring him what he needs and I suspect IX will deal with how what Kylo Ren thought he wanted wasn’t what he realizes he truly needs and that the realization of that emptiness will lead to change on his own before he is killed. It won’t redeem him but it will show those on Dark paths, including the incel types you see in his design, that just because you’ve started down a dark path doesn’t mean you have to stay there and go out in some blaze of dark glory and that morality and love and a belief that you’ve helped someone you care about to have a better life after you’re gone are not weaknesses but strengths that allow for true meaning and purpose in life. Even if found late.

 

I disagree that this one short blip gave the necessary weight to his story. When then the entire movie focuses on how it was all about freaking Kylo. Who incidentally I don`t care if he gets redeemed or not. For my money, he can redeem himself and then still get a slow agonizing death. I don`t care what he feels or thinks or wants. He annoys me, just like Holdo annoyed me. Her death was far quicker and more merciful than my nails-on-chalkboard experience having to watch that character.

As for Luke coming to hate himself, guess we have something in common then. Hooray? Only I don`t absolve him like he apparently did himself before he died.

 

I'll ask it again. Why would Luke blame himself? Kylo hops out of bed, knocks him out and then goes out and slaughters half Luke's students and takes the rest - or at least we think because I don't really remember, does anyone - do they actually say what happens? I believe we STILL don't know exactly what went down. All the better to smooth over Kylo's crimes.

I don't give a damn about "the Dark Side" - that's a dodge. Kylo did this. I don't care if Snoke was in his head or he didn't get a pony or whatever twisted lie he tells himself. He's not Bucky in Marvel with a trigger word turning him bad - and they still blame Bucky. Kylo made this decision for his own reasons so again, why would Luke blame himself? Because they need to sell their new better Vader who gets the mask AND the poofy hair and sad eyes in one package with no physical destruction. Plus he's the child of heroes so of course you'll sympathize with him - today, I saw another Kylostan going on about how we could love Luke, Han and Leia and don't want "Ben" to be redeemed. Or Nerdist using the love song from Star is Born to make a Reylo video. It's disgusting.

That's a false equivalency. He is causing harm in ROTJ because Vader could sense him and therefore he endangered their secret mission. That is nothing like "oh, the Jedi failed again, time for them to end" because Kylo destroys everything.

I'm sure we'll be sold some variation of this. I'm not buying it. No one should be buying it, unless he dies one second after recognizing he was stupid.

Absolutely. Preferably with some really pretty visuals I can get GIFd and I will blog over and over and over, the way I to this day keep seeing Han's death. I saw it about once an hour on Tumblr with the DVD came out. I can't wait.

If 9 ends in some Reylo fashion, I would hope fans would be upset but I'm sure we'll have eleventy billion clickbait articles telling us this was the only way the "Skywalker Saga" could end and isn't it poetic and wonderful. Again, as Leia would say, no thanks.

 

The "Force Bond" was the laziest plot contrivance they could have possibly gone with. First of all, I really cannot stand how the ST treats The Force as a Deus ex Machina to solve any and all writing problems that they get themselves into. "Cannot think of a way out, uh uh, just say The Force did it or whatever." It breeds both lazy/uncreative plotting and shoddy character work.

Luke had an actual established emotional character reason to want to try and redeem his father, going back for most of his life, and it was extremely emphasized in the year or so in-between ESB and ROTJ. He also had past reference to his father having once been a good man.

Padme even had a more believable reason to try and redeem Anakin because, in addition to loving him, she had also scene his good side first hand.

Rey, has no reason to want to redeem Kylo. She didn't even know the guy like a week before, and every interaction with him or things she's heard about him since then were negative. He murdered his own father right in front of her who was just trying to help him (and Kylo had previously acknowledged that he knew that she cared about Han to, yet Kylo still murdered him right in front of her). He beat Finn into a coma right as Finn was trying to protect her from him. He kidnapped and tortured her, he blew up Maz's castle, he's been killing his way across the galaxy for years, and she knows that he betrayed his uncle and slaughtered his uncle's other students (which the movie completely glosses over BTW, hmm almost like if they spent any time on that little detail than Rey's actions would see even dumber, lazy writing perhaps). And Kylo was pretty unrepentant about killing Han when she confronted him about it as well.

Also unlike Luke, she had no onscreen frame of reference to "Ben" ever having been good, quite the reverse in fact.

And yet we're meant to buy that, two days later, she's suddenly blaming Luke for all of it, and thinking that he's the key to everything, don't make me laugh. And what we get is "vague Force Vision" that we do not even get to see because details and context are unimportant to Rian it would seem, and Deus ex Machina "Force Bond." Sorry, that's not near good enough, especially when I've seen it done much better in previous films.

Rian just crowbarred the characters into whatever roles he needed to make his story work, logic need not apply. I will never not believe that.

 

Despite that TLJ was a desaster for me in cinema, I have to acknowledge that he had some good ideas. But a good scene like Luke catching the fish, was followed by the milking scene. The Porgs were cool too, but should have been more in interaction with Rey, Luke and Chewie. The whole Canto Bight was a good visual, but the adventure of Finn and Rose there was useless. He should have included it for a more important mission, like Poe, Finn and Leia try to hide there and skip the whole Holdo/Poe stuff that made no sense. The whole destruction of Luke's work is even possible, but the execution was very bad. Just a bad thought of Luke cannot be enough that he just gives up. The whole flashback was meant to make Kylo look good and Luke as the bad guy and Rey as stupid. And that's the main problem for me, Rian was too concentrated on Kylo and Star Wars has always been a group effort where every character is important. If such an iconic character really fails so terribly, you need to show it in more detail. It has to be a chain reaction of things going wrong.

 

I think one of the reasons VIII works so well for some people has a lot to do with the Force bond from Snoke and the way Rey & Ben become drawn to each other through it and their shared experiences with Luke and as lonely force users who aren’t often around others like them who are closer in age.

It has a bunch of ways for people to connect to it as a guilty pleasure. Some people literally watch horror movies to see the young girl enter the haunted home and enter the basement naively. Some people wanted to see them together as early as TFA. Some people enjoyed the mystery box component of it and wondering what was causing the phenomenon to occur. Others imagined themselves briefly as Kylo Ren and how great it would be to have someone like Rey as a partner. Others were already Death and the Maiden fans who couldn’t care less about the social implications of the Death and the Maiden trope but Iike it for the same reasons that trope lasted hundreds of years before it became taboo. Still others just wanted her to make a mistake for once and be wrong. Some wanted a shakeup in Star Wars hero and villain dynamics. Others think she’s the grandaughter of Kenobi and like the implied mysticism of the grandkids of the PT finding each other through the force. Some are just big redemption fans and were thinking she was in charge and was utilizing the interest she knew he had in her to help the resistance by using that to get him to turn.

For the people who connect to what happened on any of those Luke’s Campbellian arc serves duel purposes for his own arc and in their enjoyment of any of those.

Like much of VIII though, if you’re one of the people who didn’t like the ST much prior, and didn’t want Reylo of any kind next, and don’t connect to any of it as a guilty pleasure through any of the ways above, then it’s going to be seen more as bad Twilight stuff ruining Star Wars and looked at like someone who hates Twilight would rip apart something like that over on their boards back in the day.

That she has issues that have already shown her to be naive and borderline delusional from her refusal to accept the truth on Jakku wont matter much. That she knows Han & Leia wanted their son back won’t matter much. That she was only told that someone might come back with a tie to that saber won’t matter much. That Kylo Ren relented and offered to train her first and show interest in her in VIII won’t matter. That the negative interest opposite Luke’s is happening won’t matter. That Luke likened her to him and seemed fearful of her as Ben Solo is telling her that he was fearful of him and his power and came to kill him because of it won’t matter. That she’s already sensed Luke looming over her won’t matter. That he really did light a saber over Ben and that Ben may have seen everyone out to get him after that and/or been confronted by others (the deaths are in the courtyard and not in their rooms) in a battle that showed he was simply more powerful than the rest of them, won’t matter. That we saw him in rubble too with the KO’d Luke and that the story of what happened next night be unknown won’t matter. That TFA tells us she was lonely and VIII tells us she’s also now looking for what to do with this power won’t matter. That she might find him physically attractive in a bad dude kind of way won’t matter.

None of that will matter if you don’t connect to the guilty pleasure of it all on some level first. The other stuff makes it easier for us to suspend disbelief to get there but if your first instinct is that this is worse than Twilight or that it perpetuates tropes in society that bother you or you’re angry that they aren’t cousins... you’re just going to see it all differently than others who don’t. Especially anyone who also enjoys Luke’s arc in addition to whatever guilty pleasure aspect of the teamup they connected to it around. Star Wars has often evoked the power of guilty pleasures in other ways. Things that others would consider low brow or pulpy or soap opera-ish. You either connect to these kinds of developments enough to suspend disbelief enough or you don’t on a certain level.

 

I`m sure there are also enough that still thought "wow, that old dude sucked but squee, my ship is happening". Now I`ll be the first to admit that if Luke had had a good story in my eyes, I wouldn`t have really cared about Reylo. I liked Rey fine after TFA and I found Kylo pretty weak at the end of it but I wasn`t invested in either character enough to really care what happened to them. I certainly didn`t ship them in any way because eh, he was not the kind of hot charismatic bad boy and they didn`t have any kind of magnetic chemistry for me. I`m not opposed to the trope in general but these two rang just about zero on my ship meter.

For me the movie stood and fell with the depiction of Luke Skywalker. Now all the other parts weren`t any good either but it would have mattered less to me if I had found anything, at least a scene to like with him. At least one moment that made the movie experience worth it to me. But there was just nothing like that in the movie. Not even the R2 or Leia bits. The Leia bit now may work on some sort of meta level but overall I wouldn`t miss it anymore than I would miss any of the Luke-on-Crait-scenes. Just no pay-off in them.

But they both have the force. Which is apparently the only thing that connects them. This is the most supercifical attraction level I`ve seen. And one more reason why having only a miniscule amount of force users around in the ST was so limiting: the pickings are so slim, you only get the Incel option.

 

The whole force bond thing rang very 'Twilight' (I say this as the whole series is one authors fantasy of falling in love with a bad boy vampire that isn't good for her) for me and something best left in the realm of fantasy and not in the realm of reality especially in a situation that I can't see Rey wanting to be bonded to him. As others have said the Force is now a deus ex machina and can do anything depending on the characters oh heck let's just call it the mutant gene except everyone has it! Which is why I think the force bond is poorly written and used as it takes Rey away from Luke essentially diminishing both characters and their importance to each other and the saga as a whole.

 

I like the adorkable Jimmy Olsen of the trilogy — I mean Finn — too but he doesn’t have the Force, doesn’t understand what it’s like to go through this force awakening, and isn’t experiencing these strange powers and abilities to talk to others with similar powers light years away and, to me, it’s implied where she’s most lonely is in the same way X-men sometimes shows mutant teens feeling lonely until they are around others with abilities like them and suddenly feel less like freaks.

Something has occurred in her body that’s awake and she doesn’t know what to do with it but knows one thing... That’s an area that Chewie and Finn can’t help her with or relate to either.

So, she connects more with the only other non-middle aged person who does have similar abilities to her she’s met until she realizes he’s not going to change for her the way she thought and leaves him like a sack of potatoes.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t enjoy writing about it. It certainly reads like bad twilight stuff but I do find it more fun to watch than I expected I would as a guilty pleasure.