ST How do you build off the Sequel Trilogy moving forward

I think the mark of a good movie is evening it out enough so that everyone feels they got something valuable out of it. I mean, Luke was always my favourite in the OT and I think his arc is overall the strongest but while I admit ROTJ can be debated, I feel ANH and Empire worked for fans of Han and Leia as well. At least I haven`t seen criticisms of that kind leveled against either of those. Maybe because ANH created a true trio feeling with them that carried forward.

 

how dare you want to feel good about your childhood heroes.

 

Luke absolutely had the best arc in OT hands down OT is his trilogy. he didn't start off with a bang unlike Han (charming rogue was always going to attract more attention than a Cambellian hero, also see Jack Sparrow vs Elisabeth Swann) but his arc went from strength to strength while Han fizzled once he became a full-time rebel (ROTJ). I've seen criticism of Han and Leia in ROTJ but it was never the "they were slighted to prop Luke". There were other reasons (Ford wanted out, Fisher had her problem, their characters peaked so there wasn't really much to do with them and GL didn't want to kill Han for he wanted an uplifting ending, etc). Point being, why some characters come off better and some worse usually isn't due to conspiracy to undermine X or Y but simply whether the story that the writer-director wants to tell needs them or not. And personal interest. Someone who comes from Breaking Bad is more likely to have interest in troubled/complex/divisive characters rather than breezy/simple/agreeable. Someone who comes from Jurassic World is likely to have interest in traditional heroism including traditional romance. Someone who built a career off mystery box is more likely to keep the first movie vague in anything-can-happen non-committal way but upon return will emphasize the character who has the biggest potential for shocking twists and reveals. Etc.

 

SW ain't Breaking Bad. There is plenty of room for both.

 

There's a difference between being Breaking Bad and having interest in SW's more complex characters. if your previous movie sanitizes someone to the max that there's absolutely nothing potentially interesting left, even directors-writers who are fans of agreebale characters will pass.

 

why is it always one extreme or the other? No one wants Luke to be perfect. He was hardly perfect in the OT.

 

I agree with @Talos of Atmora about this. Luke in the hut scene was far worse. The main reason is, in the duel with Vader, Luke and Vader were both awake; they BOTH had weapons; and they were both fairly evenly matched, with Vader having a slight edge in experience and Luke in agility. Vader had committed horrible crimes for over 25 years. In the hut scene, Luke was brandishing his lightsaber over a SLEEPING nephew who had not yet committed a single crime, as far as we know, and we don’t know for certain if he ever would have committed a crime if Luke hadn’t snuck into his room like a thief in the night, instead of confronting him and having a discussion with him when both were awake.

In the duel with Vader, Vader purposely threatened to turn leia to the dark side instead of Luke to “press his buttons” when Luke refused to fight. They were in a duel; during a war; Luke’s emotions got the better of him for a short time in a life or death situation before he had a chance to even think about what he was doing. Luke put himself into the hut situation. He had time to think about what he was doing and make a conscious decision. Luke didn’t need to sneak into his nephew’s room in the middle of the night. If he was worried about his nephew, he should have confronted him before his nephew went to bed or after he woke up, to TALK to him about his concerns. There was no war at the time. Luke’s life was not in danger at that moment. No one’s life was in danger at that moment. Luke was stupid to even go into his nephew’s room as he slept.

 

Luke getting angry during a light saber duel is totally the same as pulling a weapon on his sleeping nephew.

 

Its similar, yes. Both give threats to those he loves, both are scheming for power, both have had their hearts turned at some point.

As we learn later in the film, Kylo did turn out to be the Snake, he used and seduced Rey to help defeat his own master, assumed the role of Supreme Leader, and then attempted to get Rey to join him at his side.

Kylo Ren has more in common with Palpatine than he does Anakin/Vader by the end of The Last Jedi. By the end of the film Luke's foresight(you know, the most powerful jedi ever) was correct. He did act as the film states, in "a fleeting moment of pure instict" in that in this moment this encounter with the dark side brought forth the potential he saw, as those in tune with the force do, for utter destruction to everything for which he loved.

Really well done. I do see how it is easy for people to have a hard time swallowing this dynamic.

 

I think it’s Kylo.

 

I don't know if you replied to me but since the reply came after my post I'll assume so. Luke was never perfect which is why he would appeal to someone who is into imperfect/complicated/complex characters. Now, I understand that what was done with him in TLJ angered his fans but I think it stems from the director's interest in the character complexity that wasn't the kind of complexity fans saw. How can I put it? he clearly gave Mark some meat to sink his teeth into but that wasn't the kind of meat fans thought was in character. he got a great performance from mark, one of the best in 9 movies, but the context deferred from how fandom saw the character and how they thought he would be when he grew old. Which is a reasonable complaint.

 

I think that you are overlooking a lot of context when it comes to RotJ.
Luke had been under tremendous strain and stress for a considerable period of time and his friends were literally dying as it happened.
To just look at the moment and totally ignoring what has gone before, to me, is to miss a lot of very vital points.

Once Luke gets the truth confirmed, that Vader is his father, he is also told that he most confront/kill him.
And Luke does not think he can do that.
Killing your own father would make most people pause. Luke also thinks that there is still good in him.
On top of that, he learns that Leia is his sister.
So he does not know what to do and pushes it off to the side and goes back to rebels.

He goes to Endor and there he realizes, "Vader is here, I have made a mistake."
That then gets compounded when he senses that Vader is coming to Endor to get him.
If the stays, he endangers the mission, he can't leave Endor as the shield is still up. Running away on Endor won't help since he is on foot and Vader can sense him so he can't hide. And the longer Vader is on Endor, the more risk to the mission.
So out of several bad options, Luke decides to surrender. Based on the faint and possibly foolish hope that he can reach Vader somehow. It has other issues, like why would the Empire not look for other
rebels?
But he goes to Vader and tries to reason with him and gets somewhere but Vader does not like what he is doing but do it he will, he will hand Luke over to the Emperor. So that hope was dashed.

When Luke comes to the DS2 he is resigned but has the small comfort that he take Vader and Palpatine with him when he dies. But then Palpatine takes that hope from him as well. So twice in short order he had his hopes crushed.

Then Luke is forced to watch his friends and allies dying and all he fought for being destroyed.
This makes him angry, which was the point, to fuel his hate.
Palpatine says as much, "Get angry, filled with hate and use that hate and then you will become my slave."
Luke tries to resist, because he knows that giving in to hate will accomplish nothing and only make him Palpatine's new servant. But eventually he can't resist any longer, the hate is too strong, he grabs his weapon, tries to attack Palpatine but Vader stops him and they fight.
Luke is letting his anger fuel his actions and he kicks Vader down the stairs.
Palpatine, a bit stupidly, decides to gloat and this makes Luke calm down a bit.
He stops attacking, tries to reason with his father but that gets him nowhere.
So then he hides.

But as far as he knows, the rebels are still getting decimated, his friends are dying, Han and Leia has walked into a trap, they may be dead or take captive. And he is powerless to do anything about it.
The strain and pressure is still there even if he is not acting on it at present.

The he and Vader talk and Vader is able to get the one thing that Luke has managed to keep hidden, that Leia is his sister. He was told to keep that buried but now he has failed that too.
Vader gloats and suggests that Leia be turned.
This finally pushes Luke over the edge and he gives in to his hate and goes on attack and bashes at Vader. But he manages to stop himself in time. Possibly again due to the Emperor gloating.

So one must consider the full context, what has Luke been through for the last few hours/days and not just look at one moment.

And that could be because you are not looking at the full picture the movie has painted.

You take issue when people find Rey OP based on the films because you have all this EU knowledge that don't match that.
So it sounds like you think an opinion of Rey as OP, based on just the films, is wrong because those people have not taken non-film sources into account and their personal perspective was just the films.

To me, the biggest hint we get in the OT is Yoda saying, "Beware the powers of the Emperor or suffer your fathers fate you will."
Back in the day I took that to mean that the Emperor had a power that he could use against you if you used the Force in anger and hate.
And that power he was going to use on Luke once Luke had gotten angry enough to kill in hate.
And Luke says, "You won't turn me as you did my father." Clearly saying that the emperor played a key role when Anakin turned.
I figured that Anakin did what Luke almost did, gave in to his hate and let the dark side flow through him, and the emperor used that to bend him to his will.

Here I think you are again overlooking something.
You admit that the OT films didn't give much info about why and how Anakin turned nor what he was like pre-turn.
So people would have made up ideas and notions about that.
We had little, a good man, good friend to Obi-Wan, idealistic, great pilot.
But not much detail.

Luke is quite a different story.
He had three films where he was the main character.
So here we do have a lot of characterization and character development.

So after RotJ, the question "Who is Luke Skywalker?" would have a lot of actual canon to answer that while "Who was Anakin Skywalker?" would have a lot more head-canon.

So the PT had more of a blank slate to work with when it came to Anakin.
And yes people had issues with it.
But in my experience, a lot of that had to with execution and less with ideas. The acting was a common complaint with both TPM and AotC. The writing/dialogue was another.

There were some objections to conflicts with what had been presented in the OT.
Anakin and Obi-Wan were quite antagonistic in AotC and people took issue with that since they were supposed to be great friends.
Obi-Wan saying he took it upon himself to train Anakin was changed into him making a promise to his dying master.
But overall, in my experience, the majority of complaints against Anakin had to do with acting and writing.
Some thought he was too whiny, others that he was creepy, too arrogant, rude, too stupid.

With Luke in TLJ, most that I've seen, including myself, have no issue with the acting, Mark does a good job.
Here the issue is about the ideas, how the character is bent to serve the story.
And Luke as a character is bent in TLJ.
Luke has been in a situation with a person that has turned to the dark side, done a lot of evil and yet he did not give up and thought he could turn that person back.
Not so in TLJ. Here, for no given reason, he thinks that Ben is lost, can never come back.

Luke was caring and compassionate, always willing to help his friends.
In TLJ, those friends can all die, he does not care.
He does even get to show his reaction to being told that Han is dead.

As I've said before, I might have accepted this Luke if the film had done a better job explaining how Luke come to be this way. This is a major change in the character so it requires careful explanation why.
But we get very little, nowhere near enough to explain it. To me.
It was just "Luke is like this now, accept it!"

To sum up, Luke was far more developed and established than Anakin was prior to the PT.
So with Luke, there is lot more to go on how he would act or not act.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

@Samuel Vimes , that was as excellent post explaining the difference about why how Luke is depicted in the ST is less believable than how Anakin was depicted in the PT, and why more people have problems with Luke’s characterization in the ST. You are right: In the ST, Luke’s character was bent, (I would even say, broken and destroyed ), to serve the story.

 

I'll just add that the anger that prompted Luke to lose his temper and attack Vader was among other things, based on their prior history.

We are given nothing that suggests that there was any bad blood between Luke and Ben before the incident in the hut, so I don't see how it makes sense for Luke to instinctively almost kill his nephew because of fear or anger instead of be frightened by the vision and motivated to try to keep his nephew from falling to the darkside in the first place.

Honestly, I've always thought that it'd have made more sense (and be more interesting) if what went wrong was that Luke got overconfident in his own ability to prevent his nephew from falling to the darkside and made honest mistakes in how he handled the situation.

Maybe Snoke was a former darksider that Luke had defeated in the past and thought had made a genuine turnaround and so, after some years, he decided to have him be a part of his school (humble old gartner), only to learn too late that Snoke used it as an opportunity to covertly manipulate his students including his nephew psychogically and emotionally.

(Basically, a deconstruction of the idea that anybody can be redeemed)

Because Luke is trying to preemptively prevent his nephew from falling to the darkside, Snoke reveals that to Ben and makes him believe that his uncle think he is already bad and then makes Ben think it, too. Maybe an accident happens and Snoke convinces Luke that Ben was responsible for the death of another student. Maybe he eventually sets up so that one night, Ben thinks that Luke is going to try to kill him and Luke thinks that Ben is going to try to kill him.

I feel like you'd get more out of all three characters if you did something like that with what happened between them in the past.

 

People are missing key things when analyzing Luke.

1. Snoke had already turned kylos heart

2. Snokes goal is to eliminate Skywalker, and the Jedi.

This tells us Snokes plan is to use Ben Solo to destroy all that Luke loved and built.

So, what Luke is sensing is a plan that is *already underway*. He had sensed it. Past tense.

When he goes to bens hut it is this realization of whats happening, but even under that realization he cannot bring himself to action, but at the same time it is that fleeting moment which sets things in motion.

 

It’s that “ Luke setting things in motion part” idea that I absolutely HATE. In my opinion, that should never have been done to this iconic, beloved character, making him partially responsible for his nephew’s fall and the loss of his jedi students; the loss of his life’s work.

 

It was snoke. That was his plan.

 

That doesn't make the slightest lick of difference though.

 

Yes it does, it means kylo was already scheming for power, just like Palpatine in the prequels.

 

I mean, that kind of throws a wrench in the whole idea of him being redeemable. Another issue is that when and how this happens isn't elaborated on or made clear.

 

I'm in agreement. I think most are. Was it possible to have a quote/unquote redemption? Maybe but the way it happened just sort of, happened. Given the events of tlj if they were to go that direction, WAY more focus and revelations needed to be in place for kylo and not rey.

RJ placed him more like a Palpatine character, so one film to change that would be very difficult.

 

Well, speaking for myself a fantasy film about space wizards lifting up rocks seems like a place were there should be ample room to be easy-going

I think the mark of good art is that it accurately presents the artists vision, conjures up numorous feelings from numerous different peaple and stimulates active discussion amid the peaple who look at it, and at least in that regard I think TLJ is one of the most sucessful Star Wars films.

I don't see why you have to be a d*** about it. Is telling peaple "hahahaha. Told you so" really that importent to you? It's just a freaking movie.

And I don't recall anyone who likes the ST saying it's great that Star Wars was burned to the ground. In fact, the only peaple who say it was burned to the ground at all, as far as I can tell, is the peaple who don't like it and are outraged over the films.

But how are Kylo's fans being upset that he died to allegedly prop up anouther character any different then you being upset that Luke died to allegedly do the same? No offense but it seems like there's a lack of self-awareness going on here.

He gets to be one with the Force, living forever as an enlightened, immortal being and being reunited with his father, Obi-Wan, Yoda and eventually Leia and Ben as well, who will live forever alongside him. Seems like he made out pretty good to me

No reason it can't be, though.

It does'nt have to be one extreme or the other, but at the same time there's no reason you can't go to the extremes.

But yes, your right Luke should have woken Ben up and talk to him and was being stupid - he made a bad call and that mistake cost him dearly, that's the whole point.

To some of us it is.

No, I just don't see the same context you do.

No, I don't take issue with peaple thinking that and I don't think their opinion is wrong, I take issue with peaple presenting their opinion as fact.

We see small glipses of Luke's life within a three year timespan, and then he - like a great many peaple - changed and evolved as a person within the thirty years since the last time we saw him. I understand peaple don't like the way they chose to show that he changed, but to claim he's acting "out of character" or that his dipiction in TLJ conflicts with his dipiction in the OT smacks of presenting ones personal bais/expectations as the only valid explenation.

Why is X persons personal belief for how he should have evovled correct but Johnson's is'nt? By all accounts he's a fan just like the rest of us, so surely his interpration of how the character would/could/should evovle is just as valid as the rest of ours - it seems to me the only difference is he got the change to make his interpration "the" one, and the peaple who did'nt like it...did'nt...

Peaple like to present ROTJ like Luke had blind faith in Vader's inner-goodness and frame TLJ like his brief temptation to kill Ben was born out of nothing, but that's not what happened.

Search your feelings, father. You can't do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate.

I saw darkness. I'd sensed it building in him. I'd see it at moments during his training. But then I looked inside...and it was beyond what I ever imagined. Snoke had already turned his heart. He would bring destruction, and pain, and death...and the end of everything I love because of what he will become.

He felt conflict and sensed good in Vader, and he only saw darkness in Ben - and darkness beyond what he ever imagined he would see to boot.

His bad experiences have turned him into a bitter cynic and his depressed state and self-imposed isolation have cuased him to become apathatic. He shakes himself out of it by the end of the film, so I really don't see the issue.

Yes, that should have been in the film.

Seems to me that they did give and explanation, it's just that not everyone liked/bought it.

Luke emotions got the better of him when he saw the vision of what Ben would do as well, and Luke put himself in the situation on the Death Star as well. Again, I don't really see the duel or Luke being in danger as relevent, as the only reason Luke attacked Vader was becuase he made an implied threat agianst Leia, not becuase they were fighting or becuase Luke felt threatened, so I don't see why it's out of character to just breifly think about killing Kylo becuase of an implied threat agianst multipule peaple when he actually did try to kill Vader just becuase of an implied threat agianst one single person.

Sometimes peaple make bad judgments in the heat of the moment and everything explodes in their face *. It happens and personally I like it; it shows that at the end of the day Luke was just as failable and capable of error as the rest of us.

That being said, he's only responsable for what he did, not what Ben or Snoke did, and at the end of the day it was'nt him who destroyed the temple and it was Ben's own choice to go run to Snoke rather then go seek help from his parents.

*in the words of anouther Mark Hamill character "all it takes is one bad day..."

 

You missed a lot of reviews, then.

I’m not going to be saying “told you so,” I’m going to be saying “oh, now you’re upset that your headcanon didn’t happen? Funny how you pilloried all of us old fans back in the day, laughed and told us to get over it, that it was better this way, what did we expect?”

 

Maybe I did, after all I tried my best to keep away from those given all the hate, negativity and mudslinging being leveled at the ST . But I'm not sure why anyone who likes the ST would think Star Wars was "burned to the ground" - you seem to think there's an overlap between thinking the ST/it's narrative choices were good and hating Star Wars (or at least hating the OT and the PT) and wanting the francise to be destroyed, which...well, that's silly.

I mean, you seem to be upset that your headcanon for Luke did'nt happen in TLJ, so what's good for the goose I suppose...

Well, I don't recall ever laughing at anyone or saying it was better this way, and I try my hardest not to tell peaple to "get over it" (even though, if I'm being completly honest, the thought does occur to me quite often during these discussions becuase, you know, it's just a silly fantasy film that came out almost four years ago and Luke Skywalker is'nt a real person).

 

Everyone play nice in here. Discuss the topic, not other posters.