ST Luke Skywalker/Mark Hamill Discussion Thread [SEE WARNING ON PAGE 134]

@K2771991 We have already had this conversation about Mark Hamil’s tweets. I am not getting into it with you again. Nor did i read your long post. Mark Hamill made his statements about ‘Jake Skywalker’ then posted those tweets you said not long after. Reports came out that Disney was pissed and talked to him. I am not digging up news from years ago or prove something that was already covered to death on this board. Feel free to believe whatever you want but when the guy keeps making tweets about Trevarrow’s pitch and still being a beacon of hope and optimism. Plus his original comments. your never going to convince me otherwise. You keep asking d’or evidence yet there is so much evidence to the contrary of your POV but okay. You can reply if you want but as i already mentioned i won’t be reading it or engaging with it as we have done this before and I don’t care enough to do it again. @LedReader did a great job of describing how Mark Hamill probably feels in his last post.

 

The way I see it is that Mark Hamill has as much right as anybody else to dislike The Last Jedi. Ironic however that it is probably a career best performance from him in live action.

 

Was it parody when Anakin used the same line in TPM where the context of the scene was one in which he had reverence for the Jedi?

The choice of laser sword is appropriate and consistent with where Luke's mindset is about the Jedi and light sabers at this point in the story. Rian Johnson wasn't parodying Star Wars or lightsabers with that word choice. He was being true to Luke's state of mind at that point in the story - disillusioned with the Jedi, his legend and peoples expectations of him.

Rey does bring him hope. Did you watch the end of the movie? The movie literally ends with Luke walking out with a laser sword to take on the whole First Order, something he mocked earlier and then shows him at peace that the future of the Jedi is secure with her.

If you think Rey's "training sequences" were meant to be like actual scenes of her training to become a Jedi then you weren't engaging with the movie or the specific story it was telling.

The message of the movie isn't that all sides in war are bad. That is the perspective of a character who sells the Resistance out to save his own skin. In fact, the movie emphatically states that both sides are not the same and it's DJ's indifferent example that strengthens Finns' resolve.

Do you actually realize how basic storytelling works? In most stories, heroes struggle and react in the wrong way to their problems and obstacles until they find a moment of insight, where they realize what they want is not always what they need. Where a story ENDS is where its conclusions and messages lay.

If you project your argument (all sides are bad) onto other stories, say The Lion King as an example, you'd reach the following conclusion: The Lion King tells us Simba is right to run away from his responsibilities. Hakuna Matata!

Inside Out is about how happiness is the most important emotion and that you should try to be happy all the time and push sadness away.

 

Fair enough. I am sorry if I misinterpreted you or misspoke about the point you were making.

I get what you are saying here. I think @Lobot's Wig summed up my feelings on this idea when said:

@devilinthedetails I get if you "don't trust the narrative" of a film, yet this gets us into another conversation altogether. For example, someone just told me on this thread:

In ROTJ, they don't believe that Luke can literally "feel the good" that still resides Vader. They believe this is something Luke just tells himself.

Now, one is more than welcome to interpret the film this way. If you think Luke in ROTJ, or TLJ, is full of crap...that's one's prerogative. Yet, let's be clear, this is NOT what the film is communicating. It's simply not an earnest take on the plot of the film. In fact, I'd say it's a misreading of what the film is presenting.

 

That's not necessarily a disearnest take.

The good that Luke senses inside Darth Vader is that his father doesn't want to kill him. Luke is clearly shown to want to believe this, he is also shown to doubt how right he is about Vader more than once.

Furthermore, Darth Vader ultimately only turns when Palpatine is killing Luke and even then, it's not an immediate action. It takes him time to decide to step in. When it came down to it, he was hesitant to let his son die but he was also hesitant to save him.

It's not an interpretation that I agree with, but it is also not an interpretation that I would consider out of bounds/completely unfounded in the text itself.

 

You communicate to the audience that someone has fallen to the darkside by SHOWING them doing evil things, like killing Han. You don’t do it by having another character tell you that he had fallen to the dark side, when he had not yet DONE a single evil deed. There is still time to CHANGE him then. Besides, as others have said, Johnson had the character with Luke’s name in that movie tell us that Kylo had fallen. As others have said, by this point in the movie, when the character with Luke’s name has already been portrayed as a jerk that no one recognizes as the real Luke, and has already kept the full truth from Rey, he is no longer a reliable narrator. His actions speak louder than his words. So the character with Luke’s name can tell us that Kylo was already a darksider, but when Kylo hasn’t committed any evil deeds yet, and when we watch Luke pull out his lightsaber; take a second or so to ignite it; and then hold it over his sleeping nephew long enough for said nephew to wake up, audience members can be skeptical. I think more of us would have believed the words if the real Luke from the OT had spoken them rather than the one who only had Luke’s name and nothing else of the OT Luke; and if we had been given examples of terrible deeds that Kylo had committed. I can’t speak for others, but I didn’t trust the words of a character who would go into his nephew’s room in the middle of the night to read his mind in secret.

Plus, I don’t know about anyone else, but I really didn’t see those flashbacks as all that different. None of them made the character with Luke’s name look good. In all of them, the character with Luke’s name went into his sleeping nephew’s room. In all of them, he violated his nephew’s mind in a cowardly way while his nephew was sleeping. In all of them, except the one in which he didn’t tell the whole story, the character with Luke’s name pulled a lightsaber from his belt; activated it; and held it over his sleeping nephew. In all of them, he was responsible for starting kylo on the dark path. In none of them was the character with Luke’s name just an innocent victim of an evil nephew. There was no point to the series of flashbacks, as all of them made the character with Luke’ s name look awful and made Kylo look more sympathetic. Might as well have just used one of them.

 

Selective quoting that ignores context on purpose is usually a thing I don't even dignify with a response, but I could not care less for what your opinion on my interpretation of movies or shows is. You have repeatedly ignored and dismissed other people's interpretations, while presenting your defense of MH in TLJ as the one and only absolute interpretation. I did not ignore the narrative of TLJ at all, I just think it's a horrendous one. And not well presented.

I can't bother to comment on the waterfalls of text where I disagree with pretty much every single thing you say about Luke in the ST, but I do want to comment on this. The idea that Mark Hamill actually does not have strong negative feelings about Luke in TLJ is a delusion. For every tweet where Mark Hamill has "changed his mind" as you claim, there are approximately 10 tweets or interviews where he is heavily criticizing Rian Johnson's choices for his character.

You could do a little less with the hyperbole. No one spoke about secret meanings and conspiracy theories. Mark Hamill has tweeted at least 3 tweets since the Mandalorian Season finale was broadcasted, that are all pretty obvious jabs at the Luke you saw in the ST (cause I didn't see Luke quite honestly and the more time goes by, the less I care about it, in my head it's 100% non canon storytelling).

There's nothing wicked about Mark Hamill and no one actually thinks he is an a-hole. If anything, I applaud him for speaking his mind for years now, and making it very clear which Luke Skywalker he prefers and relates to. Also, Rian Johnson is NOT his friend. They will never be friends. That's another delusion that you have promoted with 2-3 posts about him and his friendship. You can be friendly with someone, without being friends. Mark Hamill is civil, he is a professional, and he would never throw shade directly to RJ as a person, but he has passionately expressed his disagreements with him about his character and the choices in the story.

Seriously, if you think MH was not upset with The Last Jedi, you must have missed dozens of interviews and tweets. I assure you that we haven't even seen the end of it. Mark Hamill will express himself about this topic in the future again.

 

Jedi look into each other’s minds all the time (“your thoughts dwell on your mother”).

So when Ben had enough moments of darkness in his training for Luke to feel he has to confront him about it, I’d say looking deeper into his mind past what he already senses to be something troubling is totally warranted.

Also, parents / parental figures come into their children's rooms while they're sleeping all the time.

 

Edit

 

True but there is a big difference between sensing one's thoughts in a duel or during a council interrogation and sneaking into someone's bedroom. It just seemed like a creepy choice for the character. Ben is not an infant, nor is he Luke's son.

 

To me, the film seemed to portray Luke's actions as the final catalyst for Ben's complete fall. I never interpreted the film to say outright that Ben was fully dark or committed, that's part of why I think Luke felt so guilty about it and blamed himself for Ben committing fully to Snoke.

 

If you meant my take on ROTJ, my counter-question would be: why do I have to wholeheartedly swallow everything a movie tells me? Movies tells me all kinds of things that I don`t buy into or look at differently. I just consider that making up my own mind and having my own reading on it. I genuinely can`t understand "the movie tells you this, so why wouldn`t you believe it?" approach to it.

IF a movie suffiencetly convinces me of the narratives it puts forward, I may believe it. Or heck, I can still enjoy a movie if I get something entirely different out of it than the creator intended. And it is usually not that hard to say what the creator intended. With TLJ, it is actually pretty easy.

Of course this Rashomon flashback device was supposed to present the final version as "the truth" and the audience was not supposed to question Luke`s validity in it. I`m neither blind nor an idiot, I can see this. So why wouldn`t I believe it like a good littlle obedient viewer? Because I consider Luke a coward at this point in the movie, a complete failure who after several scenes with him, has utterly spent all goodwill I had from the OT so his cred as a reliable narrator for that one scene is shot. More than that, I didn`t get to see the scene or be told or shown Kylo had done anything evil yet.

The filmmaker can also have a little ticker going across the screen with "attention audiences: this is what you have to believe for the plot and characteriaztion to make sense..." And it would have the same effect on me. Either the work of fiction manages through visuals or dialogue to make me buy into its points or not.

And really, at the same time the third flashback was meant to have Luke tell the truth, the movie also wanted to present the question of "did Luke make it happen?" As in, if he hadn`t reacted like this, would Kylo Ren still have walked down the same path.?That is an inherent vague question it poses and it still makes Luke look very bad and takes blame off Kylo, no matter who told the truth when.

So if Luke gets hit with more blame, hate and scorn than the "teehee, that is so deep and thought-provoking" approach intended, the movie also reaped what it sowed there. You can`t pose a question like that and then control the outcome of reactions, like "well, maybe Luke was the catalyst, if people ponder that, they will blame him only 10 % and still sympathize with the character and/or still be engaged with the story". That you will go too far and deliberately hack away a good portion of viewers should be a foregone conclusion there.

 

Luke and Kylo were both adults. Luke was kylo’s teacher and mentor. Instead of cowardly sneaking into kylo’s room after he was asleep, Luke should have confronted him face to face to discuss his concerns man to man. If that sent Kylo off the deep end into a rage and he pulled his lightsaber on Luke, Luke would have been within his rights to reluctantly protect himself. I would think though that the discussion could have been less violent and more productive than that. Either outcome would have been better than what we got through the sneaking around in the middle of the night scenario, and both would have been far more positive and in character for Luke. Unfortunately, I don’t think that Rian Johnson wanted to present Luke in a favorable light. Every decision that he made for the character degraded, diminished, and even vilified him. Even the choice to have the stupid force projection wasn’t positive for Luke. It made him look cowardly for not going in person, and it for some inexplicable reason, also KILLED him.

 

Yes, that is how Luke sees it. He gave his nephew the final push he needed to turn. It isn't something he thinks he can be the one to fix. The same way Obi-Wan didn't think he could save Vader despite their history together. But Luke doesn't give up on Ben. He gives up on himself. That's the difference.

 

I wonder how fans would have reacted if they turned Luke into a Sith Lord like Anakin.

 

I was half expecting this. The one thing I didn't expect was for Luke to be completely unlikable.

 

I would have hated it, but less

 

I really don’t understand why people often say that Luke couldn’t be the one to “fix” Kylo. Why not??? In my opinion, Luke was the ONLY one who could have “ fixed” the problem. In the first place, he was the ONLY Jedi, and the only Jedi master. He was the one who had the skills and power to face him more safely and with more understanding than anyone else. Since Luke was also the one who was the catalyst who started kylo’s darkside rampage, he was the one who could tell his nephew that he was sorry; that he had made mistakes and hadn’t handled kylo’s problems correctly. He could remind Kylo that his darkside choice wasn’t permanent. He could remind him that even though Anakin/ Vader had been lost to the dark for 25 years and had committed countless evil acts, that he was still able to be returned to the Light.

The time to do that was right after the Jedi school massacre. Luke had caused the problem. It was Luke’s responsibility to clean up the mess. He should have confronted Kylo and tried to persuade him to return to the Light. However, failing that, it was his duty and responsibility to defend the galaxy from Kylo. Luke failed in every way possible.

@SmokeMonster4815162342 , I would have hated it just as much as having Luke portrayed the way he was in TLJ, and I consider both to be wildly out of character portrayals. Why do you think it would be necessary to have Luke written in terrible ways? Why couldn’t we get an older, wiser version of the Luke from the OT who trains new Jedi so that he can pass the baton to them in a satisfying way and leave a legacy? Why do you think it’s better to in some way destroy an heroic character who has been loved by generations for 40 years? I just truly don’t understand this.

 

Even if you believe Luke 100% as a reliable narrator in this situation, so what? Luke and the audience all know that there is not a "once a dark sider always a dark sider" rule. We have seen Vader change after decades of being fully immersed in the darkside. Ben is like a dark sider infant. Why should someone believing Luke make his actions towards Ben any less reprehensible?

 

I didn't say Luke couldn't be the one to fix him, I said that's how his character sees it. Even Han asks in TFA if Luke couldn't reach him then how could he ... and Leia responds Luke is a Jedi you're his father. Ben's problems ran deeper than that.

 

How did running away and hiding on an island help kylo’s problems, or help the galaxy deal with Kylo?I found all of RJ’s decisions bad and silly with regard to both Luke and Kylo.

Edit: and with regard to Rey and Finn and Poe and pretty much everyone else too.

 

Heh, I would have far prefered it if given the two options. At least he could have potentially been an enjoyable Sith. Better than an edgelord with wobbly lips.

A Sith on the "good" side would have been interesting. Like, why would you suddenly change your alligiances, right? So someone who is ruthlessly cracking down on the New Order and the Rebellion/Resistance Leia/Han are like "no, stop, this is not us, this is not you' and he be like "I'll have me some Snoke Flambee with extra foot soldier entrails today, the dark side rules".

Why does every Dark Sider boringly have to be with the Empire?

 

YES! Luke as a dark sider who was driven there by tragedy but is on the island because he is dangerous and needs Rey to bring him back. I would have enjoyed that.