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

Glad F&F have the keys now. They obviously were skilled enough to know how to use Luke and not overshadow new characters.

 

You have every right to feel however you want about it. My only point is that it mirrors Luke’s justifications for keeping himself out of the fight, sympathetic or not.

In all fairness, it was at the end of two seasons when the new characters were well established.

I’m firmly neutral about the decision, as I don’t have experience writing screenplays for hotly anticipated and worshipped movie serials, I just found the parallel interesting and worth noting.

 

A proper setup that was planned. Everyone involved with the ST could have did the same. They failed.

I'm not making excuses for a problem they created.

 

Isn't this the same thing as the movie though? Be the end of TFA, Rey and all the other characters were well established. If the new characters were established, there should be no fear of Luke taking over them. Right?

 

Then I would agree that they mirror each other by both being crappy and unsympathetic.

If a writer starts with not only the assumption that old characters are obstacles to be overcome because new characters can not measure up but also applies the good old solution of turning the old characters into crap so (theoretically) the new ones can shine in comparism even if they might also be crap, I think very little of their creative abilities.

Not to mention how many million more times do writers have to attempt the "love our shiny new toy, we bathed it in the blood of the old one" approach and be met with the logical reaction of resentment until they try a different way?

 

Why is it a "whine" from Arndt and supposedly him looking for sympathy? He is merely recalling the inherent issues in writing a script in which new characters would have to integrate with iconic characters from the original Star Wars trilogy yet not be overshadowed by them.

 

I would have felt deceived if I were any of the big 3.
They agreed to come back at a dinner with Lucas.
Then all these new people started making the films.
Then they even threw out Lucas' treatments.
Then Hamill was told he would not even speak any words in the first movie.
Can you imagine how it must have felt for him to read the script of TLJ?
After the anticipation to play his career defining character after 40 years?
When I make that thought, I understand every single MH tweet between 2017 and now.

 

I agree with this in principle, and I’d like to think if I was given the job, I’d find a way to include Luke, but the thing to note about this particular instance is that he didn’t start with that assumption—he made several attempts to include Luke—and instead he arrived at that conclusion gradually through the experience of writing it. I can’t judge that kind of situation any further w/o ever having been in a similar position, so I’m neutral. I just it find it interesting.


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That’s what I assume the thinking was (again, only after several attempts to include Luke in TFA and not at the outset), and I don’t think I have a particular bias for TFA as you do.

I assumed from interviews that Johnson was given the TFA script, and found that the biggest challenge of the story was justifying the words spoken by Han in TFA that the heroic Luke “disappeared...walked away from everything” and so that ended up being what he tackled first.

I don’t either and I didn’t mean to imply I thought Johnson was intending on making a meta-commentary, only that art is never really divorced from the themes governing it’s making. It usually is subconscious.


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And I can understand the challenges of RJ having to work with the set up given and I do think that's what's happening here. (Even though he kind of ignores that set up in other areas when he wants to) If RJ was challenged on how to answer the last spoke words by Han, I think there are a number of easy, interesting solutions that he could have gone with, that doesn't basically accidentally complete a self-fulfilling prophecy, or give Luke so much of the spotlight that it takes away from Rey (and potentially the other new characters) and doesn't - in some opinions - destroy the character.

There's no reason he had to explicitly adhere to the spoken word of a character, especially considering RJ does this multiple POV theme with Luke and Kylo anyway. From Han's POV Luke could have walked away from everything, from a certain POV, that of guy who hasn't seen his best bud in years and has never really understood the force stuff. And so he only knows his side of the story. He doesn't understand why or what Luke is really doing on that island. RJ could have made Luke doing anything on that island. He doesn't need to be a destroyed man, or someone haunted by failure, or someone who thinks the Jedi need to end, or someone who is going to need a whole damn movie to work out his issues. Luke could have been there, actively doing something, protecting something, Jedi Mastering something, trapped by something, that none of the other characters know about. That is... until someone comes to him, through the force, or someone he decides is ready to take up the saber, someone the story keeps the focus on.

 

I sympathize with your points, but some of them I don’t quite agree with. Yes, generally speaking, when a character says something, all it canonically means is that it’s probably their point of view, and RJ could have come up with a reason that Han simply wasn’t aware of —-though even in that case, there would still need some serious thought needing to go into why Luke would let his closest friends think such negative and depressing things if his reasons were truly otherwise —- but in this particular case, Han’s words are the audience’s only window into Luke’s mindset, so I assume it was a case of Johnson wanting to honor that. The implications from TFA that he *does* seem to use as red herrings — Luke wanting his old lightsaber, Rey having a special lineage, Snoke’s background being significant — are more expected series tropes than things implied by dialogue or concrete elements of the movie. IOW, if Luke was not on the island for negative reasons, it would definitely be a twist, but I’m not sure it would be a Rian Johnson kind of twist.

Incidentally, I actually do like the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of Luke’s slide into Hermitville because it mirrors and recalls the nature of Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side. It’s like each trilogies protagonist has a prophetic vision and Rey’s is the only one that doesn’t provoke her to fulfill it.

I would be actually interested in hearing some easy, interesting solutions to the set up suggested by taking Han’s words at face value.

My view of Luke’s cowardice is that it’s been given cover by a flawed way of thinking that a hero character like Luke could credibly fall into. “The world needs to move on from depending on what I am”. It’s flawed because it isn’t Luke’s place to decide what the world needs. He doesn’t realize that the hubris he pinned on himself for thinking he could renew the Jedi is actually the hubris inherent in thinking he can perceive what the galaxy needs and doesn’t need. It’s the kind of hubris any one of us could and probably do slip into from time to time. And I think it fits with the idea of what the war time hero might become in times of peace.

 

I like Luke Hermitville.

 

I wonder if they have a slobbering milk Luke action figure.

 

I'd buy it if they did. I'm a Black Series collector anyway.

 

Luke's whole exile being predicated on his eventual hubris and failure with Ben just isn't plausible to me and sinks the story before it even starts. Luke was so humbled and learned so much in the OT, why did we need to see him fail so much harder than he did before his eventual triumph on the second Death Star? It will just always seem incredibly forced to me and it's so much less satisfying than just a supporting mentor role that would allow our new characters to grow and evolve. I don't think anyone would have complained if that had been the case, how many people honestly begged for an absolute failure hermit Luke before TLJ was released?

 

Challenge accepted. lol Just for fun. I've never thought this out before, in this way, so this is largely first draft thinking.

Han's TFA words about Luke:

Han Solo : This map's not complete. It's just a piece. Ever since Luke disappeared, people have been looking for him.
Rey : Why did he leave?
Han Solo : He was training a new generation of Jedi. There was nobody else left to do it, so he took the burden on himself. Everything was going great, until... one boy, an apprentice, turned against him, destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible. He just walked away from everything.
Finn : Do you know what happened to him?
Han Solo : There were a lot of rumors. Stories. People who knew him best think he went looking for the first Jedi temple.
​

Since there's no mention of Luke turning off the force in TFA, I'd take it out. Keep him connected to the Force, and it bothers him that he can't just shut it off. The force will be with him, always. In a way it mirrors what Kylo is dealing with; a constant connection to his family, that acts as a reminder of his weaknesses, a temptation to the light, that won't go away. They both want to ignore it, but for different reasons. Kylo because he wants to be strong, to do evil, and not be bothered by what he thinks is his weakness. And Luke because he feels ashamed that he was weak, that he failed his family, his adopted padawan 'kids' who perished, the Jedi Order, his mentors, and even the Force itself, and wants to punish himself privately.

Making this more down to earth and personal makes more sense to me than making it about hubris and stoping the cycle of Jedi creating dark siders, or just because he thinks he'll make things worse. Kylo wants to destroy his family, and Luke feels like he already did. Luke is on that island as self-imposed punishment and doesn't think he deserves forgiveness yet. (adding to the larger theme of Skywalker repentance). And in this way, if Luke comes back, there might be hope for Kylo.

In the OT, Luke looked towards the horizon, to the future, too much. In the ST, it's the past he can't move beyond. He's trapped in it. He needs to come back to the present.

When Rey meets Luke on Ahch-to, he is in mourning. He's just felt the destruction of the NR worlds along with Han's death reverberate through the force.

Rey hands him the saber. He looks at it solemnly, while standing next to a small make-shift gravestone dedicated to his friend. Grimed-faced and confused he hands it back to her, and walks back to the village.

I plot out how Rey makes him see past those old mistakes. I'd make them bond. She's a scavenger. She's used to finding broken things and giving them value again. I'd make Luke want to take her on as a new adopted padawan child again, after she's proven herself. To see that he's still got a role to play. And a chance to fix those old mistakes.

That's all I got right now. I'd like to continue thinking on it. But basically give Luke his humanity back. Make him deeply care about his family still. Make him still connected to the Force, and he tries to silence the voices, and pair that with Kylo's own attempts at being tempted by the light. Make him have failures he's ashamed of and he's got to get his hope-mojo back.

I'd probably rework the hut flashbacks. There's no need for Luke to lie to Rey. He's ashamed of whatever happened that night, but he's truthful about it.
And maybe, just maybe, I'd show that maybe a few of those students survived.

Alright. Time for dinner.

 

I don’t think anyone would complain either...well I take that back...someone will always complain no matter what you do...but it would have definitely been a safer move. My issue is that safe moves in movies typically run the scale from pointless and boring to repetitive and lesser imitation. I’d rather a movie take a risk, especially the middle movie, that has potential to pay off in a huge way if successful. For me, the potential with the Luke hubris idea was an Arthurian type premise where the hero’s reputation, legitimately achieved through his or her genuine heroic accomplishments, begins to shield him or her from his or her frailties and hubris develops naturally from it. It is a common enough process in human nature to be recognized without the need for exposition, but not dealt with enough in movie tropes — as of this writing anyway — to be immediately embraced by an audience. I’m betting 20 years from now will be as kinder to ST reception as 20 years from the PT was kinder to it’s reception, if not more so. Although I’m not literally betting anything.


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Oh the old "it will be better received in 20 years" theory. So we'll dislike it for 19 more years?

 

I literally just saw an article the other day about how TLJ is now seen more favorably by the fandom than when it was released. I was like...you got some proof on that? lol

 

I wouldn't so much say "safe" as logical. Logical storytelling isn't bland or milquetoast even if it's predictable. Star Wars Episodes aren't Agatha Christie, it's okay for there to be expected story developments. Some fans go out of their way to tell us that a New Jedi Order is soooo predictable and it would be so boring and I just have to wonder why? People don't want to see Luke with a fledgling Academy, trying to pass on his own lessons and learning? And was what we got better? Hard disagree on that personally.

 

Technically that’s 20 years from the first film in the trilogy’s release. So we’re looking at 14 years, give or take an animated series.

 

The same number of people who thought Han and Leia would break up and have one awful child - JJ and Kasdan. It's hilarious how many "you never expected them to stay all together and for Han and Leia to stay together and Luke to be a Jedi master" comments have been

Yeah, I definitely need some receipts on that.

Why bother to buy an existing franchise and bring back the original cast if not to do the expected thing? If they wanted edgy Star Wars, they could have paid off the old gang and made new movies with no connection.