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

That could have been complex. A story where an entitled Skywalker heir isn't meant to lead the Jedi, because its not their story anymore, or for whatever reasons, and this leads Ben to the dark side, could have been cool. At least as a complex idea.

But the ST doesn't actually talk about Ben/Kylo being priviedged. We see it. We can tell. But the movies go to great lengths to actually ignore this story line, and give Kylo what he wants. It wants us to empathize with him. It was us to want him to go good. It wants us to ignore his evil. It wants us to root for him when he gets his girlfriend therapist.

That's not complex. That's shallow and bankrupt.

 

@godisawesome

Your entire framing around "privileged" versus "less privileged" conflicts is a deliberate misrepresentation of Star Wars to support your criticism of TLJ. You're forcing a contemporary class-analysis lens onto a space opera about galactic civil war, genocide, and family tragedy.

The Skywalker family members aren't "privileged" - they're essentially space war vetrans figures bearing enormous burdens. Luke grew up as a farm boy who watched his aunt and uncle's burned corpses, lost his hand, discovered his father was a genocidal monster, and then saw his students murdered by his nephew. Leia watched her entire planet - billions of people - vaporized, was tortured by her biological father, and lost her son to the dark side. These aren't "elitist problems" - they're war trauma on an apocalyptic scale.

Narratively, Star Wars has typically been the Skywalker Saga. Every trilogy focuses on this family because their choices literally determine the fate of the galaxy. That's not "bias" or "narrative privilege" - it's the fundamental structure of the story. Complaining that TLJ focuses on Luke and Kylo's psychological states rather than honoring minor characters is like criticizing Hamlet for focusing on the Danish prince rather than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The main characters get more narrative focus because they're the main characters - that's how storytelling works. By this logic, the OT was "biased" toward Luke over countless Rebel pilots who died fighting the Empire, and the PT "privileged" Anakin's story over the thousands of Jedi who perished in Order 66.

Your critique forces a real-world class framework onto a mythic space opera where it simply doesn't apply. In myth, being "chosen" typically means greater suffering, not privilege. The Skywalkers' centrality to the galaxy's fate comes at devastating personal cost - that's what makes their story heroic and tragic, not "privileged."

 

I think you're entirely missing the point that the ST is reflecting the biases of the white, middle aged affluent men that bankrolled and made them. *This* is the lens through which they are created, and this is how they are 'framed'. That the ST *are* contemporary films, and that the filmmakers *do not* really understood what drove George Lucas' vision for Star Wars (and have little interest in progressing his vision), is why the narrative of the ST is so distorted/inconsistent, and the framing unrepresentative of what traditionally constitutes 'Star Wars'. It's probably why those whom seem to warm to the ST the most (and TLJ in particularly in this instance), don't really connect with (or appreciate) the Lucas films... IMO.

It's like someone thinking they can recreate, or mimic, a Beatles song by having a mop top haircut, using a string section and singing about 'love', and believing that this recreation can somehow demonstrably capture and channel the thoughts, creativity, the 'talent' and influences of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo. It obviously can not... it can only really reproduce the scantest idea of something... and it ultimately only reflects the thoughts, views and biases of those trying to mimic the originals. In the case of Star Wars, JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson are just not at that level appropriate enough for the job/challenge... and boy does it show; creatively, narratively, in terms of pushing the form etc... and the lack of a consistent creative vision is why that 'framing' and narrative is so disconnected... not only with the OT/PT, but (most damning) between the ST films themselves. It's like EMI employing Taylor Swift trying to write a new Beatles song.

 

He literally kills his family and still thinks he's owed their inheritance.

Thats' top shelf privilege.

On any other network we'd know exactly who this was. The villain. On D+, he's the empathetic dark prince who gets kissed by the girl he tortures for over a year.

 

I feel like insisting on this basically goes out the window the moment you start making it a big plot point that your protagonist, who is basically a Light Side messiah in most ways, isn't actually related to anyone.

I'm not asking for a dissertation. What I'm asking for is that the worldview be acknowledged that the film is too afraid to actually commit making a part of him explicitly. That Kylo, deep down, feels that only through him can the past be killed. Only through him can a new page be turned because he is the last Skywalker. It is his birthright. That is what Snoke/Palpatine preyed on. It refuses to acknowledge this and the proof of that is in the start of the next film where not only does it nullify the one somewhat novel thing that emerged from its ending (that the "overarching villain and "antagonist" are basically one and the same) but it makes it incredibly easy for Abrams to just shunt it aside in the following film. So much so that it doesn't even actually occur to him that Palpatine being revealed as the one pulling the strings all along would basically be a catastrophic blow to Kylo's raison d'etre. In that film, Kylo doesn't so much as blink at this revelation and why should he when the prior film effectively skirts and pussyfoots around that part of him. There are many I've spoken to who feel that Abrams kind of ran roughshod over something that was incredibly well-established in TLJ but for all the reasons I've stated, for him it was as simple as just sweeping some dust under a rug. There was no great dismantling here at all.

This is honestly kind of a huge problem with TLJ that's crept up in the back of my mind that's developed over the course of some years since I've seen it, especially as the rest of the trilogy unfolded that you see repeat itself in so many of the characters. What happens with Finn? He's shunted into a rather tangential plotline where he, the formerly indoctrinated child soldier of a fascistic military junta, has to have the First Order's effect on the galaxy spelled out for him as if he hasn't lived it better than anyone else as a worthless peon who had his identity and agency robbed from him since childhood. His newfound family is in the crosshairs of the Order and he personally defied and wounded the organization's second in command. It is such an absolute waste of time. Poe goes through an entire plotline where he basically has to "learn" from Holdo that he shouldn't charge ahead blindly into "glorious" pyrrhic victories and command more prudently for the sake of a cause's survival. This idea (and her sacrifice) would be great and all if it weren't for the fact that when Poe is presented with another extremely precarious situation with the siege on Crait where he just decides to mount another reckless charge against an objective with even more lacking equipment and means with which to do so AND ONLY THEN does the film expect us he's grown apparently after it clearly fails, getting more people killed. A part of me would have held back from arguing that Holdo may as well have not even been in the film before but given how Rian talks about her and Poe's dynamic, it's become increasingly obvious that her concept was a lark for him rather than a serious endeavor. Rey has this problem too in that the film just becomes about her anxiety over who her parents are rather than the fact that she was abandoned. In a pretty slimy sleight of hand, the film just becomes about an obsession with how legacy is weighed, hardly a deconstruction of it when it makes Rey not consider the harm brought to her new family much at all. The new people she has made bonds with that chose to reach out to her and give her that sense of belonging.

It's why I suggested my alternative scenario for Luke. In it, he actually does buy into his own legend and his family's virtues in a sense. If Han could overcome his pessimistic realism, if Leia chooses to fight for a democratic movement in spite of her royal title, if his father could be turned even at the brink then under his watch, why shouldn't he of all people be able to show his nephew the way?! That's where he forgets something fatal. The prince. The spoiled, entitled highborn who has been in want of nothing and has never unduly suffered the consequences of a war he has not made himself. Again, someone much more reminiscent of a younger Palpatine than Anakin or even Luke. The film does not go with this. It decides, just like the characters I mentioned in the prior paragraph, to basically make Luke spin his wheels. Relearn a lesson he suffered dire consequences learning in his path as a Jedi instead of showing his new unaddressed flaw as a teacher: being too blinded by his legend and his familial bonds to see he is helping incubate something truly monstrous. You mentioned that Kylo just does extra philosophical posturing and this is true. What the film never stresses is that this is all to obfuscate that he is taking what he believes is his by the right of the innate superiority of his blood. That his "conflict" is truly a mirage. TLJ never closes the book on this just like it's noncommittal at best or outright regressive at worst with most other elements of its story.

I guess the point I'm shuffling toward here is that I find you denouncing @godisawesome's framing kind of weird given that TLJ, and the ST at large, is phenomenally unserious when it comes to speaking truth to power. Frankly, everything about the Canto Bight subplot is indicative of that.

 

1. I can agree with a pov that says Luke is overshadowing Finn (and possibly even Rey) with the amount of focus/story he gets in TLJ. I don't see many complaints about that though. @godisawesome was talking specficially about Luke and Kylo....

2. I still don't see that Ren gets more focus that Finn. As I've said before, Ren has less screentime than Rey, Luke, Finn, and Rose. Does he get talked about even when not on screen? Sure! That's villain/antagonist perks. When one is the obstacle/threat that the protagonist (Rey) must deal with....one is the spectre/shadow that looms large. As I said: One of the narrative perks (and reasons why) actors often gravitate towards being the villain in these kind of stories.

This is exactly how Star Wars has always worked. In ROTJ, Vader's internal conflict gets far more focus than how Han, Leia, or Chewie feel about their torture/trauma/pain at his hands. Luke's compassion for his father overshadows everyone else's trauma because that's the story being told. Antagonists get this narrative privilege because their redemption arcs are central to the hero's journey.

[What you missed - addressing the "no real problems" claim:]

Having loving parents doesn't prevent real problems. Kylo was sent away from his family to train with Luke, manipulated by Snoke from childhood, and felt abandoned despite his parents' love. Privilege doesn't immunize against psychological trauma or dark side corruption - Anakin had the entire Jedi Order's support and still fell. Plus, as I said....Ren is unhinged and unstable. I don't think we are supposed to agree with his/his take. Do you? The movie shows that Ren is wrong/evil.

The ST does engage with these themes through Rey (class), Finn (race), and various characters' arcs. But imposing rigid contemporary frameworks onto Star Wars' mythic structure misses how the saga operates. It's still fundamentally about the Light vs Dark struggle played out through family drama - just with more diverse casting and perspectives than before.

@Talos of Atmora

Your "Light Side messiah" complaint misses that Star Wars has always been mythic storytelling with chosen ones and destiny and special lineage. That's Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey material, not class commentary. But even within that framework, TLJ bucks that tradition by making Rey powerful while explicitly stating she's nobody - she earns her heroism without bloodline advantages. (Yes, TROS alters this, but we're discussing TLJ's themes.)

You say you don't want a dissertation, yet demand explicit exposition of themes the film already demonstrates through action. Kylo's entitlement saturates every scene. When he kills Snoke while preaching "let the past die," that's visual hypocrisy. When he tells Rey she's nothing "but not to me," that's superiority made text. Films show; they don't lecture. The film doesn't ultimately demand that we sympathize with Kylo or view him as a protagonist. TLJ briefly toys with redemption possibilities but ultimately slams that door shut. If Reylos want to romanticize him, that's their interpretation, not where the film lands.

The character arcs aren't wasteful. Finn progresses from personal to systemic understanding. Poe's Crait retreat proves he internalized Holdo's lesson. Rey's parentage obsession IS her abandonment trauma - same issue, not separate.

Your proposed Luke arc already happened - he DID trust Ben for years, DID believe in redemption, DID miss warning signs. The film focuses on the moment that faith shattered. Years of trust destroyed by one moment of protective instinct creates deeper tragedy than naive faith.

Calling TLJ "unserious about power" ignores how it challenges Star Wars more than any previous film. It questions bloodline supremacy, legendary status, war profiteering, and institutional authority. The controversy proves it engaged seriously with these themes.

Bottom line, I think your own analysis contradicts your conclusion. You perfectly articulated Kylo's aristocratic entitlement, his "prince" status, and bloodline supremacy themes - yet claim the film doesn't engage with power seriously. The fact you understood these themes without explicit exposition proves TLJ succeeded in showing rather than telling. You simultaneously criticize the film for being "noncommittal" while attacking it for committing too strongly to ideas like Rey being nobody and "light side messiah". These contradictions suggest that you're frustrated with TLJ's choices...fair enough.

Narrative focus isn't "privilege" - it's how stories work. Complaining about Skywalker focus in the Skywalker Saga is like criticizing The Lord of the Rings for centering on Frodo when thousands of soldiers die at Helm's Deep.

 

Now I know we didn't see the same movie. Kylo is set up sympathetically from jump. We have to care about him being upset with Snoke calling him names, about him being hurt the last time and his hurt feelings, that he didn't get what he wanted from murdering his father, that he can't kill his mother, that Rey ultimately won't go along with him, he gets a glamor shot, we're supposed to be upset with Hux, not him, and on and on.

No, it doesn't. In the shallowest possible ways does it even glancingly address this and then, because Kylo has bloodline supremacy, it's gone. I don't know what Canto Bight is - it's not about war profiteering or slavery or much of anything except a way to keep Finn on screen but out of the main plot - well, I defy anyone to tell me the main plot of TLJ. Is it Kylo's struggle? Luke's mid life crisis? Poe suddenly veering from a solid leader to a crazy one? Finn being taught a lesson that he already was taught? The First Order winning? Rey being an idiot....oh, wait.

 

No, you see, we needed to have the character most systemically oppressed by the First Order in the entire movie be lectured to and shown the Charles Dickens stable boys in order to prove to him that resistance is worth undertaking.

 

The film shows Kylo's emotions to explain his choices, not excuse them. Every scene you mention ends with him choosing evil despite having alternatives.

He's conflicted about killing Leia but still attacks the Resistance. His "hurt feelings" about murdering Han show patricide gained him nothing. He kills Snoke just to take his place. Rey rejects him specifically because he chooses power over redemption.

That "glamor shot" frames him as the villain he's become, not as a romantic hero. The film offers him multiple chances to turn back - he rejects them all. By the ending, he's cemented as the trilogy's antagonist.

Showing a villains emotional states doesn't equal sympathy. It makes his villainy more effective because we see him actively choosing darkness despite knowing better. That's characterization, not endorsement.

Canto Bight explicitly shows arms dealers profiting from both sides - that's war profiteering made text. DJ's "they blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow" directly confronts the military-industrial complex. Rose shows Finn systemic oppression beyond their immediate conflict.

Rey being "nobody" challenges bloodline supremacy in a saga obsessed with heritage. Luke's arc questions whether legendary heroes can live up to their myths. The Holdo/Poe conflict examines leadership and authority.

You criticize TLJ for having multiple plot threads as if complexity equals confusion. The film weaves Rey's self-discovery, Kylo's tyranny, the Resistance's survival, and Luke's redemption into a cohesive narrative about power, legacy, and choice.

Kylo having bloodline supremacy doesn't erase the critique - it demonstrates how such entitlement corrupts. His isolation despite his heritage proves the film's point about supremacist thinking's hollow nature.

Films with genuinely shallow themes don't generate years of passionate debate. TLJ's themes clearly struck a nerve.

 

Nearly the very first lines in the movie:

I know where you come from. Before you called yourself Kylo Ren.

The First Order rose from the dark side...you did not.

You may try, but you cannot deny the truth that is your family.

To me, she is royalty. ​

These lines set up that the movie wants us to view or understand that Kylo is actually good. It doesn't matter if they had some wackadoo 'reverse Vader' concept in mind. He couldn't even wait to get through the first scene without spilling the beans.

What we get is a sympathetic character mauled down by Kylo and YET he views Kylo as good still. What this tell us, what JJ is telling us, is that Kylo is good, no matter his dark side wannabe powers. Kylo is good, no matter his evil actions. Kylo is good because of his privileged royal place in the story.

Kylo demands to be treated unfairly. The story demands our sympathy, in order to find out what went so wrong with Ben Solo. We're told up front that he wasn't born this way, so its not his true nature and we will find out who's really to blame for Kylo being this way. Hint: It's not all Kylo's fault. Its pretty much everyone but his fault.

Which is all fairly odd since this doesn't get applied to Rey at all. Her truth can be denied. She CAN switch family names at will. The truth we're demanded to follow through three movies is upended when it gets applied to Rey in her journey.

 

Ancillary material like The Rise of Kylo Ren only reaffirms this interpretation as well by washing him of responsibility.

 

Are we talking TFA or TLJ? Because, despite the fact that Ren is the son of Han and Leia, I think that TFA presents him as more a straight up villain than any of the other ST films.

Those lines establish dramatic irony, not sympathy. Lor San Tekka believes in Kylo's bloodline potential while we watch Kylo murder him seconds later. The film shows us how wrong Tekka is - lineage doesn't determine morality. Kylo's actions immediately contradict Tekka's faith in his heritage

Disagree. Star Wars constantly defines good and bad by one's actions and choices...not due to their lineage or legacy or position in life. It's actually one of the MAIN tenants in these films.stories. For the most part, Ren consistantly chooses evil...and then wines about it petulantly...which in turn is even more of a bad guy thing. Not sympathetic at all.

The film doesn't excuse Kylo - it shows how someone with every advantage chose evil anyway. Luke's moment of weakness doesn't justify Kylo's mass murder. Snoke's manipulation doesn't excuse following him. Having Han Solo as a dad doesn't warrant patricide.

Rey proves bloodline doesn't determine destiny by rejecting her Palpatine heritage. Kylo proves the opposite by using his lineage to justify evil. She chooses her identity; he hides behind his.

The films' message is consistent: choices matter more than blood. Kylo had good lineage and chose darkness. Rey had dark lineage and chose light. That's not unfair treatment - it's showing how characters respond differently to their circumstances.

 

Well, they can't. The waters have to stay muddied. Otherwise, that redemption that was in store for him all along would start to look pretty sordid.

 

@Talos of Atmora

We accepted Vader as a fallen Jedi without knowing his specific motivations for decades. 'He was seduced by the dark side' was literally all we got, and it was enough. Dooku was described as a former Jedi who left the Order - no detailed psychological explanation needed.

The dark side's corruption IS the motivation in Star Wars. It preys on fear, anger, attachment - universal emotions that don't need elaborate justification. We see Kylo displaying these emotions (fear of inadequacy, anger at perceived betrayal, desperate attachment to his grandfather's legacy) throughout the films.

The films aren't muddying waters - they're following Star Wars tradition where the dark side itself is the corrupting force. Kylo's specific triggers matter less than showing him consistently choosing darkness when offered alternatives. That's how Star Wars has often handled fall-from-grace villains.

 

@godisawesome


I agree Star Wars has always been political - Lucas embedded progressive values from the beginning, and post-Lucas Lucasfilm continues this tradition.

However, Lucas never framed his characters through the "privilege" lens being applied here. Han, Luke, Leia, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda all faced massive trauma despite their positions. Having Force powers or royal titles didn't shield them from suffering - it often amplified it.

The argument about Luke's "personal pride" misreads TLJ entirely. Luke believes he's toxic to those he loves - his withdrawal is self-punishment, not selfishness. He thinks the galaxy is safer without him. That's consistent with his hero complex from the OT, just inverted into guilt.

As for Kylo getting focus over other characters - he's only getting the bad guy shine- that's how antagonists work in storytelling. Certainly we see it in Star Wars. ROTJ spends significant time on Vader's inner conflict and redemption with minimal to no focus on his victims' feelings - we never see Han, Leia, or Lando get extra focus for their trauma from Vader's torture and cruelty. No one criticizes that because understanding the antagonist barriers/threat is essential to the hero's journey.

Star Wars remains committed to clear moral lines - Kylo's villainy is never excused by his "suffering", just as Vader's wasn't. The sequel trilogy maintains this tradition.

 

Because at that point, we didn't need an explanation beyond that. You could fill that in because all you met in the OT was his kids, raised by other people.

In the ST, we have Kylo who is RAISED BY THE HEROES OF THE OT so we need to know how he got there because we saw his parents and uncle, who we knew over 3 movies to be good people. We need to know why, after seeing the galaxy saved and on the right path at the end of ROTJ, it's back to Rebels vs. Empire. But because it's a "soft reboot," or the "creatives" are too lazy or hacks or both, we get the same story again, which undercuts the hopeful story of the OT. Why a whole team of people being paid actual good money to make a new SW could not figure that out and had their golden goose run over by a truck is a story for another time.

 

Star Wars has always dropped us in medias res. Hell, we accepted changes between films without explanation too. Why are the Rebels on Hoth in ESB after their victory? How'd the Empire build another Death Star so fast? We just rolled with it.

30 years passed between ROTJ and TFA. That's massive - longer than the entire span from TPM to ROTJ. History doesn't stop after victories. Sequels regularly open in unexpected places - ESB shows the Rebels on the run despite their Death Star victory, ROTJ has the Empire building another Death Star despite their loss. That's often how sequels work.

Also, we've seen how the dark side corrupts good people repeatedly: Anakin despite Jedi training, Dooku leaving the Order, Luke nearly killing Vader. The pattern is established. Good parents don't guarantee good children, especially with Snoke's manipulation.

Your complaint seems less about narrative logic and more about disliking the ST's direction. Which is totally fair. Star Wars has always featured cyclical good vs evil - every trilogy starts with evil resurgent and heroes struggling. The "golden goose" comment reveals you wanted a different story, not that this one fails to follow Star Wars conventions.

 

It's not really that Rian lets him shine that's the problem, it's that he is clearly too overly preoccupied with Kylo as an antihero that is suggesting a new order who simply hates his uncle instead of what he actually is: a dyed in the wool fascist since he was 20. Reylos exist because the focus is completely wrong, just like how the focus is wrong with Finn. In a lot of ways, a Spartacus-esque subplot should have begun with this film where Finn is concerned. I suspect it didn't because Finn putting everything on the line to convince what are effectively a bunch of the First Order's slave soldiers in the same hopelessly bleak situation to take the courageous first step in numbers with stark contrast to Kylo refusing what should be his last chance (from the far too many that have been granted to him) to do the right thing would have been too sharp a criticism of Kylo for Rian to bear.

It's like I said with Poe as well. He goes through this whole plotline where he has to learn to not charge forward with toxic masculine hardheadedness for the purpose of meaningless pyrrhic victories but when it comes time on Crait to not consider a reckless charge even more hopeless and unlikely to actually work compared to what happened in D'Qar, he still chooses to do it. He ends up needlessly killing a bunch of people Holdo was forced to sacrifice herself to save. This film is about as interested in critiquing and examining leadership as it is fascism.

The fact that nothing from Bloodline ever really becomes relevant to the films either is telling too in this regard.

 

The film doesn't present Kylo as an antihero - it presents him as a villain whose emotional "baggage" makes his evil choices more damning, not more sympathetic. When he kills Snoke, it's not to create a "new order" but to seize power for himself. His "let the past die" philosophy is exposed as hypocritical when he immediately claims the throne and continues the First Order's fascist agenda.

TLJ actually emphasizes his fascist nature - he orders the Resistance's complete annihilation, tries to manipulate Rey into joining his authoritarian rule, and ends the film as Supreme Leader. The film shows him rejecting redemption, not offering a better alternative.

Reylos exist because some viewers project romantic narratives onto villain/hero dynamics - that's happened with nearly every attractive villain in media history. It's not the film's focus being "wrong," it's audience interpretation varying.

As for Finn, his arc explores systemic oppression beyond his personal experience - from Rose showing him Canto Bight's war profiteering to DJ's cynical "both sides profit" revelation. While not the Spartacus storyline you wanted, it's hardly ignoring his character's potential. Different creative choices aren't inherently wrong choices.

 

The problem with Canto Bight and DJ's entire place in the story is that if we're going down the route of critiquing fascism, emphasizing war profiteers' bankrolling child slavery off the Resistance's need for arms in their fight against the First Order is a pretty weird way to decide on doing that in my view...

...which makes this not even close to enough.