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

One of the things I noticed and its got a cool vibe to boot it is in TLJ, when Kylo and Rey link (without knowing why or how), Ren makes the attempt to reach his hand forward where Rey is situated and says “you’ll bring Luke Skywalker to me” but withdraws his hand slowly as he fails in the attempt. Fast forward one year and in TROS they link this time with purpose where Ren says “you are hard to find” and Rey remarks “you’re hard to get rid off “ (Ren’s side is light in his quarters and Rey’s dark sky). Then when Rey says “we’ll see”, Ren slowly had been approaching and reaches his hand out and grabs the necklace charm. Success!

MJ

 

I also agree with this however I still wish Luke's character wasn't completely assassinated to the extent that it was in TLJ. Yes, TROS improves it but I still wish Luke was more able to truly train Rey and pass on his legacy to her.

 

It's interesting how literally four of the nine saga movies we have now are based on the premise of dark side characters trying to find Luke Skywalker.

 

I agree with what he says in this video mostly. I was amused when he brought up the topic of Rian Johnson's head being shaped like a "soccer ball," though I do think it was inappropriate. Lol.

 

The "Assassination" of Luke!?! Come on, that is so over the top. Those videos sound a little bit dated now, specially when you know that Hamill's feelings about the movie have changed since. My favorite video with Rian and Mark talking about THE LAST JEDI would be this one:

PS: Any news about Johnson's photos book?

 

Oh, where Rian calls him an unprintable name? Yeah, I remember that.

 

Since I'm in the mood, I think I'll randomly remind everyone here that Rian Johnson isn't the one who put Luke on the island. JJ Abrams didn't put hm there either. George Lucas did that.

It goes all the way back to George Lucas that Rey was supposed to journey to Luke's exile at the first Jedi temple and bring him out of retirement. He was supposed to be sort of shell-shocked out there like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (which by the way, George Lucas himself wrote) and she would inspire him to resume an active role in the galaxy. Lucas also had plans for a "Jedi Killer" called Skyler who became Kylo Ren, and his superior Uber who would haunt Luke through a Force projection while he sought peace at the first Jedi Temple.

 

But that's because Vader is familiar with Obi-Wan, the person. There is no establised ability that Luke should be able to tell the bloodline of Rey, let alone Leia.

No JJ did that. You can't throw away many of his ideas and then claim to be beholden to Luke on the island.

 

Ehhh...? You're not making sense to me. Lucas set it up that Luke was in exile and Rey came out there and became the reason he returned to an active role. This is a core element in the sequel trilogy that remains from the Lucas treatments. So that originated with him.

 

Luke Skywalker's Screen time in the ST:

TFA = 1 min
TLJ = 21 min 15 sec
TROS = 2 min 45 sec

meaning JJ Abrams had Luke Skywalker on screen for 3 min and 45 sec in 2 movies !

 

To be fair, Leia only got 8 minutes in The Force Awakens.

 

I think hands down the worse thing about Luke Skywalker in the ST:

He spends the whole trilogy on one Island never leaves it.....

 

Luke was physically on Ahch-To but, mentally, he was everywhere.
Sort of "force of inspiration".

 

Point being that regardless of who came up with it, JJ didn’t have to use it. He sure as hell didn’t keep Han and Leia together, which was allegedly in the original, either. I found it interesting that JJ said they threw out the treatments but the second people didn’t like Luke in exile, all I read was “but Lucas” so which is it?

 

I think my meaning was clear, that Lucas' treatment had Luke in self-imposed exile at the Jedi temple, and depressed in some way; the new heroine was supposed to inspire him when she came to him for training; this is essentially still what happens. Neither Abrams nor Rian changed this, and it's a situation that had to be explained. So they explained it, and fans will differ as to whether they accept this explanation.

 

As I understand it, Luke may have been in exile at the first jedi temple, but we don’t know what he was doing there. He could have seeking information. He could even have been training a few new knights. We do know that even if he WAS in exile, that the first author that Lucas hired had Luke join Rey in a journey/ adventure in that very first film, but then because the authors couldn’t find a way for Luke to not take over the story from Rey, JJ just excluded Luke from his story. ( I still think that good authors should be able to come up with worthy roles for multiple characters without eclipsing one another. So I consider that to be a poor excuse).

Plus, Lucas would have allowed Luke to truly train Rey, and he wouldn’t have humiliated and disrespected the character the way that was done in TLJ. And he certainly would NOT have had Luke, his namesake character, be the reason for kylo’s fall. We would have gotten a very different story and a very different Luke Skywalker, if the Lucas treatments had been used. We definitely would not have gotten the same “story” or Luke that JJ and RJ gave us.

 

We might assume that Luke went to the temple looking for answers, and over the course of five years just slowly gave up, justifying his hands-off approach as pacifism or removing his harmful influence or letting the Force replace the Jedi with something else. My take on the film is not that Luke was completely wrong during this period, and of course he wasn't completely right either. But my expectation had been that Luke was hiding out cooking up some plan, or waiting for a person like Rey. The impression I had (sort of obviously wrong in retrospect) was that he set it up so that only a very special person could find him. Perhaps we can figure this was the situation he created, unconciously serving the will of the living Force. But it's abundantly clear that he didn't want to be found by anyone if you take The Last Jedi's dialogue from him at face value.

 

And even if there was a basic common idea, that means nothing to me. You can take one basic premise for a story or a character and give it to three different filmmakers and it is completely feasible that one movie turns out great, one turns out mediocre and one turns out a disaster.

I didn`t like the premise of "Luke on an island" all that much but that doesn`t mean that with a different presentation of Luke there, a different backstory for why he is there, a different continuation of the story, it can`t work. Bruce Wayne at the beginning of Dark Knight Rises is a depressed shut-in who walks with a cane. I watched that and thought to myself "Jesus Christ, didn`t expect it to be this bad after Dark Knight". And then Bane beats him to Smithereens on top of that. But I did, largely, enjoy the come back story. Thor in Endgame was severely depressed and a physical mess and frankly, I was horrified over how much of a joke they made him in the movie. I still found points of sympathy for the character and his final showing at least had some dignity to it. And he has another starring movie coming up than CAN fix him. Hopefully.

With Luke, I found zero sympathy for him in TLJ and zero redemption for him in that "it`s really powerful and inspiring" act on Crait. Which I neither found powerful or inspiring when watching it, more depressing and lame. It was the final disappointment of the movie to end on that whimper.

The deconstruction/reconstruction ratio is crucial to me. Even half/half is usually too much for me, let alone a 90/10 split. And of course if you deconstruct so heavily, you better reconstruct epically and monumentally.

Besides, the ST has huge similarities to Dark Empire. Not my favourite piece of Legends but I liked it well enough. Why? Because it featured the characters I cared for. So yes, they had to defeat the Emperor again, kinda, but at least it was them, not some random usurpers. The story itself of Dark Empire is Saga-destroying for me if you hand it off to other characters aka the sequels.

I never expected the OT folk to have big roles in the ST, let alone be the stars, I honestly expected "cameos". Instead they gave them "arcs" but in such a way I don`t find them likeable/heroic/inspiring anymore - and they were plenty real and human to me in the OT already so that argument doesn`t count for me - but they were still side characters so those "arcs" could never go anywhere like a main character who could truly be redeemed. So basically, the worst of both worlds. Especially Luke.

 

I think I've said it elsewhere that the revealed backstory of Luke failing so terribly with Ben Solo is the most difficult aspect of the sequel trilogy for me to accept. I think the concept of his fearing to do further harm makes sense as to why he'd completely retire, but really the biggest draw for me in this new trilogy was initially finding out what happened to Luke. I wanted to see him do further heroics, on a Jedi Master scale. The ST as a whole has become better now that it's finished, but I don't fault anyone who refuses to accept Luke's new backstory or rejects the sequels for that reason. Nobody wanted to see him so messed up out there on the island. Of course he did have an expression of dread or concern on his face at the end of TFA. But anyway, if you want to enjoy the sequels you have to accommodate this. The collapse of Luke Skywalker (along with his eventual redemption of himself) is part and parcel of the ST, or even the heart of it. They go together, take it or leave it.

 

If the redemption worked for me, I probably could roll with it. But since that little force-projection did nothing to redeem the character in my eyes, I`m still left with the collapsed mess of my favourite character. Something TLJ accomplished was make me not care at all when Luke Skywalker died onscreen. Normally I would have bawled my eyes out but that wimp going out was no big loss at that point in time.

Now at least he still has the OT (and Legends) to fall back on and allow me to still love the character there if I ignore the ST. The ST characters only have that trilogy.

 

Luke also would've only been in exile for the first film, and would retain a mentor role in the vein of PT Yoda for the duration of the trilogy.

So that throws something of a wrench in the theory of anyone claiming that the Luke we got was utilized in the way Lucas intended. We know that to not be the case. It isn't anymore in character with Lucas' vision than Han "Deadbeat Dad" Solo is in TFA, what with Lucas ceaselessly claiming that Han would be a family man in the aftermath of ROTJ, not some irresponsible father who walks out on his family to return to smuggling, something that Abrams by his own admission implemented because "he never saw Han as a family man".

This trilogy, for whatever shallow ways it resembles Lucas' story treatments, does not resemble his vision in the way it matters most: the characters. These are not Luke, Han and Leia as Lucas intended, and they never will be, despite whatever claims that people tell themselves in order to desperately validate their love of the ST movies.

All the more reason I jumped ship to the Expanded Universe five years ago. The OT characters are treated with respect, and no vapid or insufferable ST characters in sight.

The best continuity anyone could ask for.

 

Lucas probably would have given Luke more to do in the ST that ultimately would saved his legacy. Rian Johnson more than anyone else was actually responsible for destroying any real legacy for Luke, and for that, I hope he never touches SW again. He doesn't deserve to.

Rey Palpatine in no way carries on Luke Skywalker's legacy. Rian stole it for himself, the hack egotist.

What LFL, KK, and Rian did, just to be clear, was to take Star Wars's Superman character, an iconic hero, and utterly throw them in the trash. This would obviously be a stupid, bizarre move with huge characters like Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman, but LFL and many fans don't seem to appreciate what's been lost.

Some people just enjoy destroying things, especially ideals that are beneficial for people to admire. The loss of Luke Skywalker has been a huge blow to Star Wars as well as storytelling in general -- and society, which has need of positive models.

 

Well, as I said, this is the most difficult aspect of the sequel trilogy for me to accept. For me the complete ST is better than it was after two movies, but accepting Luke's Dark Side lapse and its hideous consequences requires me to think of it in terms of what I call a fan theory patch. It's imaginable that Johnson had something like this in mind, but I don't necessarily assume it's quite his take on things. My patch theory is mentioned earlier in the thread--namely that Luke lost sight of the fact that his vision of the future was in motion (cf Yoda epV) and the atrocities he foresaw were partly a result of his own emerging violent reaction to what he was seeing, in a kind of feedback loop. The more frightened he got the worse the future looked as his aggressive response became more likely and more extreme. In the beginning his first sense of it was relatively mild, but the more he looked the worse it got. So like Anakin he ended up making things worse in a desperate attempt to prevent the vision, and caused it to at least partially come true. Had he backed off, he might have cleared his mind, consulted his ascended Jedi Master advisors, and found a better way.

Incidentally the dialogue makes clear (contrary to my preference narratively and expectation and vision of Luke as a character) that he had reason to believe that he could not defeat Ben in an open fight, not with Ben harnessing the dark side anyway. That's another reason his fear drove him to act in the moment, since he might not have another chance to stop this nightmare from coming true.

 

Exactly!

Luke, Han and Leia were all trashed, Luke worst of all, and this is worse than Superman, etc, because there are multiple Supermans and Batmans but there is ONE Luke, One Han (I refuse to accept Generic Dude) and One Leia, and one chance to see them all together and they treated the characters and actors like they were from a third string sitcom from the 70s. It will never be anything but baffling to me and the fact that some fans and almost every critic in known space went along with it and praised it is even more baffling. I will never get it.