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

They're not exactly Across The Galaxy in TESB - they're all at Bespin, just in slightly different locations.

 

For all the reasons others have listed above, I felt the scene in TLJ where R2D2 showed Luke the Leia hologram from ANH to convince him to help made absolutely no sense. Like yeah, we get it, it's your sister, the one you abandoned. All of a sudden showing a hologram of her is going to change your mind? It's the worst sort of - wait for it - pandering and fan-service. I can only imagine the howls of criticism if JJ had done this.

 

Yeah I imagine Luke had ample time to think about how he bailed on everyone in the years he'd been alone on the island.

 

And that's why they should decide that using that power either kills you or it doesn't. Because then you have to figure out how much life force gets drained out of you per mile and it gets even more absurd.

 

Exactly. In theory I can buy that Luke still struggled with the Dark Side post-ROTJ (even if I think that theme was woefully underdeveloped in TLJ). What I find much harder to believe (and which I don't think was explained much, if at all) is that he would throw away everything and not try to make things better. It's not the struggle I have a problem with; it's the cowardice.

 

There was NO reason to make Luke “ much more human” in the sequel trilogy. Luke was always VERY human in the OT. He made plenty of mistakes, but he learned from them. He wasn’t even shown as all that powerful really. Certainly, he was nothing like Rey, who could do massive force feats like raising tons of boulders and defeating Kylo with no training. And that was just the beginning, I understand that in TROS, she does things like healing and taking down a ship with lightning or something.

Getting back to Luke, his biggest accomplishment was in directing some torpedoes into the death star’s weakest point. We really never got to see Luke much as a jedi. He just actually became one at the end of RotJ. The next film we see him in, he is in exile, having accomplished NOTHING!

Yoda told Luke to pass on what he had learned, so he commissioned Luke to rebuild the jedi order. But the ST took that legacy away from Luke, along with his optimistic, attitude, his personality, his integrity, his core traits, his courage, and even his very dignity. This trilogy left Luke with nothing: no accomplishments, no legacy, no family, no heroism. Luke wasn’t even allowed to train Rey. Plus they tried to turn Luke into a near villain in this trilogy, as being responsible for “ creating Kylo”. That’s just plain wrong!

Luke WAS supposed to be an “obiwan-type “ character, passing on jedi skills to the next generation. Lucas even told mark Hamill that was part of the original plan for the ST way back while they were filming TESB. Plus, how else were the jedi skills supposed to be passed on? Luke was the Last Jedi at the beginning of TLJ. He was the only one who should have been able to train Rey. And because RJ killed Luke off, JJ retconned the story to say that Leia had trained after all, even though in TFA, we were told that she wasn’t a jedi; that she had chosen to continue her leadership role instead.

And Luke ‘s little holoprojection didn’t accomplish anything. ( Except kill Luke for no reason.) rey is the one who saved the 12 resistance survivors by levitating the rocks. And leia could have faced her son herself. After all, she has now been retconned into being a jedi master.

So, I completely disagree with you. RJ destroyed luke’s Character, and he never allowed us to truly see Luke act as a jedi and jedi master, something I was looking forward to after waiting 30 years, even if luke’s role would have been a small one. Deconstructing Luke and using him in such a bad way was also detrimental to the sequel trilogy as well. Many Star Wars fans, including me, checked out of Star Wars after that. I haven’t watched a single SW film since TLJ, old or new, and I haven’t bought ant SW merchandise. I used to read every sw book and comic on the first day of release; I introduced many extended family members to SW; I bought so toys for kids, and was a SW collector myself, but since I saw TLJ, I haven’t spent a penny on SW. Destroying Luke and making the OT films pointless ruined so for me, and they lost me as a fan and paying customer.

 

Luke making mistakes is fine. Luke essentially making the same mistakes that his predecessors did, despite a big thing in ROTJ being him learning from their mistakes, and just, giving up, THAT was the problem.

 

Leia receiving Jedi training wasn't exactly a retcon. Her force pulling herself toward the ship in TLJ was meant as a surprise reveal to set her up as a mentor in ROS. It's just that the execution looked kinda silly which caused a lot of people to miss that point. Or maybe I'm wrong but that's what I immediately thought when I first saw it and was surprised that it angered so many people.

And if he was supposed to be an Obi-Wan type then they got it right because Obi-Wan failed miserably as a teacher and it lead to Darth Vader. It would be
completely unbelievable that Luke would be this perfect teacher once rebuilding the Jedi order became his sole responsibility, with no other Jedi left to help him.

Like I said, there was nothing wrong with his story of mistakes and struggle. It was his lack of any comeback that was the issue. It really felt like RJ wanted to be the one to kill off Luke to make a name for himself and advance his career instead of doing what was best for the character and story.

 

If the "darkness" Luke sensed in Ben was Palpatine, that might explain why he overreacts - it isn't just "Ben is turning to Dark Side" - it's that familiar, malevolent presence.

 

I understand your point of view, ChildOfWinds, and I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. To be sincere with you, I have to admit I was expecting an Obiwan-like-Luke for Episode VIII, something that did not really excite me as I believe(d) that Guiness had already perfected that role in the original trilogy. To find out LUKE's loss of faith and discover how he recovered it was a welcome surprise, plus Hamill did a wonderful job at it. He is grumpy and looks worn-out but you can see in his eyes that the good-old-Luke - the one you were looking for I guess - is somewhere near, underneath. The send-off of this character was also for me a terrific moment, one of the most intense in the whole saga, but that's just my own view. I just felt it that way.
I also do believe that we still can expect to see LUKE acting as a Jedi Master pre TFA, somehow. Maybe in "the Mandalorian" TV series, who knows. (That would be something for sure!)

 

It's funny because JJ did the same with Han Solo: aging, jaded, confused, overwhelmed, he just quit his OT life, just as Luke. But JJ gave him an heroic "back into the fight" arc.

Luke was denied of that arc in TLJ. It's the equivalent of Han abandoning Finn and telling him "you're on your own now, and anyway you'll never rescue Rey, it's not going to work" after Takodana. JJ was smart enough to avoid such nonsense. And no, Luke's "apparition" was not heroic, it was confusing at first (new clothes, haircut and blue saber) and then it was cheap and miserable, like seeing him dying alone on that rock + 2 twin suns (cheap, unrequired fan service).

Not only that, but Luke's passive hatred towards the Jedi Order was equally insulting and pointless. Instead of a "I wasn't and will never be as great as Ben or Yoda" subplot, Johnson thought that the "The Jedi were a failure and the Force does not need the Jedi" idea was good character development. A travesty.

 

The last part is normal reaction and self preservation when tragedy hits. People lose faith and blame the belief system even though it's misguided. The movie did a good job in showing he wasn't correct and him realizing that. It's just that RJ had him realize it a little too late.

 

I'd speculate that Luke's trip to Ahch-To and his cutting himself off from the Force was right after he left the burnt temple - and before the First Order really came into prominence.

So a lot of the bad stuff that's been happening, he doesn't know about.

 

I humbly disagree. In my eyes, Luke's exile only works if seen as self-hatred/low self-esteem. The stabs at the Jedi Order were unnecessary and pointless.

 

He was right though the Jedi Order were blind and stagnant and let Darth Sidious rise.

 

Both of those feelings come in to play also and tend to go in cycles. They're not mutually exclusive. Especially believable for someone who feels responsible for turning his sister's kid whether it was truly his fault or not. Nobody feels only one way or the other during a tragedy like that.

 

But still he went to Ahch-To looking for the wisdom (and power') of ancient Jedi. Luke jaded and overwhelmed (afraid, according to TROS) is one thing; but Luke wanting "the Jedi to die" was a whole different subplot, and even more insulting. It's the equivalent of Han Solo in TFA claiming that "the Rebellion was useless, it was all luck and the Resistance are pathetic". That would have made zero sense. Han Solo hated the U-turn that his life has taken years after VI, but he never hated his past achievements or the ideals he believed in.

 

But the REAL Luke skywalker wouldn’t have cut himself off from the Force and run away to let the galaxy burn. The REAL Luke skywalker would have tried to rectify his mistake. He would have gone after his nephew to try to bring him back, and failing that, would have helped Han and leia and the others defend the galaxy from Snoke and Kylo. He was the only jedi and the only one who stood a chance against dark side force users like Kylo and Snoke.

And @Nate787 , if that leia poppins scene was supposed to show us that leia was a trained jedi after JJ told us she wasn’t, then why would RJ give his film the title : The Last Jedi? If Luke and leia were both trained jedi at that point, there wasn’t only one jedi.

 

Not really in that scene he calls them failures him being on that island has everthing to do with wanting the Jedi to die. He says that the light will be there jedi or not. Jedi are not all the light. The galaxy doesn’t need the Jedi as there will always be people who see and can use the light side of the force.

 

Then Rian Johnson not only ruined Luke's character but also the OT and the PT. The Jedi Order was always a symbol of justice, diplomacy, and hope. Congratulations. That's my point. TLJ is the worst SW movie of all time. RO did a better homage to the Jedi in one scene (the Rebellion in despair in front of the Death Star menace, deeply missing the power, guidance and wisdom of the Order, and Mon Mothma/Organa quickly trying to make contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi) than the whole TLJ movie.

 

I liken it to someone losing their faith in their religion when they lose a loved one or any other tragedy.

"There is no God"

"I believed and did everything right and look where it got me".

Seen it plenty of times. People blaming their faith AND blaming themselves for what happened to someone else. This is not far-fetched by any stretch of the imagination. And it's not far fetched for Luke either unless you had unrealistic expectations of his ability to avoid ever screwing up again.

 

I see your point. But by that logic, Luke should have had that crisis of faith in ROTJ, yet he believed in the Jedi, and honestly tried (and succeeded) to make his father a Jedi again. TLJ's crisis of faith was preposterous. The exile only works as self-loathing (I think that was JJ's intention in TFA).

 

Why was the last movie called "The Rise Of Skywalker" when it was never really a Skywalker? At this point as much as JJ has ignored everything that came before (like GL saying that the Emperor is dead), I can't even begin to guess why he does what he does. We are in for a tsunami of blame and revisionist history over this ST in the near future. Besides, I said I could be wrong and just took it that way.

 

I believe it's unfair to compare a young naive Luke with nothing to lose and no real knowledge of the Jedi at that point, to an older Luke who has learned more about Jedi history and now feels responsible for screwing up the galaxy that he once helped bring peace.


*apologies for the double post*