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

I like to think Luke buried them (next to shmi?) before running back to obi wan to have an adventure.

 

Whatever you think about Luke in the ST ,

Mark Hamill gave an awesome performance - top notch better acting than the OT for sure.......

 

No, that's not true. That's impossible!

 

I know you’re kidding but on a certain level why shouldn’t his function to inspire change from what it was when he was young and we were young? He’s fought those wars. He’s struggled with the dark side. He’s had more time to learn of what happened with the PT era Jedi in ways he didn’t know in ROTJ. More time to learn of the extent of his father’s deeds. Why shouldn’t his narrative function better connect with some older audiences if they relate to some of his thoughts? Why can’t some of his best known traits combine in ways that are less positive for him later on?

To quote Johnson: “If you look at any classic hero's myth that is actually worth its salt, at the beginning of the hero's journey, like with King Arthur, he pulls the sword from the stone and he's ascendant — he has setbacks but he unites all the kingdoms," Johnson explained of his thought process. "But then if you keep reading, when it deals with the hero's life as they get into middle-age and beyond, it always starts to get into darker places. And there’s a reason for that: It’s because myths are not made to sell action figures; myths are made to reflect the most difficult transitions we go through in life."

 

so heroes have to follow this template?

 

And RJ can think that all he likes but he ought to understand that some people are not into "old people become crappy and have a midlife crisis" stories and actually like myths as myths and escapism, exactly to get away from real life.

I can have real life all day, every day. For my fiction I'd like something inspirational. And not just some botched attempt at the tail end of a boring midlife crisis.

I certainly hope not, I would like to enjoy stories going forward.

 

What I found ironic was that for many years it was thought that Luke had aspects of Lucas himself in his design mixed with the early stages of Campbell’s hero’s journey. As each new chapter involving Luke came out it provided a new opportunity to see where those steps better fit. Some had applied them hastily for small story beats in ANH when that’s all there was but TESB & ROTJ allowed for more overt examples. So to see that continue AND to consider that Lucas himself turned away from Star Wars and this fandom added an entirely different but potentially meaningful layer to all of this. That Lucas also realized he can’t quite stay away and found ways to help where he could since (consulting on TROS, meeting Johnson on TLJ, Howard on Solo, and working with John and Dave on Mando) also adds a smile to my face.

 

Luke and Leia died at 53, too young yet. Wonder Woman showed people in their 50s in battles etc only one important died.

 

For me it wasn't Luke's cynicism, his rude behavior, or his grumpy, uncharacteristic demeanor that bothered me so much (I didn't like them, but I could live with them).

What I couldn't live with was Luke's absolutely absurd perspective on the Jedi Order, on the events of the prequels, and the logic behind his idiotic decision to put himself on that island. So when RJ spouts off about mythology, his argument is as stupid as his TLJ screenplay...

It would have been fine to give Luke a challenging, dark situation to have to deal with...I don't think anyone objects to that. What they object to is the execution. His argument assumes his execution was good, which IMO it was not.

 

I like Luke in VIII though I do think it was a missed opportunity not to have him involved in any of the actual events of this trilogy...my wish is that RJ had kept Luke alive IX (especially after Carrie's death) and that IX and the time gap before it had involved Rey and Luke recruiting and training new young Jedi to counter an increasingly unhinged supreme leader Kylo

 

There wasn't anything absurd about his view on the Jedi. He had a crisis of faith after failing his nephew and recognizing a pattern in the Jedi that he wanted to break. He was basically telling the truth (from a certain point of view).

What's absurd is him completely bailing from everyone ever after hearing his friend was killed and knowing his sister was in imminent danger.

 

Yeah, I don't agree with this. I love Mark Hamill as an actor. Always have. But I didn't really care for his performance in TLJ. I don't blame him, as I'm pretty sure he was directed to perform in a way he wasn't really all that thrilled about... But IMO, his acting in ANH and ESB was way better. He's the heart of those films. Especially ESB. His scenes with Yoda are insane. This is not a critique of Hamill, it's really a critique of the direction he received.

 

Luke’s being isolated on the island wasn’t RJ’s decision. It was JJ’s—and LK’s and apparently GL’s. MA couldn’t give him more space and time for reasons we all know.

 

There are many reasons for Luke to be on that island, and there are many ways to redeem old hermit Luke and get him out of retirement.

Lucas apparently wanted Episode VII to be about Kira (Rey) meets the cynical Luke and successfully sways him to teach her the ways of the Force in this film (sounds familiar?). Then Luke would be around until Episode IX where he dies, but not before passing everything he has learned to Leia and other Jedi students like Kira thus ensuring that the Jedi Order will live on without him.

JJ Abrams and co. seemed to find Luke's presence to be too overshadowing for the new characters and thus threw at the very of the film as a MacGuffin, with Episode VII being The Search for Luke Skywalker. He also added the whole Empire vs Rebels dynamic back in the form of the First Order vs Resistance with the New Republic destroyed, meaning that everything that Luke fought for was pointless.

And Rian Johnson decided that killing off Luke Skywalker after stretching his cynical phase to the point of oblivion is apparently the best way to go with this character, rather than saving that for Episode IX. Additionally, he never had Luke train Rey at all. Hmmm, right now I am debating on whether Abrams or Johnson should the majority of the blame.

 

JJ. He threw out the Lucas treatments so if George did do that (and we have a passel of interested narrators with no even quasi independent source), he still made the choice to keep it. He decided to never reunite Luke, Han and Leia and I’m tired of him not being blamed for it. He’s also the one who allegedly was intrigued by “who is Luke Skywalker” and then decided it was too hard to answer.

 

As much as I would have liked to have seen a re-uniting of the OT three for one last adventure, in practice it would probably have come off like a Saturday Night Live sketch.

 

If Rian Johnson had written it, then yes, obviously. If someone seriously invested in Star Wars had taken a crack at it? Could have been amazing.

 

It could have been, but I keep imagining the three of them in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon in their respective TFA costumes, and how it would have been probably quite comical.

 

Do you think that the scenes we got of Han and Leia, or of Luke and Leia, were comical?

 

The point of seeing the OT3 together to me wouldn’t have been necessarily to see them on an adventure. I just would have liked to see a moment of camaraderie between them. A huge part of the appeal of the OT was the chemistry of those three. The payoff was their happy ending together, the family they formed. Absolutely imploding that and peeing on the ashes was a way to go, but definitely not the only way to go to save it from being a comedy sketch.

 

No, but that is because their scenes weren't all together, and were always poignant ones. What I am saying is that if they had all got together, say in the Falcon cockpit as part of an adventure, then that would probably have felt like a parody or send up. A comedy.

 

It might have been too hard after RJ tossed his roadmap for eps 8 and 9.

 

Well, in a sense I kind of agree with you, because the heart of the ST is basically satire, and that front loads our expectations for how these interactions would play out. However, I think it would have been quite possible for serious, thoughtful evolutions of the characters to be written. We didn't get that, but it could have been done. It would have required LFL to imagine the characters as having changed, which they couldn't do because they were so wedded to the reboot framework.

I could imagine any number of ways to have them evolve, and of course that's what fans and authors did for decades. LFL didn't want that though, they thought that wouldn't be accessible.

 

Oh, so once the “reason” was it was better drama now it’s it would have been comedy. Can’t wait for what’s next.

This.

He wrote and directed and made TFA before or concurrently with RJ showing up. I’m fine with RJ getting blamed but JJ as some victim in all this is just wrong.

For four years the narrative has been to screech at anyone who wanted Luke, Han and Leia to be who they were after ROTJ, taking into account where it left them, that we’re the bad guys for expecting anything other than what we got. I’m tired of it.

 

I'm not giving you a 'reason' because I'm not trying to justify the way they actually went with it. I'm not really bothered either way now. It's just me musing as to what one possible outcome of getting the three of them together might have been.