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

Luke

 

Explain? I'm not arguing, btw, just curious on your take.

 

Well, just a question came to my mind.

Why Luke even left a map for others to find him ? Didn't he wanted to die alone without anyone finding him ?

 

Technically it's never stated in TFA that Luke actually left a map to find him, it's just that the movie does a terrible job of making clear just exactly how the search is being conducted. On first viewing I thought the same thing.

 

As noted by @mtt02263, no one ever says Luke left a map.

Only a focused look at both the script and the movie and behind the scenes commentary tells the story of what they were actually going for:

- The opening crawl Lor San Tekka finds a 'clue' to Luke's whereabouts (i.e. no one left this with him, he found it);
- The clue is only a piece of a map;
- Kylo Ren calls it a section of a navigational chart, noting that they have the rest of it already from the archives of the Empire (very important);
- The device Lor San Tekka hands to Poe containing this section is described as ancient in the script; and
- R2-D2 has the same section the First Order has because he's also been in the Imperial archives back in ANH on the Death Star (JJ Abrams explaining it when asked back in Dec 2015).

So basically, what appears to have happened is that this map was split many years (even thousands - refer "ancient") before the events of the film. The Empire (and the Republic before it?) had a piece sitting in their archives incomplete. Lor San Tekka found the 'ancient' device which completed the map, resolving the issue at the end of the film when they're joined.

Luke found the temple via his own seperate efforts.

It's incredibly convoluted and a glaring example of TFA's vague storytelling.

(What was always weird about the 'but Luke left a map' discourse was the idea that it somehow makes sense to 'want to be found' by leaving pieces of maps lying around in random places in the galaxy on the off chance an acquaintance finds it years after the fact - and not say your enemies. Absolute crazyness.)

 

The issue I think with that is that R2 has another piece that fits into the slot of the piece that BB8 has.

 

Knowing the truth behind the map also significantly changes the viewing of the final scene. It's obviously a sweeping emotional scene, but if you think Luke left the map to be found, then it implies that Luke has been waiting for someone and that there will be particular story beats moving forward. If you know that he didn't leave the map pieces himself, then the final scene becomes about Luke most likely being quite surprised that someone found him and there is more tension and uncertainty about the next film. Regardless of your view and interpretation of it, I still feel that the lightsaber toss was a major tonal mistake and played for a gag. Luke either handing it back or simply dropping it in disgust/anguish would have been much more fitting IMO.

 

It's not just convoluted, it's stupid. First of all, that you need a map to find a point in space is ludicrous. That it isn't to Luke isn't clear in the narrative and that Luke doesn't want to be found is Rian Johnson's nonsense. Han says "people have been looking for him" - but not Han?

But that wouldn't subvert your expectations and be all cool and burn Star Wars to the ground.

 

Uh - how do you know where the point in space you're looking for is without a map?

Yeah ok, so he 'wanted to be found' but vanished without explanation and gave neither Han or Leia or anyone else any means at all to contact him or easily find him?

 

That's why I would've just stuck with "Luke left clues to find him". It would still have holes, but I think it's easier to believe that Luke would want to disappear or look for something in secret to keep his enemies from killing him, while still leaving bread crumbs that only his friends/family/associates would be able to piece together should they ever need him.

Luke bails out to the middle of nowhere, wanting to die, yet somehow everyone is so sure of where he is and everything perfectly fell into place in spite of him?

 

Luke wanted the jedi to end with him. But there was a map. So he did not want to be found as a jedi.

That idea -Luke's private life- is central to the novel's prologue. Rey was coming to Luke...and he dreamed with being a married man. Luke himself makes the association after waking up. Something is coming, he thinks. The force had 'cloaked itself' in a dream. Rey=wife means Rey=Luke's backstory.

Later (3rd lesson) he quotes Obi-Wan: 'greater numbers' which means Tuskens, and says to Rey: 'will you be here next month?' Which also seems to mean tuskens+wife. Cliegg's 'she's been gone a month' to Anakin.

Luke and Lando followed Ochi across the galaxy once, 15 years before TROS.

 

Someone pointed it out on another board and I never forgot it - you don’t need the map, just the coordinates. The Falcon computer maps from where you are to your destination. If it’s a place on a planet, you’d need a map for the planet. But space needs coordinates. After that, every time I read “map,” it just makes no sense.

 

Presumably the map's function is to provide a known safe hyperspace route to the destination

 

This could have been a better explanation, maybe they find the coordinates for the temple and then need to find a safe hyperspace lane to get there. Then again I'm sure JJ would create 3 or 4 more McGuffins to get there, so maybe not.

 

It definitely should have been explained a lot better, that's for sure. I don't think the idea is the terrible in and of itself though.

 

Yeah I just figured the map was a visualisation of the coordinates and the route needed to be taken to get there.

 

The map thing makes zero sense no matter how you slice it but and while it didn't make sense even in TFA, I agree with others that sticking with the idea that Luke wanted to be found (or that he at least planned to be found AT ONE POINT) makes the best of a whack plot point. R2D2 coming alive at the end is another part of this, truly the only rationale explanation for this is that somehow Rey's presence alerted him. I think you could stick with jaded Luke who originally left a map to be found but now regrets everything to do *insert much more interesting story than what we actually got*

 

"Sticking" implies it was ever the intent in the first place, and there's just no evidence that was ever the case. It's not so much making the best of a plot point as it is contriving an obviously weird hack to the story to get out of the obvious implications of turning Luke himself into a MacGuffin who disappeared without so much as a by-your-leave. It still makes Luke a huge jerk who abandoned everyone, it just also makes him a madman who also leaves behind pieces of maps in random places in the off hope that a friendly person finds them, too.

Is it 'rational' R2 would know Rey? He's not even activated. He's not sitting around scanning for people. JJ's explaination that the request was just bonking around his innards until he coincidentally reactivated until a convenient time is hilarious though.

 

I mean if Rey was either some known relative of Luke/Leia and/or had trained at Luke's temple it's reasonable R2D2 could specifically have been waiting for her to reappear, which I do feel is the implicit implication of him wakening (regardless of whatever JJ said).

I agree with you that the whole setup of Luke as macguffin doesn't make a ton of sense under any circumstances, but I guess I just think Luke setting this up himself makes more sense than it all being totally random. Making the best of a bad plot point as it were.

 

I think the main issue about the map is that it's only a map to the old Jedi Temple, not to Luke. But then, why is Luke at a Jedi Temple if he planned on living out the rest of life as a recluse non-Jedi? And, if he left the known galaxy with the intent to disappear and never be found, then why did he tell people what he was looking for?

Even if you want a story about a jaded and reclusive Luke Skywalker, it seems that it would only make sense if Luke went looking for the temple and then decided to be a recluse AFTER he arrived and not before.

The way it is set up now, Luke wanted to go somewhere to die because of his failings as a Jedi teacher, but wanted to do it at a spot that was once a Jedi school (for reasons we don't know), and also hinted to other people that that was where he was going even though he didn't want to be found. It makes no sense.

 

Par for the course for this trilogy. Almost nothing make sense when you take the time to think about it!

 

^ Fulfilling the wishes of a leprechaun-sounding lemur who literally said he'd rather he and his people die rather than fight. Go Luke.

 

Wow, didn't you know it's the most Jedi thing ever? Sheesh, I bet you just wanted Luke to destroy all the walkers with the Force and do 100 backflips. /s