ST Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Fan Reviews Here

I alway's thought it was obvious that the Jedi's arrogance is what led to Sidious being able to take over. I didn't think it took TLJ to figure that out. PT shows that pretty well.

 

Why? Because they were fooled by Count Dooku? And Palpatine?

The Jedi are suspicous of Palpatine. They know a Sith Lord is outh there manipulating things, but they can't figure out who it is. They are actively trying to figure it out. They send Anakin in as a spy. He has not been compromised yet. He becomes compromised. They become suspicous of Anakin.

The fact that Mace doesn't believe a Jedi was capable of what Dooku did is naivety. It's not arrogance. He has too much faith in the Jedi. It's not arrogance.

Yoda accuses some Jedi of being arrogant, even the older, more experienced ones. But how exactly did this lead to Sidious or Vader?

 

This notion that the PT Jedi were perfect and that Luke had no reason to be critical of them is very strange to me. Luke, particularly through recency bias and only a limited account less nuanced than what we saw of the PT as film observers, would have more reason than most to be disenfranchised with the teachings than most and wonder if they’ve outgrown their use and if something better without Jedi influence should rise in their absence. Even Sidious tells Yoda in ROTS:



They clearly grew overconfident and complacent in their position at the top. The order itself got too cozy to a Republic with so many issues in governance that thousands of systems were prepared to succeed it and join the Confederation of Independent Planets. Not one or two. Thousands of worlds. Dooku himself tells Obi-Wan that some of the Jedi, including Qui-Gonn, were frustrated with the direction of the Order and its approach to the corrupt republic. “He knew all about the corruption in the Senate” he tells Obi-Wan. It seems the Jedi had enjoyed their influence in government and had begun comprising their own ideals to keep that influence. They allowed that same corrupt Republic influence them and their own direction. They lost their way in the process as a moral authority primarily concerned with those vulnerable. The impression the PT Jedi leave much of the time is that they’ve largely become more beurocratic and stuffy and symbolic and less practical. Their temples became grander and more celebratory of their achievements and less focused on any and all failures. Less out in the field seeking to observe and improve the injustices witnessed. The slavery of Tatoooine was a systematic injustice but the primary concern was a selfish one related to what one powerful boy could do for them.

Their highly centralized approach to leadership via the Jedi council lacked a kind of middle management and regional level of empowerment and independence and agility that could have helped them protect their blind spots better. They needed to be better prepared for the possibility of succession and the possibility of threats inside and out but lacked their own contingency measures and layers of leadership to react to change. That’s classic organizational arrogance.

They were slow to evolve their dogma in part because it had brought them so much success. The outdated separation of children from family has been regularly criticized as an area in need of reform and modernization. “If it ain’t broken don’t fix it” may as well have been their motto and it’s that kind of hubris that can lead any successful organization toward disaster. All successful organizations need to continuously self-reflect on what they could be doing better as organizations. The Jedi had grown too arrogant to think that necessary.

I don’t even really see any of these topics as particularly controversial. Many of the biggest attacks in history have come from some sense of those in positions of authority resting on their laurels too much and growing overconfident that what’s worked so far will just continue to. That’s overconfidence.

 

Agreed and I'm tired of hearing the "people become bitter in real life" argument. Sure some do, but this is Luke, the hero of the OT, and I don't care to see a Dark Knight style deconstruction of our heroes which has kind of become a cliché this decade and have it presented to me like it's a bold new idea.

 

Right. I'm not against the deconstruction of heroes per se, not even in SW, just it's sad to me to see that done to Luke. I don't watched SW to be bummed out. There are lots of other films for that. Neither ESB nor ROTS (or RO) depressed me the way TLJ did.

 

Luke got his butt kicked in TESB from the beginning to the end of the film after being the hero of heroes in ANH. And it's the most beloved movie of the whole Star Wars franchise.

This is not directed at you but I am sick and tired of certain fans trying to come up with reasons why some other fans hated TLJ that are not true. Absolutely sick of it.

 

If any character was worthy of seeing the final stages of Campbell’s hero’s journey and all of the metaphors that come with that it’s Luke for me.

Johnson was spot on in this response.





Luke is a modern mythological character. His value to explore human truths exceeds my own desire for him to fulfill my childhood dreams of the action figure adventures he could live out in VIII instead.

I’m so thankful that Star Wars still aims for these levels of psychological truth and drama despite the fact that George is no longer in charge.

 

So it seems like Luke is wrestling with his own responsibility in all of this. Fair enough. But if Luke is looking back on the Jedi and feeling like they were responsible for Sidious and Vader, and he's also looking back at his own failure with Ben, and feeling like he's responsible for Kylo, then in conclusion, he pulls himself out of the events all together, and settles on complete and utter inaction...doesn't that basically boil down to the notion that anything you do, whether it's good intentioned or ill intentioned, is essentially just adding to the suffering of the galaxy? It is essentially an attack on life itself. Any action you take is bound to lead to suffering. So remove yourself entirely?

It's fair to say that whether they were arrogant or not, the Jedi had good intentions. Same with Luke. Or is the movie saying that the arrogance they may have had makes the good intention irrelevant? Because Luke's inaction after Kylo's turn could be considered responsible for trillions of deaths. Unless inaction is okay, as opposed to failure.

If you're gonna hold the Jedi responsible for Sidious and Vader, and you're gonna hold Luke responsible for Kylo, considering we can vouch for their intentions. then it seems like you'd essentially blame everyone for everything that happens in this world, as opposed to a basic doctrine of personal responsibility.

Unless a person was perfect, or they completely isolatated themselves, they would inevitably cause someone else's suffering.

 

The point isn't that you agree with the argument (I don't really) but that it has it's own internal logic that a depressed mind could by into it.

 

Yeah I don't think the fact that "someone who is depressed" might see things askew really justifies having Luke go that way in a SW movie. There are plenty of things some people might conceivable do, but that doesn't really make it okay that RJ chose to portray the character Luke that way. It's not physically impossible for Luke to act this way. It's not beyond the laws of physics. It just doesn't feel right, IMO. And that's enough, IMO, to say Luke wouldn't do that. I suspect if you had asked 100 SW fans prior to the ST if they thought it was possible that Luke would fail to train his nephew, and then run off to an island to die out of depression leaving his family, friends, and everyone else in the galaxy in the cross hairs of Snoke and Kylo, 100 SW fans would have said that sounds awful, and there's no way Luke would ever respond to failure that way.

While the internal logic might justify certain characters going down that road under certain circumstances, IMO, doesn't really fit Luke's character.

It's completely logical that a person might choose at a certain point in their life, to go off and live as a hermit in a cave, but if Han Solo did that, it wouldn't make sense. Sure it can be justified in a logical way. Some people might do that. But doing that with Han Solo would make no sense. It's not his character.

 

So we're back to "you don't really think it makes sense, you're only justifying it now after the fact."

 

I'm not accusing you of anything. I acknowledge it can be justified technically speaking. I just think justifying it in that way doesn't really speak to anything other than it's not impossible. That bar is so low, what is even the point?

 

But that's not my argument at all. I think it's an argument that could be made by Luke given the circumstances he finds himself in, both as a character and the internal logic of his arguments.

 

Well, if Luke was so depressed by what happened with Kylo that he had a full on psychotic breakdown and started slaughtering everyone, I believe there would be an internal logic that could be followed... Anakin's choices had an internal logic to them. But those choices revealed a serious lack of judgement. I would put Luke's choices in that same category. Yes, there's a logic that can be followed. But anyone who would go down that road is seriously lost. Lost beyond the point of where Luke was when we met him. He left the galaxy to deal with Kylo and Snoke when he was the most able to help of anyone. I see no upside for anyone, other than possibly Luke, given his choices. I don't even see the upside for Luke unless I drastically lower my opinion of him as a character and a hero.

 

Well I guess we just disagree that Luke had to literally start slaughtering people for the breakdown to be believable or for him to believably make the arguments he did.

 

I don't believe Luke would have done that. You do. Yes?

 

Yes, given the circumstances.

 

Do you think it lowers him as a hero?

 

Not really. To me he's a solider going through PTSD or something similar.

 

One thing that seems missing IMO from this whole thing is Luke's relationship with Anakin post ROTJ.

If you take OT by itself, and even more specifically ANH, and you focus in on what Luke wants...there are really two things. One possible, one seemingly impossible.

A) He wants to learn the ways of the force and become a Jedi like his father.
B) He wishes he had known his father. That's no small thing for Luke in ANH. It's clearly his one life's disappointment. He never got to know his father (I'm sure his mother, too, but he specifically expresses the wish that he had known his father.

Obviously, by the end of ROTJ, he accomplishes the first goal. The one that was possible. But he also, in a surprise twist ending, seems to accomplish the second, seemingly impossible goal of finally being in a situation in which he can actually get to know his father.

When I saw ROTJ in 1983, I definitely envisioned Luke would have a relationship with his father as a force ghost.

The fact that that apparently never happened in the years after ROTJ seems strange, and is something that needs to be explained. DId Luke ever commune with Anakin? It seems like the answer is no, but if so, what was that like? If not, how could it NOT have happened? For me, that was the cherry on top of Luke's victory.

All of Luke's storyline, as hard to accept for me as it is, seems to ignore the most obvious question of all...what relationship if any did he have with his father post ROTJ? It seems like that would have had a bearing on where Luke was in TLJ, and yet it's completely forgotten about. Luke's story, IMO, requires he has some contact with his father post ROTJ. Given they left that out, I feel like there's just this big disconnect between trilogies...

 

The internet can be an endless pit of despair most of the time, but witnessing someone live tweet their reactions to watching all the Star Wars films for the first time is a glorious thing.

Here's the thread for TLJ:

 

What is this Baby Boy 2.0 business? Is that really a Kylo nickname among his fans?