this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Johnson laid down plot threads for Rey and Luke (and possibly a redeemed Ben) to address the failures of the jedi order and create a new path for force users. I was completely hyped at the announcement of the 9th movies title Rise of Skywalker as I was envisioning Skywalker to become the name of grey jedi, who don't forsake attachments. Along with a final battle of Rey vs Ben, while overlapped a battle of force ghost Luke fought a spectral Palpatine. What we got was a child angry someone tried to do something they couldn't understand with their toys.
Johnson had plenty of direction in his movie, most fans were just hurt that Luke wasn't lionized like the EU had done with his character. TLJ's Luke was a 180 from what everyone was expecting (Hamill included) and that left a bad taste in alot of peoples mouths. It was 100% in character for him to become a hermit though, look at everyone of his mentors.
When Mark Hamill dislikes what was done to Luke then what was done was wrong. The whole bitter hermit approah was stupid and is Luke repeating the mistakes of his mentors.
TLJ undermined a ton of character development for the sake of subverting everything including what little internal consistency existed in the Star Wars universe.
I love Hamill, I love Luke. After reflecting on the movie for a few a months, the portrayal of an aged fallible Luke was honestly inspired. It humanized him instead of mythologized, all it needed was to stick the landing in the third movie. Luke's plot wasn't over just because he died, he still needed to guide Rey and understand how the failures of the Jedi led his father to become Vader. Self improvement isn't a linear line, it has it's ups and downs amd we have to keep trying to do better even after we fuck up. That is the story we got, it's relatable as fuck.
That would have been an endearing and ultimately satisfying end point for a nine movie franchise spanning decades.
He was already humanized in the original trilogy by not cutting off all his feelings and family connections (Jedi side) or falling so far into his feelings that he became a monster (Dark Side), but by striking a balance between the two and overcoming evil alongside his friends.
A better story would have been showing his training and becoming disillusioned at how hard it was to teach people to strike a balance instead of making that a flashback of absolutes where one dark thought undid all of this experience in balancing good and evil. What we got was awful and made Luke a caricature, not relatable.
Hell, they already had a decent premise for Luke’s self-exile but explored it in the wrong way imo.
Rather than have Luke go “I failed myself because I was about to give into fear to protect the ones I loved”, they could have framed it as “I failed myself because I was ready to kill somebody I loved to protect the ones I loved” or something along those lines. They could literally keep all the footage the same and just change Luke’s reasoning to something that would be 100% in character for him and would rattle him to his very core after the realization. Like, that would been a very dark thing for Luke to experience and live with - and it would explain the self-imposed exile waaaaay better because if he failed his core beliefs, then could he fail anyone?
Sadly, we instead got… well, whatever we got in TLJ’s character assassination of Luke.
There was no reason for Luke to almost kill someone he loved, that was the core problem with how his character was done wrong by the new trilogy. Feeling like a failure because evil was on the rise again could have been enough for him to lose hope if done right and would not undo the character growth from the original trilogy.
His whole arc in the sequels was a perfect example of hack writing.
Yeah Luke has never before almost killed a family member instinctively due to the influence of the dark side of the force. He certainly doesn’t have an ounce of evil impulse in his blood either.
If the movies had set up any precedent for this then it might make sense.
You mean attacking Darth Vader who was actively trying to kill him? While telling him that he'd turn his sister to the dark side? After the emperor was gloating over his friends getting ambushed and slaughtered? That's the situation you're referring to?
Also, I don't think that just because Anakin, who Luke never met while growing up, killed tuskens and younglings, Luke would act entirely differently than in the original trilogy. That's just weird.
A few days late and not OP but they aren't referring to that, but the scene further along where Luke cuts Vader's hand off as he is down on the ground beaten and the emperor to push him fully to the dark side says something like "finish him" in his sinister tone. And then luke has a revelation where he was about to kill his father and the roles were reversed from bespin. Luke then chooses to not kill his father and threw his lightsaber down. Then gets electrocuted by force lightning and causes anakin to redeem himself saving luke and "killing" the emperor.
I believe that's what they were referring too.
I read the comment I was replying to as being sarcastic but I might have been incorrect to do so, in that case you're entirely right.
It was more of an example of something easy they could have done to make it less shit since iirc they really went all in on the “I gave into fear” as his main reason for exile - but it’d still be a polished turd regardless because of what you said. With how it currently is, it would be at best a decent premise to explore if they spun it in a different light than what was shown in the final release, if that makes sense.
I still like the idea of Luke becoming a jaded hermit tbh, but the execution has to be done well for it. I personally like your idea of Luke becoming tired of people failing to find that balance and either becoming too much like the Jedi of the prequel era or becoming easily tempted by the dark side - with Kylo becoming the straw that broke the camel’s back for Luke.
No matter what happened with Luke in 8 it required 9 to follow up and stick the landing.
Inspires? It was just a rehashed story we'd seen over and over again.
Because the chosen one who can do no wrong would have been somehow more original?
Do no wrong? Did you even watch the OT? TLJ didn't do anything new with his character. They erased it. The wiped out all of his character development to tell a Star Wars story that had already been told multiple times before, and told far better too.
Hum... One of (if not the one) main threads of episode V is that the Jedi order was a mistake... Then there's an entire trilogy to explore this one point... And then Luke goes and recreates it on episode VII.
Repeating the mistakes of his mentors is not a problem from episode VIII.
Luke is just gone in vii, it's not until viii that the reason is revealed. He could have been fighting a super sith or uncovering some secret trove of knowledge or kyber crystal. It could have been a place to commute with past jedi to learn how to adapt the jedu way to a more stable approach. All of that would be better than I left to be alone and die.
He's gone because he recreated the Jedi Order, it blew on his face like every other time the order existed, and a wannabe Empire appeared because of it. It's perfectly fine right then for he to be in crisis.
What he was doing was a "commute with past Jedi to learn how to make the order non-poisonous" quest. But he couldn't possibly complete this one.
That he severed moments later. Yes. That was the biggest issue with his flick, in how he sabotaged any new interesting characters and material at the onset, providing with a rather good ending, but leaving with nothing appealing to follow.
Give me an example of a plot thread being severed in the same movie.
Holdo being introduced as a leading heroic character then killed later...
Luke being killed for no reason...
Resistance contact on Canto Bight set up as an aide to the protagonists, but ending up being a useless rich brat..
That Del Toro character being introduced as an aide, then is apparently killed (?) after revealing himself to be a full-evil traitor...
Snoke being set up as an immensely powerful bad guy, but later killed without any more explanation of who/what he was...
....actually it's hard to find a plot thread that was NOT severed in the same movie. Besides Broom Kid who surprisingly wasn't killed, lol
Holdo was a supporting character in Poe's character arch meant to play against his off the cuff tendencies. The sacrifice was meant to be a jumping point for expected growth in the final act. That isn't a plot thread cut.
It was both epic, had it's reason and thanks to force ghosts was never meant to be the end of Luke's plot.
I'm not gonna defend the Canto Bight plot as I obviously have issues with it. I would argue though that it's ultimately a plot thread that was pointless rather than one cut before its end.
Snoke was the emperor stand in from The Force Awakens, which had no original ideas of it's own. Snoke needed to die in order to tell an original story. Ben Solo was an infinitely more interesting and complexe villain to focus on. Why would any fan be upset at Snoke's death, the story was set up to be better and different until "somehow the emperor returned".
The first 6 movies pretty conclusively covered the failure of the jedi order and their flaws. TLJ is a lazy retread of this beaten to death point. We did get the whole rich people sold things to both sides point, but it's purely surface level and doesn't get explored to any degree.
It left the resistance at a ship full of people and the big bad being kylo who already got beat by Rey in 7 and outsmarted by Luke in 8. He somehow has to redeem himself in 9 while allowing the rest of the bad guys to remain bad, because if he's actually the leader he can just stop everything.
Luke's mentors were hermits because they were in hiding. It makes no sense for Luke to hide from a galaxy, there wasn't an empire actively hunting him. Him being in hiding was JJ's fault, but the reason was entirely left to Johnson and he fumbled it.
TFA was a lark, and it was infinitely more watchable than any prequel, but TLJ was less than it could have been precisely because JJ did nothing interesting. In that sense, TFA was a movie wasted on being a palette cleanser. TLJ reset the board with a more compelling supreme leader, a Jedi that was ready to move forward instead of living in the past, a potential new relationship with the Force, and supporting heroes that were ready to be more than they'd been created as. It explored what the Luke that JJ hinted at in TFA would have to be, and made him a snarkier version of Dagobah Yoda before letting him begin fixing the problems that Jediness created.
It was not perfect. The slow speed chase was a terrible framing device that left enough nerd-questions that it became distracting, even for me. Canto Bight did drag despite being shorter than people think. Finn's arc was too narrow a bump from his TFA arc, though it was handled with more grace. Leia Poppins was fine conceptually (she was out there less than a minute, just force pulled something, and it all sent her into a coma), but it looked a little goonie and unfortunately left people feeling unsatisfied after Carrie Fisher's death. Holdo plot was thematically excellent but executed a little too "gotcha" style in having us root for Poe's harebrained scheme for too long. Rose was not really a character meant to develop, but rather an embodiment of the spirit of the Resistance, but that made her a little less likeable than she could have been. The your-mom joke was cringey, and something less in-your-face would have served the narrative purpose.
Still, I found its flaws pretty skin deep, and I really appreciated what it was trying to do. I was very annoyed that TROS took so many pains to actively and explicitly shit on it. If they were improv students, Rian would be kind of exasperating, but thoughtful and still squarely in the realm of "Yes, And...." JJ in TROS was more like, well, somebody else.
Really nice to read comments like this. I feel the TLJ debate has a tendency to "deal in absolutes". Personally i enjoyed it more than TFA, and defintely liked where I felt it was setting up the rest of the series... But it had a bunch of flaws, and some of the hate was understandable, even if unnecesssrily vitriolic. And despite some of the stupidness, I'm still content with it as the final film in the Star Wars octology. An optimistic note of hope in the face of adversity, we don't really need to see how it all pans out...
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The hermit thing was only something his mentors did because they were in hiding from the ruling power. Once RoTJ finishes, the empire can no longer force jedi into hiding.