You just have to realize that Star Wars is dumb now

I know. Unpopular opinion here. But Star Wars has always been kinda dumb. It’s very pulpy. A lot of occurances throughout feel arbitrary to serve the wider narrative. I could make arguments about perceptions for and against, but I think it is important that the Sequel Trilogy, thusfar, hasn’t ventured that far from the OT or PT in terms of overall pulp/dumb/etc. levels.

- Sir, an escape pod just launched. Laser annoys are locked on. Should I destroy it?

- Nnnoooooo don’t bother.

- ... but... I’m locked on. It’ll take like 2 seconds.

- We scanned it for lifesigns for some reason, and found none. So it’s not worth even the most minimal effort or attention.

- But, I mean, it takes nothing. Like it would have been destroyed 15 seconds ago if you’d just said “fire”. It will use 0.00000009% of our energy reserves.

- I don’t want to file the paperwork.

- ... seriously?

- Yeah.

;p

commit premeditated murder

Citation needed.

There are 3 Rashamon-inspired flashbacks. One with no Lightsaber. One from the perspective of a scared child already poisoned by the darkside. One from an uncle who feels that his instinctual readying of his lightsaber was abhorent. I think this is very deliberately done to illustrate a shame Luke has and does it well. By the end of RotJ, and as is illustrated through his mentions in TFA, Luke was considered a legend, and in TLJ he admits he was struck down by pride - by believing his own legend. And that is very human. Even more human than Luke behaved throughout RotJ except when he embraced anger and struck down Vader.

At least that is where I am coming from and still having a hard time marrying what you describe to what is on screen.

I am really enjoying this discussion beeteedubs. Most of the folks I’ve discussed it with came away with a similar perspective re: Luke as I did. So it is refreshing to hear about other interpretations that don’t just claim character homocide.

You perfectly described what I was trying to say. Luke’s actions were instinctual. That line in and of itself communicates the magnitude of what he saw when he searched Ben’s feelings. He saw such darkness and anger that he involuntarily drew his lightsaber. Luke Skywalker, who stood alone next to Vader AND the Emporer and kept his cool (for a while), was so freaked out that his threat-detection instincts took over and he drew his weapon.

Also don’t forget that Luke in the OT gives into Fear and Anger on multiple occasions, especially during the end of the Vader duel in RotJ, and is only stopped from hacking his dad apart by the realization that this is the path he would be led down because he chapped off Vader’s hand.

Luke succumbing to a moment of weakness and stopping himself isn’t outside of the character established in the OT. Especially when he is doing it with a notion that he is protecting something.

He's also prone to giving up, feeling defeated, acting recklessly... Really, the way some people talk about Luke in the OT is very different from the Luke that was actually shown in the OT. He was always deeply flawed, but came through when it mattered most. Which is exactly what he does in TLJ.

He was driven to anger in the OT, yes, but what we witness is someone about to commit premeditated murder.

I think it’s very important to remember that Luke stopped himself. It was, as he points out, a moment of weakness and of panic.

In my eyes, one of the main themes of TLJ was the weight of time and expectations. The young heros grow up under the weight of crushing responsibility. More than anyone else, Luke is seen as the “saviour of the galaxy”. He feels the burden of ushering in a new time of peace, while also facing the far more personal responsibility of taking his nephew under his wing. For him to look into his Nephew’s heart and see something WORSE than Darth Vader, to see the threat Ben would become, and to realize that it all developed right under his nose... that would be enough to damage anyone. And then for Luke to have his momentary panic push Ben over the edge, leading to the murder of all Luke’s students and whatever other havoc Ben proceeded to cause... for me, that fully justifies Luke’s apparent transformation. He was right and wrong at the same time, and his failure to handle the situation properly led to murderouse consequences and the metaphorical loss of his nephew.

On top of that, there’s the very accurate realization that Luke repeated the mistakes of Yoda’s Jedi Order. Considering the circumstances of everything that went down, I can totally understand how Luke could convince himself that the Jedi need to end.

Yes, Luke has always had his insecurities, and BECAUSE OF THAT I have trouble believing he can be 100% sure he must murder his nephew in cold blood. Kylo hasn't been presented to US as wholly evil--he obviously has his own struggles making himself do the evil thing that must be done, which makes it that much harder to buy this Luke-must-kill-baby-Hitler backstory. I can see Luke being beside himself with grief over failure. I can't imagine him as the flippant, pessimistic, bitter old man he is in The Last Jedi. The Luke I knew was human, sometimes easily frustrated (most often with himself), but the concept of the Jedi and the idea of becoming one was obviously his most fervent wish. That he would abandon that idealism so completely is a big deal. We don't see his optimism appear and be broken. We see a brief flashback and hear a description of events, but otherwise we're asked to accept his personality change without question. The kindness and goodheartedness that was his nature is gone and we don't get to see it leave.

This is just my read on the OT, but Luke never struck me as particularly optimistic. When we meet him he is more naeve, rash, and impulsive than anything else. Pretty typical of his age, really. He agrees to become a Jedi not out of some deep commitment to the cause or the order, but because he wanted to leave home anyway and this opportunity was right in front of him. Plus he was angry about what happened to his family and wanted some revenge. And it wasn’t optimism that drove him to confront Vader at the end of RotJ. It was a pragmatic decision (Vader was tracking Luke through the force, so Luke needed to draw him away from Han and Leia), plus Luke felt an emotional obligation to reach out to Vader, given the internal conflict he’d already sensed. Luke went with Vader expecting to die while buying his friends some time. Heroic, but certainly not optimistic. In fact, I’d say his lack of optimism is directly tied to the magnitude of his heroism in RotJ.

It's jarring and off-putting, and like I've been saying, seems part of a larger pattern where confounding expectations is the entire point of the film.

I agree that confounding expectations was a large point of TLJ, but I personally think Johnson was very smart about picking the correct expectations to flip or dismantle. I think he went after the expectations that were suffocating the franchise and limiting the storytelling potential of anyone involved in making new Star Wars movies. The message to me was “stop emphasizing things that done matter”. Rey’s parentage doesn’t actually matter. Snoke’s backstory is irrelevant. Poe being a hotheaded lose cannon isn’t actually a good thing. And no, Luke isn’t the beacon of hope and optimism that Star Wars fans have retroactively turned him into. If anything, the true beacon of hope through the OT was Leia, and I felt TLJ finally hammered that point home.

commit premeditated murder

Citation needed.

There are 3 Rashamon-inspired flashbacks. One with no Lightsaber. One from the perspective of a scared child already poisoned by the darkside. One from an uncle who feels that his instinctual readying of his lightsaber was abhorent. I think this is very deliberately done to illustrate a shame Luke has and does it well. By the end of RotJ, and as is illustrated through his mentions in TFA, Luke was considered a legend, and in TLJ he admits he was struck down by pride - by believing his own legend. And that is very human. Even more human than Luke behaved throughout RotJ except when he embraced anger and struck down Vader.

At least that is where I am coming from and still having a hard time marrying what you describe to what is on screen.

I am really enjoying this discussion beeteedubs. Most of the folks I’ve discussed it with came away with a similar perspective re: Luke as I did. So it is refreshing to hear about other interpretations that don’t just claim character homocide.

Also don’t forget that Luke in the OT gives into Fear and Anger on multiple occasions, especially during the end of the Vader duel in RotJ, and is only stopped from hacking his dad apart by the realization that this is the path he would be led down because he chapped off Vader’s hand.

Luke succumbing to a moment of weakness and stopping himself isn’t outside of the character established in the OT. Especially when he is doing it with a notion that he is protecting something.

He's also prone to giving up, feeling defeated, acting recklessly... Really, the way some people talk about Luke in the OT is very different from the Luke that was actually shown in the OT. He was always deeply flawed, but came through when it mattered most. Which is exactly what he does in TLJ.

He was driven to anger in the OT, yes, but what we witness is someone about to commit premeditated murder. Yes, Luke has always had his insecurities, and BECAUSE OF THAT I have trouble believing he can be 100% sure he must murder his nephew in cold blood. Kylo hasn't been presented to US as wholly evil--he obviously has his own struggles making himself do the evil thing that must be done, which makes it that much harder to buy this Luke-must-kill-baby-Hitler backstory. I can see Luke being beside himself with grief over failure. I can't imagine him as the flippant, pessimistic, bitter old man he is in The Last Jedi. The Luke I knew was human, sometimes easily frustrated (most often with himself), but the concept of the Jedi and the idea of becoming one was obviously his most fervent wish. That he would abandon that idealism so completely is a big deal. We don't see his optimism appear and be broken. We see a brief flashback and hear a description of events, but otherwise we're asked to accept his personality change without question. The kindness and goodheartedness that was his nature is gone and we don't get to see it leave. It's jarring and off-putting, and like I've been saying, seems part of a larger pattern where confounding expectations is the entire point of the film.

Also don’t forget that Luke in the OT gives into Fear and Anger on multiple occasions, especially during the end of the Vader duel in RotJ, and is only stopped from hacking his dad apart by the realization that this is the path he would be led down because he chapped off Vader’s hand.

Luke succumbing to a moment of weakness and stopping himself isn’t outside of the character established in the OT. Especially when he is doing it with a notion that he is protecting something.

He's also prone to giving up, feeling defeated, acting recklessly... Really, the way some people talk about Luke in the OT is very different from the Luke that was actually shown in the OT. He was always deeply flawed, but came through when it mattered most. Which is exactly what he does in TLJ.

Luke succumbing to a moment of weakness and stopping himself isn’t outside of the character established in the OT. Especially when he is doing it with a notion that he is protecting something.

Part of that is the muddying of waters with how legend!Luke is spoken of during TFA and even with all the build up and the ending is sort of throws a loop for his progression. I don’t, personally, feel that is the fault of TLJ, but I also don’t know where I would peg fault with it elsewhere.

I don't think it IS a fault in progression TBH. It's the point - those legends were just whatever other people thought/expected Luke to be. The fault is in assuming that those tales were reality.

I don't even remember what exactly they said about him in TFA, so that doesn't factor in to what I'm talking about. I'm talking only about Luke Skywalker as his character is revealed in the first three movies. THAT character is inconsistent with Luke in TLJ. He certainly could have become that character, but not enough information is given to convince me. The in-between Luke that is shown is already out of character. It doesn't make sense that the character who faced Darth Vader while also giving him a shot at redemption is ready to murder his nephew in this sleep because of a vibe.

I think that moment is crucial. While we are watching the flashback, Luke is explaining that he saw such darkness Ben, such lack of hope, that it terrified him and for a brief moment he saw so other choice. This is not an inconsistency with Luke's character, this is drawing a distinction between Ben and Vader. In RotJ, Luke said multiple times that he saw/felt good in vader, or conflict. in other words, he saw hope of redemption. But when he looked into Ben's mind, he saw no hope at all.

Part of that is the muddying of waters with how legend!Luke is spoken of during TFA and even with all the build up and the ending is sort of throws a loop for his progression. I don’t, personally, feel that is the fault of TLJ, but I also don’t know where I would peg fault with it elsewhere.

I don't think it IS a fault in progression TBH. It's the point - those legends were just whatever other people thought/expected Luke to be. The fault is in assuming that those tales were reality.

I don't even remember what exactly they said about him in TFA, so that doesn't factor in to what I'm talking about. I'm talking only about Luke Skywalker as his character is revealed in the first three movies. THAT character is inconsistent with Luke in TLJ. He certainly could have become that character, but not enough information is given to convince me. The in-between Luke that is shown is already out of character. It doesn't make sense that the character who faced Darth Vader while also giving him a shot at redemption is ready to murder his nephew in this sleep because of a vibe.

Part of that is the muddying of waters with how legend!Luke is spoken of during TFA and even with all the build up and the ending is sort of throws a loop for his progression. I don’t, personally, feel that is the fault of TLJ, but I also don’t know where I would peg fault with it elsewhere.

I don't think it IS a fault in progression TBH. It's the point - those legends were just whatever other people thought/expected Luke to be. The fault is in assuming that those tales were reality.

I don't have a problem with the force stuff. Throughout the original movies Luke is said to be strong with the force, indicating he was special. Yoda said as much. It's essentially confirmed with the conversation between Luke and Leia in ROTJ that it's a special gift. Anyone can gain knowledge of the force and use it, but few can manipulate it. Those few can be Jedi.

There's also plenty of precedent in the old EU for the idea that The Force isn't necessarily just a passive resource for those special few to use. It can also be thought of as a living entity with goals all its own (play KotOR II: The Sith Lords for some interesting perspective on that), and sometimes those people who are strongly connected to The Force can find events happening around and to them which help achieve those goals. If The Force needs a certain person to prevail, that's what's going to happen, and it may act through them to make it so, even if they have no training or don't even know that The Force exists (check out the Darth Bane trilogy for a bit on that). The point being that it's not rule-breaking or even that weird for strongly Force-sensitive people to be able to perform extraordinary feats when it's needed. Training can make those things more accessible, and put the person themselves in more control as opposed to just being a passive tool (though a certain KotOR II character would caution that they may be fooling themselves), but extraordinary things tend to happen to these people whether they have training or not. Luke just happening to find R2, Leia just happening to get involved in the Resistance and run across her father, Luke just happening to be a master pilot. These things might not seem as flashy as Rey pulling a lightsaber through the air, but they're nearly as improbable. They happened because that was what was required.

I'll defer to your knowledge regarding the EU. Confession time: I never been a bigger fan of anything than I was for the first two movies. RotJ was slightly disappointing but still great. After that, not so much a fan, although I did enjoy the first two new films. My knowledge of the EU doesn't extend much past Splinter in the Mind's Eye, which was great. I've never seen Clone Wars, and didn't make it far into KotOR.

I am with Cody regarding SW and politics. I can’t say i either agree or disagree with your assessment of Leia v. Rey as feminist role models (albeit account for a variety of things in 201X she provides a lot of things to young girls which far eclipse what Leia would give them now) as that is an essay in itself.

For one thing, the character of Leia seemed like a real person with a real personality.

Nor could Hamill, apparently, but I didn't find that out until later.

But this? He has explicitly stated that he was wrong and the movie was better for it. No, it was not the Luke he had imagined, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t who Luke would or should have become. (It also parallels through the OT and PT with the folly of bloodlines and reiterates that Luke is still a person - underscores it - because it was an important character step beyond what he was at the end of RotJ.)

Of course Luke is still a person with flaws and all. I didn't say Luke could not become who he was in The Last Jedi. I said, in effect, that the line between his character in TLJ and his character before wasn't sufficiently drawn. I maintain that.

Yeah, which is why the critics who want Star Wars to be a Marxist critique are wetting their knickers. I've said here before. Star Wars doesn't do politics well. That's not a critique of Star Wars. There are more important things than politics, and Star Wars was about those things--something Joseph Campbell recognized about the first film.

I thought Star Wars was an allegory for WW2 fascism. Vietnam too. It's always been about Politics. Lucas even says so. Even the prequels were critical of Bush Jr.

And the hamfistedness of that was a low point of the prequels. Regarding WW2, yes, Lucas was definitely interested in WW2 films as inspiration, but the politics weren't front and center. Just because Nazi-esque uniforms served as good visual shorthand for evil didn't make the movie an allegory of WW2. (This reminds me of my eighth-grade teacher who insisted that we all write papers about how Star Wars was a retelling of the Wizard of Oz--as if that were it's only inspiration.) Regarding Vietnam, what director in the 70s hasn't sought to bolster his street cred by saying he was influenced by Vietnam? I repeat: the political takeaways from the Star Wars universe have always been problematic--case in point.

I'll all for getting away from the chosen one crap--the embrace of which was one of the cardinal sins of the prequels. The Force as I see it is the force as first presented--a power available to anyone who has the discipline to dedicate themselves to it. Now it just seems to be a super power some have. They haven't mentioned midi-chlorians explicitly (thank God), but I'm not convinced that they're gone. We'll see how Rey's stolen books figure in going forward. As far as I'm concerned, though, the Force as an idea has been compromised in perhaps a worse way in that it's used as narrative silly putty in The Last Jedi. It's stretched into things it has never been in the service of surprising the audience. And when there aren't clear-cut rules about how an imaginary world operates, we stop believing it and worse stop caring. Tolkien understood this in his bones. I don't expect Rian Johnson to understand the fantasy genre as well, but he really doesn't seem to care about any rules of the genre, much less understand why they're there.

I think Empire is guilty of this too is it not? In Star Wars, the force was just something that aided your actions. Like a feeling or another sense. Then later you could pull objects, see into the future, talk through space, or shoot lightning.

To some extent, perhaps, but a big difference is that for the most part these characteristics were introduced before they were necessary to advance the plot.

Nor could Hamill, apparently, but I didn't find that out until later.

But this? He has explicitly stated that he was wrong and the movie was better for it. No, it was not the Luke he had imagined, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t who Luke would or should have become. (It also parallels through the OT and PT with the folly of bloodlines and reiterates that Luke is still a person - underscores it - because it was an important character step beyond what he was at the end of RotJ.)

You just have to realize that Star Wars is dumb now

I know. Unpopular opinion here. But Star Wars has always been kinda dumb. It’s very pulpy. A lot of occurances throughout feel arbitrary to serve the wider narrative. I could make arguments about perceptions for and against, but I think it is important that the Sequel Trilogy, thusfar, hasn’t ventured that far from the OT or PT in terms of overall pulp/dumb/etc. levels.

I don't have a problem with the force stuff. Throughout the original movies Luke is said to be strong with the force, indicating he was special. Yoda said as much. It's essentially confirmed with the conversation between Luke and Leia in ROTJ that it's a special gift. Anyone can gain knowledge of the force and use it, but few can manipulate it. Those few can be Jedi.

There's also plenty of precedent in the old EU for the idea that The Force isn't necessarily just a passive resource for those special few to use. It can also be thought of as a living entity with goals all its own (play KotOR II: The Sith Lords for some interesting perspective on that), and sometimes those people who are strongly connected to The Force can find events happening around and to them which help achieve those goals. If The Force needs a certain person to prevail, that's what's going to happen, and it may act through them to make it so, even if they have no training or don't even know that The Force exists (check out the Darth Bane trilogy for a bit on that). The point being that it's not rule-breaking or even that weird for strongly Force-sensitive people to be able to perform extraordinary feats when it's needed. Training can make those things more accessible, and put the person themselves in more control as opposed to just being a passive tool (though a certain KotOR II character would caution that they may be fooling themselves), but extraordinary things tend to happen to these people whether they have training or not. Luke just happening to find R2, Leia just happening to get involved in the Resistance and run across her father, Luke just happening to be a master pilot. These things might not seem as flashy as Rey pulling a lightsaber through the air, but they're nearly as improbable. They happened because that was what was required.