Official Luke Skywalker Episode VIII Discussion Thread

Like father, like son:

 

Hopefully this hasn't already been discussed. When Luke transcends, he sees the twin suns of Tatooine, right? And let me be clear about that - he sees the twin suns of TATOOINE, not the twin suns of Ahch-To, because Ahch-To doesn't have twin suns. Both before and after his vision, there is only ONE sun. So why, WHY does the new Visual Dictionary say Ahch-To orbits twin suns? Maybe it sounds trivial, but this blows my mind. It's like the writer watched the movie and didn't get it, and apparently no one who edited it got it either. It feels so sloppy and doesn't bode well. End rant.

 

https://movieweb.com/star-wars-last-jedi-luke-skywalker-final-scene-rian-johnson/

 

DigitalSpy - Star Wars' Mark Hamill reveals original The Force Awakens ending and why it had to be changed

http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/st...ns-ending-luke-skywalker-the-force-last-jedi/

 

I love Luke Skywalker. He's my favorite hero from film. Dorothy from Wizard of Oz is second. They are very similar heroes in my book, but I digress.

My favorite thing about The Last Jedi, why I choose to defend and consider it one of the better installments of the franchise, is because it gave my favorite character two key things:

1. The means with which to become a legend one last time.
2. To leave the fight on his own terms just like his mentors OB1 and Yoda had done so.

I love Mark Hamill's rendering in The Last Jedi, I consider it one of the finest performances in any Star Wars film. It's his story really, only now at the last chapter instead of the first. It's literally the recorded memory of that first adventure that inspires him to take his last and to become the martyr he was, of course, destined to be.

Luke Skywalker is a legend. Long live Luke Skywalker.

 

Agreed agreed agreed.

For god sakes, Rian had Luke Skywalker to do with what he pleased essentially. What a canvas to work with. A writer's dream to image this and that. He could have blown fans away. He could have given us moments to rewatch for years. Decades.

The force projection was cool, I'll give him that. It wasn't enough.

We needed something like what Vader had in Rogue One. Look at how crazy fans went. Rian refused it seems, to give fans what they were waiting for at every turn. They then decided to have him vanish into the force at the end. Not even a chance for anything in IX. Thanks for nothing Rian!

 

Wait, so because of King Arthur, Luke should come to a bad end?

That's not logic. There is no necessity here that demands Luke Skywalker should have been turned into a failure simply to make the ST plot work better for its lazy writers.

What does make sense is to follow the character where we last met him, at the end of ROTJ. For the ST writers and Rian defenders, this possibility must be denied at all costs.

 

You're the one preserving Luke in amber. ESB amber, where Luke is afraid of failure.

He overcomes this and develops in ROTJ, and Rian ignores this and rehashes ESB because it helps his plot.

Luke's development in the next 30 years should follow that of a Jedi Master who grows in wisdom. There's no reason to regress him to ESB Luke, as you apparently want.

Amber, indeed.

 

This.

If heroes never failed, then there wouldn't be any new stories to tell. There wouldn't be a need for any new heroes.

Look at Yoda. IHe would've been seen as the finished article when became the Jedi Master. Then after he failed against Sidious and the Jedi fell, people thought - "oh well, he's learned his lesson, now he is complete". But then in the OT, he doesn't want to train Luke and tells him to kill his father - both comparable acts to the Luke we see in TLJ in many ways. The very idea of the PT was to show how, despite being this great Jedi, Yoda had essentially failed and was dogged by fear. He just didn't know it or didn't admit it.

It's just the same with Luke. He constantly changes from ANH - TESB - ROTJ - TLJ. There is no such thing as perfect. No such things as the finished article.
The difference between TESB Luke and ROTJ Luke was that the latter learned how to resist the Dark Side and saw what it would turn him into. But he very nearly succumbed. But this doesn't mean he is cured. And what we see in TLJ is Luke dealing with a different problem, a different source of fear, from a uniquely different position (being the last of the Jedi). And on top of that, he has learned a lot of other stuff over the years about the Jedi order itself (which is conveniently being forgotten to narrow the time jump in people's heads from ROTJ - TLJ so it makes his decision seems inexplicable). Luke saw the hubris of the Jedi Order, it's utter failure and consistent mistakes. When we see him in this flashback, it is only showing this moment which is clearly the last piece of straw that breaks the camel's back. It doesn't show us what has been going on exactly leading up to this point for Luke or Ben. We know Luke has been seeking Jedi lore and likely already has doubts about his order. Ben turning, probably cemented these issues. And for Ben, he's been manipulated by Snoke and likely fallen prey to the Dark Side already and Luke doing what he did, cemented that for him. The point I am making is that there is a big gap between ROTJ Luke not killing Vader and TLJ Luke momentarily giving into his fear of what Ben has become. There is a great deal of knowledge, time and yes, humanity, that cannot be cast aside just because Luke isn't how you remembered him and that is upsetting.

 

You know the older I get (in my 40s), the more I realize that "overcoming" and "being above" my old problems is never going to happen. We all have weaknesses that we spend our life grappling with. Guess what? 60 year olds have not transcended the weaknesses of their youth. Hotheaded young men generally turn into hotheaded old men. Maybe you mellow out a little and learn to deal with it, but you still fly off the handle sometimes. Humans spend their lifetimes dealing with their weaknesses and learning to manage them.

One minute before Luke said he would NEVER kill his father, he was wailing on him with his lightsaber and chopped his arm off. Luke came THIS close to killing his father. The heroic act is not being above temptation. The heroic act is in overcoming temptation and doing the right thing.

Ultimately, as far as we know, Luke never swung his lightsaber at another person ever again after RotJ. He was victorious in overcoming his temptations the way a REAL LIFE hero is, not a comic book character. Rian NAILED the character of Luke. I love the way he was portrayed.

 

he would have never hurt Ben, even though he had an impulse to snuff him.
and in the end he proved that by defeating him without violence.

i struggled with Luke's weaknesses the first time i watched TLJ, but Johnson made him a person first and a legend second.
and how often is it that we truly get to see a character really be both?

 

I too struggled with Luke's weakness at first but now I think his handling in TLJ is a beautiful thing.

What really struck me in my last watch of TLJ is how much pain Luke is in.
He acts like a textbook denial case:

• He cuts himself of from all support networks so no friends or Force mentors can challenge him.
• He rationalizes for himself some specious lesson about failure as an excuse for further inaction.
• He berates Rey for fearlessly going straight for the cave. (I wonder if part of this is Luke feeling threatened by her showing courage and action - the very things he has avoided since that time we saw him ignite the green.)
• He orders Rey off his island rather than address the issues at hand.
• He seems utterly incapable of acknowledging the reality of his predicament - until Rey forces him to.

I love how Lukes first real question to Rey is "why you" and he finally gets his real answer when she sits him on his ass and demands he address his trauma.

In a way it's version 2.0 of his failure in the cave. An "I am my own worst enemy" lesson explaining JJ and Lasdan's choices for Luke all delivered in classic SW fashion - same, same, but different.

 

To quote Schindler's List.



That being said, after seeing "Luke the murderer" scene in TLJ from three different perspectives, I'm still not sure which scenario is the true one. Obviously Rian wants us to question them all. Did Luke really change his mind, or was it an after-construct? Did Ben actually tell the truth? Who knows. The problem with this is that it goes against Luke's character.

Luke was more of a Oskar Schindler. He knew the power of pardoning, this was one of Luke's biggest strengths. Rian Johnson's Luke is a completely different character.

 

Luke in the OT and Anakin in the PT are both quite different characters though. Ben is much more like Anakin.