The "treatment of Luke"

Which is exactly in character. Luke defeated the Emperor by refusing to kill his father. He allowed his tormented nephew to take out his rage on a ghost. Luke fought hate with love.
'If you strike me down I will always be with you...like your father.' He saw through the rage to the broken young man behind it. One of the many reasons I loved TLJ. How I wish Hamill and Driver had had more scenes together.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 23, 2024, Original Post Date: Feb 23, 2024 ---

Agreed. We have big differences on here but M's opinions on Luke as a character are outstanding.

 

I think Johnson said in passing once that it really was born out of solving for Luke. Like, if he's here, and like this, then why and how would he get out of this given his nature - that really, Luke's never been a gung-ho go kill'em fighter after making that mistake in Empire. After that point fighting was something he did last, not first. And he never saw it as a success, but as a failure - like... well, crap... was hoping it wouldn't come down to this.

And from that lens, given the set up of hermitville, there's a very narrow set of possible outcomes given Luke's bemoaning moral nature (dude's very emo half the time).

Which... again... this idea was Lucas' idea... this hermit schtick. Folks think it was Abrams, but come on... it's totally Lucas. Hermit? Grouchy? It doesn't get more mythical and fairytale than having Arthur turn into a disillusioned hermit.
That has Lucas all over it.

Abrams would never think of that angle. That's not his style. He's more into intrigue. Luke would be far more likely to be off studying some obscure Force secret if Abrams had been handed a blank slate.

People seem to miss that Lucas was the genesis of this whole idea, down to a nagging gal who wants Luke to train her and help, all while he just wants her to piss off.

Arndt's solution was ditching Luke to the side because Lucas wanted to focus on the next generation - legacy of the heroes thing. And Lucas turned that idea of pushing Luke to the side into a hermit shtick... because... Lucas.

So, given all that, Johnson's point about, to him, only really seeing one available option for Luke in TLJ makes total sense. He didn't see this as a gimmick to be contraversial like it got marketed. It was simply what it had to be as far as he could see.

Sure, Luke could be anything. He's fictional. But given his repeatedly emo moral reluctance to fighting by the time he got to ROTJ (which was such a massive change from the past two movies), I can easily see this as feeling creatively organic as a narrative direction when only considering the character and not the audience.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

My apologies. I never meant for my comment to imply you had devulged insider information. It was intended more along the lines of "Jayson and me hardly ever agree on anything---but we are in agreement about Luke's cinematic future!"

 

I believe one of Rian Johnson’s documentary/bonus features even mentions something along those lines? Connecting Luke back to Arthur after some of his adventures were complete, playing into that myth aspect of Luke and Star Wars.

 

I believe it was that, or one of the promo docs where I saw him talking of it.

After a while they all blur together.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Yes, it did. I have the blu ray copy and there is some excellent stuff there.