The "treatment of Luke"

Can you stay on topic? You push the conversation to your disappointment about Rey Skywalker over and over. It's off topic for a thread about Luke. There are places you can discuss this here, but steering every conversation to this point is tiring.

 

Fair enough although in my defence I'm not the only one!

Back to subject...TLJ = Hamill's career best.

 

But this is Star Wars. Our modern Shakespearean tragedy that smiles in the trenches. Star Wars, at least up through this saga, was only optimistic in spite of tragic fates.

Did our Romeo-Hamlet ever have such a chance?
Not really.

The son of the sister of the son of the henchmen of the villain died to save the daughter of the son of the villain.

Shakespeare.

I honestly wonder how much comes down to the actor. Adam Driver is a puppy dog even when he barks, while Daisy Ridley doesn't really have much outside of hard edges. Even her tears seem to be the type that leave you tenuous as to when she's going to start yelling.

So, I think it's hard because they got a neo-Hamill to play a tragic Vader 2.0. A lot of people are going to fall for the 'rebel without a cause' bad boy who deep down has a good guy inside. Oldest bad boy trope in the book. But it works everytime. And everytime everyone gets mad about the bad boy dying.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

i mean, I did admit to saying it worked and sure enough did follow the pattern. I just wanted to see a redemption that didn’t end up leading right to a death because..well I thought it would also make a good story. It’s why I like how Reva’s story ended, not in a death but a chance to go forward doing good.

Romeo and Juliet? They gonna die. But that doesn’t mean an alternate ending us bad. But I also don’t think of Star Wars as a tragedy.

Like I said, it worked for the story, sure enough. But my desire is less “oh the rebel that’s actually a good guy deep down” or that it’s Adam, but more just..I like the idea of that type of ending. Would’ve been a neat difference yet also valid myth-like ending, in my opinion.

 

Trust me, I hear you. It's very much a conscious point on my mind at the moment.
That is, "What's the obligation of a story to its society?" Especially when making mythical stories, which are moral discussions spoken specifically to one's society.

I have an advantage here. I have Star Wars, the whole thing, as an observed phenomenon to draw from as lessons learned. Does it work for the narrative? Yes. Does it fulfill the obligation of being sensitive to the nurturing of society towards some hoped direction? I don't know about that. Somewhat, and somewhat not. It's muddy. Less clear this time around.

The biggest storyteller difference between Johnson and Abrams, and Lucas that I've noticed is that Lucas gives you an answer whereas Johnson and Abrams are interested in raising questions - not so much giving answers. For them, there's things going on in society they want to examine, but in a sort of Star Trekian way, they wish to raise the question of the dilemmas and then leave it to the audience to wrestle with the answers on their own.

Lucas more wanted to convey the plights and pitfalls along the way towards an asserted (in his mind) noble end.

And to bring it around to the topic of Luke... I think the derailment of topic here shows the problem of Luke in this chapter.

You bring Luke in and he's a massive distraction, but even when you want to focus on Luke it's incredibly easy to derail into the narrative repercussions of Luke and whether one thinks those repercussions are desired and/or correct.

Oh, and regarding Star Wars as a tragedy. It's absolutely a Greek Tragedy wrapped in Americana. It's a soap opera. And soap operas are an American variant of Greek Tragedies. They don't end in all consuming up-beat notes. There's always a sour note at the end if you don't stop somewhere along the way where the chorus ends on a Major five to one chord resolution temporarily.

The point that Lucas always stuck with was rather tragic. We're never free from darkness, it essentially haunts us every day, but we have to choose to hang on to hope and try to be good every day.
That's a dark form of optimism.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

When a movie takes a turn or holds a course that you didn't anticipate or desire from it, it doesn't mean that the movie or the writers are telling you that your ideas are bad.

 

That is an interesting perspective.
I had only considered that when someone didn't like a direction, it was because of either a wish left unfilled or an icon of a perceived ideal they do agree with now representing a perceived ideal they do not agree with.

I hadn't considered the empathy going so far as to be a reflection of their own personal identity. Now that you raise it, it seems silly that I didn't.

Interesting.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

People change as they get older, at times even their faith changes. They look at life differently. What they may have believed at youth may not be the same beliefs they stand by at present. They no longer bench press 300 lbs, they ride their bikes, or go for long walks. The treatment of Luke in TLJ, did not bother me at all, it felt natural, it wasn't forced; pardon the pun, in the end the hero we all knew emerged with an unknown power that only a Grandmaster of the Force could manipulate.

 

Luke has always been my boi and role model, and I absolutely loved his arc and portrayal in TLJ. I also find the arc to be very important for SW as a whole, infusing some much-needed stakes for the franchise. When the golden boy himself can falter, threats start to matter in SW, making his inevitable triumphant rising from the ashes that much more powerful and poignant, IMHO.

 

THIS! ^^^^

And THIS! ^^^^

Ironically, TLJ will play better with future audiences over the years as those '30 years of unknown Luke' eventually get played out over Disney+. The last season of Game of Thrones is another example of the dangers inherent in 'rushing' the development of a beloved character too fast for its audience to grapple with.

 

Luke's progression and treatment in TLJ still felt more natural to me (The movie emotionally, visually, and logically explained it!) than Luke going into a cave on Tatooine for a year and supposedly gaining 5000+ Force points and 3000+ cool points or something, even though he acts really stupid and arrogant during the Jabba the Hutt barter because Kasdan, Marquand, Lucas had some serious creative differences about the whole Han situation, to where Lucas just wanted Luke to throw Jabba and his cronies into the pit, whereas Kasdan wanted to make things more complicated, etc..

It's still hard to tell if Luke fighting back for his friends (for all the talk and risks that he commits to not hurt Jabba) is what corrupts him (him pulling on the black glove afterwards) and if so, should not have been referenced with triumphant rescue music/thrills. This is what people will defend about Luke, even say that he's cool with all of his flips during the barge scene, etc., but if I am to interpret the "putting on a black glove scene" as some sort of corruption or slow turn to the dark side, then why should it be commonly perceived that Luke "is being cool and a real Jedi" when he's not? Like I'm still genuinely confused about the scene. (It seems that Lucas and co. thought that Luke jumping up and getting his lightsaber was cool as well, but why add in the scene of the black glove right after the fight if it's going to be used as symbol of him losing compassion and to turning to the dark side (becoming more machine) like his father near the climax of the film?).

Let me be honest with you. I still don't get why people are okay with Return of the Jedi Luke when ROTJ has some serious problems (I would even say its tonal problems greatly outweigh whatever tonal issues that The Last Jedi has.) with its plot structure, and I can look back at the first rough draft of "Revenge of the Jedi" and say, "Yes, that's a whole lot better than the final cut/script." It also really, really bothers me that ROTJ Luke reminds me of Sephiroth from the original Final Fantasy VII in terms of his arrogance but worse because AT LEAST Sephiroth had a sympathetic angle- that he was afraid that being a monster made him inferior or that his "specialness" meant little or nothing as he could easily be replaced with the produced "monsters" at the Mt. Nibel reactor. What does Luke have? "My aunt and uncle are dead? My best friend, Biggs is dead?" But this isn't referenced in ROTJ and only tangentially in TESB if include deleted scenes (and maybe the novelization). What sort of sympathy am I supposed to have for ROTJ Luke?

 

Speed. Lucas has noted that ROTJ is almost unintelligible. He was experimenting with moving faster. Pushing it to as fast as it could go narratively until it was barely functional. Just at the red line.

This is what a lot of folks don't realize about his Star Wars movies. For him, they were always exprimental movies crammed into commercialism.

In this one, he wanted to floor it - to Kasdan's frustrations and against all regular narrative instincts.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I don't think that was really the intent. It was more to remind the audience of the physical and symbolic loss of humanity similar to his father's (whose own reasons are ambiguous and at this point, irrelevant). So whatever we perceive as inhuman about Vader might start to be allied to his son. Giving more credibility to Vader's claims of this being Luke's "destiny". I don't think Lucas even considered the Tatooine sequence as anything other than plot. And as soon as that plotline was resolved just intended to remind everyone "Hey. Father. Son. Machine. Man". See also, "He's more machine now than man." It's not subtle and not especially profound either. Lucas reserved all the crucial motivation for turning to the dark side for the "back story" (the prequels....).

Instead of making the audience ponder "I can see how or why Luke might be tempted to the dark side if he's..." Rather it's, "Maybe he is destined to join the dark side for some reason. We shall see."

The only real motivation that Luke is offered to turn in ROTJ is the repeated promise that it's "the only way" to save his friends. You could call that bargaining or extortion/blackmail if you like. Dunno what it has to do with hate and anger though. But at least it doesn't dominate the narrative. The prequels tried to retrofit a psychological profile for Anakin that enhanced the significance of the choices Luke was faced with later in the saga.

 

This is easy. It doesn't make sense today because we're so far beyond this concept in our society.

The family business, or the family obligation.

It's not much of a thing to most folks in our society now, but both Lucas and Kasdan had to wrestle out from under what they were assumed to do because of their fathers. This is really a common youth theme of the time, especially for hippies. Either you take the family business or you're going to college to become a successful cog in the machine of capitalism. Either were common expectations.

Jumping off and going into the arts and humanities was crazy in the 1960s. You were nuts. High or stupid. Need some sense knocked into you.

Remember, too, that the Empire thematically represents the concrete synthetic world of a cold heartless industry. It's juxtaposed against nature loving rebelious fools who believe in love.

It's destined in the same way that you can see in Some Kind Of Wonderful.
Here, the Dad lightens up pretty quickly once crap goes down, but it's still the same basic set up.

Kid expected to just fill in their place in society to achieve market success, rejects it for a more human connected life that's less predictable, Dad and kid fight over it.

Etc...

It's just muddy now because so what? If your Dad's dark side, who cares? If your Dad's an architect, are you? No. If your Dad runs a furniture store, do you have to? No.

The language is lost because the perspective it relied on as a part of social commonhood is gone (pretty much).

There's a similar problem in The Time Machine (1960). It just assumes we value books as a near iconic equal to a patriotic flag of hope for a future world through a sacred keeping of knowledge. It doesn't set this up in the character. The character just goes nuts at the sight of the books being neglected because it's assumed we, the audience, get the general idea because we're on the same page culturally.
We're not, so that scene now seems incredibly weak and not at all shocking now.

It's like this.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Socialism's inability to have faith; it's inability to trust, is the scientific or could be the scientific meaning and truth of TLJ's treatment of Luke. Star Wars became so big, it became fused with politics of the caricature kind, fusing the caricature with the traditional.

Because of dichotomy's pact with Star Wars, ergo with poetry, Canto Bight was able to work, despite being a surface carrier of the system; Luke's treatment, on the other hand, wasn't able to work. He was mistreated

 

He saw himself turning into his father. Ironically, Anakin's Fall actually saved him. Yet sadly....it also destroyed the Skywalkers.

 

This Cinema Therapy episode came out this week, and I wanted to share it. Back to my cave until I finish Jedi Survivor I go!

EDIT:
Minor spoilers for TROS and Kenobi

 

Commentators often seem to perceive or characterise cynicism or idealism as a choice. As if their appearance is an endorsement by the character displaying them at any one time. In truth they are normally just things that happen to people. If a once idealistic young person reaches maturity and has been unable to conclusively put all their troubles behind them and guarantee security and prosperity for the foreseeable future, then why wouldn't they adopt a certain amount of cynicism?

But fans often act like the thought police. And cannot tolerate the grey, ambiguous areas of people's characters being given any kind of prominence without condemning it as some sort of willful and perverse revisionism. They demand gratification for their approval of the character's illustrious and heroic exploits from their adolescence.

 

Few Christians can accept the position that when Jesus prayed for any other option if at all possible, and then again when he cried out why his Father had forsaken him were moments showing his otherwise perfectly stoic form faltering.
How could it? This is the same Jesus who already bested the three temptations already in perfect resolve. Clearly, he cannot falter after that - especially being the anointed one.

In like fashion, we have the same thing with Luke. He's sort of getting the Jesus treatment.

But as someone who grew up defiantly optimistic and hopeful, in spite of teenage anger that was overcome and resolved to a humanist love, I still fell victim to the same demons as I did in the past and found myself needing to defeat cynicism all over again to rediscover my childhood inner Mr. Rogers, my inner Luke, just like he did.

Luke in TLJ is a Luke I easily related to personally. I had been there. I had been both the Luke in ROTJ when I was in the military, and the Luke of TLJ a decade afterwards. And I found my way back just like Luke did through my metaphorical Rey challenging me with a reminder of what I once believed compared to where I now was and the justifications I had constructed to excuse my ideological losses.

It's very hard to actually emotionally change your existential disposition. That Luke does it in such short turn around is astounding!
If I had to pick anything that would be quote, "unbelievable", I would say the speed at which he converts away from his cynicism would be it - not that he is cynical.

It took me years to convert away from my cynicism and refind my existential emotion I had as a child, the one that burned inside of me with purpose in the military - which I learned later was false.

When I see Luke at the end of ROTJ, I see that kind of person. A person who has optimism, but it's one propped up by a sense of purpose. It's false. If you take that sense of purpose away, BAM, he hits the floor. Again, I can relate because I experienced that VERY thing first hand.
I THOUGHT I was fortified in my optimistic position because I mistook my sense of purpose, my sense of chivalry, as being that I was centered in my optimism.

I was not. I was deluded into feeling optimistic because of sense of purpose. I wasn't truly at peace with my cynicism yet. I wasn't truly okay with how the world truly is yet. I just simply had a noble purpose which stoically emboldened me with an optimistic feeling.

Once I lost that sense of purpose, I had to face reality without it. I became bitter and spiteful. Reclusive and resentful of the world. I became nihilistic.

It took time for me to realize the lesson that reality may be existentialist in a nihilistic form, that of having no true meaning or value or point in doing anything.
True. However, the value is what I choose to make it. And where I choose to put that value, what I choose to do. That is what defines my experience of reality. It's what allows me to make my reality what it is. It's what defines my relationship to reality and others.
I realized that what matters is who I choose to care about. That is what value there is. Not some noble chivalrous purpose of being a member of protector knights (which was how I felt about being in the military).

And really that's what I saw Luke go through in one movie, in less than one movie!
He ultimately decides that what matters is who he cares about, not what he cares about and the integrity of some ideology which gave him a sense of purpose by its integrity.

It was, to me, very beautiful and an amazingly mature fable narrative. Most fables in movies are infantile. They only really address coming of age stories. They almost never breach the topics of our second half of life and the challenges we face in those parts.

It will always be a dear story to me, TLJ, because of Luke's narrative in it.

Cheers,
Jayson