What they should have done creatively with Luke

I would have preferred not showing his face.

Some close ups of his right hand (dark glove) and the lightsaber.

All the time with the hood. Not so much time for that scene.

Showing less = more mistery and curiosity.

 

In a scene where we see something of Luke Skywalker that we have never seen before, but that is so him. That boyish happy go lucky attitude / personality from ANH, that boyish playfulness TRANSLATED into his light saber fighting style. Cool boyishly playful moves, slicing twirls, enjoyment energy, a playful energy that MANIFESTS as an insane skill that no other Jedi have shown so far. A playful style that shows a very masterful underlying skill.

Well, to be fair we saw both that happy go lucky attitude and slicing twirls in Empire at the start when Luke fights Vader on Bespin. Luke does a twirl-block against Vader, and then there's Luke's "You'll find that I'm full of surprises line", combined with Luke using the environment to fight Vader (carbonite tubes) and regain his footing.

And in The Last Jedi, Luke evidently shows a bit of cocky discipline through his actions against Rey when they fight.

I would have preferred not showing his face.

Some close ups of his right hand (dark glove) and the lightsaber.

All the time with the hood. Not so much time for that scene.

Showing less = more mistery and curiosity.

Messi, so you believe that presenting Luke in roughly the same fashion as his appearance to Jabba's palace (hooded), along with the more iconic aspects of Luke's character in Return- i.e. the green lightsaber (symbolic of reaching maturity) and the black glove (symbolizing Luke's connection to Vader and his lack of compassion/the dark side, i.e. what Luke could turn into/ the path to the dark side) would make Luke all that mysterious and curious, even though most people have already seen Return.

To be fair, the hooded appearance is to make Luke appear more like Darth Vader in Return, as well as (probably) referring back to when Obi-Wan lifts his hood up in A New Hope- there is an almost exact shot of this in Jabba's palace.

But hey, to each his own opinion. I don't think that laser-focusing on Return's elements here would have made Luke all that more mysterious or curious.

 

I would have been happy if all of Luke's scenes had been observed on the bridge security monitors. When the commotion died down. Din could have said, "Wait here." and ventured out into the hallway with the darksaber. Katan, Dune and the rest watch on the screens as the two confront each other. Then Luke puts his sword away first. Din does the same and we see them talking with each other. Then Din comes back and says his goodbyes to Grogu.


Better still. Din and co hear the commotion in the hallway as the dark troopers get their butts kicked. After a while it dies down and then there's the sound of another, smaller metallic fist clanging against the blast door. The door opens, and it's just R2 and Threepio there.

 

To me, this is a pretty obvious idea but I haven't seen anyone else say it, so hot take I guess?:

Use Mark Hamill. Give him the TLJ-flashback beard. Use makeup and maybe a little CGI to take out some wrinkles, put some color back in his hair, but don't restructure his whole face or anything.

We've had five years since ROTJ. He doesn't need to look identical to ROTJ Luke. He can look a little older. Sure, it would be a bit older than is realistic. But I think fans would forgive that.

 

I am overjoyed to see a young CGI Luke Skywalker at all. When that guy walked into the room and removed his hood I thought “we have really entered an age of technology and special effects where anything is possible.” With that said, I wish the scene could have been longer. The challenge is for season 3 on what to do with Luke. Now they’ve piqued our interest, filmmakers can’t simply walk away from the possibility of having Luke return or (what I want more than anything else) young CGI Luke to star in his own tv series.

 

Luke was always bit whiny , but whiny , fat and old not ok, by return of jedi was less whiny and you knew he had been on a character arc, then in sequels they just made him weak to elevate rey as baddest jedi, a better relationship story with rey, where he defeats her and teaches her, ,,

 

By TESB, I think that Luke's been on a character arc. ROTJ is unclear as can be, imo. I think, in many ways, it's going backwards or I think it's quite inconsistent with when we last saw Luke, who was visibly beaten and calmly (wisely?) staring out a window with TESB. He cracks a smile at Chewbacca saying goodbye or something.

When ROTJ rolls around, Luke's like a different character- all within a span of a year. He learns nothing from getting his butt beat by Vader, other than being afraid of him ("I'm endangering the mission, I shouldn't have come."). And then, Luke responds to that fear (He seems to have learned something about this in TROS, ironically.) by going to Vader because he doesn't want the rebellion to die in the forest/be endangered, even though it's revealed that Vader and a commander had suspicions about rebels (even with Luke's implied mind trick on the commander). Similar to Obi-Wan's nihilistic/limiting philosophy in TESB, only a chosen (or a select person) with "Force blood" or someone tied to Luke's direct family who has the Force will be able to save the rebels (i.e. Luke entrusting Leia to save the rebellion), which contradicts A New Hope's message (Han saves the day, Obi-Wan's sacrifice made the difference, Luke trusting in the Force made the difference, etc.).

Anyway, Luke getting his butt kicked DOES not make him humbler/wisened up as in the ending of TESB. At the start of the film and even when confronting the Emperor, Luke acts cocky when the well-being of Han (and the friends who went along with Luke's plan) are on the line. Luke smiles and says to Jabba to not overestimate his powers.

I dunno if it made Luke weak. And even then, I can think of weak characters- often the humblest heroes are the strongest ones. The more I think about this, the more irrelevant it gets whether Luke was operating at 100% or 80% his force powers. Is not Star Wars about one person making a difference or a small group resisting the Empire? How is the focus on space wizards going to help with this theme if all the fans can think is how powerful the Jedi are depicted all the time?

Even in TESB, when Luke was showing what he'd learned from the Dagobah training and by instinct. It's also creativity of the use of the Force in TESB, which makes it appealing- (Force telepathy, Force pulling, etc.). We don't see any real symbolic/cool new uses of the Force in ROTJ, aside from maybe Vader/The Emperor reading Luke's mind, which still isn't a far stretch from TESB's telepathy scenes. And the scenes there aren't really symbolic as much as they are practical that move the plot along and create drama (Vader learns that Leia is Luke's sister, etc.) (TESB had Luke symbolically/spiritually or romantically calling out to Leia (the love interest before it was retconned, and Luke symbolically/spiritually connects with Vader via the cinematography shots in the Falcon- showing the connection between father and son.).

No offense to your opinion, but Luke being "less whiny" is still a persistent assessment that many fans seem to have of Luke's character. If you are going to make that assessment, do it when Luke is actually "cool", like when he makes a sacrificial jump to his death over joining the Empire without saying a word vs. Luke being wordy and almost bragging to the Emperor that he can never turn him to the dark side and then almost immediately contradicting his stand (no lightsaber, tense breathing and production implies that Luke was making a sacrifice here) by begging for Vader's help like a punk. Tell me how Luke begging for his dad's help is heroic- that he believes in his father to save him? That he believes unto his death even? There is a moment where Luke looks or reacts genuinely scared of the Emperor (after the Emperor says that he will die. Also, fear and screaming being the reaction of a hero? TESB Luke jumped off soundlessly to his death with a look of disillusionment in TESB.) and is screaming like crazy- that does not appear like the face nor the disposition of someone who still believes in his father- that's he still good. Luke seems delusional more than anything and wanting to save his hide, or the script is set on being symbolic this much. But since Luke appears to be afraid and is screaming, he seems to be lacking in perseverance (also, he appears to believe in the Emperor's words about killing him, which reveals weakness in faith in the rebels and in living in general).

 

He just learned that the evil Darth Vader is his father. What a shock to the soul! Of course, Luke is going to be disillusioned and questioning everything now.

But did he give up? It would have been easy to let go of the antenna and fall to his death. But he didn't. Instead Luke called out to Leia. This indicated to me that Luke had overcome his initial shock and revulsion and was determined to live.

I viewed Luke's response to the Emperor at the end of ROTJ to be the ultimate gamble on the inner-goodness of Anakin. He was willing to sacrifice his life because he sensed there was still good in his father.

(My only issue with Luke's character development is how he apparently lost that conviction by the time TLJ rolled around.)

Luke's portrayal in Mandalorian S2:E8 was absolute perfection.

 

Luke wasn't willing to sacrifice himself for his father's sake in Return Of The Jedi. He knew his father could not destroy him. But he was willing to sacrifice himself in the battle above Endor, when DSII eventually blew, if it meant that his friends could carry out their mission without Vader threatening them to get to him.

In Return Of The Jedi, Luke almost killed his father after swearing not to fight him (Three times. But no coq* crowed). He then realised that destroying his unrepentant father was the path to the dark side that the Emperor wanted him to go down. Turning away from Vader and defying the Emperor, he tossed his weapon away - proclaiming himself a Jedi as his real father was before him. But he underestimated the Emperor's power. When Palpatine unleashed the power of the dark side on him, Luke was left with no resort but to plead for his Vader to settle the conflict he had felt within him. And prove himself to truly be his father.

Tossing his weapon away and refusing to be drawn into a fight had served Luke well before and he still held that conviction in TLJ. It's his, and the whole galaxy's notion of what a Jedi is, what a Jedi must do, and how that relates to his own legend that Luke is deeply ambivalent about by the time we catch up with him.

Also. Because he played no direct role in Ben's ultimate redemption, unlike Rey, Luke was unable to see the eventual goodness prevailing in him (he only saw pain and suffering). So he knew that confronting Kylo would result in him being destroyed by Ren in anger (not good) or he would wind up killing his nephew which, even, if Luke somehow maintained balance while doing it, would be disastrous. So Luke concluded that if the light was to decide Ben's and the rest of the galaxy's destiny, it would be far more advantageous if he, and the Jedi that he embodies, were as far removed from events as possible.

In the case of "The Rescue". Luke has not experienced tragedy like the one that will happen 30 years later. And his opponents are all droids in this battle. So his experience with Vader and Palpatine has virtually no relevance at all to what is taking place in that scene.

(* en francais, to fool the sewra filtre)

 

To the OP - While I don't necessarily have a problem with Point 1, I disagree with Point 2. When we look at Luke's main Jedi actions in ROTJ, he's far from the boyish figure we met in ANH. He's more stoic and more mature. His appearances in Shattered Empire and the Battlefront II campaign show give us more examples of this as well. The Mandalorian is five years after that. I can't imagine him still keeping that boyish charm with him all that time, least of all in his fighting style. Maybe, maybe we'll find it in his piloting when in dogfights, but that's probably as far as it could or should go.