What's the point of this trilogy?

If a claim makes up supporting evidence to an opposing party's counterargument within a discussion, then it's appropriate to ascertain the veracity of that claim. No? A parallel is being struck between two examples. But are those examples indeed truly parallel? Is it indeed an accurate comparison based on how one perceived a comment, or perhaps, misperceived a comment.

 

Claim?
This is interpretation of art. Not a court room.

God comes down and gives you exactly what the director meant and it's everything opposite of what you understood the movie to mean for the past 40 years.

Does that invalidate your interpretation of the movie? If so...why?

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Yes, Jayson, “claim”. If someone made an unsubstantiated assertion to you about the originating influence behind an artist’s work you were familiar with, you wouldn’t question that when you know it’s not likely accurate? I betcha you would. Be honest now.

“Invalidate”? No. Provoke me to question and perhaps reconsider my preconceived notions? Absolutely.

Life is a work in progress, man. What I believed to be true yesterday might not be so much the case today depending on what I happen to discover. I probably didn’t have the full picture in front of me and made some well-intended assumptions. But it’s never too late to rethink what you think you know.

There was a time I didn’t know what had inspired George Lucas to write his “little space thing”. I didn’t get what influences he was drawing from or the intent he was striving for with his didactic parable. Grasping that helped enrich the fable for me. It made it more meaningful and impactful. I wouldn’t trade that insight for anything. It’s precious to me.

If ‘art should be open to interpretation’ is what you’re getting at, then I certainly concur. But when a topic of conversation veers to ‘artist intent’, then defining what that artist did in fact intend, isn’t irrelevant to the subject. It now IS the subject. And if the source for that definition isn’t totally correct, then that isn’t irrelevant either.

 

Ah, I see where you're coming from now.
You're not so much interested in rightness, as refinement and expansion if there is one to be had, and the method of achieving that is to beat the hypothesis to a pulp and if it remains standing, then it's worth considering.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Ha ha ha. If that's what you got out of that, then sure, why not.

 

Well, alright.
I don't know about what Kersh said, but I think the general point he was making is valid.
It is pretty clear when reading through the various draft summaries and the transcripts of Lucas' recordings of him working through the various development notes that while Luke is supposed to go through an evolution of training in Empire, that never-the-less, Lucas repeatedly solves problems by just whipping out the Force in made up reasons.

In one draft, the second, (according to the J.W. Winzler book) Luke hears Ben tell him to use the Force to get his sword.
Yet in another version, Luke just up and does it.
To solve the problem of needing Luke to have a reason to go to Dagobah, Lucas suggests that Ben tells him to go there, and to solve the problem of Ben suddenly being there he considers that Luke whacks his sword on something and a hidden crystal pops out perhaps.

Obviously none of these things are the final version.
I only bring them up to say that if the question is whether or not the Force is a narrative device that's employed at the level that it's shown because the creators wanted that level at that moment regardless of any other set of logic, I'd have to agree with that position about the creation of the story and this plot device.

Time and again Lucas' notes indicate the Force powers as plot devices in various manners. He even, at one point, considers giving levels to the Force, suggesting that Ben and the Emperor are level 6 and the Emperor is aiming for level 10 and Luke has to stop him before he gets to Level 10 - and he considers this idea because he kind of likes the ticking clock it provides.

At another point he suggests Luke gets out of the ice cave using the Force to fight off the wampa to show that Luke's capable, but then fails to use the Force later when the wampas attack the base to show that Luke's a failure (even has Han put him down and tell him he'll never be a Jedi).
It's all for the emotional value. Lucas doesn't really have any notes expressing how Luke can't do whatever or can do whatever because he's only done whatever and hasn't done whatever level of some such.

The learning/training scale isn't really something he waxes over in his notes to any degree of rationalism. It's always focused on the metaphors.

For example, after the training he at one point had Luke taking out "137 storm troopers" "unleashing his full force", at Bespin, but he didn't do this to showcase ability, but instead to show Luke going dark with anger and slipping down the bad side of the Force. Which, "I decided to move him closer to the dark side in the next film, not this one." so he removed that bit.

That is, the reason it was removed wasn't because of logical relationship of when Luke would or wouldn't do something regarding the Force, but because it was narratively the wrong time for that kind of moment in the story for what it represented.

And that's how he talks all through all of the transcripts. The Force just does things because that's the emotional value relevant to the moral narrative of the story at that moment. The iteration of what it does and why it's that over any other option never really comes up. It's just - boom, here's a cool trick showing off some psychic power or super ability.

Of note, across his development notes, these powers wildly swing between ranges of power expression - sometimes (as noted above) seemingly contradictorily.

So, yeah - I don't know about Kersh talking about discovery or what-not, but the idea that the use of Force powers are conveniently aligned to narrative emotional value, for example that of Ben showing up - yeah, I can agree to that. The whole cave Force use was almost always tied together with Ben showing up to Luke in some manner or another. That was sort of the big value more than anything - that Luke used the Force itself wasn't ever really talked about with as much importance as that Ben shows up to Luke. In fact, Lucas talks about how the whole reason that Ben starts showing up to Luke is because Luke is growing into his new Jedi role - that's about as close as you get to a rational logic about power capabilities. He just sort of throws it out there that as you go Jedi you start seeing this other layer to reality and poof - Ben.

But that's also mainly an excuse to get Ben back so Ben can deliver emotional drama to Luke and weaken Luke's psychology even more - which Lucas spends a hefty amount of his time focusing on in his notes. In fact, almost all of his interest in the Force in his notes about Luke's expressions and training is all about psychology and beating Luke up and making him weak and scared. It's not really about growth or stages.

The only real discussion about growth in the Empire production book is about the Dagobah foliage or Lucas talking about his own past.
There's no real mention about making sure to show how Luke has progressed from the previous movie to this one.
Somewhat counter to that, in fact, Lucas in early drafts has Luke fumbling around and making mistakes right and left until he gets to Yoda, who then makes fun of him and tells him he's not worth it and won't amount to anything, and then Ben gets all dramatic and Luke gets all mad at him, and then his sister bit, and the scary cave, and then he takes out a bunch of soldiers in a wild rage, and then goes toe-to-toe with Vader all screwball and Vader mops the floor with him in their psychic battle leaving Luke over the course of the movie a complete "n00b" who thought that he could do things and was always wrong the whole movie.

Obviously that's not the version we got, but I bring it up because the idea that the cave Force use was to show us that Luke grew between the two movies might be true, but it's nowhere in Lucas' production notes.

So ... yeah. The Force is really just a shtick you pull out to exemplify a metaphorical display of the character's emotional arc. That's what we see in the production notes.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

But at the end of the day, we all do that, don't we? None of us can see into the director's head...'that's not how the Force works.'

 

It’s pretty self-evident in the re-introductory scenes of ESB that there’s been a notable passage of time. And in that time, while we were away, the story kept unfolding without us. The characters kept advancing and progressing. Luke, as we meet him again, is no longer that dopey naïve farm boy taking his “first step into a larger world.” He’s “Commander Skywalker” now. He’s the one who led the group that established the base on Hoth. He’s “Rogue Leader” now. He’d literally become a leader of men in the interim between episodes. He’s evolved.

His statement of purpose in ANH is “I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father.” It doesn’t stand to much reason that the character would abandon that defining pursuit in the absence of a mentor. That he would have just hit the pause button on his development and not attempted to explore this avenue established to be so important to him.

So, he would likely have progressed further toward this personal goal as well. What he does in the wampa cave then is an outward expression of his inner experience. Luke had matured since we last saw him. In his knowledge of the Force as well.

It’s similar to, but not truly the same as what’s happening with Rey in TFA. In that scenario, Rey is desperately trying to make purposeful use of a mysterious power she’s only just discovered and doesn’t understand. It isn’t yet a defining element for her character. It isn’t something she’s in active pursuit of mastering in order to achieve actualization. It’s a utilitarian means to an end that also represents her “first step into a larger world”.

@Martoto's perspective, if I understood it right, is that Luke in that scene was also just poking around in the dark. Not really knowing what he was doing. Literally grasping at solutions and it all just happened to work out for him. I don’t personally feel that to be consistent with the broader narrative voice of the film. I don't buy in on the equivalency.

And Luke’s emotional arc is expressed in terms of maturation from child to adult. ESB is the midpoint of that maturation. He’s grown from where he was before, but not fully to where he’ll ultimately arrive. It’s his . . . ‘awkward phase’.

 

So, in one case a character grows and in the other they are stunned to find out they have more ability in them than they knew.

In both, the Force is used as a metaphorical expression of moral bearing.

I don't see a problem.

Cheers
Jayson

 

I don't either.

The question of the matter was 'People didn't have an issue with X. So why do they have an issue with Z?' My best guess to the answer is because X and Z aren't the same thing. They resemble one another. But there are intrinsic dissimilarities that, I believe, would cause people to view them as separate things. Make more sense?

 

Well, yeah.
They're two different topics. One is a discussion about growing up, and the other is a discussion about finding self-worth.

Consequently those two topics would have different Force expressions and needs.
It wouldn't make much sense to discuss the notion of being worth more than you think you are through Force metaphors that were used to discuss growing up.
That would make very confused metaphors.

Can't really have a character be surprised by what they have in them if when they go to do something, nothing impressive happens.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

He says it either in the commentary or in the "Masters" documentary about ESB.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 29, 2022, Original Post Date: Sep 29, 2022 ---

It's a warning to her not to resist. She just mocked his attempt to get her to just tell him by reciting BB-8's tech specs.

Yeah. People have attached meaning to the fact that Luke doesn't move stuff until film two and use a mind trick until film three. Which is unnecessary and unwise give what we know about how the OT was kind of made up as Lucas went from a basket of ideas. And there was no plan or intent to demarcate specific skills to different stages of maturity or a linear scale of ability and skill. The mind trick is treated as a sort of joke and to create intrigue surrounding Obi Wan. But which Solo still calls "simple tricks and nonsense". And his cynicism is somewhat justified. Until we see Obi Wan seemingly enter a different plane of existence and we begin to understand how deep the force actually goes.

I haven't denigrated anyone. I don't feel obligated to make anyone whose demands to have their head canon vindicated lead them to denounce and reject an entire trilogy to feel included. They seem to be quite adamant about excluding themselves.

I think I have demonstrated more than awareness. And "validated" people's viewpoints in the sense that I have acknowledged how their head canon is most suited to having a sense of ownership of the narrative. The "emotional" side that you refer to is not spontaneous emotional response to how and when Luke could or couldn't perform certain feats. It's the emotional response to that head canon not being vindicated and the feeling of dispossession of those notions of being in control of the narrative.

Mind tricks are not a place. They are pretty much a joke. Even when Luke does it in ROTJ. To demonstrate that Bib Fortuna is a fool. And that Jabba won't be so easily persuaded.

"There is no try. Do. Or do not."

I will acknowledge that Yoda's dogmatic tendencies don't do justice to the mysteries of the force. But basically it's true. When Luke tried to reach hi saber, he failed.

Was Luke's success at Yavin a demonstration of maturity? It was an act of faith. "Trust me". That prompted Luke to let go and shoot. He would either succeed or he would not. The cave shows Luke remembering that lesson. It was do or die, just as with the death star and no targeting computer. You can draw a comparison with not trusting his eyes and the accuracy of the targeting computer he was reading and not trusting the spatial relationship between himself and the saber. What's really the difference though? They are both decision made beyond reason. Don't target, just shoot. Don't reach, just take the saber.

Not according to his friends in ESB who are taken aback when they discover that they are simply bait for Luke. Even in ROTJ: "Luke's crazy. He can't take even take care of himself much less rescue anybody".

Why hasn't Luke considered seeking out any other Jedi like Obi Wan? Why didn't Obi-Wan instruct Luke to go to Dagobah directly after Yavin. Obi Wan's appearance is a complete surprise and mystery to Luke. Clearly Ben only appears at certain milestones or crossroads.

As for the passage of time. It's deliberately vague. The fact that the first act has Luke plowing ahead gung ho with his piloting skills isn't meant to indicate growth except as a pilot in the rebellion (one of the few left after the Yavin and becoming a leader by default as much as by merit)

She successfully turned Palpatine's power against him. Unlike Yoda in ROTS, although he came close. But it's implied that Palpatine's power is even greater at the end of TROS thanks to the dyad of Ben and Rey. (It's been argued that Yoda's failure in ROTS is his decision to face Palpatine alone. And I would agree with that.)

 

I see it as acknowledgement to the futility of her resisting. She can fight it all she wants. It won’t matter. He’s going to reach in and take what she’s guarding. He’s that confident in his superiority. It’s that overconfidence and underestimation that then defeats him in this scene and later at the end of the film.

That confidence though is just a façade. Like the mask he wears. It’s bluster he’s using to hide his immense feelings of inadequacy that Rey then picks up on and exploits. This portrayal is integral to the character’s realization.

Anyway, point being: What he’s doing is not presented as what we’d recognize as the ‘mind trick’ we see her use later on. He isn’t issuing commands or directives he expects to be obediently followed. He’s tormenting her while he engages in an unseen excavation of her mind.

Certainly. There wasn’t some predefined roadmap of proficiency markers. Like trading up belts in karate or whatever. But Luke’s increased skills in the films do reflect his increased knowledge in the Force and run parallel to his increased growth as a maturing young person: Traversing from adolescence to adulthood. The metaphor at play.

There’s an emotional attachment there for a lot of fans who connected their own transitional growth with Luke’s. They grew up as he grew up. So, to see someone ostensibly skip all those perceived pivotal steps of development and arrive at a comparable place of maturity feels inauthentic. ‘She didn’t do the work’.

I’m sympathetic to this reading of the text and where it’s coming from. It isn’t that ‘they broke the rules and rules matter, dammit!’. It’s that ‘they minimized the weight of my own personal incremental journey into adulthood. I reject this’.

Personally, I feel that’s a massive misreading of the text. The Luke character lived a sheltered life without the benefit of really knowing the realities of the larger world. The Rey character had no choice but to face those shaping realities from an early age. They’re starting off at wildly different places of maturity. Rey starts off further along in her abilities in the Force than Luke, because she’s already much further along in her path of maturity than Luke. That’s the difference with the characters. Luke’s journey was unique to his experience. Rey’s journey is unique to hers.

But I get why some folks aren’t able to make that distinction. They have too much personal investment and are viewing it as what feels true to themselves rather than what’s true to the story and its characters and themes.

It was both. Putting his faith in a ‘greater power’ WAS the act of maturity - of personal growth. It’s not likely something Luke would have been capable of at a point earlier in the film. It runs parallel to the context of the scene.

We’re introduced to Luke as someone willing to shirk his responsibilities: “But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters.” “You can waste time with your friends when your chores are done.” He’s trying to duck out of his obligations so he can go screw around with his pals. A place of immaturity.

We leave Luke unexpectedly taking command of the assault on the Death Star, “Biggs, Wedge, let's close it up.” It’s a moment of him freely taking charge of the situation and embracing a newly earned sense of responsibility. A place of maturity.

The moment he’s willing to listen to the disembodied voice of his mentor and put his full trust into this unseen presence, he’s only barely glimpsed at before, is a triumphant moment of evolution for the character. A place of maturity.

There’s absolutely a thematic connection there. And the connection is the continuing advancement of his maturation. Luke grew throughout the story of ANH and it culminated in one tremendously critical expression of progression. His established growth didn’t weirdly stagnate between episodes. He starts ESB from a place of extended growth. That bit in the cave is evidence of his continued maturity - making further use of a concept we’d seen him learn as the climactic gesture of that phase of his character’s arc.

That’s not the same sort of growth we see Rey demonstrate in the expanse of minutes between scenes in TFA. These two scenarios are clearly in conversation with one another, but they are not the same.

“Taken aback”? You’ll need to expound on that thought for me.

But that’s their character dynamic. Han is the surrogate older brother figure to Luke. However much he matures, Luke will always be the ‘kid brother’ he has to watch out for. That’s what’s so fun and endearing about their relationship.

Who says he didn’t? Just because it isn’t in the movie doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Real answer? Because it’s a movie and George hadn’t quite worked out what to do with Obi-Wan just yet.

Being very nearly dead seems like a pretty big crossroads to me. If you want a plausible inworld explanation. Obi-Wan, as he is now, isn’t truly dead of alive. He exists between both states. Luke, at that moment, is the closest to being dead he’s likely ever been. The closest he’s ever been to where Obi-Wan now exists. Makes a certain type of spiritual sense, doesn’t it?

Regardless, what you’re doing now is using one interpretation to justify another - supporting a theory by using another unsupported theory. We’re in the weeds between the weeds.

Luke is unequivocally the leader of Rogue Squadron. He’s “Commander Skywalker”. He’s giving orders. This is a pretty clear graduation from where he was in ANH. It isn’t about “piloting skills”. It’s about leadership and responsibility. The end of ANH marries those two concepts together. As he matures in his leadership, he matures in his Force ability. The beginning of ESB progresses both.

She held two lightsabers in front of her. Is there some reason to believe this was something Luke at her age couldn’t have also done? Was this something only Rey was uniquely suited to do on account of her having surpassed those that came before? Sure didn’t seem like it to me.

I guess she possessed a superior fortitude that allowed her to stand back up after getting life sucked? Luke couldn’t have done that maybe? I’m reaching here.

 

It's not just a basket of ideas. If you look at the production notes and work session transcriptions, it's clear Lucas was interested in Force powers only in so much as they served the narrative purpose of representing the character's disposition at that point.
It's not just a toneless random grab bag of neat magical kung-fu tricks.
It's a pseudo-random grab bag within a tonal boundary. Take the snow cave. This came in a few different flavors during development. It was a fight where Luke uses his psychic powers to enhance his fighting skills against the snow beast and best it, it's a moment where Ben calls out to Luke to tell him to use the Force to grab his lightsaber through a bit of light instruction, it's a moment where Luke uses the Force to grab his lightsaber on his own through an internal "Rocky/Daniel LaRusso" moment.

They're all tonally related. They all explore the emotion of success and pulling through a hard bit - biting down, digging in. And the one that survives to the screen is the one that best represented this idea. You can sort of watch this happen through reading the transcripts and notes - this plopping down the clay of emotional need, and then the refining down until the right exposition in psychic power is landed on to best represent that emotion.

So yes, it's a basket of ideas that's made up, of course it is, but it's not equivalent to the idea of just purely random neat trick picking for the sake of picking a trick.
Lucas always leads with emotion - except when he got into the big exposition battles in the prequel - then at times he'd go off on tangents that are more to do with world exposition than character emotion metaphor.

I think the reason some folks probably have a hard time catching the progression narrative is that even in ANH that progression is so blazingly fast that it can be somewhat confusing how much is progression versus how much just is shoved or pre-capable.

For example, Luke goes from a farmhand to ace fighter pilot in what feels like an incredibly short amount of time. Some accept the transition as part of his progression, while others point to his line about easily shooting creatures back home in like fashion to the torpedo shot, and his line about not being such a bad pilot to Han, as evidence that he was already an ace pilot, and then yet others point to the Force being his reason because Anakin - so like Father like Son.
I'm not arguing, and don't care, for any of these positions mind you.

But I think it shows the confusion the movie creates in its hyperspeed character progressions.

Then there's the joke lots of folks love about how they just appoint people military ranks without any good sense that they should be appointed that by any typical standard of quality military organization.

The basic problem here is that these movies are rooted in the old sci-fi serials, where people are catapulted in their progressions at neck breaking speeds that would make critics heads spin if they were presented to be taken seriously. That form language didn't really depart from these movies (speaking of the OT, that is) and in like fashion we whip through progression stages so fast that if you take a bathroom break at certain moments, you'll miss the entirety of a character's progression shift from one point to another.

So I can sort of understand the problem of catching the sense that Luke has any pronounced progression within each movie. It's easier to see it movie to movie than within any one movie. Arguably, Han has a more visible character arc progression in ANH than Luke in that he overtly goes from not being willing to help with other people's problems to wanting to help his new friends because of Grinch-Who-Stole-Christmas-like reasons. And even that massive character shift moment happened off screen, so you didn't even need to have gone to the bathroom to miss it.

It's probably the single largest source of all the Star Wars jokes over the decades, this rapid progression. Because if thought about critically - which no one should ever do about Star Wars logistics, it creates very odd sets of logics. Which, of course, happens often when you watch old serials as well.

Once again we see that things are representational, not rationally practical.
The hard part that she needed the Force for, wasn't magic. No one does in Star Wars. Luke didn't need it in ROTJ either. The magic tricks wasn't hard for him.

The hard part was deciding and standing on conviction - that is where they both dig into the Force.

Luke could be written to have held up two sabers against the Emperor and beat him. But it also would be entirely empty and worthless if Luke didn't have a moral dilemma to choose over. Star Wars is first and foremost defined by, "Will they or won't they?"

It's not can they or can't they. Of course they can. No one is incapable as an arc lynchpin in Star Wars. That's never the main tentpole of a story. It's moral choice.
And that's what every big bash moment for a character is ultimately about.

So yeah, Luke could step in, but it would be entirely meaningless to see Super-Luke (or novice Luke, or any Luke) best the Emperor with two lightsabers. Because that it's two lightsabers isn't what did anything.

It's because it's Rey choosing to deny her darkness with conviction - fully choosing in full embrace without doubt. That is what kills the Emperor. Her complete and unfettered denial of him within her. And that is why he dies.

The successful turn of his powers against him is simply a moral rejection. In Star Wars, one of the hardest things to truly do.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

What I was more getting at initially is that I was never hung up on Rey progressing too far too fast. I was more on the other side of the spectrum wanting her to develop even further beyond what had come before.

This is largely due to how I read the climax of ROTJ. Luke isn’t victorious simply because he rejects his darkness, but because he embraces his compassion. A virtuous compassion above and beyond what his mentors could have managed in his place.

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.” “He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil.” Luke, at the end, doesn’t just reach his full potential and become a Jedi like those before him, he exceeds them. In his actions, he’s proven himself more of a Jedi than the Jedi who taught him to be a Jedi.

“We are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.” Luke grew beyond his masters. The new generation taking what it had been handed and making it better. He’d done something they couldn’t have done because they didn’t believe it possible: To reach someone committed to the darkness and inspire them to turn back. To make a better choice. A choice of empathy and mercy.

Rey’s victory at the end of TROS has nothing to do with compassion or understanding. It’s her reflecting hatred back on to itself in a deliberate effort to destroy. I remain unconvinced that a Jedi predecessor in her place couldn’t have made that same choice and course of action through to the same conclusion. It’s a personal victory for the character and that matters. But I wish it had also been a spiritual victory for the overriding ethos too.

But then this take is totally based on how I interpret the underline moral of the story. Which is totally on me.

 

I don't read that ending the same way.

The topic is self acceptance with Rey.
So I see here compassion in the form of her accepting Kylo after her angered outburst rejecting him, and it is through that accepting of the other side of herself, Kylo Ben, that she has the strength to face her inner demons of guilt which lock her into a path of self condemnation.

I don't see her as angry against Palps, but no longer tolerant. No longer tolerant of that voice in her telling her she'll never be good enough, always bad. It's a moment of yelling, "enough!" at herself reflected in her great demon Palps.

So to me they are the same dispositions just over different topics which changes the expressive form. One is finding the goodness in others. The other is finding goodness in their self.

Both require compassion, just a different kind.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I like that read

 

Rey was violent throughout the entire trilogy.

She continued to beat down on Kylo Ren after she had clearly won in TFA....notice how they showed her circling him like Anakin did with Obi Wan in ROTS.
She was shown enjoying shooting down First Order TIES in TLJ...which is somewhat creepy as her best friend was a former stormtrooper...and I was genuinely startled when she reached for the lightsabre after Ren literally held out the hand of friendship. Yes, yes, I know he was the 'bad guy'....but she was supposed to be the 'good girl' and better than him.
She was violent throughout TROS.

Rey's potential for 'going dark' was actually one of the things I found interesting about her, and why I expected her to truly face her 'personal demons' in TROS, yet this never really happened. And i had to admit, after Luke used compassion and love to defeat Palpatine (and his own nephew in TLJ) I was both bewildered and disappointed that she resorted to simple violence at the end to destroy Palpatine. She was supposed to be the ST's 'Luke'....but instead came across as the 'anti Luke'. Maybe DLF thought a 'modern' audience would prefer this...I don't know.

 

I simply don't subscribe to the idea that Luke's maturity was defined by using a mind trick. Or that people could emotionally resonate with Luke's journey only by his maturity being defined by him learning a trick that people have imposed imaginary levels of difficulty and complexity on some linear scale.

If we're bringing the end of ROTJ into it. Luke's mind trick skills played no part in it. In fact none of his Jedi skills did. He matured by recognizing fully the danger that he faced in exercising the righteous fury stoked by his father and the emperor. Demonstrating that he was going to be who he was going to be in spite of his feelings of anger (mostly justified) and not because of them. Even if that meant dying. (Kind of like Rey does)

 

The movie I saw had it happen.

I wouldn't say defined. They were expressed through them.
It's like saying that the horrific moment to Crane in Psycho isn't defined by the now famous stabbing strings sound of the score. It's expressed through it.

Of course no mind tricks mattered.

When you read through the transcripts of the writing sessions across the movies, the thing that jumps forward is how to Lucas, the deepest level of the Force in these movies is their metaphor for our spirituality. Using the Force isn't just psychic powers. He talks of those things as byproducts of becoming stronger in the Force, almost a lesser trait.
The real value that he talks about a lot is finding a more noble self.

When I remarked that Luke used the Force, it is in these terms. That is, it's along the same lines as "becoming one with the Force" - the hippy great spirit concept the likes of one of the motifs in Lipsett's 21-87 short movie where "The Force" name comes from where he (through snipping audio clips of others) describes that (paraphrasing) people are surrounded by pavement and the hustle of modern life, they are dissatisfied, half human, left craving for something more. But that when they are surrounded by nature away from the world of human society, there they find some "Force, call it god...whatever..." that invigorates them, gives them meaning and value.

This connecting with the universe. This is "The Force" that Lucas was more interested in. It's in the little smaller parts like, "Search your feelings" of the movies.
That's what Luke dug into - reoriented himself to.

From this perspective, he became lost for a bit - caught up, in the game the Emperor had him playing. The trappings of the hustle. And it was this Force Luke used to conquer that trapping.

From this angle, using The Force, is a sort of communion with spiritual harmony, with the universe, the self.
It's all very hippy spirituality, really. Which makes sense. Lucas considers himself a big old hippy.

Cheers,
Jayson