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rant, on 04 July 2018 - 12:25 AM, said:
But you're right. The criticism I was citing RE: TLJ was in response to alot of my fan friends complaining essentially #notmyLuke . Because they wanted to see the Luke they knew from ROTJ/EU: superpowered Goku version Luke, failure not acceptable. Or they complained that noone said " I've got a bad feeling about this". I'll be honest: the decision to take Luke in that direction is my favorite thing about TLJ (plus the entire duel on Crait).
I'm only going to snip this but out to respond to, more for clarification than anything else...and because I thought your rebuttal post was lucid, well-thought out, and gave me lots to chew over, most of which I think I accept.
I'm spoilering it so those who are sick of me bleating on can ignore it.
Spoiler
Anyways, re: above.
Here's my issue with Luke. I have zero problems with a failure arc for Luke late in his life. I just think it was executed disastrously AND destroys the obvious setup by JJ for no other reason than to stroke RJ's narcissistic ego (sidebar: there's people out there that he attended film school with who like him, but are under no compunction to believe he is anything but a narcissist, so not my words).
I digress: In TFA, JJ has Luke go to an island, the one with the first Jedi temple. We know from Han that he went there after a student went bad. Rey finds him at the end of TFA, dressed in regal Jedi robes. The script eludes to the fact that Luke went there with a purpose in mind, and when Rey shows up with his old lightsaber, he gives her a look that is described in the script like so:
Rey stares, knowing exactly who it is. But she just stares
for what seems like forever. Until he finally TURNS, SLOWLY,
to her. Pulls back his hood.
IT IS LUKE SKYWALKER.
Older now, white hair, bearded. He looks at Rey. A kindness
in his eyes, but there's something tortured, too. He doesn't
need to ask her who she is, or what she is doing here. His
look says it all.
In response, Rey pulls something from the pack.
LUKE'S LIGHTSABER.
And she holds it out to him. An offer. A plea. The galaxy's
only hope.
HOLD ON LUKE SKYWALKER'S INCREDIBLE FACE, amazed and
conflicted at what he sees, as our MUSIC BUILDS, the promise
of an adventure, just beginning...
To me, the above scene (italicizations by me) reads like JJ and Kasdan intended not only that Luke knows who Rey is, but that he's reverent about the lightsaber and portents she represents...
Now we move to TLJ.
RJ wanted to pick up on that exact scene. I'm unsure why. So he does, only he makes his first subversion and has Luke carelessly toss the saber over his shoulder for a gag (not a gag I appreciated, but it's fine). This would be fine I guess, if the next few scenes didn't utterly dismantle the setup in TFA. Luke IMMEDIATELY changes from his regal Jedi Robes (Conflict #1), into his dank, brown hermit-wear. Asks who the hell Rey is (TFA conflict #2), and then refuses to even engage with her. Chewie literally has to come up the hill and bash his door in to get him to even pay attention. Then we get the cave/tree scene with the Jedi texts and Luke saying he came to Ach-to to die and kill off the Jedi order (TFA conflict #3).
Conflict #1: Luke has ZERO reasons to be wearing his Jedi Robes as she arrives, only to change into permanent hermit gear in the next scene. The reason? RJ needed him to be rejecting the Jedi Order, not magnifying it. It's a bullshit reason that undoes the final scene in TFA.
Conflict #2: The script of JJ and Kasdan's TFA states that Luke knew who Rey was. RJ's script conflicts with that to make sure that Rey and Luke have no connection established so that he would NEED to be nice to her or help her. RJ does this often in his script, basically allowing one decision to dictate another absolutely with no malleability...so he can say later "this is the ONLY way it could go".
Conflict #3: If you are on the run from Snoke, your wayward, evil student Kylo Ren, and the rest of the First Order (though how he knows who the FO is when he's been gone and supposedly disconnected from the force for 6 years and they are essentially a brand new threat, I don't know) AND from your own mistakes...why you as Jedi Master would go to the damned FIRST JEDI TEMPLE...to die and kill off the Jedi Order....is beyond me. He may as well have thrown up a big blinking space sign that reads "Kylo, find Luke here!" I'm convinced that JJ and Kasdan intended Luke to go to the Temple with a purpose, learn why his student went awry, and study/meditate on how to fix it...not to die.
It also bothers the absolute shit out of me that RJ chose to have Luke talk to the audience and discount the prequels (RJ is kind of a dick about how he speaks about Lucas, and I find it highly disrespectful) by saying that the Jedi were lazy and bad and ALLOWED Darth Sidious to rise and create the Empire and enslave the galaxy. Meanwhile, the point of the prequels was that the Jedi were stuck in their ways after a thousand generations, and the mire made way for the most powerful Sith in generations to mask his actions and slide through the ranks and corrupt one of their own. Make no mistake, Mace Windu had Sidious dead to godamned rights in ROTS and would have beaten him if Anakin hadn't intervened. The point being that the Jedi, though too stuck in their ways, we're still generally a force of good who allowed their mandate of protection to get out of hand because a Sith was pupating everyone. RJ literally STEALS Palatines entire master plan out from under him and has Luke blame the Jedi instead. It drives me batty.
Anyways, my whole longwinded point here is that for me...it's not about Luke being a failure. I'm totally fine with that, but his reasons are bad, and his actions while being a failure don't reflect that of the man he once was in any way. Here's the setup I would have used instead. Have Luke and Kylo confrontation be that Luke believed a vision (cloudy the future is!) of his student going bad even though it was incorrect and born out of Luke's own inner fears from his father going bad (they can show US this, if not Kylo)...and by the very act of threatening to kill him based off that bad vision info, Kylo sees Luke as a threat and THAT is what turns his ear to Snoke and corruption. At least in that situation, Luke's guilt at his own failure would be wholly justified. I would still argue that instead of going off to die, he would go off to learn about how to rectify his mistake, if he could.
In the end, Luke learned lessons in ROTJ that RJ has him UNLEARN just to make his failure plot line work. People like to say "This is who Luke has always been, look how he behaved in ROTJ!"...but my argument is that those are HUGE life lessons he learned about family, and love, and belief in the good in people. Kylo HAS good in him, he mentioned it in TFA. So how Vader got a pass "I won't fight you father, there is still good in you, I feel it"....and Kylo gets a summarily almost executed, before Luke runs away...is just tone deaf to me.
Luke in TLJ can BE a failure. But he needs to be a failure that matches with who he was, what he'd learned, and what that would turn him into. I argue that's not an "I'm a grumpy hermit who wants nothing to do with anything" situation, and JJ and Lawrence Kasdan certainly didn't write him that way. In fact JJ has told Mark that initially he was going to have the rocks around Luke levitating to show how "one" with the force he'd become when Rey arrived. He decided it would have been over the top and wanted a quieter more reverent scene between the two to end on...but it shows that RJ's "he's disconnected from the force for years" bullshit was a plot point he invented just so he could hand wave the fact that Luke hadn't contacted his sister, couldn't feel the strife in the galaxy, or the falcon landing ect. and to serve the rest of his Luke plot points (like the reason no force ghosts were around to help Luke with his issues).
Anyways, re: above.
Here's my issue with Luke. I have zero problems with a failure arc for Luke late in his life. I just think it was executed disastrously AND destroys the obvious setup by JJ for no other reason than to stroke RJ's narcissistic ego (sidebar: there's people out there that he attended film school with who like him, but are under no compunction to believe he is anything but a narcissist, so not my words).
I digress: In TFA, JJ has Luke go to an island, the one with the first Jedi temple. We know from Han that he went there after a student went bad. Rey finds him at the end of TFA, dressed in regal Jedi robes. The script eludes to the fact that Luke went there with a purpose in mind, and when Rey shows up with his old lightsaber, he gives her a look that is described in the script like so:
Rey stares, knowing exactly who it is. But she just stares
for what seems like forever. Until he finally TURNS, SLOWLY,
to her. Pulls back his hood.
IT IS LUKE SKYWALKER.
Older now, white hair, bearded. He looks at Rey. A kindness
in his eyes, but there's something tortured, too. He doesn't
need to ask her who she is, or what she is doing here. His
look says it all.
In response, Rey pulls something from the pack.
LUKE'S LIGHTSABER.
And she holds it out to him. An offer. A plea. The galaxy's
only hope.
HOLD ON LUKE SKYWALKER'S INCREDIBLE FACE, amazed and
conflicted at what he sees, as our MUSIC BUILDS, the promise
of an adventure, just beginning...
To me, the above scene (italicizations by me) reads like JJ and Kasdan intended not only that Luke knows who Rey is, but that he's reverent about the lightsaber and portents she represents...
Now we move to TLJ.
RJ wanted to pick up on that exact scene. I'm unsure why. So he does, only he makes his first subversion and has Luke carelessly toss the saber over his shoulder for a gag (not a gag I appreciated, but it's fine). This would be fine I guess, if the next few scenes didn't utterly dismantle the setup in TFA. Luke IMMEDIATELY changes from his regal Jedi Robes (Conflict #1), into his dank, brown hermit-wear. Asks who the hell Rey is (TFA conflict #2), and then refuses to even engage with her. Chewie literally has to come up the hill and bash his door in to get him to even pay attention. Then we get the cave/tree scene with the Jedi texts and Luke saying he came to Ach-to to die and kill off the Jedi order (TFA conflict #3).
Conflict #1: Luke has ZERO reasons to be wearing his Jedi Robes as she arrives, only to change into permanent hermit gear in the next scene. The reason? RJ needed him to be rejecting the Jedi Order, not magnifying it. It's a bullshit reason that undoes the final scene in TFA.
Conflict #2: The script of JJ and Kasdan's TFA states that Luke knew who Rey was. RJ's script conflicts with that to make sure that Rey and Luke have no connection established so that he would NEED to be nice to her or help her. RJ does this often in his script, basically allowing one decision to dictate another absolutely with no malleability...so he can say later "this is the ONLY way it could go".
Conflict #3: If you are on the run from Snoke, your wayward, evil student Kylo Ren, and the rest of the First Order (though how he knows who the FO is when he's been gone and supposedly disconnected from the force for 6 years and they are essentially a brand new threat, I don't know) AND from your own mistakes...why you as Jedi Master would go to the damned FIRST JEDI TEMPLE...to die and kill off the Jedi Order....is beyond me. He may as well have thrown up a big blinking space sign that reads "Kylo, find Luke here!" I'm convinced that JJ and Kasdan intended Luke to go to the Temple with a purpose, learn why his student went awry, and study/meditate on how to fix it...not to die.
It also bothers the absolute shit out of me that RJ chose to have Luke talk to the audience and discount the prequels (RJ is kind of a dick about how he speaks about Lucas, and I find it highly disrespectful) by saying that the Jedi were lazy and bad and ALLOWED Darth Sidious to rise and create the Empire and enslave the galaxy. Meanwhile, the point of the prequels was that the Jedi were stuck in their ways after a thousand generations, and the mire made way for the most powerful Sith in generations to mask his actions and slide through the ranks and corrupt one of their own. Make no mistake, Mace Windu had Sidious dead to godamned rights in ROTS and would have beaten him if Anakin hadn't intervened. The point being that the Jedi, though too stuck in their ways, we're still generally a force of good who allowed their mandate of protection to get out of hand because a Sith was pupating everyone. RJ literally STEALS Palatines entire master plan out from under him and has Luke blame the Jedi instead. It drives me batty.
Anyways, my whole longwinded point here is that for me...it's not about Luke being a failure. I'm totally fine with that, but his reasons are bad, and his actions while being a failure don't reflect that of the man he once was in any way. Here's the setup I would have used instead. Have Luke and Kylo confrontation be that Luke believed a vision (cloudy the future is!) of his student going bad even though it was incorrect and born out of Luke's own inner fears from his father going bad (they can show US this, if not Kylo)...and by the very act of threatening to kill him based off that bad vision info, Kylo sees Luke as a threat and THAT is what turns his ear to Snoke and corruption. At least in that situation, Luke's guilt at his own failure would be wholly justified. I would still argue that instead of going off to die, he would go off to learn about how to rectify his mistake, if he could.
In the end, Luke learned lessons in ROTJ that RJ has him UNLEARN just to make his failure plot line work. People like to say "This is who Luke has always been, look how he behaved in ROTJ!"...but my argument is that those are HUGE life lessons he learned about family, and love, and belief in the good in people. Kylo HAS good in him, he mentioned it in TFA. So how Vader got a pass "I won't fight you father, there is still good in you, I feel it"....and Kylo gets a summarily almost executed, before Luke runs away...is just tone deaf to me.
Luke in TLJ can BE a failure. But he needs to be a failure that matches with who he was, what he'd learned, and what that would turn him into. I argue that's not an "I'm a grumpy hermit who wants nothing to do with anything" situation, and JJ and Lawrence Kasdan certainly didn't write him that way. In fact JJ has told Mark that initially he was going to have the rocks around Luke levitating to show how "one" with the force he'd become when Rey arrived. He decided it would have been over the top and wanted a quieter more reverent scene between the two to end on...but it shows that RJ's "he's disconnected from the force for years" bullshit was a plot point he invented just so he could hand wave the fact that Luke hadn't contacted his sister, couldn't feel the strife in the galaxy, or the falcon landing ect. and to serve the rest of his Luke plot points (like the reason no force ghosts were around to help Luke with his issues).
