I've made this point so many times and it never seems to sink in.
There are innumerable problems with TLJ, but the biggest by far is this. And the movie's defenders never seem to be able to understand it at all. They'll argue with the strawman version all day, claiming that their taste is more sophisticated and deeper because they like a darker, broken, washed up Luke and anybody who doesn't like it just wants childish levels of moral simplicity.
But the OT isn't actually childish in that way. Luke is complex and he has a real arc throughout that story.
And because he has a specific and well crafted character arc, when he shows up in TLJ as the polar opposite of the man we knew, that is pretty jarring. It's jarring, not because it's impossible to write a story where Luke went from the hopeful hero who struggled with but ultimately rejects the dark side and redeems his father in the process to a sad husk of a man years later.
I might question the wisdom of that direction more than other directions, but I can think of several ways to do it well.
That’s never been the problem. The problem is that none of Luke's character change is earned or explained within the film, so it makes zero actual sense. And when I talk to TLJ fans about this, they'll deflect and say that Luke being a hermit is explained by his failures with Kylo as if *that* is the core issue I'm concerned about. It's not.
Luke self-imposing exile after trying to kill his own nephew makes some sense.
What makes no sense at all is how Luke's entire OT character arc was completely reversed and undone in between RotJ and TFA, such that he'd ever even remotely consider killing his own nephew over a vision (remember how a key part of his early Jedi training involved learning to separate force visions from reality and how he literally lost a hand learning that lesson?), let alone actually begin to take action.
No excuse gets you around this problem.
All of the the character changes that would have had to have happened leading to Luke having any intent whatsoever of killing Ben and then to display the level of absolute cowardice thar is required for him to run away while he knows Kylo Ren is out there trying to glorify Vader and join the dark side, is just missing from the entire sequel trilogy. There's zero explanation for how Luke went from a hero who wins through refusing to kill his father and who instead offers him charity, compassion, and redemption... To a guy who would get so freaked out by a little nightmare that he tries to kill his nephew and then runs away, leaving him to become Vader 2.0.
There are innumerable problems with TLJ, but the biggest by far is this. And the movie's defenders never seem to be able to understand it at all. They'll argue with the strawman version all day, claiming that their taste is more sophisticated and deeper because they like a darker, broken, washed up Luke and anybody who doesn't like it just wants childish levels of moral simplicity.
But the OT isn't actually childish in that way. Luke is complex and he has a real arc throughout that story.
And because he has a specific and well crafted character arc, when he shows up in TLJ as the polar opposite of the man we knew, that is pretty jarring. It's jarring, not because it's impossible to write a story where Luke went from the hopeful hero who struggled with but ultimately rejects the dark side and redeems his father in the process to a sad husk of a man years later.
I might question the wisdom of that direction more than other directions, but I can think of several ways to do it well.
That’s never been the problem. The problem is that none of Luke's character change is earned or explained within the film, so it makes zero actual sense. And when I talk to TLJ fans about this, they'll deflect and say that Luke being a hermit is explained by his failures with Kylo as if *that* is the core issue I'm concerned about. It's not.
Luke self-imposing exile after trying to kill his own nephew makes some sense.
What makes no sense at all is how Luke's entire OT character arc was completely reversed and undone in between RotJ and TFA, such that he'd ever even remotely consider killing his own nephew over a vision (remember how a key part of his early Jedi training involved learning to separate force visions from reality and how he literally lost a hand learning that lesson?), let alone actually begin to take action.
No excuse gets you around this problem.
All of the the character changes that would have had to have happened leading to Luke having any intent whatsoever of killing Ben and then to display the level of absolute cowardice thar is required for him to run away while he knows Kylo Ren is out there trying to glorify Vader and join the dark side, is just missing from the entire sequel trilogy. There's zero explanation for how Luke went from a hero who wins through refusing to kill his father and who instead offers him charity, compassion, and redemption... To a guy who would get so freaked out by a little nightmare that he tries to kill his nephew and then runs away, leaving him to become Vader 2.0.
https://x.com/CitizenAmedia/status/2061891600436048084
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