I can understand this idea. If you were big into the EU, you were running on about 25 years of "The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Badass." To see Luke fall like that would be jarring. But that doesn't excuse the response to that movie.
If you check the original trilogy, Luke used the force to make a shot that Wedge made without the force, got his hand chopped off, and then made an appeal to his dad. He was hardly the Superman that later fanfic made him out to be
Right? Also, he was basically a kid who got a loaded gun shoved into his hands, and pushed at Vader. Then, apparently, entirely forgotten by the galaxy. Real US war veteran vibes. "Glad you saved us, why are you still here?"
I didn't want him to be the same person, but it feels super jarring seeing how after everything in the ot and his unwavering belief in space Hitler, we are supposed to believe that cause of some bad feelings of the dark side, he thinks about killing his own sleeping nephew, come on dude
have you never heard anyone fantasize about a time traveller killing Hitler before he rose to power, and how many lives could be saved by murdering one sleeping child?
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Luke arrived too late to save Alderaan, but if he could prevent that from happening again, then he had a duty.
consider that by TLJ, Luke is no longer in the fight, but an aging veteran, who saw a vision that his friends/family would die and everything he fought for his whole life would be destroyed. And for a moment he thought of taking a drastic step to save it all. the fear of loss was his undoing
He didn't have an unwavering belief in space Hitler. He had a complex and wavering belief in space Hitler. He's temporarily driven to fight Vader, the same way he considers killing Kylo, before his better nature takes over. This idea that a complex Luke is "character assassination" is wild.
Luke in the original trilogy isn't some grand paragon of the Jedi ways. He's a good person, but he's also sometimes impulsive, sometimes angry, sometimes doubtful of himself. That all carries over into the sequels, with a Luke who is somewhat cynical and tormented, but also deeply wise. It's great.
I see your point, and again, I agree with most of it, but you can't compare being driven to fight space Hitler over his friends and sister on the brink of death, to actually considering, pointing and igniting his lighsaber to his sleeping, defenseless, underage nephew, AND after, giving up
People wanted that because it generally makes for better media when the alternative is just writing a beloved character very differently with no justification other than “people change”. You’d be right if we saw the transformation, but just telling us is famously the wrong way to write a character.
To continue the characters story… and actually show the character growing and developing. You’re right that a character changing over the years and growing is important they didn’t do that they just said “he is this way now”. The poor choice to time skip away from beloved characters led to this.
The only place Rian Johnson could go after the horseshit he was forced to shovel by JJ is where he did. Luke becoming a bitter hermit is the only way the stupid concept of him leaving in the first place works.
This is a good point that rarely gets brought up. I’m pretty love/dislike with TLJ. I don’t really like that it sidelines Finn, but the visuals are so strong and I think a lot of what I don’t like ties into RoS not picking anything up from it, so it’s full of dead ends through no fault of its own
Not only does RoS not pick anything up, but it spends half its runtime undoing everything TLJ did. It makes TLJ a side story instead of the central part of the trilogy, and it's one of the major reasons RoS is the worst Star Wars movie ever (aside from, maybe, the ewok movies)
The hate I have for RoS just makes any negative feelings I have about TLJ feel so insignificant in comparison. In many ways it killed my enthusiasm for Star Wars in general
I completely agree that JJ kicked too many cans down the road as he always does, but I also think there are tons of writers who could have run with it and made Luke's evolution between the OT and the sequels more consistent and convincing.
There were 40 years between IV and VIII. He'd already lost a lot of his wide-eyed excitement by RotJ, and he spent the next few decades with even more heartache and pain and loss.
I'd say it's very realistic that he ended up where he did.
And part of how he acted around Rey was to get her to leave.
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you cant character assasinate people who arent real
I'd be a bit done with society too.
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Luke arrived too late to save Alderaan, but if he could prevent that from happening again, then he had a duty.
I'd say it's very realistic that he ended up where he did.
And part of how he acted around Rey was to get her to leave.