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umm Ashoka WAS hated initally thing is, in her case it was by design. and she was intended to EVOLVE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msgQ6WbIHyc good video on it there

There is no character assassination of Luke. Luke was a feth up the entire time. Even when he was getting gak done he was doing it stumbling his way through it all. Are you remembering Jedi correctly? Because I don't think Lukes plan was to not have force manipulation work, fall into the rancor pit, have to kill a monsters and get tied up, taken to a sarlac pit, and have to kill a ton of people on his way out to "save" his friends. WHICH BTW, he did by being the distraction. He didn't actually save any of them. He just jumped around a couple skiffs chopping wood with his light saber while they did the actual rescuing.

But thats what happens. Because Luke kind of sucks.

Then he goes to Endor. And he gets brought to the Emperor. And he's all I will convince my dad to help me. But he doesn't. He ends up ALMOST going dark side and angrily chopping wood onto his dad till he removes his hand. THEN he does the one thing he is really actually great at which is turn back from the dark side and stand his ground. His plan was never to get almost killed by a bunch of lightning and then have his Dad do the actual work of killing the Emperor.

Remember when Luke was a feth up and almost died in the snow?

There is no character assassination of Luke in the sequels. The Sequels handle Luke PERFECTLY. That is EXACTLY who he should be growing up to be. The issue is you have 30-40 years of thinking of Luke as the main character filled with EU garbage that turns him into a super competent savior while ignoring everything that he actually is. Which is a confused, sad, person who wallows on his failures and stumbles his way through situations he is not prepared for.

 Lance845 wrote:
There is no character assassination of Luke. Luke was a feth up the entire time. Even when he was getting gak done he was doing it stumbling his way through it all. Are you remembering Jedi correctly? Because I don't think Lukes plan was to not have force manipulation work, fall into the rancor pit, have to kill a monsters and get tied up, taken to a sarlac pit, and have to kill a ton of people on his way out to "save" his friends. WHICH BTW, he did by being the distraction. He didn't actually save any of them. He just jumped around a couple skiffs chopping wood with his light saber while they did the actual rescuing.

But thats what happens. Because Luke kind of sucks.

Then he goes to Endor. And he gets brought to the Emperor. And he's all I will convince my dad to help me. But he doesn't. He ends up ALMOST going dark side and angrily chopping wood onto his dad till he removes his hand. THEN he does the one thing he is really actually great at which is turn back from the dark side and stand his ground. His plan was never to get almost killed by a bunch of lightning and then have his Dad do the actual work of killing the Emperor.

Remember when Luke was a feth up and almost died in the snow?

There is no character assassination of Luke in the sequels. The Sequels handle Luke PERFECTLY. That is EXACTLY who he should be growing up to be. The issue is you have 30-40 years of thinking of Luke as the main character filled with EU garbage that turns him into a super competent savior while ignoring everything that he actually is. Which is a confused, sad, person who wallows on his failures and stumbles his way through situations he is not prepared for.

dude, anyone whose plans go perfectly every time without having to change them and iprovise is the worst kind of mary sue

BrianDavion wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
There is no character assassination of Luke. Luke was a feth up the entire time. Even when he was getting gak done he was doing it stumbling his way through it all. Are you remembering Jedi correctly? Because I don't think Lukes plan was to not have force manipulation work, fall into the rancor pit, have to kill a monsters and get tied up, taken to a sarlac pit, and have to kill a ton of people on his way out to "save" his friends. WHICH BTW, he did by being the distraction. He didn't actually save any of them. He just jumped around a couple skiffs chopping wood with his light saber while they did the actual rescuing.

But thats what happens. Because Luke kind of sucks.

Then he goes to Endor. And he gets brought to the Emperor. And he's all I will convince my dad to help me. But he doesn't. He ends up ALMOST going dark side and angrily chopping wood onto his dad till he removes his hand. THEN he does the one thing he is really actually great at which is turn back from the dark side and stand his ground. His plan was never to get almost killed by a bunch of lightning and then have his Dad do the actual work of killing the Emperor.

Remember when Luke was a feth up and almost died in the snow?

There is no character assassination of Luke in the sequels. The Sequels handle Luke PERFECTLY. That is EXACTLY who he should be growing up to be. The issue is you have 30-40 years of thinking of Luke as the main character filled with EU garbage that turns him into a super competent savior while ignoring everything that he actually is. Which is a confused, sad, person who wallows on his failures and stumbles his way through situations he is not prepared for.

dude, anyone whose plans go perfectly every time without having to change them and iprovise is the worst kind of mary sue

Right. And then he went to go make a Jedi Academy, and over years he made mistakes. And then he wallowed on his failures. The EU Luke is the worst kind of Mary Sue. The movie Luke is a regular kid whos been in over his head since the day we met him.

NONE of Lukes plans work out in any of the original 3 movies.He succeeds at any of those situations because of OTHER people. When the chips are down and Luke is the boss at the Academy he has nobody else to turn to. It all lies on his shoulders. And we have never seen him succeed on his own at anything.

Lance, you are reaching conclusions not supported by your evidence.

Luke, in the course of his character arc, is certainly not defined by everything going according to his master plan, No one claimed that ITT. He’s also not defined by emotional serenity or hyper competence. Again, no one claimed that ITT.

The point of his arc is, he’s not sure what he is supposed to do and his mentors are largely unreliable so he has to intuit the correct path, and pursue it with faith even when it seems to be against all odds. This is as true with his one-in-a-millions shot in ANH as it is with his refusal to play the Emperor’s game in RotJ.

His arc is complete when he sees his father take his place at the side of Obi-Wan and Yoda. At that point, his story ends because his main conflict had been not knowing whether he should trust his feelings. Anakin’s last words to Luke are “You were right about me. Tell your sister, you were right.”

The resolution of this conflict is what allows Luke to become a Jedi Master, as Togusa outlined above. And that is what we see in the finale of The Mandalorian.

What we see in the Sequel Trilogy is someone who seemingly forgot everything that happened to him during his arc, someone who never developed from being unsure to finding that he can and should trust his feelings.

 Manchu wrote:

The resolution of this conflict is what allows Luke to become a Jedi Master, as Togusa outlined above. And that is what we see in the finale of The Mandalorian.

What we see in the Sequel Trilogy is someone who seemingly forgot everything that happened to him during his arc, someone who never developed from being unsure to finding that he can and should trust his feelings.

What you see at the end of Mano is a Luke that has reached a place of confidence with a mission. He is a "Master" in that he knows the skills well enough. But Ezra at the end of Rebels was closer to a master in his giving himself over to the force and the peace and power that comes with that then Luke at the end of RotJ who was right but hasn't reach that point yet.

Like Yoda says to Luke in the sequels. His mind is always looking to the future and the past. Never the here and now. He wallows on what was and what could be instead of doing whats right in the moment. Thats not a lesson we saw Luke really learn. He didn't forget everything. He never LEARNED everything. And when he saw Ben becoming the next Vader he freaked out. And then, with those deaths of his charges around him, with the loss of his nephew, he wallowed as Luke is want to do.

This thread has made me realise something very interesting; the Emperor is defeated not by being out-Forced by a Jedi, but by Anakin abandoning his twisted beliefs for basic human emotion, his love for his son.

Yet this flies totally in the face of Yoda (and presumably the Jedi) “no attachment” teachings. If Luke and Anakin hadn’t had that attachment, they wouldn’t have won.

It ties in with one of the annoyances I have with The Last Jedi, where Yoda burns the Jedi texts. For a brief moment it looked like Yoda was admitting to Luke that he got things very, very wrong and that dogma doesn’t matter, Jedi or Sith, what matters is that you’re a good person. That’s a very interesting core for the films and builds on the earlier “force being out of balance” theme from the prequels. Unfortunately they undermined that whole concept by Rey just having the books anyway

 Jadenim wrote:
This thread has made me realise something very interesting; the Emperor is defeated not by being out-Forced by a Jedi, but by Anakin abandoning his twisted beliefs for basic human emotion, his love for his son.

Yet this flies totally in the face of Yoda (and presumably the Jedi) “no attachment” teachings. If Luke and Anakin hadn’t had that attachment, they wouldn’t have won.

It ties in with one of the annoyances I have with The Last Jedi, where Yoda burns the Jedi texts. For a brief moment it looked like Yoda was admitting to Luke that he got things very, very wrong and that dogma doesn’t matter, Jedi or Sith, what matters is that you’re a good person. Unfortunately they undermined that whole concept by Rey just having the books anyway

Which is where a New Jedi or whatever series would be interesting.

IIRC the EU started with Luke having married Jedi and training adults before the prequels decided that Jedi are monks trained from infancy. Seeing Luke or Rey or whomever trying to build a more emotionally healthy Jedi order would be cool.

Or alternately if the High Republic shows the Jedi becoming stricker and more insular and banning families etc.

It’s pretty rich for Yoda to criticize Luke for not paying attention to the present.

This is the same Yoda who hung out with Palpatine on the daily while wondering who the Dark Lord of the Sith might be. Same Yoda that couldn’t see what was up with Anakin, despite the VERY obvious warning signs up to and including Anakin flat-out begging for help. Same Yoda that couldn’t figure out that the key issue was the relationship between father and son, rather than Light and Darkness.

What was the “here and now” for Luke? It was his friends’ suffering on Bespin. It was the turmoil deep within his father, to which Obi-Wan and Yoda were totally blind. The man who saw the good in notorious galactic war criminal Darth Vader would never have contemplated murdering his own nephew in his sleep.

Favreau and Filoni are not motivated to desperately overcomplicate things for the sake of being “interesting.” They understand the simplicity of narrative is what lends it depth and meaning. That is why they were able to write that scene in the finale with Luke, which is what we all needed.

The same Yoda passing on his hard earned wisdom you mean?

The here and now was a scared and angry kid that needed help and family not fear of what he might be.

Don’t get me wrong, ESB Yoda had some wise lessons to pass on to Luke just in terms of the more mundane things Jedi need to know. But the big picture stuff Yoda got completely wrong.

Also a here and now was a girl that was looking for guidance and went through a lot of trouble to find the only person she could get help from only to be turned away because of his own fear of what might be if he fails again.

I don’t accept that characterization as authentic for Luke. I look forward to Jon and Dave eventually clarifying that was an alternate future avoided by some interdimensional adventure Ahsoka goes on.

Personnaly I loved the characterisation of Luke in the Mandalorian and in the sequel trilogy and I don't see them as mutually exclusive.

In the Mandalorian, Luke is victorious. He has saved the galaxy and is rebuilding the Jedi Temple and things, despite some harship are comming along nicely. He immersed himself in his new duty as a Jedi Master, modelled himself after his masters Obi-Wan and Yoda and added a touch of himself here and there. He became powerful and in control, but at the same time he lost his youthful naivety and innocence, the innocence and naivity that actually made him triumph over the Emperor. Blinded by his newfound sense of gravitas and his responsabilities over a alaxy still in turmoil and the rise of a new great power of the dark side, he considers for a brief moment doing the unthinkable, the exact opposite of what his younger self did: sacrifice a familly member for the greater good. The fact that he didn't shows that even as an aged master, Luke still has a bit of the young self in him left. That conflict between his newfound assurance, sense of gravitas and responsability as the "Jedi Master" vs his younger self makes him a broken man for a while. Yet, in the end, his hope in the future is restaured and with his sacrifice he restaures hope for the galaxy as a whole. That's a very good story arc. It simply wasn't what many were expecting. They were expecting Luke to always be the hero, to not be seen at his lowest in the sequel. Many wanted to see Luke the old hero, not Luke the broken hero and the former they could only see for a few minutes at the end of episode VIII.

What if Grogu is such a massive problem for Luke that that's what MAKES him so jumpy about Ben turning to the dark side? That Luke is learning from other mistakes after RoTJ?

We've seen Grogu do some very dubious things, and he's basically been travelling the galaxy with a pretty brutal group for the last year or so.

(Also - Yoda does have a sense of humour outwith his bluff on Dagobah. He rips right into Obi-wan in front of the Padwans in AotC - "Lost a planet, master Obi-wan has. How embarassing". Note that this may be the one and only good thing about AotC)

 Manchu wrote:
I don’t accept that characterization as authentic for Luke. I look forward to Jon and Dave eventually clarifying that was an alternate future avoided by some interdimensional adventure Ahsoka goes on.

Always in motion the future is.

Wow. That was pretty easy.

I'd argue that Luke's plans in RotJ work out pretty well overall - he sets out to rescue Han and redeem his father, in both cases he succeeds and in both cases he runs up against complications brought on by highly proficient scheming overlord types. He has come a long way from being the stumbling farm boy in the original movie.

I would also argue that Luke isn't necessarily a Mary Sue in the old EU stories as a rule - there are a number of good stories with him where he is wrestling with his own doubts about how best to carry on the Jedi legacy etc, but I think we can acknowledge that there were plenty of cases (especially when he's presented as an external character who we don't see the perspective of) where he comes off as this infallible plot device used to steer the perspective characters on the Path to Righteousness through his inarguable wisdom rather than forcing them to earn hard-won wisdom the way he had to. The best of Legends exists in the same timeline as the worst of Legends, and people who found him to be a great character in those books or those who found him to be an insufferable mary sue aren't objectively right or wrong: they just didn't read all the same stuff.

For what it's worth I don't think his character was assassinated in the Disney-era, a lot of the examples people cite turn out to be hyperbole or carefully selected excerpts taken out of context; the only way I see that he's truly been diminished in the canon material is that the galaxy is now presented as large enough and complicated enough that not everyone knows about him - or knows the exact correct details of his life, what he's doing, where he is, etc. It's not about making Luke less important, it's about selling the idea that the Galaxy is a big place.

BrianDavion wrote:
umm Ashoka WAS hated initally thing is, in her case it was by design. and she was intended to EVOLVE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msgQ6WbIHyc good video on it there

I've seen this video - and it's pretty ridiculous in its deification of Filoni. They course-corrected a flagging character, that's not a new thing in animation. He deserves props for that course correction, and developing an endearing character that the fandom has embraced, but doesn't make him a 4D Chess Master.

 Jadenim wrote:
This thread has made me realise something very interesting; the Emperor is defeated not by being out-Forced by a Jedi, but by Anakin abandoning his twisted beliefs for basic human emotion, his love for his son.

Yet this flies totally in the face of Yoda (and presumably the Jedi) “no attachment” teachings. If Luke and Anakin hadn’t had that attachment, they wouldn’t have won.

It ties in with one of the annoyances I have with The Last Jedi, where Yoda burns the Jedi texts. For a brief moment it looked like Yoda was admitting to Luke that he got things very, very wrong and that dogma doesn’t matter, Jedi or Sith, what matters is that you’re a good person. That’s a very interesting core for the films and builds on the earlier “force being out of balance” theme from the prequels. Unfortunately they undermined that whole concept by Rey just having the books anyway

I rather like that bit, Yoda died believing that Luke being Vader's son was going to be a major obstacle he'd need to overcome and it ended up being the thing that saved his life, and the galaxy. It makes sense then that his appearing to Luke again to impart one final bit of wisdom should be the bit he gained after dying: to trust the future to those who come after and to trust them to do what he couldn't.

Besides that, I feel like a lot of people missed the shot of the books in the drawer on the Millenium Falcon at the end of TLJ which I guess muddled the whole thing.

 Manchu wrote:
I don’t accept that characterization as authentic for Luke. I look forward to Jon and Dave eventually clarifying that was an alternate future avoided by some interdimensional adventure Ahsoka goes on.

Once again, that really, really isn't going to happen.

Of the group that actively, loudly, and vocally hate on the Sequels, only a sub-category of them hate them so much that they don't consume Star Wars media. In that group, you have further sub-categories you need to remove from consideration: people who refuse to consume any Star Wars so long as Disney owns it, people who have in fact aged out of the target demographic and wouldn't be consuming Star Wars media anyway, people who make a big stink about it online but still buy the tickets and subscriptions and toys anyway. When you are left only with the people who truly do not read, watch, or otherwise consume Star Wars stuff but would if they were catered to - how much money is Disney actually losing?

How does that money compare to the gains they get from market awareness after say, one ad campaign? Or middle-class moms looking to distract their kids for an afternoon while they go out for a girl's night? More importantly, how does that compare to the 8-10 year olds who enjoyed those movies and will ask their parents for Star Wars stuff for the next five years, who'll spend their first personal money on Star Wars comics, books, and video games (if EA ever gets around to making any)? How does that market compare to the market they stand to alienate by making such a change?

This isn't new ground either, Lucasfilm is going to rehabilitate the Sequels the same way they rehabilitated the Prequels, they're even using the same people to do it. And just as I have had to put up with y'all talking about the hidden depths of the 'bring balance to the force' idiocy you too will have to listen to people say 'well actually, Rey looking at the infinite reflections of her own duplicates proves they always intended for her to be a Palpatine because...' forever and ever.

I’m interested in how Luke will deal with training someone that’s more powerful in the Force than he?

 Graphite wrote:
(Also - Yoda does have a sense of humour outwith his bluff on Dagobah. He rips right into Obi-wan in front of the Padwans in AotC - "Lost a planet, master Obi-wan has. How embarassing". Note that this may be the one and only good thing about AotC)

He also goes full Giggly Dagobah Yoda for a bit in a very decent early Clone Wars episode.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m interested in how Luke will deal with training someone that’s more powerful in the Force than he?

If he's still juggling Grogu by the time Ben Solo shows up on the scene, how his Grogu going to react to his steady descent? Will Grogu have some kind of mental connection with Snoke?

Little puzzling question about the characterisation of a non-Jedi character. Bo-Katan seems to be dead set in leading Mandalore again yet in all her previous incarnation, while she had some leadership, never was "running for the crown". In Clone Wars, she is second in command to Pre Vizla and when he gets killed she seeks to get revenge against Maul. When the Republic comes to her aid and capture's Maul, she is left as the nominal leader of the planet following the death of her sister and her position as the leader of the "anti-Maul" resistence, but she obviously doesn't seem to enjoy the position and doesn't seem to even think she's fit for it, declaring herself "only good at war". In Rebels, she leads a cell of anti-imperial rebels that join forces with the titular character to free Mandalore from the Empire. She refuses to take command and Sabine has to coax her into taking once again the mantle of leader of Mandalore by giving her the Darksaber. Then of course, things go bad again and the Empire destroy Mandalore and most of its population. Obviously, Bo-Katan could still be described as a "fervant nationalist" believing that Mandalorian should be a proud, independant and feared civilisation of warriors and craftsmen, but why is she now passed from reluctant and self doubting leader to ambitious one?

I imagine the circumstances that lead to her losing the Darksaber (and Mandalore itself) probably factor a lot into that. Perhaps the fact that she was gifted it the first time caused someone to challenge her leadership at a critical moment, or sowed dissent in the ranks.

Definite novel material.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m interested in how Luke will deal with training someone that’s more powerful in the Force than he?

Badly, according to the sequels.


On that, it actually just struck me, as a result of the mention above of Yoda not seeing the Sith Lord right in front of him for all that time, that Palpatine's reveal actually makes Luke's mistreatment of Ben Solo make more sense. TLJ revealed that Luke contemplated (but backed out from) killing Ben because he could sense nothing but darkness inside him, and that coupled with Ben's raw power in the Force was going to lead to disaster. But we're shown over all three of the movies that Ben was conflicted, and even at his worst still, like Vader, had that kernel of good still inside. So what gives?

Well, Palpatine does. He explains in Rise that he was manipulating everything behind the scenes. And it seems perfectly reasonable that the guy who managed to hide his presence even from Jedi Council members in the same room, and who successfully clouded the vision of the most powerful of the Jedi so that even they couldn't see what was coming, could similarly manipulate Luke so that when he looked at Ben all he saw was the potential for darkness, rather than the various other paths that Ben could potentially have taken.


All of which has nothing to do with the Mandalorian, obviously, but was relevant to the side-discussion going on in here as a result of the 'different' portrayal of Luke. Which, for me, worked fine - I don't see the Mandalorian's take as a different one. As someone else said above, this is a Luke who has just defeated the Empire, and is committed to rebuilding the Jedi order. The sequel Luke is the Luke that has that optimism smacked out of him in the most brutal fashion, and who has had 30 years to learn just how rubbish the Jedi Order was right before their fall. I get that this isn't the Luke a lot of people wanted (I have no idea why... Grumpy Old Man Luke was an infinitely more entertaining character than wax-model Serene Jedi Luke from RotJ) but it is a reasonable progression of the character.

I would have totally been ok with Grumpy Old Man Luke that is just secretly testing Rey the whole time, ala Yoda in Empire.

But there was no reveal, no ah hah moment, Luke really was just that cynical and jaded.

Even, like, the lightsaber toss could have been framed as, "you saw what I wanted you to see..."

insaniak. if you remember it wasn’t just that Palpatine was hiding his presence from the Jedi Council but also that the Jedi themselves had a diminished connection to the Force. The apparent explanation for that was specifically that they did not pay enough attention to the here and now.This is the basis of Qui-Gon’s emphasis on the so-called Living Force and his refusal to go along with Council politics.

Compel, you are totally right; Luke putting on an act to test Rey like Yoda tested him would have been interesting and that’s what they seemed to be setting up but unfortunately no there was no depth to it, just boring edginess.

Regarding Bo-Katan, I still think she is being set up as a potential villain or at least as someone flirting with outright villainy.

 Manchu wrote:
Regarding Bo-Katan, I still think she is being set up as a potential villain or at least as someone flirting with outright villainy.

I can't remember any female character who actively saught power who wasn't a villain. Seeking power in general is considered villainous in most occasion though I think I can remember a few male heroes seeking a position of leadership.

Leia, Padme, Mon Mothma all come to mind as heroic female characters who sought (and successfully gained) power.

It’s not just seeking power with Bo-Katan. She’s literally bent on world domination, which is a classic villain trope.

 Manchu wrote:
Leia, Padme, Mon Mothma all come to mind as heroic female characters who sought (and successfully gained) power.

None of them sought power. Leia was adopted into royalty when she was a baby and isn't a leader of the rebellion in the first trilogy and operates as a leader of a resistence movement in the sequel on the basis of her experience and fame. Mon Mothma is introduced as a leader without any explanation as to why. Padme is also a princess who basically got power bestowed upon her. None of them have in their story arc for objective the taking of power and the establishment of them at the top of a hierarchy.

It’s not just seeking power with Bo-Katan. She’s literally bent on world domination, which is a classic villain trope.

Is she? She seeks to reunite all Mandalorians and restaure her civilisation. Sure Mandalorian are traditionnaly ruled by some sort of monarch, the Mandalore, who rule based on his martial prowesses and military leadership which, if she takes power, would make her a despot, but I'm not sure it's a "world domination" trope like that of Palpatine for example. We have not seen yet who or why some would oppose her.

By that standard (with which I do not agree), SW tends to take the view that the desire to seize power is morally suspect. Has nothing to do with characters’ gender. Obviously, the prototypical example is Palpatine.

As for Bo-Katan, what you describe is why she is on the edge: is this about rebuilding the lost homeland or is this about her own ego? So far, it’s ambiguous.

 Manchu wrote:
By that standard (with which I do not agree), SW tends to take the view that the desire to seize power is morally suspect. Has nothing to do with characters’ gender.

It's a common trope that extands well beyond Star Wars. People who seek power are more often then not villains. I think I can count on the fingers of my hands the number of heroes, all men, who actively seek power. Power tends to be bestowed or even imposed upon heroes. They relunctantly accept it for various reasons.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmbitionIsEvil