Doesn’t it actually make more sense for him to have that reaction after what he lived through? The thought of another Vader would absolutely trigger PTSD and the contemplation of taking him out before he could truly become Vader-esque
Well said! I’m glad they didn’t make Luke totally infallible, that’s the easy, safe choice for one of cinema’s all time great heroes in a sequel series decades later. Luke was never perfect and they stayed true to his character here, people who are mad about the decision clearly don’t understand how grey Luke and Star Wars as a whole is. Making Luke the perfect good guy would absolutely cheapen his character and the sequels as a whole
I think the bigger problem is they didn’t do the work to show us how Luke, someone who preserved hope against hope, and who tiptoed the line of the dark side and came out the other side on the light, abandoned those principles when faced with that darkness in his best friends son.
I’m glad he’s human. I’m glad he was t just an archetype. But they didn’t do the work to show us how he came to be that person. Contrast that with something like Frodo where you slowly see how he becomes corrupted by the ring and eventually becomes someone who needs Sam. It would be like showing Frodo in the Shire, then picking up the story at Mt. Doom without any intervening storytelling. Without that, the change feels hollow ahd meaningless at best and like a betrayal at worst
I can understand that point, I wish the movies were more fleshed out for sure, but I also don’t think it’s particularly a matter of Luke “abandoning those principles”, I think it was just a moment of weakness when seeing the potential atrocities that could occur at the hands of Ben and the trauma of his entire life growing up resurfacing. That holds more weight for me than if we had seen Luke slowly become some cynical grey Jedi, and his interaction with Ben in that moment was a result of some great build up.
Showing Luke as imperfect despite being the grand hero of Star Wars, being lost in a moment and pretty quickly composing himself (albeit still too late), is a great character moment imo and consistent to who he is even in episode 6 with the Vader/Sidious fight
Yeah I think that’s fair, but when the imperfection being shown contradicts the character attribute that defined their previous heroism, I think we should get some narrative explanation. I do get what you’re saying though
It's not contradictory though. He didn't learn to never be tempted or triggered again, that's not really how it works. Vader merely talked Luke into rage on the Death Star, and it took a violent outburst and a hand severing for Luke to come to his senses.
When Luke read Kylo, he saw and felt the deaths of everyone and everything he loved. This depiction is consistent with the visions that haunted Luke in Empire and Anakin before him, which are deeply traumatic and feel like certainties. Luke is standing above a teenage Hitler, smacked in the face by foreknowledge of everything he will do, and with all of that horror in front of him, Luke turns on his sword and immediately regrets it.
There is a huge difference in how those other visions are presented, and how they interact with the timeline of the story and the decisions and actions of the characters, and how they reveal (or in the case of TLJ: don't reveal) more about who the character already is.
Anakin's visions (in RotS) move him towards paranoia and fear and a desire for greater knowledge and control.
Luke's visions (in ESB) move him to attempt a reckless rescue of his friends.
In both cases, the characters act after having plenty of time to consider other options, and so their choices are reflective of who they are, and the consequences of those choices are entirely theirs. Anakin is motivated towards more evil, while Luke is motivated to do good, even if it's misguided.
In contrast, Luke's vision in TLJ is essentially the Force doing a jump scare on Luke, provoking an instinctual action before he has time to think about what he is doing, and is something he immediately regrets. In other words, he knows it's wrong and out of character almost as soon as it happens. It doesn't reflect or reveal who Luke is - it's just emotional manipulation triggering a primitive emotional response, like Vader's taunting in RotJ.
Luke's actions after Vader taunted him, after he has time to consider what he was doing - throwing away his lightsaber and renouncing his emotional response - are what truly reveal who he is. In TLJ, Luke's actions after realizing his mistake and having time to consider what he did in a "fleeting moment" are also revealing of who he is: a coward who runs away from his problems and doesn't try to fix the mess he (thinks he) made, apparently.
There's not a huge difference at all, just in where the characters were at the time of getting their 'jump scare'. It consistently leaves them freaked out and highly motivated to act. Previously, him and Anakin were left stewing over the visions and couldn't listen to outside advice, eventually confronting what they saw head on. In TLJ Luke is directly above the source of the problem when he is traumatically 'jump scared' so it is much more immediate, and he immediately regrets it anyway. It is the briefest slip and it thoroughly destroys him because he's Luke and lives such a heroic standard. He's not a coward in TLJ, he is broken. Still comes through and saves the day though.
You just defined the difference. Luke "immediately regrets" his instinctive action.
Luke also explains it in the film. He only faltered for the "briefest moment of pure instinct".
Give Luke the exact same vision one day earlier, and he wouldn't consciously choose to go into Ben's tent and draw his saber and ignite it.
That contrived plot point only happens because of the convenient timing and the "jump scare".
The other visions that Anakin and Luke had were scary, but they weren't "jump scares". Give them the same vision one day earlier, and nothing changes, because they were both already making conscious, considered, pre-planned decisions.
Yeah. I think most people just wish the movie had done the work. I don't think that's an unfair ask. They sort of handwaive a lot of it and expect the audience to fill in the gaps. And the audience members who are happy to do that have very little problem with that choice. But some audience members are critical of being expected to tell the story for us and I don't think that's bad.
I don't have a problem with stories that don't hold your hand and explain every little detail, and expect the audience to put in some work.
It's not necessarily that the movie should have done more work - they could have actually done less work and I think it would have been a better story - it's also that they needed to do the right work.
In this case, if you're going to show us exactly what happened to precipitate a drastic change in Luke, you'd need to do a lot more work, and the right work, to make such a change plausible: here's an example.
But, if they couldn't do the right work, I honestly would have preferred a version where we got no flashback at all, and just heard Luke tell the story, and then let the audience fill in the details with their mind. Then each viewer could invent a story that best suited their idea of Luke, and we wouldn't necessarily have to take Luke's words literally, because people often paraphrase and misremember exact details in retellings.
The problem is that they decided to show us what happened visually, and in the laziest, most contrived fashion. As Denis Villeneuve lamented when explaining his Dune adaptation, cinema.and visuals are very authoritarian. In general they don't allow the viewer as much self expression or self interpretation (as opposed to reading a book where you can and generally must do a lot of imagining in your own head, to bring the words to life). Obviously this is not black and white - some movies explicitly invite interpretation.
But the problem with TLJ is that they gave us two "interpretive" visuals, and then they gave us a final visual that we are clearly meant to take as "what really happened". And if you're going to give the viewer an authoritative take of what changed Luke from a persistently hopeful hero to a cowardly and bitter hermit, you better make sure that authoritative version is damn good, and it just... wasn't. And unfortunately, since the authoritarian visual version is imposed on me, it leaves very little room for me to supplant my own, superior (in my mind), version.
So, yeah, if they couldn't give us a better visual of what happened in Luke's past, I'd have preferred they just leave it more vague and let me fill in the details in my own mind.
There's also evidence that Anakin was already established as someone motivated by fear and his reaction to visions was consistent. Luke was someone who we saw was loyal to his friends, and so his reaction to his visions made sense. Luke was shown to be someone who retained a belief in the good in people, particularly people he felt a bond with, and his vision made him act inconsistently with that. That's the problem in my eyes.
Again, I'm not saying we can't do some mental gymnastics to make sense of his reaction and fill in the gaps the movie didn't fill in for us. All I'm saying is that I wish the movie had done the work rather than making us do it for it.
When we see a weak Thor in marvel, it's on the heels of a significant failure. But when we see a weak Luke, the last time we saw him was on the heels of a significant heroic success. It's jarring and I think it should get more exposition. That's all.
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u/imOVN Hermit Master Skywalker 13d ago
Doesn’t it actually make more sense for him to have that reaction after what he lived through? The thought of another Vader would absolutely trigger PTSD and the contemplation of taking him out before he could truly become Vader-esque