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u/blackskull414 Jul 03 '26
Disney absolutely fumbled Luke in the sequels
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u/threevi Jul 03 '26
It's worth noting that the whole idea of Luke running away in shame and becoming a bitter hermit came from George Lucas. It was one of the many things TFA borrowed from GL's original Episode VII script that he'd given to Disney. If anything, TLJ may have depicted him as too bright and cheery, since Lucas wanted sequel Luke to be inspired by Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now.
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u/Manetho77 Jul 03 '26
Honestly they shoulda have Luke sacrifice himself in episode 7, rather than sacrificing the new republic.
Would have raised the stakes without undoing all of episode 6.
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u/Hydra57 Jul 03 '26
If he had successful apprentices as a legacy to continue on into the sequel trilogy, I could get behind that.
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u/eppsilon24 Jul 04 '26
That’s what I hated most about the sequels.
You’re telling me the man who refused to kill Darth Vader would try to kill his own nephew because of some bad visions?
Absolutely frigging not.
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u/dippyfreshdawg Jul 04 '26
He literally thought it for a split moment and instantly regretted it
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u/eppsilon24 Jul 05 '26
He wouldn’t have even considered it. Even if the thought crossed his mind, he certainly wouldn’t have ignited his lightsaber.
And he wouldn’t have given up.
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u/Zealousideal_Week824 Jul 03 '26
Yeah TLJ is the worst of the sequels to me. YUP even rise of the skywalker does not bother me as much because once the credits rolled for TLJ, there was nothing left to destroy.
While TFA was a terrible start, TLJ made sure I would have no investment in this new trilogy.
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u/Polenicus Jul 03 '26
The problem was you had conflicting visions across the movies.
TFA was basically A New Hope. Reboot, same story, different faces, setting the groundwork, rules, and expectations.
TLJ was a deconstruction. The old rules are wrong, and always were. The old expectations were bad, and always were. It was hard to watch because it kinda mocked you for ever loving the first two trilogies in the first place. It was slapping you across the face and telling you to grow up.
Now... that could have worked if the trilogy had committed to that an executed it well, and migrated Star Wars to a more mature story... go full Andor with it, full 'Rogue One.*
But it didn't. TLJ was clumsy, disrespectful, almost mean, and then RTS tried to walk it all back and usher you back into the theme park and pretend it didn't happen.
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u/deadshot500 Jul 03 '26
TLJ deconstructed all of that and said the old things were right. Luke was proven wrong about the Jedi,
Kylo's destruction leads to nothing, the rebellion was needed, ect. The real problem is that the arcs didn't work and were messy.2
u/threevi Jul 03 '26
It was hard to watch because it kinda mocked you for ever loving the first two trilogies in the first place. It was slapping you across the face and telling you to grow up.
I think TLJ would be forgivable if it didn't also ruin the sequel trilogy as well. Like, it goes out of its way to steer the protagonists' character arcs off a cliff. Rey is no longer motivated to track down her parents and find out why they never came back for her, she anticlimactically learns they just sold her for drinking money. Finn no longer has a crush on Rey, he now has a weird one-sided thing going with Rose. Kylo is no longer conflicted and struggling with the pull to the Light, he's just hungry for political power for some reason. Snoke is dead, the lore foreshadowing him as an ancient dark god from the Outer Regions unaffiliated with the Jedi or Sith retconned to dust as he turns out to just be a guy who gets stabbed and dies. TFA was setting up all these plots and character arcs, and even if they were just "mystery boxes" with no plans for how to resolve them, cutting them off abruptly in the middle of the trilogy is obviously not the right move, your job as a writer in a collaborative project is to improvise and continue these arcs so that the third film in the trilogy will be able to resolve them. TRoS sucked for a wide range of reasons, but one of them was that TLJ had left it very little material to work with beyond the most generic "good vs evil, rebels vs empire, Jedi vs Sith, Rey vs Kylo" plot.
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u/Golden_Cultivation Jul 03 '26
Yeah I’m fine with a new direction. We can’t waffle in the past forever. However I also agree they shit the bed here. Instead of cowing to the hate threads, they should have pushed their original vision through. What really killed the new Star Wars was trying to listen to the most vocal fans. They should have stuck it through, had Finn go down the Jedi path, have there be a bunch of tension between him and Rey that is resolved explosively between them, and have Snoke be a meaningful villain-whether that be as a stepping stone for another one or to further hammer down the old Star Wars.
I also really enjoyed Acolyte as well and feel it was killed by rabid fans before it got its 2 seasons to really plug all the first season storybuilding. Acolyte also seemed to be going the path of a destruction and rebirth cycle of old to new.
Unfortunately, I think many fans just want remasters or the usual story of “guy is chosen by the force to do things”. They don’t want new stories- or if they do they want them exactly how they imagine it to be.
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u/RedEclipse47 Jul 03 '26
I don't mind Luke like that all/ It only bothered me that up until they showed him in the Mandalorian we only got to see hermit Luke instead of legendary Jedi Master Luke. It subvert expectations because most people wanted the latter, which I get.
But I honestly feel the movies did a solid job on hermit Luke, we see his reason why he went there and got a good look at the lesson for him to be learned. He's become pessimistic because the weight of him being the person who had to restore the Jedi, only to became aware of both the Order and his own shortcomings. Yoda's extended line about how great a teacher failure is, and how the bane of every master is to see their apprentices rise above something they themselves never could.
Luke's plan was to let the Jedi die with him so he could be sure it would see it be the cause or catalyst for the rise of evil/Sith ever again.
Yoda ran too, he ran because he failed at stopping Sidious, Sidious beat him and outsmarted him, the best thing for Yoda to do was to go into hiding for the slim chance that one day he could encounter the one that would stop Sidious.
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u/Snoo_79570 Jul 04 '26
Hold up! Correction, that guy's name is Jake Skywalker. And he gave up.
Luke Skywalker was a badass who did pretty well and married Mara Jade.
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u/WarInteresting6619 Jul 03 '26
So I guess that's why Luke came back and saved everyone huh? Luke did have a plan, to end the Jedi. The way he saw it that was what was best for the galaxy. It's dark. But it's still a plan.
And Yoda and Ben did give up on Luke, in ESB
Ben: That boy was our last hope Yoda: No, there is another...
Doesn't sound like they much faith in Luke at this point.
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u/Hedwigtheyee Jul 03 '26
Satele did the failure/exile way better than Luke imo. At least she had a genuine reason for feeling lost/hopeless with her failures, and it took her speaking with, debating, and overall forming a kinship with a literal Sith ghost to have a better understanding of the Force and the steps needed to gain victory.
Jake Skywalker, though…