While I love Obi-wan is secretly stronger than everyone including Anakin, and Chosen One™ Obi-wan au's
My absolute favorite thing, both canon and au is
Chosen One™ Minor Force Deity Anakin Skywalker gets absolutely annihilated by Normal Dude Just Dedicated to His Craft Obi-wan Kenobi.
Obi-wan is just a guy. Yeah a jedi, but still just some dude who has spent decades of his life committed to his training and trying to live up to what he thinks a Jedi should be.
What I love about Obi-wan is the fact that, while many others (jedi included) think he's "the perfect example" of a Jedi (They give him the call sign Guiding Light ffs), Obi-wan doesn't think that. Obi-wan sees himself as just some dude. To the point where he disagrees with people who try to tell him he's special in some way. Hells he didn't even think he was The Master of Soresu despite Mace Windu saying he was.
My point is. You take Obi-wan and throw him up against Anakin. Who knows he's the chosen one and let that go to his head (and let his ego be inflated by Sidious). Who thinks hes hot shit and the most powerful person in the galaxy.
And he gets his ass handed to him multiple times by Just a Sad Little Dude Obi-wan.
I need everyone who claims to like SW to understand that. Attachments are not relationships.
It's not about having friends or lovers or people to care about. It's obsessive fear of loss and jealousy. You know what we call that on Earth? Abandonment issues and people pleasing. We go to therapy for that, bc it's not healthy and it makes us miserable.
So why can't Jedi marry? The Jedi believe that children and spouses deserve complete attention. They believe that people deserve present parents and involved partners. Being a Jedi isn't a job. It's a lifestyle. How dare they preach compassion and fairness and justice whilst leaving some abandoned child somewhere? How dare they teach kindness and love and self sacrifice while having a neglected spouse?
That's the difference. That's why Kanan, who no longer lives like a Jedi in the Republic, can have a relationship and not have attachments, and be a good enough Jedi to be knighted. That's why Luke, who loved his father, could be a Jedi. That's why Obi Wan, who loved Qui-Gon, Satine, Bail and Breha, Ahsoka, Anakin, Luke, and Leia and had life-long relationships with them could be a Jedi. That's why Yoda, who loved his family so much that feeling their deaths from across the Galaxy made him stumble, could be a good Jedi.
Relationships were encouraged. That's healthy. That's loving. That's being alive.
Attachment is fear, and fear isn't love. Fear is selfishness.
GOD, I WAS SURE WE WERE ABOUT TO WATCH TAPAL’S DEATH IN THIS MOMENT, TRAPPED BEHIND THE GLASS AND UNABLE TO HELP.
But instead it’s a moment of, HOLY SHIT, THE JEDI ARE INCREDIBLE, LOOK WHAT ONE JEDI MASTER CAN DO????
While at the same time it doesn’t take away from the tension, because this entire thing is a gauntlet run against probably thousands of clones. Yes, the Jedi are incredible, Tapal holding that one clone against the ceiling while walking by, laser focused on the path before him, HOLY FUCK THAT WAS AMAZING, but it’s still just a matter of time.
There’s so many more clones than there are Jedi, like, that’s one of the biggest points of the prequels and how Palpatine manipulated things–the Jedi straight up did not have the numbers to fight a galactic war by themselves, so instead Palpatine created a Republic army, drafted the Jedi into service (who felt obligated to help control this tire fire as best they could, because they were the only ones who had even some experience at this kind of scale of things, and everyone was pretty much going to die a lot faster if they didn’t try to make things better), that when they all turned on the Jedi without warning, sure, you can fight your way through a lot of them.
But eventually it just takes one out of those thousands and thousands to land just one good hit and the Jedi are just as mortal as anyone else.
The tension between HOLY SHIT TAPAL IS AMAZING versus THERE’S NO WAY TO FACE THESE ODDS WE KNOW HOW THIS ENDS was beautifully done in this game and watching this scene just ached for it. This is how you take out these incredible space wizards who really do live up to they hype–by overwhelming them with sheer numbers and a betrayal so massive and unexpected that it literally comes out of nowhere for everyone involved, except the evil fucker who engineered this all in the first place.
"The point is not that you are born evil - the thing that makes the film work ultimately is the fact that he is a good kid, trying to be a good kid, and he grows up to be a good kid. It's simply that his emotions take him places he can't control. He becomes evil out of his own ambition and greed, and revenge and hatred - all those things that kids face. Kids can see how their fears can cause them to do things that will turn them evil, even if they don't want to be evil. So hopefully, that will have some kind of an impact when it's all finished."
She’s gonna play nice when meeting them and then when they are out of earshot she’ll tell her assistants to make sure they don’t sleep in the palace lest they leave fleas
Satine, later that night: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA KRIFF
imo the fandom hatred of satine feels kinda… like right-wing garbage? like yeah we see satine rejecting the warrior aspect of mandalorian culture… but surely warfare and violence isn’t the only aspect of mandalorian culture? do we see anything that says that satine is doing other things to crush mandalorian culture?
people bring up the absence of mando’a… but mando’a has never been used on-screen by even death watch or din’s covert. there’s no indication it’s present in current canon.
mandalorian culture may hinge on a warrior aspect, but is that worth preserving for culture’s sake? is there anything inherently wrong with a pacifist movement rising up to discourage needless death? obviously, star wars frames pacifism as weakly as possible, as a strawman designed to be torn apart in favor of well-intentioned people with guns and laser swords to fight the bad people with guns and laser swords.
satine is murdered by maul. her entire character existed to be a “will they or won’t they” counterpart to obi-wan, incapable of standing on her own narratively. this is most obvious in her murder, which is a tragedy for obi-wan rather the loss of satine’s life being a tragedy in and of itself.
most fanfiction revolving around the mandalorians, especially obi-wan/jango pairings, take an actively negative approach to satine, adding onto her canonical pacifism and snootiness the more explicitly hateful qualities of usurper, killer of culture, and, sometimes, abusive ex. it’s almost like satine is built up as hateful to be less of a threat to the obi-wan/jango ship. (I personally don’t pair satine and obi-wan, just pointing this out)
I wonder how much of the hate directed at satine (and her sister, who doesn’t have that pacifist ideology) is because she’s one of the only notable female mandalorians that isn’t from disney rebels.
the hate towards satine reads to me like conservative attachments to “traditional values”, militarism, and outright misogyny.
I have not read star wars books that may have more information regarding what satine’s government is like. I do know that satine’s government is uncomfortably all human white blond and blue-eyed, but we don’t exactly get a more diverse glimpse of the other mandalorian factions, and the death watch is led by a human blond-haired blue-eyed man. if there really was a problem about diversity in satine’s government, wouldn’t that be a talking point to bring up in the show?
My apologies to my Satine-loving followers for having to endure many of the responses on this thread, but I wanted to thank @corvusian for being willing to offer a different view than the people above and expand on all the points they made:
1. Violence is certainly not the only aspect of Mandalorian culture. And Satine herself literally is given a line showing that she prioritizes, appreciates, and cultivates non-violent Mandalorian tradition.
2. Blaming Satine for a Mandalore that doesn’t speak Mando'a is an example of attributing an out-of-universe creative decision to the in-universe fictional character (a recurring theme with her character).
Mando'a is not really present in The Clone Wars, but it was never meant to be a statement about Satine. Instead, it’s likely that Mando'a was avoided because of the (understandable) bad blood between Karen Traviss, the original creator of the language, and the creators of the show, when George Lucas wanted to tell stories about pacifist Mandalore that effectively went against Karen’s novels.
However, Mando'a is not completely absent from the show. In Season Two, “The Mandalore Plot,” we hear a couple lines of Concordian Mando'a. Again, likely because of a desire to distance themselves from Karen’s language, the Mando'a that we hear in the episode is basically gibberish, both in terms of grammar and vocabulary.
(There was some legitimate Mando'a that was eventually used in Star Wars Rebels, so perhaps something changed after Disney acquired the rights to Star Wars, but that’s just my speculation.)
But you know who is the one named character who speaks the language in TCW? Satine Kryze. And she speaks it to the Death Watch bomber who tried to kill her, as a way to comfort and honor him – a traditionalist warrior – as he is dying. So the idea that she was somehow suppressing the use of Mando’a is ridiculous to me.
3. People who like to say that Satine committed cultural genocide failed to consider the fact that canonically, Death Watch was a small splinter group, and the rest of the Mandalorian population seems to have generally supported Satine and the New Mandalorians.
This isn’t explored in great detail on screen, however it was explored in the junior novelization Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy. Basically, the book sets out that Satine rallied the Mandalorian warlords to the pacifist cause, but she never forced it on any of them. Instead, it’s set out that the vast majority of the clan leaders were simply tired of fighting, and they chose peace.
In Season 2, “Voyage of Temptation,” Obi-Wan says that “a civil war killed most of Satine’s people.” Is it so audacious to consider that even a people that honored war may at times look at the destruction war has caused and decide to choose a different way?
(Beyond that, we don’t even have time to get into the fact that not only did Satine exile the warriors who refused to accept peace to Concordia, arguably the most habitable planetary body in the Mandalore system, but she also gave them their own independent governor, so they weren’t technically even ruled by her.)
Further, on screen, what we do see is full support for Satine from the Mandalorians in Sundari. Satine rules by the will of her people, and when they turn against her, she also steps down at the will of the people. She knows that her authority comes from them, not because she holds the Darksaber or has killed the previous leader in battle (hooray for democracy!).
Literally, when her prime minister asks if they should attempt to stop the Death Watch, she says “How can we? The people are on their side now” and lets herself be removed and imprisoned without bloodshed (in the book, she says that she knows this will lead to her death)
4. As to the final comment about the homogeneity of Satine’s Mandalore, this is another instance of fans taking an out-of-universe production decision and applying it to Satine, in-universe fictional character.
The Mandalorians were designed as generally white, blond, and blue-eyed because George and Dave wanted space-Vikings, so they gave them a stereotypical Scandinavian look.
The entire population looks like this because crowd design and animation takes tons of work and time that the designers and animators did not have. That’s why if you look at the crowds, you notice that all of the characters are basically the same few designs with their features mixed-and-matched.
But you know who also is completely white, blond, and blue-eyed?
Death Watch, save for the exception of Bo-Katan Kryze (ironically, if Satine is in favor of some sort of blond/Aryan Mandalore, her family is the biggest offender considering her sister and nephew are both redheads)
This was not a statement on race. It was simply the design that they gave to all Mandalorians in this stage of Star Wars animation production.
Thankfully, in Rebels and in The Siege of Mandalore, they began to vary the look of the Mandalorians (both Death Watch and the Sundarians), indicating that the intention was never to have them all be white.
Ultimately, I don’t care if people dislike Satine. What I do have a problem with is when people justify that view by saying that she’s supposed to be a villain-esque figure, when that is completely different from what’s actually shown onscreen.
And so the desire to reframe the Jedi as misguided, as ultimately deserving of being rewritten into something different, starts to feel a lot uncomfier. Because they suddenly start looking a lot less like victims and a lot more like a problematic force that deserved to be destroyed—unloving baby stealers, clinging on to traditions for the sake of tradition, even when it hurts their people.
Victims need not be perfect to be victims. But reframing victims as being harbingers of their own destruction—well, that looks like a viewpoint I don’t think a lot of people really want to be espousing.
When a Star Wars writer engages with the material but not the narrative.
I'm writing a long post about the Jedi and the clone troopers and there's a whole section that I had to remove because it was too long:
Karen Traviss' take on the Jedi and the clones.
I already wrote about why Karen Traviss' take on the Jedi and Yoda doesn't track with what George Lucas had established in his narrative of the Prequels. Since then, I've been able to do more research.
It's no secret that one of the reasons Traviss listed for criticizing the Jedi in the Expanded Universe books she wrote is their treatment of the clones (or at least what she understood it to be).
In 2008, she wrote a now-deleted blog post about it (it was really long, so I'm only including the part relevant to my point, if you want the full context you can look it up, this is old stuff).
So if you ask me, in the above quote, Traviss is essentially doing the equivalent of saying:
"Batman is a psycho elitist who beats up the mentally ill and indoctrinates kids, turning them into child soldiers for his unending crazy vigilante war on crime, and if you can't recognize that then you scare the living crap out of me."
Like... you can argue that, and a couple of comics have argued that.
But by and large, the general consensus is that Batman is a superhero, the Robins are his sons and daughter, and the "mentally ill" are in fact the Joker and Two-Face aka mass murderers.
So if you make that argument, that's you applying your real-life values and conclusions to a narrative that deliberately doesn't acknowledge those points, in-universe, in order to tell the story it wants to tell.
It's counting on your suspension of disbelief, defined as "the avoidance—often described as willing—of critical thinking and logic in understanding something that is unreal or impossible in reality, such as something in a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe it for the sake of enjoying its narrative."
The Jedi accepting the clones and the clones being slaves isn't a "delicate point". It's barely a point at all!
It's never addressed in the film (because of course it isn't, the Prequels are about Anakin and the Republic, not the clones).
It's only addressed once by Slick, an unreliable narrator, in The Clone Wars.
That's it. Hell, in 2008, when The Clone Wars writer Henry Gilroy was asked to comment on the relationship between clones and Jedi, he explicitly said he'd "rather not get into" that particular point.
I recently got Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of 'Attack of the Clones' and nowhere is that detail touched on by Lucas at any point.
So while Traviss acknowledges the Jedi are fictional characters, she doesn't follow that thread through to the end by acknowledging that fictional characters don't have free will, they must abide by the story and the whim of the writer.
She's engaging with the material, but refusing to engage with the narrative. She's having her cake and eating it too.
My reason for saying all this is that in the book Star Wars on Trial, she elaborates on her thought process upon discovering this detail.
Shortly before to this, she acknowledges twice that she knew nothing about Star Wars, beside seeing the original films in her youth.
Another writer who saw the new films and saw Mace Windu argue against there being a war...
... the worry on his face at the prospect of the Jedi being thrown at the Separatists...
... and the sheer melancholy on Yoda's face upon announcing the Clone War had begun...
... might have instead wondered how the Jedi, so opposed to war, could've ended up being generals.
Because while we don't see the Jedi openly protest the use of the clones in the film... they're not exactly giddy about it, either. All they can do is watch powerlessly as it gets voted by the Senate.
"The Jedi are there. But the Jedi aren't really allowed to be involved in the political process. They're there, but they can't suddenly step up and say, "No, no. You can't do that." They have to let the political process go."
- George Lucas, Attack of the Clones, Commentary #2, 2002
We also don't see them take on the role of generals, either.
We only see them begrudgingly lead troops on Geonosis, specifically.
But they're not referred to as "generals" yet.
Another writer might have imagined a scene where after Geonosis, Mace Windu talks to Palpatine thinking the Jedi will go back to their roles as diplomats, and that what we saw in Attack of the Clones was a one-time thing to save Obi-Wan, but Palpatine politely goes:
"Ha! No. Didn't you hear? The Senate was so impressed by your performance on Geonosis that they voted to make you all generals in the GAR. Now, get back to the front."
Another writer might've elected to write them having that "big moral debate" she mentions.
Instead, Traviss immediately jumps on the "Jedi are elitists" train.
Because her personal experience with the military makes her sympathize with the clones and her personal belief is that - while the story may frame the Jedi as "the good guys" - nobody is that good a guy, real life people aren't that pure and selfless.
That's her choosing to take that line of thought instead of one more in-line with the story, because she perceives it as unrealistic. But like... Star Wars isn't real life, it's a fairy tale.
That's like saying:
"The hunter in Little Red Riding Hood commits animal cruelty by cutting the Wolf open. He should've let nature take its course, the wolf earned that meal fair and square. If you think the hunter should've saved Red Riding Hood and her Grandma, then clearly you're the kind of monster who thinks one life is worth more than others."
... no?
The story's narrative clearly portrays the wolf as the villain of the tale and frames the Hunter saving Red Riding Hood as a good thing.
Disagreeing with that narrative is absolutely fine, but anybody who acknowledges the wolf is the bad guy in the story isn't automatically an animal hater and/or a bad person. Just because you say "the wolf is the villain" doesn't mean that you think that, in real life, killing wolves for shits and giggles is good.
Conversely, the narrative of the Prequels asks you to suspend your disbelief and not consider the implications that having a clone army entails. Because the use of clones doesn't have a direct impact on either Anakin or the Senate's stories.
OK, so in Part 1/2 of this post, we explored why Luke's TLJ characterization isn't really inconsistent with what had previously been established in Star Wars lore. It tracks. Dare I say: it works.
And yet... something still feels off, right?
Well, the reason for this is because Luke's character development is impacted by the film's structure, which in turn is impacted by - of all things - Poe's lack of development in Episode VII! Just hear me out!
The intention:
Making the audience feel the same emotions as the protagonist, deuteragonists and antagonist.
This is what most movies strive for. Unless the film is trying to go for some dramatic irony, you want your audience to be on the same page with your protagonist, emotionally-speaking.
And y'know what? Rian Johnson does this very well.
Overall, he displays a very good grasp of making us, the audience, feel the same emotions as a film’s protagonist (generally, the main character, whose POV we follow) or deuteragonist (the ‘secondary main character’).
Rey was expecting to meet the Luke from the Original Trilogy, the Luke from Legends... and instead was disappointed to meet an old jaded hermit. Just like the majority of the fans were.
Finn is fooled by DJ, mistaking him for an archetypal "misfit with a heart of gold". Just like the fans were.
Poe is increasingly frustrated with Holdo, just like we were.
Call it "meta", call it "subversive", the bottom line is that some of the narrative choices that a lot of fans criticize the film for are intentionally placed there to put you in the same mental state as the characters you're following, even during the film's twists.
But as a result, if a character isn’t the protagonist (Rey), or the deuteragonists (Poe or Finn), or even the antagonist (Kylo)... they'll barely get any development.
They might get one or two scenes for themselves tops, but overall secondary characters like Luke, or Holdo, or DJ will mostly be shown through the filter of Rey or Poe’s or Finn's POV.
The Problem:
Luke isn't a protagonist or deuteragonist, so he isn't developed to the audience's satisfaction.
Don't get me wrong: Luke has the second-most screen time in the whole film, but that's because Rey is the one with the most screen time, and he's primarily a character in her storyline.
To be fair, he does have his own subplot, he's the spiritual center of the whole film. But concretely, he’s one step above support characters like Holdo, Leia, Rose and DJ. We're barely shown his own POV and mainly view him through Rey's lens.
Like, there's a reason why in this scene...
... we don't see what Luke witnessed in Ben’s mind, simply his reaction to it: Rey didn’t see it either.
All three "Rashomon" flashbacks are what Rey is picturing in her mind when she’s being told three different versions of the story. She doesn't see what Luke witnessed, so we don't see it either.
And you know what? On paper... this is also not really an issue. It's actually quite standard. I mean, Yoda doesn't get much backstory or an arc in Empire Strikes Back. He's just the mentor figure, and we see him through Luke's POV.
There's no arguing that Luke in TLJ receives much more development than Yoda does in ESB.
But y’know what?
Yoda was also never the protagonist of a whole other trilogy.
So if you're gonna tell an audience that "the protagonist of the previous trilogy strayed from the path and is now a completely different person" - even if they eventually make their way back with a character arc - I don’t think it’s out of order for audience members to expect more development than a regular mentor archetype.
Context is expected, and when it isn't delivered, that'll kill the suspension of disbelief, for many fans. They're not just disappointed in Luke like Rey is, they're not immersed in the movie anymore.
So how do you go for what Rian was going while also trying to keep about half the fans from jumping ship?
The Solution (?)
Delving deeper into Luke.
So let’s suppose Luke was treated like a deuteragonist. Suppose we see his own POV more, rather than just seeing him through Rey’s eyes. Would that help? And what would that look like?
Firstly, we keep that deleted scene of him mourning Han’s loss.
Or we show it like in the comic adaptation of TLJ, with Luke getting angry at his decision to cut himself off from the Force, unintentionally levitating objects until Chewie consoles him.
WHAT IT DOES:
Either version humanizes Luke, shows who he is beneath the jaded mask he's putting on, gives audience a chance to mourn Han with him.
We keep that deleted scene of him explaining to Rey why he thinks the Jedi were flawed, also known as the “3rd lesson scene”.
WHAT IT DOES:
Spells out Luke's rationalization that the Jedi Order needs to end. Marks the beginning of Luke's wake up call.
We add one or two additional short flashbacks of Ben gradually becoming darker and unhinged. Maybe he harms one of his fellow students in a fit of rage.
WHAT IT DOES:
Clarifies that Ben was going through a dark period and that's why Luke went to confront him in his hut. He didn't just saunter into Ben's hut, sabers blazing.
Maybe halfway through the film, we see Luke pack his bag as he prepares to rescue his friends with Rey, only to find her communicating with Kyloe.
After all, the novelization shows that, upon opening himself to the Force and sensing Leia, he immediately decides to get back in the game. So if that’s not just something Jason Fry added to embellish stuff, let’s see that.
WHAT IT DOES:
Drives home the fact that Luke realizes his mistake. (Although, it might also take away from the subsequent scene with Yoda).
Finally, let’s actually see what Luke saw in Ben’s mind: him killing Lor San Tekka, killing Han, killing Leia, murdering Chewie and countless more innocents all with a smile on his face.
WHAT IT DOES:
Provides context for Luke's extreme reaction.
Most of these things are already technically canon, the only difference is that it would be shown on screen. And if all these elements are added, then Luke’s reasons for staying away and his reaction in Ben’s hut are already more understandable.
So where’s the flaws in this solution?
Solution Flaw #1:
Increase in the runtime at the cost of other scenes.
The Last Jedi is already the longest film in the franchise. Adding just three of the above-suggestions would increase that runtime, which wouldn’t work. So you’d need to take something out.
But Finn and Poe’s storylines are already stripped down to their bare bones as it is. Hell, so was the Rey/Luke storyline, for that matter.
Actually, wait... why do we have three storylines, in the first place?
After all, if we look at The Empire Strikes Back, they only have two storylines, right?
The protagonist, Luke, goes to Dagobah.
The deuteragonists, Han and Leia, evade the Empire.
Main plot & subplot. Great.
Wouldn't it be better to just have Poe and Finn do the Canto Bight storyline together? That would give us sme remaining time to focus on Luke’s past, right? Where’s the issue?
Well, Rian Johnson put it this way:
Bottom line, in The Force Awakens, Poe is a clear-cut character. Simple as that. He’s charismatic and fun, but there isn’t much room for him to grow.
A lot of people compare his character to Han, but there's an issue with that comparison (besides the obvious fact that Finn is Han and Poe is Leia)...
In ANH, Han has an arc.
He's the philosophical antagonist of the film, he's only out for himself which conflicts with Luke's attempts to help others. Han goes from being a selfish irresponsible gun-slinger to taking responsibility and becoming a selfless rebel, a part of something bigger. Arc concluded.
(Hell, this very reason is why Harrison Ford didn’t wanna keep playing him and lobbied to kill him off.)
So in ESB, Leia is the one who has the arc.
Han is just being himself. Leia is the one who must slowly come to terms with the fact that she does love him, despite him being a total nerf-herder. So she and Han bicker, there’s conflict there, but there’s also an underlying affection.
As such, when Poe doesn’t have an arc in TFA, and is already on great terms with Finn, then there’s no conflict if you put them together in a subplot.
And conflict is crucial, in storytelling. If it's absent, then the story becomes boring.
As a result, Rian Johnson had to create conflict and growth for Poe.
Which means that, now, a third storyline is thrown in the mix... and the pacing and development of the other two are affected by this. Some really good scenes need to be cut, some stuff needs to get shuffled around.
For example, remember this deleted scene, from further up?
In the commentary, Rian explained that the reason it wasn’t in the film is because it didn’t intercut well with the other two storylines.
*Three and a half, if you wanna count Kylo's personal scenes.
As such, there’s no space to add more scenes to develop Luke's perspective.
And if Rian made more space, well, that wouldn't work either. Because while Luke is the spiritual core of the film... this isn't his movie. He's not the protagonist anymore. But he used to be, and if you show him too much (not as Rey's mentor figure, that is, but as a protagonist or deuteragonist), he'll take the spotlight off the new cast with the snap of a finger.
When Michael Arndt was working on the Sequels with George Lucas in 2012, he encountered this same issue:
“Early on I tried to write versions of the story where [Rey] is at home, her home is destroyed, and then she goes on the road and meets Luke. And then she goes and kicks the bad guy’s ass. It just never worked and I struggled with this. This was back in 2012. It just felt like every time Luke came in and entered the movie, he just took it over. Suddenly you didn’t care about your main character anymore because, ‘Oh f*ck, Luke Skywalker's here. I want to see what he’s going to do’.”
- Michael Arndt, Entertainment Weekly, 2015
And I'm guessing this is a problem that JJ had to deal with too, hence why Luke was pushed to the end of Episode VII: so as to give the new characters a chance to be developed a bit more, first.
“In a very general sense, the original idea for Episode VII started midway through what we now know as Episode VIII...”
- Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, 2016
Solution Flaw #2:
Plot twist would be ruined.
Talking about this one:
Again, we're seeing Luke THROUGH Rey's POV, for the most part. Our reaction is - intentionally - the same reaction as Rey.
The whole point of the twist is that
we, with Rey, believe Kylo can be redeemed, because
we, like Rey, remember Luke redeemed Vader.
So when she realizes “oh shit, Luke was right, he’s too far gone”... we react that way too.
But if we had seen Ben’s turn as well, if we had seen how he was during his training, if we had seen what Luke’s saw in Ben’s mind, we would all collectively agree with Luke and think that Rey is making a mistake in trying to redeem Kylo.
So when Rey walks away from Luke, rather than hoping she succeeds, we’d just be waiting for her to inevitably fail. We'd be thinking:
"Rey, you moron, you're walking into a trap and Kylo isn't gonna turn!"
Emotionally-speaking, we would be detached from the protagonist.
Do I care about Luke’s characterization in TLJ...?
In spite of what the length and intricacy of these two posts might indicate... I don’t, really 😅
Like, sure, I wish more had been done with the character, but Luke was never really my childhood hero, Obi-Wan was.
So Luke in TLJ isn’t a gaping wound in my chest. I didn't whine about it in 2017, nor did I shed tears of joy and said “he’s finally back” when we saw him in The Mandalorian, for example.
Like, it was an awesome scene, but in my mind Luke never left.
Also I’m the type of Star Wars fan who’ll tolerate any addition to the canon by virtue of it being new Star Wars content.
So even if that addition is something I didn’t enjoy during the viewing, I still focus on the positive and roll with it, I come up with a headcanon that'll make it work.
Because you get to do that, with a transmedia franchise!
If you don’t like how it went down in the movie? There's always a comic around the corner that'll retcon it and/or retroactively make it better... that's how it was for the Prequels.
But for the Sequels, it's difficult. There's a scarcity of transmedia content, when it comes to stuff set around the Sequels era.
I mean, can you think of any
Luke-centric work
that serves as a meaningful addendum to what's seen of him in the Sequels?
A novel, a comic issue and a distantly-relevant manga.
That's it.
(The Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett are too soon after ROTJ to have any meaningful impact on Luke's journey in the Sequels.
Some people see Luke's behavior in those shows as "the beginning of his failure", but I covered why I don't think this is really the case, here.)
Instead of just three items, how about a comic mini-series focusing on the year Luke spent training Leia, or on his adventures across the galaxy as he tries to rebuild the Jedi Order? Maybe he meets Cal Kestis, or Quinlan Vos? Maybe he needs to face against an Oppo Rancisis who was consumed by the darkness, post-Order 66?
Or better yet, how about a video game centered on Luke, in the style of Fallen Order or Jedi Academy?
Get Mark Hamill to motion cap it, he's done it before.
This would also allow the fans who grew up with the powerhouse that is Legends Grandmaster Luke Skywaker to have some fun!
Many fans wanted to see Luke in action, in TLJ, and instead got a pretend-samurai fight. Which is nice, powerful and symbolic, he goes out like a true Jedi, it makes the Force more than a superpower... but it's not a lightsaber duel. In a game, though? Players can go to town.
I dunno... any additional content would've smoothed the blow for many people who didn't like what was done with Luke in TLJ. Sure, you'd always have people who just hated the whole thing, but if transmedia content helped reduce the hate for the Prequels, it could've done the same with Luke.
what thinking about purge trooper commander night does to a mf….i like to believe that he and ahsoka actually encounter each other a little after order 66. she can tell his inhibitor chip has started to fail, and that the weight of having killed jedi and their padawans is beginning to settle in. instead of finishing the job like he nearly begs her to, she directs him to find rex. (also, by this time, the markings on his armor, even his jaig eyes, are painted over. eventually, his armor is discarded entirely and replaced with run-of-the-mill, standard purge trooper armor.)
(edit: ps. in case theres any confusion, the clone is an OC of mine!)
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