Discussing Luke's Relationship with Mara Jade and Kylo Ren aka Why I Still Find Luke's Moment of Weakness Stupid

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don’t think those inspirations are supposed to represent all the themes of the story holistically.

The Jedi are pretty much the Buddhists using the blended way for positivity.

[Lazerlike42]

I am well known among people I know in life for strongly believing that TLJ is not only the worst Star Wars movie ever made, but one of the worst movies ever made, period. I HATE the film.

Yet I don't think most of the problems with Luke are problems with what he does, exactly. Rather, the problem is that the film doesn't earn any of these moments. Luke sneaking up on his nephew in the middle of the night and trying to kill him is certainly extraordinary and shocking, and it's certainly out of character for the Luke the audience knows, but it isn't something that's completely out of the realm of possibility - the story just needs to earn that moment. It needs to do the legwork so that the audience can see it happening.

Imagine a followup story to A Christmas Carol where Scrooge has fallen back into his former ways. The story could work if readers were given enough reason to accept it. Those reasons could be covered chronologically as the main story. They could be covered after the fact as the answer to a mystery: "why did Scrooge revert?" They could be looked at in many ways.

What wouldn't work would be to have a story about some other character(s) where Scrooge was a secondary or side character who happened to have fallen back. Something like that can't just be the a footnote in the story, or something tangential, or something to move the plot along. It doesn't necessarily have to be the central story, but it's still got to be given its due and it's got to be earned.

That is what TLJ doesn't do with Luke. Having him go dark is fine. Heck, he does it in the EU - more than once if I'm not mistaken - and fans think it's great. The problem with TLJ is that it just tries to have him turn dark without any explanation. In fact, it's worse than that. In TLJ, Luke's incident with Kylo is actually given to the audience as the answer to another mystery. Why is Luke hiding on this little island and why has he given up on the Force? Oh, it's because of what happened with Kylo all those years ago (and its aftermath). - but the thing that happened with Kylo is itself a mystery, and in this case its a mystery that is never answered or even treated as though it is a mystery.

[Winter]

Imagine a followup story to A Christmas Carol where Scrooge has fallen back into his former ways. The story could work if readers were given enough reason to accept it. Those reasons could be covered chronologically as the main story. They could be covered after the fact as the answer to a mystery: "why did Scrooge revert?" They could be looked at in many ways.

What wouldn't work would be to have a story about some other character(s) where Scrooge was a secondary or side character who happened to have fallen back. Something like that can't just be the a footnote in the story, or something tangential, or something to move the plot along. It doesn't necessarily have to be the central story, but it's still got to be given its due and it's got to be earned.

That is what TLJ doesn't do with Luke. Having him go dark is fine. Heck, he does it in the EU - more than once if I'm not mistaken - and fans think it's great. The problem with TLJ is that it just tries to have him turn dark without any explanation. In fact, it's worse than that. In TLJ, Luke's incident with Kylo is actually given to the audience as the answer to another mystery. Why is Luke hiding on this little island and why has he given up on the Force? Oh, it's because of what happened with Kylo all those years ago (and its aftermath). - but the thing that happened with Kylo is itself a mystery, and in this case its a mystery that is never answered or even treated as though it is a mystery.

Okay this is actually kind a of creepy because I was JUST going over my She-Ra Christmas Carol idea that I posted here and then I come here and see someone talking about ACC. Weird.

Anyway, one thing that I DID like in Willow (Series) was that Willow was still WILLOW. This felt like the character we met at the end of the film and the few things that felt out of place (his conflict with Sorsha) ARE explained. Likewise his conflict with his son (whom blames the death of his mother on Willow) makes sense and feels authentic to the character. I can picture Willow wanting to go on Adventures and not being there when something happened and blaming himself for this terrible thing that happened.

Honestly, most of the Willow series almost feels like a direct response to TDST. A young new sorceress with great power and a young warrior both of whom have natural talent yet both get their asses HANDED to them over the course of the season by people who took the time to really train. Kit is rather arrogant, full of herself and a bit whiny and as a result not everyone gets along with her, even her girlfriend finds her annoying at times. She eventually recognizes these flaws and tries to better herself.

A far cry from Rey who had few flaws and NONE were really addressed and she only got worse as the filmmakers seemed to have no real idea what to do with her until and so is it any wonder she never really grew as a character?

As I said elsewhere, my feelings for Willow are kinda mixed but Kit and Elora ARE better characters then Rey and Willow FEELS like Willow so this IS an improvement over what we got in TDST.

[Madner Kami]

You could explain Luke's personality shift pretty easily even, with already existing lore. There are at least two characters in canon, which force-bond with other people and it's implied that Kylo does have this ability as well, just that they call this "Diad of the Force". So, Kylo force-bonds with uncle Luke and Kylo's worries and insecurities are influencing Luke, which leads to a moment of weakness during a Force Dream/Vision by Kylo, which leads to Luke igniting his saber. There, done. Logical explanation, in-canon and even explains Rey's personality-shift. Why is this so hard for professional writers, when an unpaid extern can do it in ten seconds flat?

[Winter]

You could explain Luke's personality shift pretty easily even, with already existing lore. There are at least two characters in canon, which force-bond with other people and it's implied that Kylo does have this ability as well, just that they call this "Diad of the Force". So, Kylo force-bonds with uncle Luke and Kylo's worries and insecurities are influencing Luke, which leads to a moment of weakness during a Force Dream/Vision by Kylo, which leads to Luke igniting his saber. There, done. Logical explanation, in-canon and even explains Rey's personality-shift. Why is this so hard for professional writers, when an unpaid extern can do it in ten seconds flat?

Honestly a better solution would be to have it were Rey was a student at Luke's Academy, have Luke dead before the start of the Trilogy and have Kylo NOT be a relative of the Skywalkers. With the former it explains Rey's skills in the Force and why she was on Tatooine as she was in hiding, Luke being dead can be this huge mystery and trying to figure out what happened to him and Kylo being a new character means there's more that can be done with him WITHOUT retreading Vader's story.

However, I try to give the filmmakers some leeway as there's a LOT that goes into making a movie and it could be that the ideas we got were the result of the films rushed development so they couldn't be ironed out.

I've had an idea for a Avatar Series that I've been working on for a few a while now and it's gone through some MASSIVE changes and I'm not ashamed to admit that the first few versions of the story SUCKED. The lead didn't work, the plot was a mess and hardly anything worked. It was only after several MAJOR changes that it started to work and if I was forced to put it out with what little I had because I was on a deadline it would be seen for the piece of crap it was.

Just look at Lucas' original ideas for Star Wars, yes we can see the elements that would make it a classic but there was a LOT that was just kinda crap and wouldn't have worked.

By all accounts no one who worked on TDST had any real time to really brain storm, they had some ideas and Lucas' ideas (which Lucas himself admitted where REALLY rough first drafts that needed more work) and by the time Production came they had to crank out these films FAST with almost no time to really get things done. TLJ and ROS were both in production AS each film was finishing. They had about 2 years to come up with an idea and put it to paper and by some accounts they didn't even have a fished script and were writing it up AS THEY WERE FILMING!

Add to that the fact that the next director could discard the ideas of another and well, you get the Trilogy we got, a jumbled mess.

[CharlesPhipps]

Luke drawing his light saber is an influence of the dark side. It’s supposed to be out of character, or at least out of the pre-Jedi/dark version Luke in the first two movies.

He never does anything overtly dark in Jedi except for choking the guard, while he conversely never actually attacks Ben.

And because of it, billions of people died.

Basically, the story would be better if Kylo Ren is utterly irredeemable but Luke thinks he can reach him.

Because Luke doesn't want to acknowledge his nephew is willingly, gleefully, deliberately evil.

He didn't fall, he jumped.

[Winter]

Luke drawing his light saber is an influence of the dark side. It’s supposed to be out of character, or at least out of the pre-Jedi/dark version Luke in the first two movies.

He never does anything overtly dark in Jedi except for choking the guard, while he conversely never actually attacks Ben.

And because of it, billions of people died.

Basically, the story would be better if Kylo Ren is utterly irredeemable but Luke thinks he can reach him.

Because Luke doesn't want to acknowledge his nephew is willingly, gleefully, deliberately evil.

He didn't fall, he jumped.

Why is Kylo into the Dark Side? Putting what's said in ROS, (which is flat out ignored in the film itself) we never really learn why Kylo is the way wants to be like Vader, why he fell, or why he hates his father. We learn why he hates Luke but we never learn what his deal is with his father and why he so much more tied to his mother.

Going by JUST the original Trilogy we learn that Vader was a good man, that he was seduced by the Dark Side but also has a strong desire to be close to his only known family, aka Luke. Further more, we can see through Luke the pull of the Dark Side how even someone as noble as Luke can be tempted by the Dark Side and possibly fall we can see through him how Vader fell.

But with Kylo we don't really get anything and like I've said before, his motive keeps changing film to film. In TFA he wants to be like Vader, in TLJ he wants to destroy the past, also in TLJ he wants to take over the world. In ROS he wants Rey and kill her if she won't join him, also in ROS he wants to protect Rey when he switches teams because [Motive Not Found].

It's like everyone had their own idea as to what Kylo was suppose to be so they all just did whatever and what we're left with was a character who doesn't really have an established motive beyond "Eh, just copy Vader's Arc".

Going over with Mara we DO learn why she hates Luke, why she was loyal to Palpatine and why she eventually turns from the Dark Side.

And again, as stated at the start of all this, one of these people is a complete stranger who wants Luke dead and the other is his family whom he helped raise. One other these people is someone he tires to murder in their sleep and the other is someone who he does everything in his power to befriend and turn from teh Dark Side. Also one of these stories is a land mark story that revitalized Star Wars Popularity and is still influencing the series to this day while the other may very well be retconned out of the franchise.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Luke drawing his light saber is an influence of the dark side. It’s supposed to be out of character, or at least out of the pre-Jedi/dark version Luke in the first two movies.

He never does anything overtly dark in Jedi except for choking the guard, while he conversely never actually attacks Ben.

And because of it, billions of people died.

Basically, the story would be better if Kylo Ren is utterly irredeemable but Luke thinks he can reach him.

Because Luke doesn't want to acknowledge his nephew is willingly, gleefully, deliberately evil.

He didn't fall, he jumped.

Same difference with anakin. He thought Padame was betraying him.

[Winter]

Same difference with anakin. He thought Padame was betraying him.

Anakin had already fallen to the Dark Side and his first response to ANYTHING that gets out of hand was always violence. Luke was a Jedi who only resorted to violence when there was no alternative. We see this as far back as A New Hope, what does Luke do when he learns that his aunt and uncle are dead and that his father was a Jedi who was murdered by Vader?

"I want to come with you to Alderaan. There's nothing for me here now. I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my Father."

He's not doing this to seek revenge he's doing it because he wants to become a Jedi. Also in ANH when he learns that Leia is on the Death Star he goes to save her despite the risks because he feels he has to do something to help. That's what bugs me, Luke has always sought to do the right thing and him trying to murder his own nephew in his sleep is out of character.

And again, the whole point of this thread is to show how Zahn understood that and BUILT on it while Johnson undid all that development while saying it's in character for Luke to act this way.

[CharlesPhipps]

Anakin had already fallen to the Dark Side and his first response to ANYTHING that gets out of hand was always violence. Luke was a Jedi who only resorted to violence when there was no alternative. We see this as far back as A New Hope, what does Luke do when he learns that his aunt and uncle are dead and that his father was a Jedi who was murdered by Vader?

I know and imagine the Force telling him: "You have to kill your nephew."

It explains why he'd lose faith in it.

Because he doesn't want to believe that Ben is dead and unreachable.

Even though he is.