Is Last Jedi Luke's actions consistent with Luke's character from the original movies?

[MixedDrops]

I forgot which review it was Chuck had, where he talked about how sometimes we have thoughts that pop up in our mind for a split second (eg "wow that guy is ugly as fuck" etc) that we would never say out loud because we know they're wrong or we just immediately suppress them. We know better, but that won't stop those thoughts. To me, I can buy that maybe even if Luke was a paragon he would have thoughts like that every once in a while, and with Ben Solo he had just one of those moments.

I can understand not being able to get past that though (FTR, I don't think Mark Hamill himself had a problem with that part, his bigger problem was that after Luke made that mistake he moped around for years instead of picking himself back up and righting the wrong he committed), though as to whether or not that's consistent with OT Luke- I dunno if it's likely he ended up being as serene/detached as the Jedi Masters in the prequel Republic, even with years of training. That and Luke arguably rejected many of the ways of the Jedi order, particularly the parts where you need to sever attachments to the world (in that way you could say he's similar to Anakin). At the very least that's certainly the case in TESB, and Luke couldn't continue his training after Yoda died. He was left to sort of figure things out on his own, though I suppose its true he could Force-Skype with various Jedi ghosts if he needed guidance. Even just taking the original trilogy I always felt Luke was more Grey Jedi than anything though.

[Yukaphile]

That was in "Attached" from TNG. But that's mere mortals. I expect a Jedi Master to be more disciplined. Especially after years of rebuilding the Jedi Order. There's also a difference between having said thought and actively grabbing the lightsaber to attempt to do so.

And you don't have to be an emo hermit to keep attachments, as his Legends self proved. You can still have discipline, especially with the connection to the Force a Jedi has.

And I disagree. Luke was quite optimistic. And he was very dedicated to the ways of the light. When you can say that you're gonna bring Darth Vader back to the good side, then you're not some kind of whiny git anymore, you're something else.

[Madner Kami]

There's also a difference between having said thought and actively grabbing the lightsaber to attempt to do so.

That is the cracker right there. Fleeting thoughts are just that, acting out on them is something completely else. There are plenty of people I'd have liked to strangle, kick their arse or just generally bash their head against the next best wall, but I never did. And here we have Luke drawing a weapon on a sleeping pupil of his. Really think about this.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

He's totally out of character, in my opinion. Pulling out his lightsaber on a sleeping Kylo is something I could live with- we don't know exactly what was going through Luke's mind. What's really out of character is abandoning his friends and family to suffer and die because of a mistake he made. That's contrary to Luke's most basic attributes and I can totally get why Hamill was/is so upset about that.

[ORCACommander]

quite frankly when it boiled down to it, we have a 30 second version of rashamon that fails to pull off rashamon

[Yukaphile]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij5LecFWgAo

To me, this is Luke.

[Admiral X]

Even the actor who played the character thought TLJ Luke was inconsistent with the original trilogy Luke. He goes as far as to call him Jake Skywalker rather than thinking of him as Luke.

[Yukaphile]

I mean, that says it all. Nuff said. GG NO RE

[Nessus]

You can have a Luke that's a bitter, ground-down old man, you just have to REALLY sell how he got there, cause it's a complete 180 from how he was and the path he was on for the entire original trilogy.

Similarly, you can have a Luke who gets up in the middle of the night to talk himself to the brink of murdering someone he cares about because he saw grim force visions... but you have to REALLY sell how he got there, because it runs completely counter to his historically known personality.

Last we saw of Luke he'd just been proven right for holding out hope for years that a walking atrocity of a man who'd maimed him and threatened everyone he cared about could be redeemed. EVERYONE thought he was crazy for it, and for good reason, but he stuck to it, and was validated in the end for it. His optimistic philosophy must have leapfrogged iron-clad to fucking diamond-clad as a result of that.

In order for that man to have become this one, something really heavy must have happened, probably a lot over an extended period. That's VERY "show, don't tell" territory. That absolutely needs to be developed, and developed well if you want people to feel it enough to believe it (or vise versa). It's not even enough to sell it to the degree you would with well made new characters, because you're not just laying down new stuff: you're actively burning retrograde to all the character's previous momentum, so your development has to be twice as good to pull it off.

But the movie doesn't develop, or even tell. It shows only the very end event, but nothing of what lead there, and what lead there is EVERYTHING for a change that significant. Without that, the difference is stark enough, sudden enough, to just feel like a completely different character.

[Yukaphile]

That's really the issue, isn't it? Return of the Jedi ended on such a high note, with the Emperor dead, the Empire severely weakened, his father redeemed, learning he had a sister, and his friends alive, to the point you can't believe Luke would be that way. At all. Hell, I could buy Luke behaving that way in Legends more than the actual canon, especially during the Legacy era, after the Vong war, many betrayals, the New Republic turning on them, several friends and family members die, and his nephew falls to the dark side and murders his wife. I could buy Luke being bitter at that point. But not how Return of the Jedi left off. I do wonder how the new EU is setting things up to incorporate this into what was seen in Last Jedi into its universe, but one thing for sure is that it definitely won't be as great to the original trio as Legends was.