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

[MrL1992]

To answer the thread title, yes.

[AuRon]

I'm not going to make a big post here, but in response to the above comments: there are reasons why I choose to think of the original Thrawn trilogy as an alternate "sequel trilogy", and the conclusion to "my version" of the Star Wars saga. Its obvious that Lucas intended for his story to have a happy ending, and I kind of feel that that should be respected. The Thrawn trilogy shows us what happened after Return of the Jedi, but while still allowing a happy ending.

I've heard about what happens in the later "legends" books, and while some of it sounds interesting, a lot of it sounds pretty unappealing. Luke turning to the dark side, the emperor being resurrected, the empire hanging around for another 20 years with a revolving door of new leaders, Jedi developing god-like powers beyond what was ever shown in the movies, the emperor having a secret "noble" purpose behind forming the empire to stop an alien invasion... I'm not a Lucas fanboy, but I still feel that the story he told on the original movies should be respected, and not torn down, which I feel a lot of this stuff does.

[Makeshift Python]

It’s hard to respect Lucas’ intentions when he kept altering them to suit his needs. We know he was going to make VII before selling it to Disney, so I’m curious to how he would actually continue the franchise after years prior to calling ROTJ “the ending”.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well based on what was said about Star Trek canon, it seems easier to accept a purveyor that fans are comfortable deeming in charge of a franchise, qualified by merit of storytelling along with that.

It's easy to understand how that falls apart with Disney, but even with Lucas crafting Star Wars there was never a seemingly solid conception of where these characters came from or were going, just based on Chuck's Hero's Journey videos. Compositing or breaking up conceived characters and writing up each new story along the way with completely divergent renditions from each other, it feels a lot more fabricated than if they were all pre-written even with maybe some alterations here and there for adaptation purposes.

[Yukaphile]

No, even on this, I can't agree. The "fairy tale ending" shouldn't discount possible future dark tales from taking place, only so long as they keep Luke in character, and damn it, if he didn't run away from the Yuuzhan Vong conflict, he wouldn't run away from a conflict he had a hand in creating in the Disney canon.

[Makeshift Python]

Truthfully, Luke really should have just murdered Ben right then and there. He could have easily lied to Leia and Han about how Ben stupidly fell off a cliff or something. They’d probably have believed it too.

[AuRon]

It’s hard to respect Lucas’ intentions when he kept altering them to suit his needs. We know he was going to make VII before selling it to Disney, so I’m curious to how he would actually continue the franchise after years prior to calling ROTJ “the ending”.

http://collider.com/george-lucas-star-wars-plans

[Yukaphile]

Lucas even claimed once Legends was never canon, it had layers of canon, but he also insisted he left that to his people to handle. So yeah, Disney could legitimately cite Lucas as a firm foundation for decanonizing Legends. Don't treat him as a saint in storytelling even if he is a nice guy, overall.

[AuRon]

To make it clear, I'm not going to put George Lucas on a pedestal. He has his flaws. He was creative and ambitious, but obviously needed help from other people to put a good story together. But if you're going to say that its okay to disregard or tear down what happened in earlier movies, and the story and character development doesn't matter, then what does matter?

Are you watching for the characters? The storylines? The action? The setting? Nostalgia? What is it that people like about Star Wars, and makes them want to see more, while saying they're fine with stuff from the original movies being thrown out?

Personally, I think the best way to do new Star Wars movies would have been to set it hundreds of years after the original movies, so that you could do whatever you want without screwing with the original story. I also would have tried coming up with a more original story than "empire versus rebels again". Lucas made it clear that the original movies were partially inspired by World War 2, and the Vietnam war. So, a new movie series could have taken cues from more recent wars. Instead of space nazis, maybe have space terrorists, and religious zealots. That would have been different.

But Disney never would have done any of that, because they wanted to use the old characters for nostalgia.

[Yukaphile]

I feel as if Legends was still consistent to the character, because at least during the height of the Yuuzhan Vong War, Luke didn't run and hide - and if he did, it was to come up with a cunning plan, take the battle to the enemy, rather than... do nothing. Hell, after Jaina killed Jacen, he didn't break. He just accepted it, and the death of his wife, and moved on as people should, with grief, but with dignity.

I've said elsewhere I feel they should have started with Dawn of the Jedi thousands of years prior, then moved on to Tales of the Jedi, then the KOTOR era, and then The Old Republic era. Go chronologically. But you're right it was a nostalgia cash-grab.