Star Wars: Episode IX - THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

[ironwez20]

My favorite part is when they keep patting each other on the back while they?re embarrassing themselves and telling each other how well they?re doing.

Lol they?ve been doing this since the movie came out. Spent all of Christmas convincing themselves the ST makes sense.

Khev- the ST makes sense cause kylo?s hair looks just like anakin in revenge of the sith . They had a plan all along! I don?t care what people who actually made the thing say! It syncs perfectly if I can piece together the smallest things possible that still don?t go together

Jye- brilliant khev. Absolutely savage! I don?t care either way as long as Luke and the falcon are in it.

 

[Khev]

Absolutely savage I better call 911 lol

Damn dude you even just ruined the boyscout Mando Luke persona ST haters are celebrating as real Luke because while his actions seemed heroic he was really just kidnapping grogu on his new found mission to end the failure of the jedi lol

They only see superficial heroics with Luke swinging his lightsaber.

The real courage and heroics is what motivates Luke inside to make those hard decisions.

It?s all good I now view Mando Luke as a win win for everybody!

It doesn't matter, they still need to be miserable, lol. RO Vader gave me enough of the "prequel Vader" that I always wanted which makes it easy to not get too worked up about PT Anakin/Vader anymore and just appreciate the PT for the select good elements that it does offer. Mando Luke could have easily done the same for those who see Luke as a static killing machine but nope they prefer to wallow in rage.

Your post is the disease and Khev?s post is the cure lol

This is where the law ends and Khev starts!

The sequence of Luke in Kylo's room pondering if he should kill him wasn't what really bothered me about Luke. My biggest gripe was that we never got the heroes back together on screen again. Most of us older fans have preconceived ideas of how things should have played out with the EU stories. I loved Dark Empire and saw some elements taken from that in Rise Of Skywalker though rushed. I think aspects from each trilogy are good and some are cringey for sure. To many head scratcher moments for me in the new trilogy with the lightsaber transporting and the fact that jedi ghosts become tangible. I know Ben sat down with Luke in Jedi but really weird. I guess when your part of the Living Force or is that undead living force you do really become more powerful than can be imagined.

That's cool on how you see Luke in Ben Solo's hut but yeah when I say "ST haters" I'm not talking about even-tempered longtime fans who just didn't like that the ST brought elements of severe tragedy to the lives of the OT heroes or were frustrated at missed opportunities like having the main three heroes together again. I was more referring to the types who blindlessly obsess over hating and bashing the films as if it gives them some sort of internet clout or something.

 

[Khev]

Time to make it personal now Khev!

Luke is the Captain America of SW. If you think Cap is okay to do what Luke did, then I would consider the take on Cap insulting. Imagine taking Iron Man's daughter under his wing, and she was considering joining the Flag Smashers. He shows up in the middle of the night like a pedo and raises his shield up like Walker did, and stops. Even though he didn't do the act, it was insulting to say he would think those actions in the first place. Luke would talk with him with his parents present and let him go to the dark side if he desired, but would clearly state that we are enemies the next time we see each other. You can justify the writing in any movie, but it doesn't mean it is logical and true to the characters. Honestly, Superman snapping Zod's neck in Man of Steel still doesn't sit well with me.

Ha ha, that was a cheap move bringing Cap into it.

But I don't see Cap and Luke as being synonymous at all. Steve always had unshakable moral purity whereas a major element of Luke Skywalker's journey beginning with ESB was whether or not he'd be able to resist the pull of the Dark Side. Sometimes he passed with flying colors and other times he temporarily gave in. That's why even *after* ROTJ when Dark Empire came out with all those covers of Luke in the Darth Vader armor nobody was freaking out or screaming Jake Skywalker. We all just thought it was cool and wondered how far he might still be capable of falling even after his victory against the Emperor.

But then decades passed and apparently for a good part of the fandom the notion that he was unshakably perfect got so cemented over those many years that a fall from grace, even if temporary and without him actually turning to the Dark Side, was unthinkable and the source of utter outrage.

 

[matticus]

Ha ha, that was a cheap move bringing Cap into it.

But I don't see Cap and Luke as being synonymous at all. Steve always had unshakable moral purity whereas a major element of Luke Skywalker's journey beginning with ESB was whether or not he'd be able to resist the pull of the Dark Side. Sometimes he passed with flying colors and other times he temporarily gave in. That's why even *after* ROTJ when Dark Empire came out with all those covers of Luke in the Darth Vader armor nobody was freaking out or screaming Jake Skywalker. We all just thought it was cool and wondered how far he might still be capable of falling even after his victory against the Emperor.

But then decades passed and apparently for a good part of the fandom the notion that he was unshakably perfect got so cemented over those many years that a fall from grace, even if temporary and without him actually turning to the Dark Side, was unthinkable and the source of utter outrage.

Knew you would enjoy it with Cap being brought into this.

They are both the same spirit to me, just different universes. Light side and dark side are all about the Jedi experience. If Cap did what Luke did in TLJ, you would see the bashing that TLJ gets. Cap is as perfect as it can get in the MCU, what's wrong with having Luke be that? The thing with Dark Empire is that he had to join the Dark Side in order to defeat the Clone Emperor, not kill a student in cold blood nor run into hiding. Not very heroic, and in three movies, Luke was heroic in all of them. We are not talking high drama here.

I bring up comics and games all the time, but it seems most people don't care to acknowledge them. I wasn't a big fan of the Dark Empire, story wasn't that great. But you have like 50 books of Luke being Grand Master and creating a whole new academy that lasted till Disney canceled the EU. Nope, we are going with the Dark Empire comics that made Luke bad, cause that's edgy man. Snyder got the lukewarm treatment over his DC movies, cause he took that graphic novel approach with edginess and look where that got him. I like to celebrate heroes, not be disgusted by them.

 

[TheDucky]

Lol they?ve been doing this since the movie came out. Spent all of Christmas convincing themselves the ST makes sense.

Khev- the ST makes sense cause kylo?s hair looks just like anakin in revenge of the sith . They had a plan all along! I don?t care what people who actually made the thing say! It syncs perfectly if I can piece together the smallest things possible that still don?t go together

Jye- brilliant khev. Absolutely savage! I don?t care either way as long as Luke and the falcon are in it.

My favorite posts of theirs are when they try to change the context of the PT and OT to make the ST work.

 

[ajp4mgs]

It is dumb to compare Luke to Yoda, who is nearing death, hunted by the galaxies largest army, with no army himself, was supposed to somehow fight the Empire by himself. Meanwhile, Luke, who is still young for a Jedi, can still fight, has an army and support system, is a little ***** who runs.

It is dumb to compare Kenobi to Luke because he had a purpose in exile.

Luke in TLJ makes no sense and Hamill himself agrees.

I can agree for the most part with respect to Kenobi executing an additional purpose beyond just hiding. But I don't agree about Yoda. I could post transcripts from the OT days, and go on and on, but it wouldn't matter. Oh well.

You?re arguing a point with me that I didn?t make.
I didn?t say that training meant that NO Jedi could fall to the dark side. I didn?t even remotely imply that.
I just said that it was something that the Jedi were aware of and worked to help their students to avoid. They are obviously not always successful because we wouldn?t have any movies if they were.

Train harder doesn?t necessarily mean bad teacher, it may simply mean bad student.
Here is where the misunderstanding comes in again.
You seem to be under the impression that George Lucas spent three movies trying to convince us that Luke Skywalker is a quitter who gives up on people, like his nephew who is being lured to the dark side, when the going gets tough.
I am under the impression that those three movies were telling us the opposite.
In fact, I do believe that the opposite was the ENTIRE point of the whole trilogy.
Mark Hamill, you know, the guy who played Luke, agrees with me.
I happen to think that the guy who plays Luke Skywalker gets the character better than you do. I may be wrong about that, but I don?t think so.

I think where you and I disagree most is not the disparity in how we interpret OT Luke, but how we interpret his characterization and motives in TLJ. Instead of debating who understands Luke and who doesn't, I'll just explain what my view is and why. I know that I can't compete with Mark Hamill, so if you think I'm totally off base, that's fine. I may indeed be wrong, but I'll at least back up my point of view.

Everything about OT Luke's character arc is best defined by the Dagobah cave for me. Yoda advises him that he won't need his weapons. Luke ignores this and straps on his belt with blaster and lightsaber. When he confronts Vader there, Luke ignites his saber and strikes to kill. He succeeds at decapitating Vader and sees his face in Vader's mask. When Luke later departs for Bespin, Yoda tells him to remember his *failure* at the cave.

So why does defeating Vader in that cave duel get described as a failure? If that was what he was being groomed for, what alternative would've qualified as a better success? Well, we see it in ROTJ. Luke throws his saber down. He's willing to sacrifice himself rather than give in to the type of aggression that Palpatine is counting on. At the time, his friends hadn't even taken down the DS2 shields. All hope of destroying Palpatine was lost, but Luke didn't finish off Vader and didn't attack Palpatine either.

Luke hadn't graduated to being a true Jedi before that. He hadn't understood what Yoda had been trying to teach him all along. Earlier in ROTJ when Luke said, "then I am a Jedi," Yoda laughed at him and told him that he first needed to confront Vader. Just like he did in the cave. And so it happened, but it ended far differently. And I believe that's what the audience (mostly kids) was meant to have as the takeaway lesson. Set up throughout ESB; payed off in the climax of the saga.

The cycle of failure would've kept going if Luke hadn't learned what Yoda was trying to get him to understand. I'm not even sure that Kenobi ever understood. Luke brought his father back by showing him where he'd gone wrong all those years ago. And everything was brought back into proper balance as a result. So my questions would be simple to anyone who claims to understand what post-ROTJ Luke would act like if his nephew went to the dark side: What was the purpose of the Dagobah cave lesson? How did Luke change by the end? And would Luke go back to being more like the kid who failed in that cave and flew off to Bespin to accomplish nothing?

How you interpret those critical points in his character arc will then determine how you perceive what Lucas was saying through Luke's journey. I'd be curious to learn how those opposed to TLJ Luke interpret the Dagobah cave relative to the ROTJ climax.

 

[jye4ever]

I can agree for the most part with respect to Kenobi executing an additional purpose beyond just hiding. But I don't agree about Yoda. I could post transcripts from the OT days, and go on and on, but it wouldn't matter. Oh well.



I think where you and I disagree most is not the disparity in how we interpret OT Luke, but how we interpret his characterization and motives in TLJ. Instead of debating who understands Luke and who doesn't, I'll just explain what my view is and why. I know that I can't compete with Mark Hamill, so if you think I'm totally off base, that's fine. I may indeed be wrong, but I'll at least back up my point of view.

Everything about OT Luke's character arc is best defined by the Dagobah cave for me. Yoda advises him that he won't need his weapons. Luke ignores this and straps on his belt with blaster and lightsaber. When he confronts Vader there, Luke ignites his saber and strikes to kill. He succeeds at decapitating Vader and sees his face in Vader's mask. When Luke later departs for Bespin, Yoda tells him to remember his *failure* at the cave.

So why does defeating Vader in that cave duel get described as a failure? If that was what he was being groomed for, what alternative would've qualified as a better success? Well, we see it in ROTJ. Luke throws his saber down. He's willing to sacrifice himself rather than give in to the type of aggression that Palpatine is counting on. At the time, his friends hadn't even taken down the DS2 shields. All hope of destroying Palpatine was lost, but Luke didn't finish off Vader and didn't attack Palpatine either.

Luke hadn't graduated to being a true Jedi before that. He hadn't understood what Yoda had been trying to teach him all along. Earlier in ROTJ when Luke said, "then I am a Jedi," Yoda laughed at him and told him that he first needed to confront Vader. Just like he did in the cave. And so it happened, but it ended far differently. And I believe that's what the audience (mostly kids) was meant to have as the takeaway lesson. Set up throughout ESB; payed off in the climax of the saga.

The cycle of failure would've kept going if Luke hadn't learned what Yoda was trying to get him to understand. I'm not even sure that Kenobi ever understood. Luke brought his father back by showing him where he'd gone wrong all those years ago. And everything was brought back into proper balance as a result. So my questions would be simple to anyone who claims to understand what post-ROTJ Luke would act like if his nephew went to the dark side: What was the purpose of the Dagobah cave lesson? How did Luke change by the end? And would Luke go back to being more like the kid who failed in that cave and flew off to Bespin to accomplish nothing?

How you interpret those critical points in his character arc will then determine how you perceive what Lucas was saying through Luke's journey. I'd be curious to learn how those opposed to TLJ Luke interpret the Dagobah cave relative to the ROTJ climax.

Khev had mentioned this in his previous post but the fans complaining specifically about Luke absolutely refuse to acknowledge events that happened in the movies.

Their arguments are built on willfully ignoring the 3rd act in in TLJ, TROS and to some extent ROTJ.

Your post is meticulous, well informed and logical.

This is what you will get for such a well structured analysis…

LUKE IS PERFECT ARRRGGGGGG!!!!!

 

[Khev]

Knew you would enjoy it with Cap being brought into this.

They are both the same spirit to me, just different universes. Light side and dark side are all about the Jedi experience. If Cap did what Luke did in TLJ, you would see the bashing that TLJ gets. Cap is as perfect as it can get in the MCU, what's wrong with having Luke be that? The thing with Dark Empire is that he had to join the Dark Side in order to defeat the Clone Emperor, not kill a student in cold blood nor run into hiding. Not very heroic, and in three movies, Luke was heroic in all of them. We are not talking high drama here.

I bring up comics and games all the time, but it seems most people don't care to acknowledge them. I wasn't a big fan of the Dark Empire, story wasn't that great. But you have like 50 books of Luke being Grand Master and creating a whole new academy that lasted till Disney canceled the EU. Nope, we are going with the Dark Empire comics that made Luke bad, cause that's edgy man. Snyder got the lukewarm treatment over his DC movies, cause he took that graphic novel approach with edginess and look where that got him. I like to celebrate heroes, not be disgusted by them.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with having Luke be like that per se. And Cap and Superman are good examples of characters like that that really work. And for that reason you're absolutely right I'd be very annoyed if any story had Cap raising his shield over his own nephew, John Walker style, and then changing his mind. That would be totally wrong for the character IMO and I have similar feelings about the infamous MOS neck snap.

If that's who Luke is to you, and if 50 or however many Grand Master Luke EU books really cemented that version of the character as your picture of him then I totally get why ST Luke would be absolutely unacceptable to you. I really do. The aspirational paragon of virtue is definitely a valid archetype. I personally just don't think that it really fits with the ups and downs we saw the character go through in the OT nor the overall bittersweet tone of the inter-family melodrama that is Star Wars. To me this is a world of conflicted, haunted, sometimes even reluctant heroes closer to Aragorn or Frodo than Cap or Supes.

Aragorn was what 87 years old, level 100, had killed however many hundreds of foes and STILL didn't trust his own strength of character to resist pure evil. Frodo took Sting, the very blade that lightsabers are based on, and held it above the throat of his best and most loyal friend before coming to his senses. I just don't have any problem whatsoever with Luke being in that same vein, in fact it's one of the most fitting scenarios I could imagine for him to endure when you look at the tone and structure of SW and what they were all inspired by.

Not just Tolkien but Kurosawa. Toshiro Mifune’s General Makabe in The Hidden Fortress was an unkempt, disheveled bully for a good part of the film and is revealed to be a legendary swordsman and general and I see shades of TLJ Luke in that too. None of this is to say that a preference for one specific archetype is any more or less valid than another but it does surprise me to see the level of vitriol for a take as valid as the one that played out and the level of immaturity (not by you) from those who seek to invalidate and gaslight those they disagree with.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts and yes in case you weren't around for prior discussions on Dark Empire I have always been a really big fan of those two miniseries, mostly for the mood, art, and edginess of them flirting with the possibility of Luke going bad so to see elements of that in TLJ and TROS was really cool for me.

 

[Khev]

I know that I can't compete with Mark Hamill

I love Mark but his take on what Luke should do in the movies has never been gospel. His suggestions have gotten vetoed ever since ROTJ. Make note of 14:50 and 15:27.

[video]

Hell none of the actors ended up having their characters do what they wanted them to do in Jedi, lol. Imagine calling Han "Jake Solo" because his character didn't die like Harrison Ford wanted.

 

[TheDucky]

Is anyone else here?

 

[TheDucky2.0]

It is good to be back... even if my old account is now screwed up.

 

[a-dev]

Testing if post needs mod approval or if that's just a marketplace thing.....

 

[jye4ever]

My account is still fine

 

[JAWS]

I see that some in the Fandom Menace is starting to turn on Doomcock and his "sources"

 

[JAWS]

Whoa... Got to wait for moderator approval?? Man they are going to be busy.

 

[Khev]

Testing if post needs mod approval or if that's just a marketplace thing.....

My post above needed mod approval for some reason.

 

[a-dev]

Testing if I still need mod approval on a subsequent post.....

 

[a-dev]

Looks like I do. That's gonna get annoying. I assume it's being worked on.

 

[jye4ever]

I can see your post a-dev can you see mine

 

[chrisstbh]

Testing if post needs mod approval or if that's just a marketplace thing.....

I'm getting "awaiting moderator approval" on everything