Luke Skywalker

I don’t entirely love Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi — it works for me, though I recognize that it is messy — but I consider its capstone to Luke Skywalker’s story not just the best thing in John Williams’ opera cycle but even so good that it retroactively improves Luke’s story in the original IV-VI trilogy. Rescuing some thoughts from X/Twitter and elsewhere:

For one thing, it keeps the promise made by that last moment in VII: The Force Awakens —

— Luke is now ready to truly understand Kenobi, though it takes Luke until the end of VIII: TLJ for him to fully register Kenobi’s final lesson to him and stop wallowing in his own bullshit. It is the fitting end both for Luke and for the “saga”.

John Williams knows the score, if you will pardon the pun. The first time we hear the Force theme is seeing Luke restless in IV: A New Hope …

… and Williams teases us by leaving the theme uncompleted. As he will again and again, either letting is fade away or interrupting it with something else. Until, at long last, he does complete the theme — gently, not triumphantly — with Luke’s death at the end of VIII: The Last Jedi when we know that Luke has in his last moment come to peace with himself, because he finally learned the lesson Kenobi needed him to understand.

A word about violence

It is a pity that the choreography of the fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin at the end of III: Revenge Of The Sith is so bad because the core idea is brilliant: Obi-Wan keeps falling back and falling back and falling back, desperately hoping that Anakin will make a mistake.

Obi-Wan’s error in succumbing to settling things with Anakin through violence and trying to set his own terms for it should give poignance to his duel with Vader decades later in IV: A New Hope, showing he has learned and matured. In Obi-Wan’s last duel, he finally accepts that he cannot — and should not — defeat Vader through violence. He does not try to set the terms of the fight, or try to “win”.

Wisdom.

This takes us to Luke — who we met and came to love as a young hothead — finally learning what Obi-Wan was trying to teach him, stepping up yet refusing violence, completing the work.

Moviebob

So Uncivilized

Luke is not a generic hero, he is a repudiation of the generic hero.

Jesse McLaren

So Luke Skywalker force projected across the galaxy to distract a Sith blinded by anger that he didn’t even realize he wasn’t a fighting a physical person, allowing the next generation of heroes to escape and then he gloriously faded into the sunset and you didn’t like that?!

And it was revealed Rey isnt from a famous family she’s just an ordinary person who has the power to take on the forces of evil and you were mad she’s not a nepo baby?!YOU WERE MAD SHE’S NOT A NEPO BABY?!

Jonathan McIntosh

A handful of The Last Jedi haters in my mentions are offering up a fascinating misreading of the final showdown between Luke and Vader in V: Return of the Jedi. I think it’s worth taking a moment to discuss because it may help explain why these guys hate Luke’s character so much in Episode VIII.

The misreading: Luke Skywalker uses his great warrior skills to defeat Darth Vader. Once he’s proven himself in combat and stands victorious, Luke does the honorable thing by showing mercy and sparing his enemy. Thereby saving himself from corruption and redeeming his father.

What really happened: Luke tries to avoid fighting but gives into anger. As he bests Vader in combat, Luke realizes his great mistake, winning this fight means losing his soul to the Dark Side. The battle itself is corrupting him, understanding this Luke throws away his weapon.

Notice that the misreading (above) reframes Luke as a badass warrior and reframes his refusal to kill Vader as an act of mercy stemming from a position of power. This is significant because Luke beating Vader in combat is explicitly depicted as a moment of weakness not strength.

The desire of some fans to re-imagine Luke as a powerful warrior who spares the bad guy out of benevolence is consistent with the way male heroes are often represented. It’s the way Batman is framed when he doesn't kill The Joker. But Luke Skywalker isn’t the typical action hero.

Luke’s arc in the original trilogy ends with him not only refusing to kill the bad guy, but refusing to even fight a worse villain. This is why Luke’s force projection standoff with Kylo in The Last Jedi is so perfect. It's the ultimate expression of everything Luke has learned.

The fact that an iconic figure like Luke Skywalker was explicitly framed as weak for fighting a murderous villain like Darth Vader is a pretty subversive message, especially for a male hero in Hollywood. And it’s something that, 35 years later, some fans still refuse to accept.

Max Gladstone

Responding to a comment lost to the sands of time, affirming my own disdain for the Jedi.

I see where you’re coming from, but I don’t buy it. Admittedly, in part because I have no difficulty either rejecting prequels or considering them as schlocky historical dramas produced in the period between VI and VII. That said, you’re spot on with respect to Luke’s moral issues in VII and VIII being natural outgrowths of his character in IV-VI. On bias I think the evidence of the prequels is that the Jedi were terrible Jedi. Which kicked me in the feels the way I think some feel kicked by the Luke thing.

The whole plot of the Prequel Trilogy (I-III) rests on the Jedi being so bad at the most basic of human interactions that they don’t recognize fascism and Palpatine’s general skeeviness staring them in the face, and never think through the underpinnings of the civil war. If we sort of go with the prequel trilogy where it seems to lead us, here’s the story as I see it:

• I-III: The Jedi are an ossified order so devoted to strength and self-righteousness that they forget their role and allow a great crime to take place.
• IV-VI: Luke learns the Force but resists exactly the old Jedi bullshit that got the galaxy into this mess. (In this light, walking out on Yoda turns out to be one of the wisest things he does in the whole trilogy …)

This tacking into personal connection ends up saving the galaxy from the Emperor: Luke going to save Han and Leia leads to him reconnecting with Vader (traumatic as that is), and reaching out to Vader leads to the Dark Side eating itself. But, we get to the New Trilogy (VII-IX): Luke’s rudderless when he encounters the limits of his philosophy, and petrified precisely because his iconoclastic mysticism has left him so alone. And he’s aware enough to see himself recapitulate old Jedi mistakes. That leads to his breakdown, and I think that’s the root of his recovery at the end of VIII. At least that’s how I see it.

Brendan Hodges

This week taught me loads of people think the Jedi in the prequels were Good Guys who did everything right, instead of inhuman militarized priests whose hypocritical arrogance directly contributed to the fall of The Republic. The Jedi steal children from their parents, never let them talk to their parents again, generally act like inhuman robots and “training” is forcing kids to play party games seeing if they guess a speeder or a cup is on their iPad. What could go wrong!

When Anakin goes to Yoda for spiritual support, mortified Padme might die, Yoda responds: “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” If Yoda had a more nurturing & accepting hand, Anakin never would’ve become Darth Vader. Instead, it’s a culture of Catholic Guilt. Brendan Hodges

It’s significant the only Jedi to stand up to the Council in all 3 prequels is Qui-Gon Jinn, the first Jedi to learn to become a Force Ghost. Lucas is demonstrating knowledge and wisdom go deeper than fundamentalist attitudes and over-reliance on arbitrary dogma.

The Jedi think they’re “keepers of the peace, not soldiers,” only using the force for “knowledge and defense.” Yet, from the opening of I: The Phantom Menace, Jedi are deployed as armed enforcers for The Republic, shaking down CEOs of trade companies. They live by none of their values. II: Attack of the Clones is especially damning. Yoda and Mace are anguished their “ability to use the force has diminished.” Ultimately, they cover up their failure from the Senate, the same toxic attitude of cover-ups with the police & the Church, an image of power above all else.

When Luke ultimately realizes the cycle of violence and fundamentalist hypocrisy must end, he’s right.

“Now that they are extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy, hubris.” Luke hides on Ahch-To out of guilt, but also in fierce ideological opposition to propagating a toxic religion. Until Rey, he doesn’t see a way of reconciling the virtues of the Jedi with a new outlook (syncretism). IX: The Rise of Skywalker should have deepened these ideas, but alas.

While the Star Wars Prequels (I-III) may fail as entertainment or drama, they persevere as rich, rewarding and sadly relevant texts by a very strange man, George Lucas. And Rian Johnson is the only post-Lucas storyteller to meaningfully reckon with them. They’re a magnificent work of art.