I really agree with your dislike of the dark and gritty DCEU, but i am perplexed that you would lump this with those (hyperbole aside). Luke is shown as ‘not perfect’ and struggling with how to exist as a perfect legend, and a flawed human. And i feel like he resolves this by the end of the film, so I didn’t come away feeling that he was flawed when i left the theater.
Sorry, I just realized that I didn’t address your actual point about Luke redeeming himself by the films end. My issue would be his inaction for the 30 years leading up to this film.
JJ / TFA set RJ up with a difficult question to answer: Why would Luke go missing for all of this time? RJ came up with the best answer he felt that he could… that Luke felt compelled to take himself (and the Jedi) out of the equation, leaving the Knights of Ren to run amok.
That just doesn’t ring true to the character for me. Assume for a moment that he DID react in a moment of pure instinct and draw his weapon on this adolescent nephew (not exactly avuncular, but let’s suppose it happened). Would Luke immediately exile himself for that? Would the shame of failure with all of the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders “break” him? RJ would say yes, but I (and at least a very vocal minority) would say no. We already saw Luke deal with the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders and he never gave up on his friends. We saw Luke find out that he was the son of (one of) the biggest bad guys in the galaxy and he didn’t run away into hiding. After getting beaten from one side of Cloud City to another, having his hand lopped off, and being told that he was the heir to a legacy of death and destruction, can anyone imagine an ROTJ where Luke Skywalker has abandoned his friends, leaving Han to be a permanent ice cube and Leia to be Jabba’s own personal concubine? Gritty and realistic. And had ROTJ been made in PTSD aware world of 2017, maybe this is what we would have gotten, but I come to Star Wars for escapism and parables.
I’m with Mark Hamill… “our” Luke would not have acted the way RJ has written him in TLJ. He may have had to regroup, but he would have acted to save Ben and not have abandoned Leia and Han. Only then, AFTER he had righted his wrongs, THEN he might have made the decision to end the Jedi order and exile himself.
So who’s to blame here? Is it JJ for sending Luke off in the first place and creating a mystery box too impossible to answer without destroying a hero? Or RJ for not giving Luke a noble enough reason to abandon his friends and family? Maybe both, I don’t know.