Novus_Opiate said:
He says the temptation came over him but for a brief moment. He wasn’t going to actually do it.Yeah I get that; what I don’t get is why it even came to that point to begin with? I mean we have to consider, it wasn’t simply a tempting thought, but those thoughts actually compelled Luke to pull out his lightsaber and ignite it! That’s so irrational of Luke. Sure, I bet killing Kylo is a thought would had crossed anyone’s mind if they learned Kylo’s taint of the darkside, but this is Luke here. I’d buy Luke was outside of Kylo’s hut, stewing back and forth of what to do and how to confront him; however again, it’s beyond me to think this temptation compelled Luke to pull out his lightsaber and stop himself from committing the murder at the last second.
dahmage said:
Luke’s final version and what is generally accepted as the true version has Luke go in to read kylo Ren’s mind. After seeing kylo rens darkness he has what he describes as a very brief moment of thinking that it would be better to kill him. And without thinking ignited his lightsaber and immediately, immediately regretted that decision.
No, again, it makes no sense. Luke in ROTJ was struggling between whether to kill Vader or redeem him, and yes, it came to that point where he was tempted to really finish Vader off, but he came to senses to not fall for the bait. So all these years later, that lesson he learned was for nothing…?I don’t get all these complaints that boil down to “Luke would never do that” (including disappearing in the first place) when we basically saw nothing that happened between the end of ROTJ and TFA/TLJ. People change, especially those that have suffered trauma. It’s the same complaint about Han that makes no sense either.
Sorry, but in movies you don’t change people’s characters off-screen unless it’s logical. Luke growing wiser and more confident between TESB and ROTJ is logical. Luke going from believing in his Nazi father to contemplating his nephews murder is not. Such a change of character needs to be explained more thoroughly. Given that so many don’t buy the way Luke behaves, I think it’s clear this part of the plot is underdeveloped.
I think his rash behavior in the OT and the fact that what he saw in Ben’s mind was traumatic would cause him to make the mistake of briefly “acting on instinct”. Doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility.
I’m not saying it’s out of the realm of possibility. I’m saying it could have been developed better. Luke doesn’t just have the idea float around in his mind, he activates his lightsaber and contemplates killing a sleeping boy who hasn’t yet committed any crimes.
sorry, but “contemplates killing” is your own wording, and it is clear that you are over-inflating the problems in your descriptions of parts of the film because you didn’t like it. it wasn’t contemplation, it was an instinctual reaction that lasted a split second.
You’re talking semantics. He instinctively thought about killing a sleeping boy, his nephew, who hasn’t yet committed any crimes for a split second. The Luke we knew didn’t show those instincts.
I think this is the same Luke that has always looked forward or “looked to the horizons” instead of concentrating on what’s in front of him. Yoda called him out on it again. This is the same Luke that has not learned from his mistakes or teachings. If he was any different, I would have been upset.
I think the point of ROTJ was, that Luke was different, and had learned from his mistakes and teachings. He had also grown beyond his teachers, by seeing the good in Vader when his teachers could not.
Now part of that growth is reversed to make him more human and flawed. That brings new things to the table, but also alters the perspective on the character. Not everyone has to be on board for this. The Luke we meet in TLJ is very different from the one we left in ROTJ. It’s up to each of us to decide if TLJ sufficiently fills the gap, and if they like the moody and fearful Luke, who abandoned his friends and the universe.
When it came to Ben, Luke was scared sh*tless about what he would become. Because of this he made a fleeting decision that he literally backed away from a second later. Luke is not perfect and he’s not the savior of the universe. I felt this made his character more believable in the end. We all make mistakes and make rash decisions that affect our lives. Why should Luke be so different? And again, if hew was concentrating on where he was and what he was doing, he wouldn’t have looked forward, freaked out, and made such a costly mistake.
This is Luke and I loved it.
Like I said it is a different version of Luke as envisioned by RJ. It’s a more complex version, which is interesting, but I can’t blame anyone for missing the optimistic hero of the OT.
Well said. I love the civil conversations we can have about this. In the end, it’s a movie franchise and these are first world problems. I enjoy this fandom even when I may disagree with someone about certain aspects of the film. MTFBWY!