I’ve been thinking a bit about why I think Luke’s character is wrong to me, and why RJ’s explanation is insufficient.
The way I view Luke in this film is:
Luke has done something against his values driven by fear, and his actions have made things worse. He feels ashamed about what he has done. His reaction to this is, that he gives up on all of his values, and everyone who shares most of those same values.
I have problem with the first part, because one of the main values of Jediism is to control your fears. To be a Jedi is to be level headed, to not be impulsive. This also goes back to what Mark Hamill has said: “A Jedi wouldn’t do that”. Luke is a Jedi, that was one of the outcomes of his arc in the OT, and TLJ now wants us to accept, that Luke acted against those values impulsively. Of course we’ve seen Jedi act against their values before, most famously Anakin. However, with Anakin it was a process that was developed over the process over three films, and I think it can actually be argued, that Anakin never really accepted many of the values of the Jedi in the first place. Then there’s Mace Windu, who at the end of ROTS wanted to execute a seemingly defeated Darth Sidious. Here again we’ve seen the buildup of the conflict, and the effect that has had on the Jedi. They’re starting to come apart. What’s happening in ROTS is not a vision of evil, it’s real evil. RJ spents next to no time building up Luke’s sudden impulsive act, an act we may understand from a human perspective, but not from a Jedi’s perspective, and that’s where this movie really drops the ball in my view.
I have an even bigger problem with the second part, namely that Luke’s mistake causes him to give up on all his values instantly. After spending an entire trilogy returning the Jedi values back to the galaxy, he gives up on them completely, and in this film is actively campaigning against them. The Jedi are somehow wrong for attempting to channel the Force in a way, that for a thousand generations has prevented evil from spreading throughout the galaxy. The Jedi made mistakes in the final days of the Galactic Republic, but surely that can’t be atributed to their core values. Those core values are likely reflected in those old books Luke found in the Jedi tree, the books that Yoda jokingly says, aren’t page turners. In my view there’s something really wrong with a film, that argues these books with these core values should go up in flames. It’s reasonable to argue, that they should evolve, but kill the past? I feel this movie and it’s creator really don’t understand the themes and values represented by George Lucas’ original six film saga.
Luke’s entire reason for being a Jedi was because his father did it and it seemed like a good career path after his future in moisture farming went up in flames. It seems harsh, but there it is. In Empire, he realizes that his father actually wasn’t this great hero but a massive jerk who ruined Star Wars for everyone thirty years ago. By the end of the trilogy, Luke finally makes some peace with that. He boldly proclaims that he is not just a Jedi, but specifically ‘a Jedi like my father’. Basically, he sees in himself the same potential for failure and may even realize how the Jedi religion sets people up to fail, and he is okay with that. The trilogy ends with him being torn between two worlds - the world of his friends, and the world of his Jedi teachers who want him to spread their failed teachings throughout the universe. He tries to be the Jedi sage, and it predictably fails, to the ruin of both his friends and the Jedi. Now he’s master of exactly zero worlds, so I can totally see why he’d try to hunt down the Jedi texts and burn them. After all, in some ways this is ultimately the fault of the religion.