I don’t agree with the reading that Obi-Wan and Yoda were just using Luke, but I don’t think TLJ ruins that which came before it. I know it’s kind of a paradox, but TLJ is both dependent on the the OT, while also trying to be its own thing. It takes the franchise in a different direction for sure, and you kind of have to separate it from the thematic heart of the originals.
It’s not an exact comparison, but think Logan relative to the original X-Men trilogy.
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That being said, TLJ isn’t really as gray or cynical as people are making it out to be. I don’t think it was saying the Jedi are evil.
I think it’s still a very traditional good vs evil story, it just places less faith in ideals alone and gives less credit to principles making a hero. It embraces the human condition and makes that which is in all of us - our ability to fail and move on - good enough to be heroes. In some ways, that’s more optimistic than saying we have to work super hard just to be good people. It’s not saying that the Jedi were super bad just because they were flawed, just that they don’t have a patent on being able to save the galaxy.
Sometimes trying too hard to be the hero can backfire, like with Poe, Finn, and Rose - and in the case of Luke, who held himself to such high expectations of heroism that he exiled himself after failure (which, thinking the galaxy is better off without you is still kind of an extension of some bullshit hero complex).
You don’t have to try to be the hero - as long as you do good, there’s one in there - and your failures, flaws, and screw ups won’t take that away as long as you get back up.
EDIT: honestly I wish people wouldn’t ignore my posts
Yes, but here’s the thing. If you want to separate it from the thematic heart of the originals, than do your own thing. Create your own story with your own characters, perhaps set in the same universe. Don’t take Lucas’ story and Lucas’ characters and alter that to suit your own agenda. It’s not just that TLJ creates its own reality, it tries to alter our perspective on the earlier films, and tells us to view them through the prism of Rian’s vision. Even worse it attempts to do this by taking the same challenges, and then provide a different solution, in the process invalidating the earlier solution. It doesn’t even say, different problems require different solutions. It takes the same problem of Empire versus rebels, and a Jedi pupil turned to the dark side, and tells us the solution to that problem is not what the OT presented us, it needs to be something else. In doing so it betrays the spirit of the originals in my view.