https://medium.com/@hitRECordJoe/a-new-old-skywalker-253efda3809c
An essay written by JGL on Luke Skywalker - worth reading. Even though we ultimately disagree, he clarifies some great points already presented in this thread several times, and he does acknowledge that those who didn’t like the movie aren’t entirely wrong on Luke’s characterization or the movie itself.
If already posted, forgive me.
Another way to take this is that Luke is no longer our main character. In a movie, audience avatars such as Luke or Neo or Ethan Hunt cannot abandon their missions, cannot have self doubt so severe that they give up on the story, since that sends the clear message that the audience should give up on the story. I think this is where many fans are stuck right now. They still see Luke as the main character, someone who needs to have faith in this story. But the main character is Rey, and it is through her eyes that we are seeing this version of Luke. She is disappointed with this guy, the legend who was supposed to show Rey her place in all this. And that’s exactly why Luke cannot be the legend anymore. He must be a disappointment because otherwise people would continue to see him as the main character, and Rey would never even have the opportunity to carry the weight of the story on her shoulders.
People forget also that this is a mythological convention as old as the hills, and even Star Wars has used it in the past. The father figure becomes the ogre that our hero must slay, for the good of the people. Their time has passed, their rule is corrupted, the young blood must overthrow them. The Last Jedi accomplishes this in spades.
My problem with that is that I didn’t connect with Rey in TFA, which leads me to believe that most, if not all of my problems with TLJ, are TFA’s fault.
Well, TFA was so generic with respects to the OT I think anything outside of that realm would feel alien.