This makes the white-hot outrage over Luke’s characterisation in TLJ even more laughable.
At the end of RotJ, Han and Leia are respected leaders and heroes to the New Republic. Fast forward to TFA and Han is back to being the scoundrel smuggler we were introduced to in the first movie, and Leia is back to being a Rebel leader, and thus we have two characters who made a 360° turn.
It’s strange how Abrams hasn’t received any backlash for this deliberate regression, but Rian Johnson gets all the blame for ruining Luke Skywalker.
In my experience, Rian gets a lot of blame for things he wasn’t able to do anything about.
There’s a lot of problems with characterisation at the hands of what Rian did to Luke as his arc is very much following the same trajectory of Return of the Jedi but at the same time it’s not entirely his fault either. He was put in a position that he had to try to make sense of how Luke was already so out of character leaving his family and friends without reason. He went looking for the first Jedi Temple for reasons. He doesn’t even tell Han or Leia why. He just leaves them without a trace and on a wild bantha chase that ulimately meant nothing.
I think the reason J.J. gets so much of a free pass is he made something that looks like Star Wars and when you don’t think too much it really hits the beats of the first two films in particular. A lot of people want Star Wars to feel like these two but George decided to grow it beyond just that. It was no longer just a Saturday matinee adventure serial or dreamlike tragedy. It was also a child’s fantasy, a film noir mystery, and opera to name but three subgenres within how it evolved. Even The Clone Wars series tried very hard to make each season different. The first season is about showing models to kids on how to live the rest of their lives, the second is showing bounty hunters, and it continues to the very end with Yoda’s Arc exploring the Force Priestesses and the deeper metaphysical side of the Force. George never restorted to doing the same thrills.
There was poetry of course and similar storybeats but it was always different. Like in A New Hope the Death Star conveys Luke’s external struggle to defeat the Empire but in Return of the Jedi the situation is much more internal on Death Star II. It’s Luke going into the heart of what twisted and converted his father. The same thing with Anakin destroying the Trade Federation ship. It was an accident versus Luke who trusted the Force with destroying the Death Star. The moments and poetry have to be different to work. You don’t really get that sense in the Sequel Trilogy.