Hal 9000 said:
I don’t feel a need to tinker with “it was fear that kept me here” as it’s a natural lead-in to the point Luke wants to make. Even if we quibble about TLJ, it’s not untrue that fear was part of the equation for him.
I also believed this exact same thing a few months ago, so I totally get where you’re coming from. I hate to push back, but I’d bet there are plenty of people who think this is more of a serious continuity issue than Kylo claiming he told Rey her parents were nobody.
Here is a quote from Rian Johnson:
“The first thing I had to do when I was writing the script was figure out, okay, why is Luke on this island? … So, he knows his friends are fighting this good fight, he knows there’s peril out there in the galaxy, and he’s exiled himself way out here and taken himself out of it. So I had to figure out why. And I knew because its Luke Skywalker, who I grew up with as a hero, I knew the answer couldn’t be cowardice. I knew the answer had to be something active. He couldn’t just be hiding, and I knew it had to be something positive. He thinks he’s doing the right thing.
And that kind of led to the notion that he’s come to the conclusion from all the given evidence that the Jedi are not helping. They’re just perpetuating this kind of cycle, and that they need to go away so that the light can kind of rise from a more worthy source. And so suddenly then, that turned his exile from something where he’s hiding and avoiding responsibility, to him kind of taking the weight of the world on his shoulders and bearing this huge burden of knowing his friends are suffering. And because he thinks it’s a better, bigger thing for the galaxy, he’s choosing not to engage with it.”
The problem with the line in TROS is not that it mentions fear, but that it suggests that was the entire equation, and not merely a factor, to use the same analogy as you. “It was fear that kept me here”. See how it simplifies everything to an extreme degree? Really, not also that you thought the Jedi would only add to the problems of the galaxy? He’s basically admitting that everything he argued for in TLJ was entirely motivated by fear and shouldn’t be considered or remedied.
What I really think you should consider doing, is making it clear that Luke had his own fears, but they were not preventing him from leaving the island. That’s the definition of cowardice. He has to genuinely believe what he was saying in TLJ, but recognize that it was rooted in his aversion to failure.
For what it’s worth, I showed the first clip to somebody the other day who isn’t involved in this stuff and he couldn’t tell there was anything changed about it. Again, I’d rather not push for this, but it lines up with several other changes made for continuity with TLJ and I also think it’s something people will bring up in the future. Especially since we want this to be the final version, it’s worth considering more heavily, I feel.
