Servii said:
RotJ is the movie that really elevated Luke from a good character to a great one. It’s why I don’t abide people claiming that Luke is generic or uninteresting. Luke is great because he doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of the knight or warrior. He’s reserved and soft spoken, and conquers the villain through compassion, not force. He is what a knight would be in an ideal world.
Absolutely. His scenes with Vader perfectly highlight the contrast between an ideal masculine knight and a toxically-masculine one.
Luke is calm with a firm, compassionate heart. He is secure, giving in his care for others, despite the loss he’s experienced in his life. We see this in his mission to save Han. He pauses his own training for his friend. He trusts his friends with the mission on Endor and is prepared to die on DSII. The love he has for his friends is enough.
Vader is cold with a ruthless furnace heart. He is possessive and, ultimately, insecure. As such, he uses power to compensate. His wrath extends to his own men and he even attempts to turn his children into servants for his own selfish conquests.
Luke is defensive (except when he indulges into the dark side, as he still has his own internal conflict), Vader is aggressive.
Still, Luke is prone to the same rage his father is, and going cold as a defense mechanism from pain. This is one of the ways Vader being Luke’s father retroactively makes ANH better. Luke inherited that cold reaction to his the death of his uncle and aunt and Biggs from his father. Even when mourning Obi-Wan, his reaction is still rather subdued.
But Luke is ultimately able to reach the sensitive man locked within Vader’s mask through his own mastery of his emotions. Also because he’s his son, the son of his long-dead wife who still has unconditional love for his father. The same unconditional love his wife had for him, but he wasn’t able to let go of his selfishness. And while Vader exhibits the same possessive tendencies over Luke in ESB and most of ROTJ, he eventually chooses to be selfless when he can’t stand to watch his son about to die just to save him, a monster.
In their final scene together, Luke and Anakin are both more concerned about each other then themselves. Anakin’s son was able to pacify his flame and melt his armor, bring out the compassionate side of him, that Luke also inherited, but mastered far sooner.
I don’t think a Jedi should be a hippie pacifist; after all, Luke still fights all of Jabba’s minions, when he’s forced to. They fight to defend others first and themselves second. But, as Obi-Wan put it, “There are alternatives to fighting.”