DrDre

GigoloJoe said:

I hate to be a naysayer, but I’ve found these grades to have a somewhat unnatural colour pallete. It’s common in digital grading - the skin tones have a sort of apricot hue and you can’t unsee it. Having said that - it’s much better that you’ve brought the levels up and boosted contrast as the 4K83 was far too flat to begin with. The latest 1.3 minimal DNR is much improved in this respect, and retains more accurate colours.

I personally feel the skin tones on many of these releases are unnaturally pink, but we all have our preferences.

UncutIsSuperior said:

Hello. Is this tool compatible with MacOS? The only laptop I have at the moment is a MacBook Air and I am wanting to make an Ultimate Edition of the Star Wars saga with this tool, complete with some scenes that were cut from each film. Thank you.

No, sadly it is only compatible with Windows at this time.

Here are two sets of frames from the Rancor scene:

Here’s an update of my color grading for the future 4k80, which will also serve as a reference for a bluray regrade:

Thanks for the vote of confidence! Here’s a larger set of comparisons between Sanjuro’s color grading, and the latest update of my own.

Sanjuro set 1:

DrDre set 1:

Sanjuro set 2:

DrDre set 2:

Sanjuro set 3:

DrDre set 3:

Sanjuro set 4:

DrDre set 4:

RogueLeader said:

Hey man! Happy to hear you enjoyed it some more in your most recent viewing! Hope your day is going well.

Do you think you just enjoyed it more in a general sense, or were there specific things that you noticed you kinda liked this time around?

I found I really enjoyed the Luke/Rey/Kylo/Snoke dynamic this time round.

yotsuya said:
But, he sold it outright and put Kennedy in charge so he clearly didn’t want any part of the development process. So it really is his own fault.

That is not true. Iger’s book makes it clear, that Lucas wanted to keep creative control after the sale, but Disney would not give it to him for understandable reasons. The fact that Disney chose to buy his treatments gave him some peace of mind, as he clearly believed, that at least the saga would be continued on the basis of his ideas, but when that didn’t happen, he was obviously very disappointed to the point, that he initially didn’t want to come to the premiere of TFA, and only showed up after Bob Iger convinced him to do so.

Anchorhead said:

DrDre said:

‘There’s nothing new,’ he said. In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies. In this one, he said, ‘There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward.’

That’s laughable - and typical Lucas. He shrunk the Galaxy Far Far Away into the Solar System Far Far Away by having everyone end up being related to each other. Not a new story, just more of the same one. New characters? He milked Bobba Fett. New technologies‽ He rolled out a second Death Star!

1. In the interest of disclosure; I’m not familiar with the prequels beyond seeing Phantom once and screen-grabs of scenes from the other two. I just havent seen much beyond video game quality rehashes and spinning colors. I may be way off on the two prequels I’ve never seen.

2. While there’s no denying The Force Awakens mirrors the same structure as Star Wars, it at least matches visually and has a bigger Death Star.

One of the criticisms against the PT was, that it was visually too distinct from the OT, particulary after Lucas decided to go fully digital filmmaker with AOTC. You might argue Lucas cared more for the new technology than consistency with the previous movies, which to him were less than he had hoped for, due to technical limitations. So, I think Lucas for better or for worse was always interested in moving the envelope technically. Additionally I would argue Lucas introduced a whole host of new worlds, and environments in the PT, and certainly greatly expanded the visual language of the Star Wars universe through highly diverse designs, even if they didn’t always translate very well to the big screen.

Funny, reading some of the comics, and having some debates here have helped me accept what is, and let go of what might have been. I watched TLJ the other day, and I actually enjoyed it for the most part.

Rodney-2187 said:

If the 4K UHDs are the special editions, then no sale. But what if they aren’t quite the Originals, but closer to them than the blu rays? I’d probably get them.

Would that mean the end of any hope to ever see them release the fully restored Originals though?

I will get them even if they are just the GL SE. For one with HDR I expect the colors to be massively improved. Secondly >90% of the films are just the OOT, and this will likely be the highest quality these films have ever been with the amount of detail far exceeding the potential of any fan restoration.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/ca.sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/george-lucas-couldnt-hide-his-disappointment-when-he-was-show-star-wars-the-force-awakens-103743963.html

“Early on, Kathy [Kennedy] brought J.J. [Abrams] and Michael Arndt up to Northern California to meet with George at his ranch and talk about their ideas for the film,” Iger writes in The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years As CEO Of The Walt Disney Company (via Slashfilm).

“George immediately got upset as they began to describe the plot and it dawned on him that we weren’t using one of the stories he submitted during the negotiations.

“The truth was, Kathy, J.J., Alan [Horn, Disney’s chairman], and I had discussed the direction in which the saga should go, and we all agreed that it wasn’t what George had outlined.

“George knew we weren’t contractually bound to anything, but he thought that our buying the story treatments was a tacit promise that we’d follow them, and he was disappointed that his story was being discarded.”

Things didn’t get much better once he’d seen the movie either.

“Just prior to the global release, Kathy screened The Force Awakens for George,” Iger goes on to say.

“He didn’t hide his disappointment. ‘There’s nothing new,’ he said. In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies. In this one, he said, ‘There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward.’

“He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t appreciating the pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt quintessentially Star Wars.

“We’d intentionally created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the earlier films, to not stray too far from what people loved and expected, and George was criticizing us for the very thing we were trying to do.”

DominicCobb said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Alright, I’ll bite.

650m domestic, 875m international. 1.525 billion worldwide.

I’d up the domestic but lower the international. Keep worldwide about the same, maybe lower.

Domestic 540m, international 660m, total 1.2b.

Here’s a direct comparison:

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/J91MCNNU

Just a little update, after some vacation, and some debugging I’m finally almost ready to start generating LUTs. Here are a couple of 1080p comparisons to show, what you can expect from this color grading.

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Sanjuro:

DrDre:

Broom Kid said:

Are you actually streaming it in 4k right now? Every other account I’ve read from the Netherlands is that they’re marking things as being available in 4K but none of the content is actually encoded at that level. If you’re getting an actual 4k stream and not a 1080 stream marked as 4K, it means they’re already starting to update/upgrade the files they’re serving since the platform went live.

Also, I’m guessing the Ewok movies and show isn’t up there? I have yet to see anyone say they’ve watched them, and considering people are finding stuff like the '90s X-Men and Gargoyles episodes, Ewoks should have turned up by now.

The quality is a lot better than the streaming version I have on google movies, but the most obvious difference is the colors, which have a much higher dynamic range. The Ewok are not available.

Rogue One looks awesome in 4K. The HDR color grading is a massive improvement over the bluray. 😃

oojason said:

‘Free Disney+ pilot launches in the Netherlands, here’s what it’s like’:-

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/12/20862167/free-disney-plus-hands-on-pilot-marvel
 

The article claims that Rogue One is available now in 4K (along with 16 other titles) - impressive…
 

From Dre’s posted images above this does look to have a good simple UI too (which is always a bonus 😃)

Keep checking to see if they accidentally release ‘The Mandalorian’ before the 12th November, please Dre 😉

Am very much liking that ‘Empire Of Dreams’ is on there - hopefully more Star Wars documentaries and BTS programs will be added over time…
 

Rogue One in 4K is looking pretty sweet! 😃 I will look for any accidental Mandalorian content. 😉

ATMachine said:

This is foul sorcery.

There’s so much content, and it’s really fast.

It even has this gem:

For all you Marvel fans it also has many of the old cartoons from the 1980s till today:

As it turns out we here in the Netherlands are extremely fortunate to already have Disney+ available for the next two months for free! Disney will be testing their platform in our country before the worldwide launch, and so here are a few screenshots of the new service:

All the Star Wars films, and series are available, and for those wondering, the versions available at this time are the digital masters, that have been used over the last years, including the extras.

StarkillerAG said:

DrDre said:

StarkillerAG said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Actually the Luke of TLJ is the one who has finally internalized the lessons of TESB. Rey says herself that Luke is purposefully ignoring his success in ROTJ (which repudiated Yoda and Obi-wan), but he has a reason for doing so - saving Anakin did not destroy the Death Star in the short term, nor the Empire in the long term. On the contrary, Luke sees his victory there and elsewhere as having a direct line to his hubris in training Ben.

And anyway, Luke in ROTJ is very pointedly not able to avoid the emotions affiliated with the dark side. He brings his weapon with him when he goes to see Vader. He gives in to his fear, anger, and hatred. It is only when he is on the verge of killing his father does his rationality come in, and he realizes what he has done - it is an exact mirror of the flashback in TLJ. Of course the argument then is that “he should have known better.” Well fine if you feel that way. But in my mind, the dark side is a constant temptation, and the factors leading to that moment in Ben’s hut were such that Luke was, in his arrogance, unaware of what he was getting into (it was a far more subversive challenge than the explicit manipulation of the Emperor on the Death Star). This arrogance is of course a mirror to the arrogance of the Jedi in the PT not realizing the fear and the anger they were giving into, which caused their downfall. Luke, seeing the cycle of things he’s found himself perpetuating, decides to end the Jedi for good. I don’t see any regression at all.

To me this presents a very narrow point of view, and just like much of Luke’s character development seems to be ignored, reducing him down to his mistakes at some moment in the past, so too the Jedi are reduced to their mistakes at the darkest time in their history. Like Luke there is much more to the Jedi than their mistakes at a specific moment in time. The Jedi guarded the peace in the galaxy for over a thousand generations. That to me is clear proof, that the Jedi code works, and that Luke in TLJ was turned into a fool, not being able to look beyond the flaws of a couple of individual Jedi, who by no means seem to be representative of the Jedi over their millenia long history.

I mean, yeah, Luke is looking at it the wrong way, and he’s ultimately proven to be wrong. But Luke is no fool. All we know about the Jedi is that they were the guardians of peace for a thousands generations, but even that doesn’t mean there were a thousand generations of peace. They were exerting their will of the Force over the galaxy. Luke only cites the rise of Darth Sidious and the creation of Vader (because these are things we can connect to as we’ve seen those films), but the whole point of him being on the island is to study the long history of the Jedi, and this is the conclusion he came to, that the Jedi must end. You can nitpick that they didn’t give you sufficient explanation, but in my opinion the implication is clear, that there are more flaws to the order than just the ones we’ve seen in the films.

Yet, Luke then changes his mind.

He doesn’t change his mind about the Jedi, he changes his mind about helping the Resistance. This is shown very well in the Yoda scene. Yoda tells Luke that the teachings of the Jedi were flawed, and tells Luke to pass on everything he learned, both success and failure. Luke still believes that the old Jedi were flawed, but he decides to create a new order of Jedi, learning from the failures of the old.

I didn’t hear anything about a new order of Jedi. All I saw was Yoda chastising Luke for not living up to his potential as a Jedi.

You obviously weren’t paying attention during that scene. Yoda specifically says:

“Heeded my words not, did you. Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, but weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.”

It was Luke who chose to only see the Jedi through the lens of his own failure, and thus couldn’t see the bigger picture.

Yes, but Yoda’s speech allowed Luke to see the bigger picture. Once again, the quote above clearly contradicts the point you’re trying to make.

No it doesn’t. There is nothing in Yoda’s lesson to Luke, that indicates he’s presenting Luke with some new insight, that did not exist when the Jedi were in their prime. In fact Yoda saying “heeded my words not”, suggests the opposite of what you are suggesting. What Yoda is telling Luke is, that he did not do as he was taught. He should not only pass on his successes, but also allow others to learn from his failures, a lesson he probably gave to many Jedi in the past.

StarkillerAG said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Actually the Luke of TLJ is the one who has finally internalized the lessons of TESB. Rey says herself that Luke is purposefully ignoring his success in ROTJ (which repudiated Yoda and Obi-wan), but he has a reason for doing so - saving Anakin did not destroy the Death Star in the short term, nor the Empire in the long term. On the contrary, Luke sees his victory there and elsewhere as having a direct line to his hubris in training Ben.

And anyway, Luke in ROTJ is very pointedly not able to avoid the emotions affiliated with the dark side. He brings his weapon with him when he goes to see Vader. He gives in to his fear, anger, and hatred. It is only when he is on the verge of killing his father does his rationality come in, and he realizes what he has done - it is an exact mirror of the flashback in TLJ. Of course the argument then is that “he should have known better.” Well fine if you feel that way. But in my mind, the dark side is a constant temptation, and the factors leading to that moment in Ben’s hut were such that Luke was, in his arrogance, unaware of what he was getting into (it was a far more subversive challenge than the explicit manipulation of the Emperor on the Death Star). This arrogance is of course a mirror to the arrogance of the Jedi in the PT not realizing the fear and the anger they were giving into, which caused their downfall. Luke, seeing the cycle of things he’s found himself perpetuating, decides to end the Jedi for good. I don’t see any regression at all.

To me this presents a very narrow point of view, and just like much of Luke’s character development seems to be ignored, reducing him down to his mistakes at some moment in the past, so too the Jedi are reduced to their mistakes at the darkest time in their history. Like Luke there is much more to the Jedi than their mistakes at a specific moment in time. The Jedi guarded the peace in the galaxy for over a thousand generations. That to me is clear proof, that the Jedi code works, and that Luke in TLJ was turned into a fool, not being able to look beyond the flaws of a couple of individual Jedi, who by no means seem to be representative of the Jedi over their millenia long history.

I mean, yeah, Luke is looking at it the wrong way, and he’s ultimately proven to be wrong. But Luke is no fool. All we know about the Jedi is that they were the guardians of peace for a thousands generations, but even that doesn’t mean there were a thousand generations of peace. They were exerting their will of the Force over the galaxy. Luke only cites the rise of Darth Sidious and the creation of Vader (because these are things we can connect to as we’ve seen those films), but the whole point of him being on the island is to study the long history of the Jedi, and this is the conclusion he came to, that the Jedi must end. You can nitpick that they didn’t give you sufficient explanation, but in my opinion the implication is clear, that there are more flaws to the order than just the ones we’ve seen in the films.

Yet, Luke then changes his mind.

He doesn’t change his mind about the Jedi, he changes his mind about helping the Resistance. This is shown very well in the Yoda scene. Yoda tells Luke that the teachings of the Jedi were flawed, and tells Luke to pass on everything he learned, both success and failure. Luke still believes that the old Jedi were flawed, but he decides to create a new order of Jedi, learning from the failures of the old.

I didn’t hear anything about a new order of Jedi. All I saw was Yoda chastising Luke for not living up to his potential as a Jedi. Yoda didn’t treat that message as some new insight about the Jedi. It was Luke who chose to only see the Jedi through the lense of his own failure, and thus couldn’t see the bigger picture.

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Actually the Luke of TLJ is the one who has finally internalized the lessons of TESB. Rey says herself that Luke is purposefully ignoring his success in ROTJ (which repudiated Yoda and Obi-wan), but he has a reason for doing so - saving Anakin did not destroy the Death Star in the short term, nor the Empire in the long term. On the contrary, Luke sees his victory there and elsewhere as having a direct line to his hubris in training Ben.

And anyway, Luke in ROTJ is very pointedly not able to avoid the emotions affiliated with the dark side. He brings his weapon with him when he goes to see Vader. He gives in to his fear, anger, and hatred. It is only when he is on the verge of killing his father does his rationality come in, and he realizes what he has done - it is an exact mirror of the flashback in TLJ. Of course the argument then is that “he should have known better.” Well fine if you feel that way. But in my mind, the dark side is a constant temptation, and the factors leading to that moment in Ben’s hut were such that Luke was, in his arrogance, unaware of what he was getting into (it was a far more subversive challenge than the explicit manipulation of the Emperor on the Death Star). This arrogance is of course a mirror to the arrogance of the Jedi in the PT not realizing the fear and the anger they were giving into, which caused their downfall. Luke, seeing the cycle of things he’s found himself perpetuating, decides to end the Jedi for good. I don’t see any regression at all.

To me this presents a very narrow point of view, and just like much of Luke’s character development seems to be ignored, reducing him down to his mistakes at some moment in the past, so too the Jedi are reduced to their mistakes at the darkest time in their history. Like Luke there is much more to the Jedi than their mistakes at a specific moment in time. The Jedi guarded the peace in the galaxy for over a thousand generations. That to me is clear proof, that the Jedi code works, and that Luke in TLJ was turned into a fool, not being able to look beyond the flaws of a couple of individual Jedi, who by no means seem to be representative of the Jedi over their millenia long history.

I mean, yeah, Luke is looking at it the wrong way, and he’s ultimately proven to be wrong. But Luke is no fool. All we know about the Jedi is that they were the guardians of peace for a thousands generations, but even that doesn’t mean there were a thousand generations of peace. They were exerting their will of the Force over the galaxy. Luke only cites the rise of Darth Sidious and the creation of Vader (because these are things we can connect to as we’ve seen those films), but the whole point of him being on the island is to study the long history of the Jedi, and this is the conclusion he came to, that the Jedi must end. You can nitpick that they didn’t give you sufficient explanation, but in my opinion the implication is clear, that there are more flaws to the order than just the ones we’ve seen in the films.

Yet, Luke then changes his mind.

Because he is wrong about the Jedi and about himself. Changing his mind means allowing himself to be himself. Luke sees the legacy of the Jedi as failure, and his own legacy as perpetuating that failure. So he tries to move beyond his instincts. But though the Jedi often failed, it was that they kept trying to do the right thing that was important. Their failures are not what define them. Luke sees his solution as a long term play - if the Force were allowed to just be left alone, not controlled but any one order, then it might find balance and these disastrous failures wouldn’t happen. But the short term is important. People are in danger, and he has the power to stop it, so he should and he does.

I added a bit more to my argument above.

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Actually the Luke of TLJ is the one who has finally internalized the lessons of TESB. Rey says herself that Luke is purposefully ignoring his success in ROTJ (which repudiated Yoda and Obi-wan), but he has a reason for doing so - saving Anakin did not destroy the Death Star in the short term, nor the Empire in the long term. On the contrary, Luke sees his victory there and elsewhere as having a direct line to his hubris in training Ben.

And anyway, Luke in ROTJ is very pointedly not able to avoid the emotions affiliated with the dark side. He brings his weapon with him when he goes to see Vader. He gives in to his fear, anger, and hatred. It is only when he is on the verge of killing his father does his rationality come in, and he realizes what he has done - it is an exact mirror of the flashback in TLJ. Of course the argument then is that “he should have known better.” Well fine if you feel that way. But in my mind, the dark side is a constant temptation, and the factors leading to that moment in Ben’s hut were such that Luke was, in his arrogance, unaware of what he was getting into (it was a far more subversive challenge than the explicit manipulation of the Emperor on the Death Star). This arrogance is of course a mirror to the arrogance of the Jedi in the PT not realizing the fear and the anger they were giving into, which caused their downfall. Luke, seeing the cycle of things he’s found himself perpetuating, decides to end the Jedi for good. I don’t see any regression at all.

To me this presents a very narrow point of view, and just like much of Luke’s character development seems to be ignored, reducing him down to his mistakes at some moment in the past, so too the Jedi are reduced to their mistakes at the darkest time in their history. Like Luke there is much more to the Jedi than their mistakes at a specific moment in time. The Jedi guarded the peace in the galaxy for over a thousand generations. That to me is clear proof, that the Jedi code works, and that Luke in TLJ was turned into a fool, not being able to look beyond the flaws of a couple of individual Jedi, who by no means seem to be representative of the Jedi over their millenia long history.

I mean, yeah, Luke is looking at it the wrong way, and he’s ultimately proven to be wrong. But Luke is no fool. All we know about the Jedi is that they were the guardians of peace for a thousands generations, but even that doesn’t mean there were a thousand generations of peace. They were exerting their will of the Force over the galaxy. Luke only cites the rise of Darth Sidious and the creation of Vader (because these are things we can connect to as we’ve seen those films), but the whole point of him being on the island is to study the long history of the Jedi, and this is the conclusion he came to, that the Jedi must end. You can nitpick that they didn’t give you sufficient explanation, but in my opinion the implication is clear, that there are more flaws to the order than just the ones we’ve seen in the films.

But why allude to some unknown flaws, deflating the Jedi as a whole, only to then go back to business as usual? That seems pretty pointless, to just use it as a plot device to keep Luke in one place up till, and for the duration of the story, have him repeating how he has good reasons for wanting the Jedi to end, only to have him recant, when it’s convenient for the writer of the story. That’s my issue with this kind of storytelling. There appears to be more to the story, but we are never shown. I just read a comic about Kylo Ren and Snoke, and there’s more development of both characters in those 20 pages then there ever was in the movies. Such character development would go a long way in providing some much needed emotional resonance to Kylo’s betrayal in TLJ.

DominicCobb said:

Actually the Luke of TLJ is the one who has finally internalized the lessons of TESB. Rey says herself that Luke is purposefully ignoring his success in ROTJ (which repudiated Yoda and Obi-wan), but he has a reason for doing so - saving Anakin did not destroy the Death Star in the short term, nor the Empire in the long term. On the contrary, Luke sees his victory there and elsewhere as having a direct line to his hubris in training Ben.

And anyway, Luke in ROTJ is very pointedly not able to avoid the emotions affiliated with the dark side. He brings his weapon with him when he goes to see Vader. He gives in to his fear, anger, and hatred. It is only when he is on the verge of killing his father does his rationality come in, and he realizes what he has done - it is an exact mirror of the flashback in TLJ. Of course the argument then is that “he should have known better.” Well fine if you feel that way. But in my mind, the dark side is a constant temptation, and the factors leading to that moment in Ben’s hut were such that Luke was, in his arrogance, unaware of what he was getting into (it was a far more subversive challenge than the explicit manipulation of the Emperor on the Death Star). This arrogance is of course a mirror to the arrogance of the Jedi in the PT not realizing the fear and the anger they were giving into, which caused their downfall. Luke, seeing the cycle of things he’s found himself perpetuating, decides to end the Jedi for good. I don’t see any regression at all.

To me this presents a very narrow point of view, and just like much of Luke’s character development seems to be ignored, reducing him down to his mistakes at some moment in the past, so too the Jedi are reduced to their mistakes at the darkest time in their history. Like Luke there is much more to the Jedi than their mistakes at a specific moment in time. The Jedi guarded the peace in the galaxy for over a thousand generations. That to me is clear proof, that the Jedi code works, and that Luke in TLJ was turned into a fool, for not being able to look beyond the flaws of a couple of individual Jedi, and by no means seem to be representative of the Jedi over their millenia long history.

[yotsuya said:]
If you don’t think he would act that way or be discouraged then I think you have missed something about the entire saga. Try watching TESB and TLJ back to back. Then tell me that TLJ isn’t in character. Yes, in ROTJ, he is more confident, but confidence can be shattered easily. Luke has shown that to be the case. Insisting that he maintain the confidence that he has for most of ROTJ is unrealistic. The unsure Luke we see in ANH and TESB is just hiding under the surface in ROTJ and only needed a sufficiently horrible event to bring it out.

In my view you missed something in the saga, because you keep going back to TESB to argue Luke in TLJ is consistent with his portrayal in the OT. The problem is you view Luke as this flawed static character. Luke in ROTJ is just the same character as in TESB with a little more confidence. Take that confidence away, and add a few years and you have Luke from TLJ. However, you ignore much of Luke’s character development in the OT. The Luke that let himself fall to his death rather than accept Vader’s offer, is not the same character as the one who left Yoda and Obi-Wan on Dagobah, and that’s without considering the time he’s had to reflect on the consequences of his actions. Then there’s his development in ROTJ, where after being goaded by Palpatine, and Vader to release his anger, at that seminal moment he realizes he will follow in his father’s footsteps, if he doesn’t let go of his fear, and anger. So, he throws away his weapon, and declares himself a Jedi. These are scenes of critical character development, that you just seem to ignore. The Luke at the end of ROTJ is not the impetuous naive, youth we met in ANH, nor is he the impatient hothead from TESB, nor is he the overconfident Jedi wannabe at the start of ROTJ. He is a fullfledged Jedi, in tune with the Force, and able to avoid emotions affiliated with the dark side of the, such as fear, anger and hatred. That is his arc in the OT, his hero’s journey. You say:

“Try watching TESB and TLJ back to back. Then tell me that TLJ isn’t in character.”

What you’re really saying for the Luke of TLJ to be in character, he has to regress back to the character he was, when he first entered the cave on Dagobah. To me that’s one of the running themes in the ST: regression. Han regressed back to smuggler, Leia regressed back to the leader of a fledgeling rebellion, the galaxy regressed back to the Galactic Civil War, and Luke regressed back to his younger stupid self.