I don’t like TLJ at all, and it all has to do with the treatment of Luke. I think it was a complete betrayal of the character in two major ways: 1) They took a massive steamy dump on the last moments of Jedi when Luke throws down his lightsaber and refuses to kill his father. This Luke acknowledging giving into fear, hate, and anger will not allow him to defeat the darkside. What we see in the “Murderous Uncle” plot point is the complete opposite of this lesson. Not to mention in Jedi, his father is essentially the head of the SS, yet Luke refuses to give up on him and literally risks his life to do it. But his nephew he’s just gonna kill? 2) Luke the quitter. A core component in every movie is “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you!” Leia from the deathstar, his friends from Vader, Vader from himself. I get that Abrams set Johnson up for this character betrayal first, but at the end of ever Luke scene I sat there thinking, “OK this is were we get Luke back for one last ride, like Han.” Instead we bitter bastard Luke who has given up on everything. Instead of “I’m here to rescue you!” we got “GET OFF MY LAWN!!”. I’ve read things like, “this makes the character more believable” or “it plays off earlier flaws”, but 1)NOTHING ABOUT STAR WARS IS BELIEVABLE. There’s no sound in space, light can’t make a saber, and yoda is a muppet (in TLJ a crappy looking one). The reason why star wars is for 12 year olds is its about imparting ideals and lessons in a mythic setting. Luke Skywalker is supposed to be larger than life, not a frail being. He is the idealization of the good guy, the boy scout archetype. Johnson seemed more interested in making yet another deconstructionist pile of junk than a true Star Wars movie.
That said I get why the critics liked it, the dialog is good, the main plot of Kylo and Rea was great, the Fin, Rose, Poe plot was middling, but the character development from FRP plot was good. I don’t get the hate for the jokes, to be honest they kept me watching after every crappy Luke scene. It’s a dark movie that needed gags, just like Empire did. But none of that good can overcome the bad of the betrayal of characterization of Luke Skywalker, the essence of what a Star Wars movie should be: a mythic morality tale wrapped in escapist fantasy.
It used to be Star Wars was the only franchise I would pay regular prices for, now it’s just like everything else. $5 Tuesday if that, more likely free from the library.
