1 minute ago, Stan Fresh said:

Because he felt ashamed and bitter. Seems perfectly plausible to me.

It's not the most implausible thing in the world, but I think it's worth trying to develop a reading of the movie according to which Luke is not a terrible person. Letting the neo-Nazis rise to power when you're the one person with the skills to stop them, simply because of shame and bitterness... if that's the only explanation, then I do have a lot of sympathy for the Not My Luke crowd. Whatever his flaws, Luke is ultimately a hero. Shame over one highly understandable lapse is not by itself going to keep him from saving innocent lives.

26 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

Been thinking more about this complaint, which is the most serious criticism of the movie's portrayal of Luke. There is something to the criticism, for sure, but I think you can connect the dots and make sense of Luke's behavior if you keep in mind the power of the dark side.

The way I see it, there is temptation from the dark side any time a Jedi makes a morally important decision. That's the explanation for Luke's lapse when he comes to read Ben's mind, just as it explains Luke's rage-filled attack that cuts off Vader's hand in ROTJ. In that moment, Luke was ready to kill Vader, because he was tempted by the dark side. In both cases, there was an immediate provocation ("If you will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will"/discovering the extent to which Snoke had already corrupted Ben), which allowed the dark side to briefly get ahold of Luke.

Then, to explain his long exile and abandonment of Leia and her cause: After his experience with Ben, Luke became convinced that Jedi training was not an effective way to keep someone from falling to the dark side. Not only did it not stop Ben from falling, it didn't even stop Luke himself from succumbing, if only momentarily. So at that point, his greatest fear is that if he stays involved in the galaxy and keeps behaving like a Jedi, and in particular if he goes to fight Ben, he will fall himself. This is how he rationalizes his decision to go into exile.

I find that the emotional charge of Luke's rage against Vader then beating him down and slicing off his hand was a series of event. From the belligerent antagonism of Palpatine, the frustration of the Rebels getting wiped out above and on Endor and Vader using Luke's affection for Leia to finally make Luke respond in a violent epic outburst. But then he still reigns himself in after all that to stand tall and call himself a Jedi and take the high road of the Light Side.

The problem is that the emotional charge for Luke's reaction to his own nephew was not evident to me. It portrayed Luke as an almost methodical calculated killer. which is an antipathy to Luke's state of being in ROTJ. Luke was entrusted with Ben's training and care of him, Leia's only child. I just see it as a huge change to Luke's character for him to stalk Ben to his hut and while prone almost kills him. It was not only badly written it was outright stupid move for someone so 'wise', it is a move without any thought or reflection. I do not see Luke as someone entirely led by impulse to not rationalize the series of events first.

10 minutes ago, splad said:

The problem is that the emotional charge for Luke's reaction to his own nephew was not evident to me. It portrayed Luke as an almost methodical calculated killer. which is an antipathy to Luke's state of being in ROTJ. Luke was entrusted with Ben's training and care of him, Leia's only child. I just see it as a huge change to Luke's character for him to stalk Ben to his hut and while prone almost kills him. It was not only badly written it was outright stupid move for someone so 'wise', it is a move without any thought or reflection. I do not see Luke as someone entirely led by impulse to not rationalize the series of events first.

It all depends on how far gone Ben really was at the time. It doesn't sound like he'd done anything terrible yet, but if we believe Luke's account of the event, he might have seen in his mind that Ben was already as deep into the dark side as Anakin was near the end of Episode III. At that point, Obi-Wan decides that he needs to kill Anakin. Is it really so out of character for Luke to be tempted by a similar line of thought? Especially given that we know from ROTJ that Luke is susceptible to brief moments of aggression fueled by the influence of the dark side?

49 minutes ago, splad said:

I just see it as a huge change to Luke's character for him to stalk Ben to his hut and while prone almost kills him.

Do we know at which point he got that intention? The most plausible series of events from my perspective would be that Luke gets a whiff of darkside corruption from Ben during their training. To study him more deeply, he sneaks up on him as he sleeps, so Ben is more susceptible to Luke's telepathy/sense/whatever. The corruption Luke sees is far deeper than he imagined and in an impulsive moment (perhaps on his own, perhaps with a little push from Snoke) he ignites the lightsaber he always carries with him. Feeling shame over what he had pondered to do, he sheathes the saber again - or at least plans to do so because Ben wakes up a moment too early and... well, we know the rest.

41 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

It all depends on how far gone Ben really was at the time. It doesn't sound like he'd done anything terrible yet, but if we believe Luke's account of the event, he might have seen in his mind that Ben was already as deep into the dark side as Anakin was near the end of Episode III. At that point, Obi-Wan decides that he needs to kill Anakin. Is it really so out of character for Luke to be tempted by a similar line of thought? Especially given that we know from ROTJ that Luke is susceptible to brief moments of aggression fueled by the influence of the dark side?

Anakin instigated the attack not Obi-Wan. Ben was a sleeping boy while Luke stood over his prone form deciding whether he should live or die. Their is a premeditation that makes Luke's character uncharacteristic from his previous appearances.

2 minutes ago, Cifer said:

Do we know at which point he got that intention? The most plausible series of events from my perspective would be that Luke gets a whiff of darkside corruption from Ben during their training. To study him more deeply, he sneaks up on him as he sleeps, so Ben is more susceptible to Luke's telepathy/sense/whatever. The corruption Luke sees is far deeper than he imagined and in an impulsive moment (perhaps on his own, perhaps with a little push from Snoke) he ignites the lightsaber he always carries with him. Feeling shame over what he had pondered to do, he sheathes the saber again - or at least plans to do so because Ben wakes up a moment too early and... well, we know the rest.

The point made is that Ben his own nephew was sleeping and he drew his saber on someone without even trying reason first when not being attacked or instigated is not in line with the Luke of the original trilogy.

1 hour ago, DaverWattra said:

It's not the most implausible thing in the world, but I think it's worth trying to develop a reading of the movie according to which Luke is not a terrible person. Letting the neo-Nazis rise to power when you're the one person with the skills to stop them, simply because of shame and bitterness... if that's the only explanation, then I do have a lot of sympathy for the Not My Luke crowd.

But he ISN'T the only one with the skills to stop them, and he's not a terrible person for letting shame overwhelm him. He's just a normal guy.

Quote

Whatever his flaws, Luke is ultimately a hero.

And ultimately he steps up.

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Shame over one highly understandable lapse is not by itself going to keep him from saving innocent lives.

I also mentioned bitterness. Having the whole galaxy rely on him to be a legend when he's just a guy made him bitter and drove him into hiding, too.

6 minutes ago, splad said:

The point made is that Ben his own nephew was sleeping and he drew his saber on someone without even trying reason first when not being attacked or instigated is not in line with the Luke of the original trilogy.

It's not like one day he randomly decided to brain-scan Ben. The movie is pretty clear on that. He'd already noticed the evil inside the boy. That Luke tried ordinary measures first before freaking out at Ben is implied in the story.

11 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

But he ISN'T the only one with the skills to stop them, and he's not a terrible person for letting shame overwhelm him. He's just a normal guy.

You don't think it's fair to say that, at the time of Ben's turn to the dark side, Luke was the only Force-user in the galaxy with enough power and skill to defeat Snoke and Kylo?

Treating your personal feelings of shame and bitterness as more important than an enemy with the power to kill countless innocents and dominate the galaxy is a terrible thing to do. I don't think there's any way around that. If someone says to you "I was the one guy in the world who could defeat the Nazis before they came to power, but instead I dodged the draft because it was my mistake that let Hitler come to power in the first place," that person is a craven fool, the opposite of a hero. Not even up to the standards of a "normal guy" (which is hardly how I would describe the Luke we see in the OT).

11 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

And ultimately he steps up.

After sitting back while the First Order commits more than a decade worth of atrocities?

You don't need the Force to defeat a Force-user. Remember Order 66? The arena battle in Episode 2? You're starting with a false premise.

And it's not like the movie sides with Luke on his decision. Yoda makes it perfectly clear that Luke was wallowing in self-pity instead of doing the right thing. He made a mistake, he owned up to it, and he got back into the action.

Do you expect a flawless hero? I can't imagine anything more boring.

I don't expect a flawless hero. I think my reading of the film ascribes enough flaws in judgment to Luke to consider him a flawed hero. On my view Luke was still wrong to retreat to Ahch-To, but his decision was an understandable mistake rather than bizarrely crazy and irresponsible. Meanwhile your reading paints him as a below-average loser who sat by and did nothing to prevent terrible atrocities when he knew there was a chance he could make a difference. (Even if there were others with the power to stop Snoke, that doesn't absolve Luke ca. 20 ABY of the responsibility for at least trying to stop Snoke himself.)

Moreover, I don't understand your resistance to the highly plausible hypothesis that the dark side's influence played a part in Luke's moment of weakness in Ben's room.

Jeezus... You people still arguing about this movie?

If you didn't like it, shut up and vote with your wallet next time... don't buy the Bluray and don't go to the next Star Wars moive.

Don't sit around whining about it and complaining about other people liking it.

And for goodness sake, I wish the review bombing on rotten tomatoes would stop... it's pretty obvious to those with any sense that it's exactly that... the only sites that show a low audience score are those that are easily abused by bots and alt accounts.

(And for the record, I didn't particularly like the movie, but I'm not gonna sit around and whine about it like a spoiled little child)

15 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

I don't expect a flawless hero. I think my reading of the film ascribes enough flaws in judgment to Luke to consider him a flawed hero. On my view Luke was still wrong to retreat to Ahch-To, but his decision was an understandable mistake rather than bizarrely crazy and irresponsible. Meanwhile your reading paints him as a below-average loser who sat by and did nothing to prevent terrible atrocities when he knew there was a chance he could make a difference. (Even if there were others with the power to stop Snoke, that doesn't absolve Luke ca. 20 ABY of the responsibility for at least trying to stop Snoke himself.)

I think you're judging him as a legend, not a man who can be overwhelmed by carrying the weight of a galaxy on his shoulders. See also: the message of this movie.

Quote

Moreover, I don't understand your resistance to the highly plausible hypothesis that the dark side's influence played a part in Luke's moment of weakness in Ben's room.

Saying "oh it was magic" is just weak storytelling and characterization. It absolves characters of responsibility and agency. If it was Snoke's evil wizarding powers that did it you might as well replace Hamill with a Lego figure in the movie.

On 1/12/2018 at 1:27 PM, Maelora said:

To quote the most insincere character in the MarcyVerse: 'Boo hoo, Marcy did a Bad Thing!' (and this is someone who burns down orphanages; I don't think I'm actually that bad...)

Can I even be bigoted against my own gender? I thought it came with my membership package that I could diss my own gender. I'll have to check the small print.

Anyway, I can respec characters (if I'm in a generous mood), but I've never tried to respec wamen. Is that like ramen?

<smartass mode off>

Okay, srsly, I'm sorry if I ruffled any feathers with that. I honestly thought that scene was silly. (And I love Carrie to bits, I pretty much owe my sexuality to her back in 1984).

I mean, if they just wanted her taken out of action for Poe to do some Mansplaining Mutiny, they could have done it another way.

Why now, after five movies, is Leia suddenly a Force Wizard? I can only assume (with her brother gone) she was intended to be a mentor for Rey in the next film. That might have been cool, but that plot obviously was rendered moot when we lost Carrie

If you ruffled feathers with a joke about goofy-looking flying, I consider that a public service.

As for Leia "suddenly" being a Force Wizard, I would like to remind everyone that her brother and father could both draw on the Force with little to no training, that she could sense Luke's location and mental state in Episode 5, and that she strangled a hutt in episode 6 - a feat that shouldn't be humanly possible, given that his neck was about as big around as a cow's ribcage.

I don't mind Force Jesus Leia one bit, even with a silly scene with her flying through space.

2 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

It's not the most implausible thing in the world, but I think it's worth trying to develop a reading of the movie according to which Luke is not a terrible person. Letting the neo-Nazis rise to power when you're the one person with the skills to stop them, simply because of shame and bitterness... if that's the only explanation, then I do have a lot of sympathy for the Not My Luke crowd. Whatever his flaws, Luke is ultimately a hero. Shame over one highly understandable lapse is not by itself going to keep him from saving innocent lives.

Luke made a big point about how one guy with magic powers couldn't destroy the entire First Order, so I can't really say that he's the only one who can save the galaxy in good faith.

24 minutes ago, OddballE8 said:

Jeezus... You people still arguing about this movie?

On many forums, people are still arguing about the Prequel Trilogy; I've even seen the occasional Original Trilogy argument.

What I'm trying to say is, don't expect the Sequel Trilogy ragefest to stop while there's still sequels in production, or for at least two decades afterward.

27 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

If it was Snoke's evil wizarding powers that did it you might as well replace Hamill with a Lego figure in the movie.

I'm not saying it was Snoke, I'm saying it was the temptation of the dark side. The dark side doesn't take away your free will or turn you into a puppet, but it is tempting and addictive, like a drug.

Anyway, I feel like I've made my case. At this point we're going around in circles.

I feel that's the wrong way around. The dark side isn't a thing that makes you do evil, the dark side is when you do evil.

1 minute ago, Stan Fresh said:

I feel that's the wrong way around. The dark side isn't a thing that makes you do evil, the dark side is when you do evil.

It's somewhere in between. Again, like a drug. Heroin addiction doesn't literally make you take more heroin, but it does give you a strong, compulsive desire to take more. The dark side doesn't control people, but it does seduce them.

1 minute ago, DaverWattra said:

The dark side doesn't control people, but it does seduce them.

I can be seduced by a pastry, that doesn't mean the pastry made me eat it. It's a metaphor.

13 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

I can be seduced by a pastry, that doesn't mean the pastry made me eat it. It's a metaphor.

At this point, I'm not sure we're really disagreeing. If you agree that the dark side presents Force-sensitive people with a strong--but not forcible or irresistible--temptation to act with aggression and fear, that's my view of the dark side as well.

Not quite? I feel when Jedi talk about the dark side, they're talking about personal failings, not a metaphysical (small f) force. So when Luke is beating on Vader, there' no exterior force, no outside agency acting on him and influencing his actions. It's his own rage, his own fear. The dark side is a state of mind, not a force.

With regards to Luke, if nothing else he's taking after his prior teachers. Obi-Wan made a pretty major blunder with regards to training Anakin (he even admits as such in RotS as having failed his former Padawan), and after the birth of Luke and Leia went off to hide in obscurity, doing nothing to prevent the galaxy from going down the tubes. Yoda did much the same, feeling the whole mess was his fault for letting the Jedi Order become such a collection of hidebound dogmatists.

A bit more seriously, Luke had a moment of weakness where he considered killing his nephew, in whom he sensed only darkness. With Vader, he sensed some flicker of goodness, of inner conflict and was still idealistic enough to believe that he could reach that inner goodness. What helped Luke was that for the past two decades Vader had by and large been miserable in his role and felt there was no going back, and even then it took Luke nearly being murdered before his eyes for Anakin to reassert himself and hurl the Emperor to his well-deserved doom. But in Ben Solo, he didn't sense any conflict, just darkness. Luke had also been taught by two different Jedi Masters to "trust his feelings" and that in so doing he'd be following the Will of the Force.

Unfortunately for him, that lead to a moment of weakness, from which he recovered, but sadly not soon enough. And what's the first thing he sees upon clambering out of the wreckage of Ben's hut? His entire training temple, everything he's been working towards for years, reduced to a flaming ruin and a large portion of his students (many of whom were probably children) dead. All because of his own brief moment of weakness. Clinically speaking, the man's suffering from a severe case of PTSD, which combined with his guilt very likely feed into severe depression that lead to Luke's resolution to remove himself and by extent the Jedi from the galaxy.

There's also the matter of it having been at least a quarter of a century between Rotj and when his training temple got burned down. A lot can happen to a person in that span of time, especially as Luke was at best in his mid-20's during Rotj. Add onto the pressure of being a "living legend" whose credited for saving the galaxy at least twice (blew up the first Death Star before going on to defeat the fearsome Darth Vader in single combat and then deposing the Emperor)... when his major blunder winds up shattering the marriage of his sister and best friend as well as sending the galaxy spiraling towards darkness once more, it's small wonder that in his shame and guilt that he decided he wanted nothing more to do with the galaxy after his self-perceived hubris wound up costing the galaxy the next possible generation of Jedi Knights. This was in large part because he no longer felt worthy of bearing the mantle of "legendary hero" that had been placed upon him. That he was able to shoulder that burden for as long as he did, and then take it up once more even in the face of his own death, speaks volumes for the strength of his inner character.

Personally, I would have loved to see Luke grow and try to come back from that sort of despair (one so bad he cut himself off from the Force, which for him was probably akin to willfully blinding oneself), but for purposes of the narrative of both this film and Episode 9 I get that he had to die. Otherwise, you've got a retread of the 90's where nobody except Luke, Han, and Leia were allowed to save the galaxy. The old generation of heroes had their time, and must now step aside to let the next generation of heroes to step up to the plate. But at least Luke got to go out and be the inspiration for future generation of heroes, which given where he stated the sequel trilogy is a **** fine way to exit the stage.

2 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

It's not like one day he randomly decided to brain-scan Ben. The movie is pretty clear on that. He'd already noticed the evil inside the boy. That Luke tried ordinary measures first before freaking out at Ben is implied in the story.

Thank you for making my point for me. He did not randomly go in there. He premeditated the event which makes Luke very cold blooded which is why this is not the Luke of the original trilogy

4 minutes ago, splad said:

the event

It's hilarious that you think playing word substitution games will score you a win in a discussion.