Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
You know out of all the story telling elements in TLJ, the one I had the least problem with was Luke's story. Its the only thing that really wasn't shoddily written, and it would make sense that Luke would finally realize what the Jedi learned in the PT. That they hadn't evolved, that they were arrogant, that they were a big reason why the Galaxy willingly fell under the sway of Palpatine.
I think at one point during the speculation around the Last Jedi, I wrote here that I wanted to see Luke follow his father down the dark side and be a big part of a rising of the Sith, and that Snoke was just a hologram and it was Luke who had taken over the First Order in his attempt to bring peace to the Galaxy.
It was the rest of TLJ storys that were just really really terrible, they took a pretty credible enemy in the first order in the first movie and basically made it blunderingly incompetent. They took a pretty good space nazi in Hux and made him the butt of knock knock jokes. Kylo Ren became an even more emotionally unstable flat villian though Driver acted the crap out of it. The Rose, Finn story was just not only boring but silly and went nowhere. They made Phasma even more worthless. And I think to the surprise of Abrahms and everyone else they made Smith look like the Iron Mike Sharpe of the Star Wars Galaxy and killed him off so they could do a couple of funny lines, and it forced them to bring back Palpatine, I was convinced that was not supposed to happen.
The Phantom Menance was a good but pretty much retelling of ANH with a Death Star that could shoot Death Stars out of its mouth. But they did a decent job of establishing new characters, and had a decent shock moment of it.
But TLJ was like dynamite on the rails and blew the trilogy train clear off of the track to the point, that The Rise of Skywalker was an even bigger mess with a bunch of fan service thrown into it. The sad thing was that the script and story for TROS was so bad that you could literally see the actors were just done with it, and trying to get to the end of filming. And the usually imaginative special effects and modelling teams were pretty much checked out for the most part which lead to the awkwardly stretched Star Destroyer effects.
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The problem with the Luke stuff was none of it was earned. Such substantial character development (/degradation) off-screen is lazy. How did we get there? A flashback to a hut scene of him being on the verge of hacking down his nephew on a hunch and the remorse for that doesn't seem like enough to dismantle the old Luke. Him getting to a place of such paranoia would require a change in the character alone. Luke was steadfast in upholding the light side at the end of RoTJ, enough not to be swayed into anger/hate/temptation. I haven't read whatever comics and backstory they cobbled together around the sequels (who has the time or the desire..) but the heel turn required a much more fleshed out explanation to convince any one fresh out of watching the OT.
The "training" Rey underwent was half baked too. Luke promised 3 trials she would have to pass, and we were shown 2 (apparently the 3rd left on the editing room floor). Not that she needed help with how ridiculously overpowered she was anyways.
Luke dressed in exquisite robes only to toss his own lightsaber in comedic fashion like that is something you'd never see in an alternative Lucas-written sequel either.