Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

It wasn't really an "attempted murder," I'd say. It was literally a reflex.

Oh I have FAR more problems with the film than just the Luke stuff. It's kind of a mess overall imo actually.

Luke's treatment is just the one that many people latched onto the most because he's THE iconic SW hero and he had a very clear character arc in the OT, so naturally people are going to pay close attention to how he is characterized now. No surprise there really.

My own personal take on it is that you cannot bring up specific incidents in the OT, but ignore the larger character arc that Luke went through. Bringing up him attacked Vader ignores the fact that he then realized that that was wrong and REJECTED it mere moments later, again character progression. Now you might say "well he can make the same mistakes again," and fair enough. However, it's also fair for others to say that they don't find that interesting. Myself, I don't find it "deep" or clever or interesting to see Luke essentially regress and make the same freaking mistakes that he made 30 years ago and the entire universe basically being a OT-rehash, it's not creative it's just boring. At least RO and Solo had the decency to actually set themselves in the Imperial/OT-era itself.

And the Luke/Kylo stuff is were the shoddy world-building and lack of proper backstory REALLY becomes a problem imo. In order to even kind of buy this, many need more explanation. What about Kylo was so dark, why did he come to hate his family so much, tell us ANYTHING about Snoke and how he was able to pull off of this off, how did the guy who refused to give up on Vader, the face of evil who had been butchering people across the galaxy for DECADES, get to the point where he decided that his nephew (who had apparently not really DONE anything all that evil at the time yet) was beyond saving, etc?

A few vague flashbacks, some statement about "well I saw something scary," or "Snoke got to him" aren't enough for many people. If you're going to do such an extreme storyline, then you cannot half-ass the details.

That's not what we were talking about, unless I've been mistaken this whole time.

Nobody's saying that, actually.

What's being said is "he's shown a weakness for this before, that growing as a person doesn't make him infallible, and that his initial reaction to Kylo does in fact show a great deal of growth in dealing with that weakness between ROTJ and the present."

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 9th 2018 at 10:04:22 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

That's my major issue with Kylo Ren; It seems more like the universe and its characters are being bent to prop up his narrative because I don't have any other context for why his actions or the actions others took to create him are supposed to be believable.

What's unbelievable about Kylo Ren being a selfish evil brat with too much privilege?

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

That's him in the present. I'm asking for more on why he became that way. Hence "create him".

Edited by VeryMelon on Dec 9th 2018 at 5:32:26 AM

Is there a reason that he needs a reason beyond wanting to be powerful and terrifying?

Good parents have bad kids all the time.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

I'm glad you're satisfied with that, but not everyone will be.

I will say that Kylo's turn to evil was slightly...convoluted? Not because it's implausible per se, but more that it's "more complicated than necessary". They could have gotten away with "Kylo turned evil and killed everyone" but they went with "Luke saw him becoming evil, reflexively went for his lightsaber, which made Kylo really evil for sure!"

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

He was already being influenced by Snoke. Again: he was being influenced by Snoke for years, since he was a child.

Was that stated in the movies?

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Keep in mind that even in the old EU Luke wasn’t perfect. The entire plot of Legacy could have been avoided if Luke had realized “Okay, Jacen’s gone off the deep end, I have to stop him.” But he didn’t do anything to move against him until the war was already in full swing and Jacen was too far gone to be saved, and even THEN he couldn’t do it.

I’d prefer mistakenly proactive Luke over “This will work itself out” EU Luke.

I recall that Jacen debacle being something no one likes for several glaring issues, so not exactly the best defense of Luke "Sits on his ass while the first order burns the galaxy" Skywalker.

Edited by VeryMelon on Dec 9th 2018 at 7:13:44 AM

Luke: "I saw darkness. I sensed it building in him. I'd seen it in moments during his training. But then I looked inside, and it was beyond what I ever imagined. Snoke had already turned his heart."

Wasn't it also the fact that the rest of the Jedi Council was worried Luke would fall to the dark side if he murdered Jacen out of anger after he had already decapitated a sith that he had thought killed Mara Jade.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

Leia also said something similar to Han in TFA. That Snoke corrupted Ben was established, its how thats (still) unclear.

"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."

I imagine Snoke corrupted Ben simply by telepathically communicating with him and pointing out that the First Order has cookies.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

That makes sense.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

The Dark Side has cookies. Snoke probably offered cocaine.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

I agree that this is an issue, but it was an issue long before Kylo Ren. Star Wars in general has a problem with the idea of using evil as its own motivation. The Dark Side has always been presented as this insanely slippery slope that will control and drive your actions the moment you give it an inch.

"One day, Bob was walking down the street when a person he didn't know grabbed his arm to ask for help. Bob was having a bad day and responded to them more curtly than he should have. Now he eats babies and pillages nations as Darth Rejector, Lord of the Dark Side."

Rather than adeptly representing the scope of responsibility that the power of the Force represents and the emotional temptation for misuse, it's more like every Force-Sensitive is walking around with a brain parasite just waiting to seize control.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 10th 2018 at 8:36:35 AM

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

To be fair, most of that is glorified fanfiction. There are only one or two canonical darksiders whose career in Darksiderism we got to witness the beginning of.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

To be fair, most of that is glorified fanfiction. There are only one or two canonical darksiders whose career in Darksiderism we got to witness the beginning of.

The Dark Side is also told to be ''highly addictive. This is a flimsy but workable Watsonian justification for the Doylist reason of Dark Siders simply aren't heroes, and star wars is a story about heroes.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

I liked The Unifying Force where Luke just spells it out in a simple way that frustrates Power Gamers.

"The Dark Side in our religion means evil. So if you use it, you're being evil. If you're not evil, you're not a Dark Sider."

I think the issue here is I don't think there's actually a story. Everything we see about Kylo Ren is that he's eager and willing to be evil to be "great." Part of ROTS' problems is that Anakin needed his wife and a Greek tragedy prophecy failure to fall.

Kylo Ren is the more realistic but depressing, "I became a Space Nazi because I liked the outfit."

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Dec 10th 2018 at 8:55:48 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

In isolation, I thought Luke's overall story was fine, someone who believed their own hype and ended up being responsible in part for the suffering caused by one of his students. Obi-Wan expressed similar sentiments that since Anakin was his responsibility that he could have done something to prevent all that from happening.

The problem is that it does very little for Ben's character. It doesn't explain any of the underlying darkness everyone was whispering about, and the act itself is carefully constructed so that it was largely a misunderstanding. Even then it doesn't explain his actions, merely reveal the catalyst. It's functionally like saying Anakin's fall to the dark side in Episode III was purely his complacency in Mace Windu's death, and the rest was just "darkness." It's the equivalent of someone doing a hit-and-run on your car and you decide it was time to rob a bank.

Yet Rey sees this as a massive revelation that reveals Ben is redeemable, not because she empathizes with him but because she gets a vision (vaguely explained) telling her exactly that. Ben gets a similar thing of "I got a vision I could turn you." So all of this plotting relies on a blanket excuse of "it's the force, we don't have to explain it" rather than let the characters make their own logical/emotional decisions.

The Dark Side is, essentially, teflon sprayed on the slippery slope.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Dec 10th 2018 at 11:52:02 AM

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"