I think if Luke had been gone a month at the beginning of TFA that would make sense for me...or even if he had been gone ten years because he had no way of getting back but had actually wanted to return to sort things out....and had then gone off the rails a bit because he had been trapped there...that would make a greater sense. It might be more realistic/human, but it’s not more legend/human, and certainly the constant smashing and killing of the hero characters is not suited to what are or were intended for a child audience (almost first and foremost.) I mean sure, we kind of cross that rubicon with Reveng of the Sith as it is...but even the treatment of the characters over in Rebels starts to burn bridges (turned my little one right off of Star Wars. When you are under ten, the heroes are supposed to live, not get blinded and eventually...well. Spoilers I guess. ) with them. In some ways that’s the same argument we get for the ST. We can just about get behind the Solo death as being roughly akin to Obi Wan (it isn’t, in many ways...for a start, he’s not set Rey out on her quest and given her secret truth etc yet. He doesn’t have enough of a bond to have his death affect her so greatly...Luke has known Obi Wan Years, and had just had great revelations and a quest thrust upon hiM.) but if you do that to everyone...and it is, every happy ending undone, every hero killed and first made into a failure...pretty soon the saga becomes nihilist. You can have ups and downs, but this mostly downs thing isn’t working well. Someone once said ‘it’s not that stories teach us there are monsters, but that they teach us monsters can be fought’ (paraphrasing) but here we are adding ‘but you will never win’. It makes it hard to cheer on the new guys, because we know even if they are amazingly amazing, their lot will always be to suffer and die. It’s the dangers of reopening a closed story in the manner they have chosen.
I agree it would make more sense. But, I work with what I got. Star Wars moved past legend human with ESB and definitely with ROTS. Same with Clone Wars. I mean, the series is done well enough, but it features a hero who becomes Darth Vader. I'm not convinced any more that all SW is always for kids. I think there is a way to bring them in. I certainly have found the way for my daughters. But, I would not start with TCW or Rebels. I can see that but I have a different perspective. I see it as every generation must face its darkness. An American founding father once said The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Every generation has their battles and struggles, triumphs and failures . I love ROTJ but I never thought it was a happily ever after. The novels didn't either. So, I see as the next part of the world building, that each generation will face trial. And the monster will be defeated and the torch passed on. I'm sure we will disagree on this point and that's fine. But, I think SW has grown with the fan base, tackling mature themes with each step. How successful will vary.
The sequels killing off the Original Trilogy heroes really isn't any different than what the OT did with the prequel heroes. It's just that we weren't as attached to prequel heroes since we hadn't gotten the prequels yet.
I posted this over in the TLJ thread, but since it looks like this conversation has moved over here, I'll post it here to.
Both TCW and Rebels were buildup to be for preteens to teenagers, and the stories grow up at about he pace they expected the audience to grow up over the seasons. So approximately six or seven years into TCW, the Preteens are nearing the end of high school and teenagers might be in college or even graduated from it. I can't say for sure is Resistance will follow this pattern, but that is very likely.
That's true. The one thing I'll say is I hate what the PT did to Obi-Wan. I felt that his character was very much changed from the OT in the PT, and it bothered me. Yeah, I can't see TCW being "for children." The hero is Anakin, who becomes Darth Vader. And the show has many gruesome scenes that are pushing the line, in my opinion, for anyone under the age of 13. Some examples can be found here.
For me it boils down to that it's not as crucially important if Luke makes sense if we stretch it (I think it doesn't, because it would require severe psychological trauma for Luke to change that drastically which wasn't implied, but that's another matter), but that even if we find a way to find it logical that Luke and Leia are now giving up on Ben, ....it makes the entire saga way less interesting. There was supposed to be an archetypal battle of good vs evil; Lucas modeled the saga around ageless aspects of history and philosophy, and not just the hard mundane reality of history. You can call it childish all you like but it was the heart of the OT. Even the most dangerous person in the galaxy was redeemed and that's how the entire story started and ended. Sure, one could argue that we put aside the old tired actors/characters and new characters play that role now but I don't think they did even that. Leia and Luke still had leadership roles and defined the events of tlj. They didn't seem to be just the old tired characters that just failed. They seemed to define the ultimate aims of the Resistance at the end. Therefore there's a good chance Abrams will rewrite back that part of SW somehow but it will be hard to magically retcon tlj because it was pretty explicit at its aphorisms. In any case SW will be way more mundane and uninteresting if we keep the "Resistance" to be practically no much different than the dark side since it appears reluctant to forgive. In a sense it's kinda odd that a Disney product did not keep it at the line of TFA because their MO is to basically soft-reboot old stories. Sure, they are never revolutionary and if you want truly original run away from that conglomerate, but the only thing they are consistently good at is comfy soft-reboots of old stories of often dying franchises.
Well, for starters.. the whole squeal series is.. un imaginative .. soft pedaled reboot.. So starting off from that point, what Rian done was quite interesting and a good bit of change, not just a Luke is Yoda Empire strikes back Redo, which JarJar Abrams started in TFA.. Look at Yoda, He failed to kill the Emperor, should have he and Obiwan have just ran like they did at the end of Sith? No! they should have gotten together, with Senator Organa, and searched for remaing jedi, and then go after the emperor.. not just sit out the next 20 years twiddling there thumbs.. Start the rebelion.. For Luke, there's not really a time frame of what happened when, We have what? over 30 years between ROTJ and TFA? How old is Ben? How long ago did Ben go dark? How long ago did Luke vanish?? Lets say the thing that happened with Ben happened 10 years before TFA, what did he do the previous 20-25 years? the empire fell 5 years after ROTJ, so you have 15-20 years of time to deal with.. Was Ben in the first batch of new Jedi? Were there any graduates before the sundering? How long had Ben been in the jedi class? As for Luke, he feels he failed royaly with Ben, and losing his academy students.. so I don't blame him for shutting down... he feels that he's failed himself, Yoda, Obiwan, Leia, Han.. everybody..
I thought RotS made it believable enough that Obi-Wan and Yoda concluded the Force was no longer with them and it would be futile, self-destructive to try to fight the Emperor soon after. Though maybe they did think, at least subconsciously, that as the public seemed to support or not oppose the purge they didn't deserve to be saved, at least until they really rose against the Empire.
At a conceptual level, shaking things up was probably the right thing to do. But then it comes down to execution, which leaves much to be desired.
My problems with TLJ are not the attempt to do something a little different - I applaud that. My issue is almost entirely in it's execution, whether it's dumb scenes, or the pacing of the movie, which I found to be poor.
Yes, but Star Wars has continued to grow and expand its storytelling. The PT introduced the shades of gray by Lucas' own efforts and admission. So, the idea that we have moved past some archetypes really shouldn't be that surprising. Heck, even Vader going from just the villain in ANH to used to be good guy was a bit of a script flip. It's not that I find the OT childish-far from it. I find that it was something that could be expanded upon and grown within, with each character. Do I think the ST did it perfect? No. Does Luke make sense to me? Yes, yes he does. His character won't to others. And that's OK. That doesn't make Disney evil, doesn't make Rian Johnson the worst person on Earth, or whatever hyperbole will be flung about. It's a creative choice. One that, no matter how much we go back and forth, will not change people's minds, unless we're willing to see another person's POV.
The middle section of this film is an absolute slog. By the time it got to the final act (which wasn't all that spectacular for SW - and walkers on a white planet - really?) I was bored and just wanted it to end. I never had a problem with what they did with Luke either. Sure I would have liked to have seen him in action one last time but that would have been entirely predictable, at least this was a bit different, that being said I do think the film almost drowns under the weight of these 'subversions' at times instead of trying to tell a good story.
Luke retreating from the galaxy to become a hermit on an island, then reluctantly training a new female Jedi all came from George Lucas. The reason why Luke retreated from the galaxy was all Johnson though.
I think that TRoS will make or break TLJ. I like TLJ well enough but it really is the 2nd act in a three act story, moreso than the OT. ESB definitely "subverted" expectations as well and yet is fondly remembered as a film, because we have ROTJ. We know the end of the story, how it turned out. Now, I won't argue that TLJ could have been paced better, that it lacks a sense of urgency at times. But, the overall themes towards the story I think will bear out under the rest of the story being told.
As much as I dislike TLJ, I'm still looking forward to TROS as much as ever. I think Abrams will at the very least, put out a crowd pleasing, well paced movie.
And if Lucas had done his ST we would have had more of them. I wonder how individuals would have responded to that.