Spoilers What happened the night the Ben turned on Luke
- Thread starter JD
- Start date
Luke dealt with some pretty tough shit, he never knew his parents then found out his Father was the devil, he had the hots for his sister, the people who raised him were killed and as the last Jedi was tasked with saving the galaxy from his father and one of the most powerful Sith Lords ever. He was a much older man by the time Kylo Ren turned, he was a master who had self taught himself and had his own students.
That was a Luke with 3 years Jedi experience who was in conflict not only with his father but with the Dark side. He wasn't flying into a rage as much as he was battling the dark side within himself.
What he does with Kylo Ren is years later when he is a grown man who knows himself and who has faced the worst odds. He should have this covered.
Maybe people around you are making mistakes and not you
But Luke considering to killing his nephew in the middle of the night?
That is a big flaw
I remember hearing this quite a while back actually. Mark was told before so that he would react appropriately to the real reveal, meanwhile everyone else on set heard Prowse say something else.
So that's an "Absolutely not, what kind of monster would even think of the idea" on the "Would you kill baby Palpatine?" question.
I love Luke, too, but I think it's expecting too much of him to not even twitch when he sees Kylo Ren murder Lor San Tekka, Han Solo and, probably, given how misleading these premonitions can be, Leia as clearly as we did on screen when it actually happened, never mind all the people on and around Hosnian Prime. And "twitch" is pretty much all he did. Hux was probably more threatening to Kylo when he nearly shot him while he was unconscious, because Hux only stopped because Kylo woke up, not because he had any second thoughts.
Easiest question if I ever saw one.
Yoda wouldn’t even think about killing a baby.
Darth Sidious* wouldn’t think twice about killing a baby.
That’s the difference between light and dark.
(* Please no "but Sidious is Palpatine" replies. You’re missing the point.)
Princess Leia is Mary Poppins Y'all!!
Why not. Maz Kanata is now pretty much Rocket Racoon; Y'all.
Why not. Maz Kanata is now pretty much Rocket Racoon; Y'all.
Good passively allows evil to fester and strengthen until billions of people are dead and it's nearly too late to do prevent tyranny, slavery, and mass murder from encompassing all of creation. Well, I guess that checks out with the PT.
It's funny, though. I thought Jedi were supposed to be dedicated to the defense of the innocent. Waiting until after they've been wronged to do something feels more like revenge than protection. Revenge isn't very Jedi-like. They had to reprint all those posters, after all.
As I think about it more, Luke's reaction is starting to seem very topical. He understands the path Ben is on before Ben does. You can see the same thing with political radicalization today. Someone falls in with a bad crowd, and even before they've become malicious, their thoughts and worldview have already been infected with hate. Then they get defensive when someone lashes out at them because they said some innocuous-sounding phrase. If it was the real-world, if Luke had heard Ben mention some meme or phrase or codeword associated with a violent movement, then went to talk to him and found a homemade bomb and a bunch of racist literature in his room, and a poem titled "I will prove my loyalty to the New Order by murdering my parents," are we really going to say it's unthinkable for Luke to raise a hand to him, even for an instant? And Ben (who people are having a weirdly easy time sympathizing with) immediately takes that as confirmation of all the awful things his creepy new friends have said about Luke, and burns down his house and murders anyone around who doesn't swear personal loyalty to him without taking even five minutes to figure out what was going on. Because he was a good kid who never would've done anything wrong if Luke hadn't threatened him
A lot of people keep complaining about Luke almost killing Ben being out of character, but that was the whole point of Luke's arc in the movie. He did something horrible, that he knew he shouldn't have done and he felt so guilty about that ran away and shut himself off from The Force for years.
Me too but we aren't Jedi Masters.
No one is arguing that. We are arguing that it was the wrong kind of arc for the character.
Luke Skywalker is NOT flawed. He is a noble, brave, honorable, positive, heroic beacon of unyielding light and hope who defies the modern conventions that everything has to be all grim and dark; And has been for two generations, over a span of forty years.
That was until this apparently unworthy Johnson asshole was randomly chosen to piss all over everything with his emo episode of the week grade bullshit.
Problem meet Nutshell.
That was until this apparently unworthy Johnson asshole was randomly chosen to piss all over everything with his emo episode of the week grade bullshit.
Problem meet Nutshell.
Says who?
Um, hate to break it to you but that’s how the justice system works. First you do the crime and then you do the time.
That analogy is totally false. First he didn’t actually find any incriminating evidence and secondly Creepy Uncle Luke didn’t raise a hand to smack Ben upside the head to knock some sense into him, he raised a loaded gun with the intent of killing his nephew while he was sleeping and couldn’t even explain or defend himself. If that’s not the Sith way then I don’t know what is!
Luke Skywalker's right hand would disagree with you, falling through Bespin's atmosphere because he didn't listen when people he trusted told him the best he would accomplish by going to Cloud City was "nothing," and the worst was "die or become evil."
I think Anakin Skywalker's robot arm, falling down to the Death Star core, also might have a point to raise about Luke's incorruptibility and how unlikely he is to resort to brutal, horrifying violence when his best friend and only family is threatened.
J. J. Abrams will be very surprised that Rian Johnson wrote and directed "The Force Awakens" and decided the central motivation would be that Luke ran away from everything and hid when stuff got hot.
Oh, wait, you thought he was looking for some Ancient Jedi Secret that would let him brainwash Ben to a more acceptable moral worldview, or crack Star Destroyers open like an egg with a thought, leaving their crews flailing in the void without an opportunity to explain or defend themselves. You know, like a hero.
"I am presently incarcerated. Convicted of a crime I didn't even commit. 'Attempted Murder,' now, honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for 'Attempted Chemistry?'"
Sometimes, interdiction rather than punishment is the goal. That's why there isn't an airline hijacking every week like there was in the '70s. "I'm just going to commit a crime, I haven't done anything yet" is probably a legal strategy most defense attorneys would tell you to avoid.
Good point, he didn't find evidence. Luke saw Ben do it, as clearly as he saw Darth Vader cut down Ben Kenobi. As clearly as Leia saw Tarkin destroy Alderaan. As clearly as Mace Windu saw Palpatine cut down three Jedi Masters without blinking. As clearly as we saw Kylo Ren in the past two movies. If you're having trouble trusdting rock-solid Jedi prognostication, imagine it was simple sci-fi time-travel and Luke had come back from the time of TLJ to undo the last two movies.
And explanations? I've heard Ben's reasoning for setting his home on fire and killing anyone who didn't swear loyalty to him, for gutting a friendly old monk like a fish, for murdering his father as he embraced him, for lining up the bombing run that nearly killed his mother, for incinerating billions of families to clear a path for a blitzkrieg that would kill and subjugate uncountable more innocent people. Believe it or not, I didn't find "I want to be strong like grandpa, the broken man who hated everything, especially himself, and died knowing the only worthy deed he performed in his misbegotten life was to sacrifice it for his son" an extenuating circumstance that makes him deserve to live more than all the people he was going to kill. Maybe I'm just not heroic enough.
I'm not sure I'm even as heroic as Luke Skywalker. Maybe I wouldn't have tried to stop him, but, then, I'm not a fighter. I don't have the constitution to shoot down TIE fighters or blast stormtroopers or slice up gangsters. But if I didn't abhor violence? Would I have had a second thought after deciding that Ben Solo... that Kylo Ren, mass murderer and destroyer of worlds had to be stopped, now, completely, before he had the chance to do any harm? Maybe, if it occurred to me that I'd have to explain it to his mother. Maybe I'd stop, decide that kindness was worth a try (despite what Yoda said about trying), that it was worth the attempt to save his soul despite the risk to billions of innocent people, that I could still stop him later if he truly proved committed to his path. And maybe that'd give him time to wake up, see the sword in my hand, and blast me through the wall and a mile down the road with the intent of killing me, without giving me a chance to explain or defend myself.
I wonder, would the story have been more acceptable to you, would Luke seem less flawed and pathetic, if the reason he ran and hid was because he saw all the stuff Kylo Ren would do, tried to be patient, and loving, and kind, and was betrayed anyway? That he was ashamed that he didn't save the galaxy because he was too old, too soft, too good to still fight for the innocent? That he lacked the moral clarity of his youth to put aside the deaths of all those people on the Death Star, knowing there was no other way to save the Rebellion, or the worlds that would be made examples of as Alderaan had been? That now, he couldn't bear to harm even one person who wasn't directly threatening him at that moment, and his passivity had allowed darkness to engulf the galaxy? Is that the moral you want from Star Wars, that evil will always triumph because good is dumb?
I don't get this role reversal. As we grew up and faced difficult situations we asked ourselves "What would our heroes do?" in this case Luke. Now we have grown up and become so cynical to think that we are comparable to those heroes to the point that our reasoning is "Well, I am not a good person so my heroes shouldn't be either" and they should do as I might do. We've brought the good down to our level.
Even Mark Hamil has said he aspires to be as good as Luke.
Also there is no immediate or dire situation that needs taking care of when he is in Kylo's room.
Even Mark Hamil has said he aspires to be as good as Luke.
And even at that moment he decides to throw away his lightsaber and possibly the whole galaxy with it because he just won't do kill Vader. After only 3 years of being a Jedi.
Also there is no immediate or dire situation that needs taking care of when he is in Kylo's room.
Yes, and Luke stops himself with Ben, too (and he didn't even have to exhaust himself maiming Ben, first. See, maturity and wisdom!), for all the good being a heroic paragon does him. Make no mistake, if Luke had committed to killing Ben, we wouldn't be having this discussion about the limits of tolerance when faced with deadly threats, we'd be talking about Han Solo's wacky fun old-guy adventures around Hosnian Prime.
We've got people arguing that Luke has been too corrupted because he decided not to kill a mass murderer, just because he thought about it a little too hard. So, sure, maybe going so far as to ignite the Lightsaber was excessive. Where's the line where stopping evil becomes evil? Would it have been too much if he just drew it in a moment of shock? How about if he rested his hand on it, fearing that the already-secretly-evil Ben had drawn him into a trap? Maybe just going up to Ben close enough to sense his future in an unguarded moment was too far? Is the only way Luke could've maintained his heroism if he sensed a darkness growing in Ben, and thought, "That seems like someone else's problem. I'll just assign him some extra homework on why blowing up planets is bad, and things will be fine."
Though I don't see how any of those things even come close to killing millions of conscripts, many of whom probably weren't even informed they'd been a party to mass murder. Many of whom were probably asleep in their bunks. Kylo Ren made his decision for evil. TK-421 put his pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else, but poor widdle Ben gets all the sympathy... what, because of his big sad eyes?
Wasn’t that before Luke actually became a Jedi Knight? It was, it was before Luke became a Jedi Knight! Wasn’t that before Luke actually became a Jedi Master? It was, it was before Luke became a Jedi Master! If anything his robotic arm is a reminder to him NOT to act the same way ever again.
Or Luke saw Ben do it, just as clearly as he saw himself wearing the Darth Vader mask and helmet...
"Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."
- Jedi Master Yoda
