Pics from Ireland Shoot *spoiler*

[Odine]

Maybe he's not a hermit, and maybe he's not yet resurrected the Jedi order. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Maybe he has just been spending the last 30 years travelling, listening (to use THT's take which is cool) to the force trying to find other force sensitive sentients to train... Maybe he simply can't find any. Maybe Leia can't or won't learn for some reason and Luke has been trying to find apprentices to follow Yodas instructions and his journey has taken him a long time to many worlds and perhaps the force has been guiding someone else to find him and they just haven't met yet, maybe they're about to in some ancient monastery somewhere that looks like Ireland.....

[Mara Jade Skywalker]

Thirty years without any new Jedi would annoy me as well.

[Odine]

Really? Wow.

 

Personally I'd buy the concept that there hasn't been a Jedi for 30 years more than the concept Luke has found many, trained them, and now has a thriving academy of Jedi padawans and knights ready to save the galaxy from peril again. All in the space of 30 years.

[Guest]

I think the whole either/or is a little silly. Most likely he's trained a small number of Jedi, and if he is living as a hermit, it's a fairly recent thing.

I mean, we're talking 30 years. That's a long time. That's a career. He could have done great things and then retired to meditate.

[Odine]

Defeating a Sith Lord THE Sith Lord and turning his apprentice back to the light side of the force isn't enough?

 

I mean I agree, either or in its extreme is silly... but a bit of a breather after epic events between the series makes sense to me. Id rather a slower pace film too, so its not throwing us and the protaganists into epic struggles from the get go. That to me would be a weird place to pick up. I dunno, maybe Im not articulating myself very well....

[Mara Jade Skywalker]

Really? Wow.

 

Personally I'd buy the concept that there hasn't been a Jedi for 30 years more than the concept Luke has found many, trained them, and now has a thriving academy of Jedi padawans and knights ready to save the galaxy from peril again. All in the space of 30 years.

Like Fozzie said, it's not either/or for me. But the idea that Luke hasn't trained ANY new Jedi doesn't fit well for me. It's not who he is. I mean, he joins the Rebellion and in the span of three years he's already commanding his own X-wing squadron. He wants to be in the thick of the action. To me it's much more likely that he'd start a Jedi Academy than become a hermit, if only to metaphorically spit on the Emperor's grave.

[Driver]

Yeah, there's a way to make it work.

 

If Luke went to be a hermit post ROTJ, that is dumb, totally agree.

 

But if he was Jedi and Alliance hero, and started training new Jedi for awhile, and say one of them went bad and Luke had to put him down, and then he decided Jedi training was too dangerous to go unchecked and decided to remove himself-- that might be cool. That puts him in Unforgiven style tropes. If Luke had a lot more adventures post ROTJ, but at some point something went wrong, and he chose to go hermit after that-- I'd be okay with it.

[RelentlessMalice]

I hate sand. Its dry, corse and gets everywhere.

[pavonis]

 

Luke isn't going to make the same mistakes.

 

No, he's going to make all new, original ones of his own. Mistakes that you won't like and will find appalling and incomprehensible. You better steel yourself for disappointment and rage when Episode VII is released.

[The Human Torch]

What I wrote doesn't mean new Jedi haven't or couldn't have been trained.

 

What I wrote also doesn't mean Luke never went anywhere.

 

I wrote that Luke's teachers reached their pinnacle of enlightenment and revelation by being solitary, only acting when prodded by the Force. Even with ANH-Luke dropped in Obi-Wan's lap Obi doesn't just act, he sits and he thinks. Yoda is resistant to acting when Luke falls into his lap, but he sits and he thinks.

 

Both then stress that approach repeatedly to Luke. They even correct him when he lashes out about being told to not help his friends, about not being told truths... it's the rush to face Vader that was the issue. The rushing without thinking, the trying to do that is the issue. Luke is told to listen and then he'll know and he'll do.

 

That is Luke's example and it shows with how he grows in the last two films. He's separate. After his youthful stumbles on Dagobah he also becomes quiet. He joins the group and acts when necessary, but he's always quiet and thinking. His actions change when he hears the Force.

 

Luke running around like Qui-Gon and with a Padawan Obi at the whim of the Alliance would not be fitting to him or what he experienced in his teachings. The settling of trade disputes, going off on ordered investigations like some US Marshal with Magic is backwards to what Luke is taught.

 

You can call it a Hermit. You can call it whatever makes you feel better. I believe it just means that Luke got the message. That the PT and OT both tell us that the Jedi are meant to act, but they are tools of the Force not the other way around. The Jedi are also not supposed to be the tools of anyone else, as the films show it's the abuses of politics and being a quasi-branch of government that put the Jedi on the path to Galactic ruin.

 

Luke told us who he was by throwing down his lightsaber. Blasters are crude, lightsabers civilized, but the Jedi need neither and should be doing whatever without the need to hack off arms. Quiet the mind, be aware, then you can act and make change prior to or without violence being necessary.

 

Luke is a Jedi. He stresses that. Leaving out the word Knight. Perhaps that means something. Or maybe it just ran off the tongue better.

[Mara Jade Skywalker]

Yeah, there's a way to make it work.

 

If Luke went to be a hermit post ROTJ, that is dumb, totally agree.

 

But if he was Jedi and Alliance hero, and started training new Jedi for awhile, and say one of them went bad and Luke had to put him down, and then he decided Jedi training was too dangerous to go unchecked and decided to remove himself-- that might be cool. That puts him in Unforgiven style tropes. If Luke had a lot more adventures post ROTJ, but at some point something went wrong, and he chose to go hermit after that-- I'd be okay with it.

I'd be okay with this, depending on how it's written. I still think he should be married and have children, but I've accepted that's probably not going to happen. That's okay. I'll just go read my Zahn books.

 

HOWEVER, it'd still make me laugh my ass off because it's been done in the EU, in a really awful series. Yes, let's scrap all the good stuff from the EU for some lame plotline from Fate of the Jedi. That makes sense.

[Zerimar Nyliram]

Which is why I want it to be completely different from the EU. I love the EU so much that I want movie Luke's life not to resemble it at all. No kids, because anyone other than Ben just doesn't seem right to me. That's why I'm perfectly fine with hermit Luke.

[D-Ray Kenobi]

Up until Star Trek Into Darkness, I would have been okay with anything that J.J. and the rest of the Bad Robot writing crew tried. But after how they kind of mismanaged Khan, I'm a little more weary.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, though. Like I've said here before, I want to be challenged and surprised by this new trilogy. If I go in knowing what to expect, it'll just be the Prequels all over again.

[Guest]

Up until Star Trek Into Darkness, I would have been okay with anything that J.J. and the rest of the Bad Robot writing crew tried. But after how they kind of mismanaged Khan, I'm a little more weary.

 

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, though. Like I've said here before, I want to be challenged and surprised by this new trilogy. If I go in knowing what to expect, it'll just be the Prequels all over again.

STID was exhausting.

[D-Ray Kenobi]

I still liked Into Darkness, but it was a vast departure in tone from what made the first so great. And as much as I love Benedict Cumberbatch as anyone else, he was really badly miscast in that role.

[The Human Torch]

I pretend he says, "I'm John."

 

And they're like, "Who's Johnny?"

 

And then it turns into a musical.

[RelentlessMalice]

I guess I am the only one who loved Into darkness. What was so bad about it?

[Driver]

We have a thread somewhere with all sorts of reasons-- for me it was several lapses of logic that were a sign of rushed lazy writing. They have a transporter that can work planet to planet, but they still use starships. Khan's blood can make people return from death, and not only do they forget they have 30-something other of his people in storage they could get that blood from, they've effectively solved every medical issue ever.

 

So in the next one everyone should be immortal and beam from planet to planet. No danger, no need for starships.

 

After the first one I felt like the winking and nodding to the original series was done, and they needed to move forward and tell their own story. Instead, it was more recycling and rebooting of one of the best Trek (and scifi films in general) for no good reason other to say they could.

 

I don't blame JJ for it as much as I do Kurtzman, Orci, and Lindelof who wrote it, and frequently write franchises I love into terribleness.

[D-Ray Kenobi]

Apart from what Seth said, my main problem with Into Darkness was that it diverted way too far off track from the thesis of the first movie. The first goes out of its way to tell you that it's happening in a new alternative timeline and anything can happen, even going to the point of almost literally breaking the fourth wall to tell you that. It has the balls to do that too, going as far to blow up Vulcan and make their species nomads. It had Leonard in there as a nice friendly connection, but that was about it. Otherwise, it was ready to literally throw existing Trek mythos over a cliff just like Kirk's old classic car.

Instead of taking advantage of that freedom in the sequel, we get a story that completely echoes the best beats of the best original cast films. But instead of getting a story of man vs. man or personal vengeance, we got a militaristic space shooter that just as easily could have been a SyFy movie of the week if it didn't have the budget or all the Trek lore to it. Instead of trying to find its own voice in the midst of the unintelligible action and plot holes, it tried to pull our emotional strings by merely checking off all of the same scenes we've already seen, just with minor differences this time around. It just didn't earn anything on its own or fulfill the promise of all of the setup of the first film, it was just intent on saying "Hey guys, remember Wrath of Khan? Wasn't it awesome?" It was still a passable summer action movie, it was just a big letdown from what the first already established.

Bringing back on topic, that's my main fear with the new trilogy. This is the first time since 1983 that Star Wars truly has a chance to do something new and go into uncharted territory, but my fear is that J.J. is still going to use the crutch of existing knowledge and lore to elicit an emotional response. He kind of has a history of it too. He tried too hard to make a Spielberg film instead of his own with Super 8, and tried to hard to reboot Wrath of Khan to make a good new Trek movie.

[Doze]

All I want is for there to be a Wookiee Jedi. Is that so hard?

[The Human Torch]

You can have your Jedi Wookie if I can have a Jedi Jawa.

[Doze]

Deal!!! But NO Sandpeople Sith or Jedi, that would be just... silly.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

Yeah, there's a way to make it work.

 

If Luke went to be a hermit post ROTJ, that is dumb, totally agree.

 

But if he was Jedi and Alliance hero, and started training new Jedi for awhile, and say one of them went bad and Luke had to put him down, and then he decided Jedi training was too dangerous to go unchecked and decided to remove himself-- that might be cool. That puts him in Unforgiven style tropes. If Luke had a lot more adventures post ROTJ, but at some point something went wrong, and he chose to go hermit after that-- I'd be okay with it.

Wow! Before I even read your post (I was on Odine's post #28), I started thinking the exact same thing, as far as a scenario. It was so close, it's scary! Almost like you read my mind!