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The Luke Problem


Darth Ender
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I don't know about Luke mopping the floor with Ben. Luke has "Old Man Strength" it's true but Ben has the fire and vigor of youth and rage.

 

Plus, Luke might mop the floor with Kylo, but there's no way he would kill him. So it's kind of a moot point. I see Luke going to take care of Snoke while Rey fights Kylo, kind of an echo of the ROTS duels.

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The main job of the first movie is to be fun and have characters people like, so that the audience cares what happens to them going forward. Which I think was very much accomplished.

 

Kylo Ren has disarmed Rey after she rejected his offer to train her and launched into one final suicide attack. She's laying in the snow next to Finn. Kylo Ren stands over her, his lightsaber buzzing, only inches from her face.

 

Kylo Ren:

You are not ready.

(Lightsaber is disengaged.)

Seek me out when you are.

The planet splits open between them, separating Kylo Ren from Rey.

 

Entertaining enough?

 

I think what happened is far better than what you just said.

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I think what happened is far better than what you just said.

 

You think neutering the villain and giving the hero an easy victory before she faces any major struggles is better than giving the hero a set-back, showing ambiguity by the villain allowing the hero to live, and promising another confrontation when she's ready?

 

Okay. Personally, no matter what you think of my brief rewrite, I thought what we got was one of the worst handled aspects of the movie even though it was also one of the most important.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

To be fair, it wasn't a clean victory. Kylo Ren was already shot and pretty badly wounded when Rey fought him, and he still beat Finn down, and was winning most of the fight with Rey, until the end.

 

I think in the Episode 8 rematch, Rey is going to pull a TESB Luke and think she is ready, but Kylo is going to hand Rey's ass to her.

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I think showing Ren as someone whose abilities are woefully inadequate adds alot to his character going forward. It sets up VIII as a dual story of both of them training and becoming more powerful, rather than just Rey needing to improve to measure up to Ren.

 

Now if they meet up in VIII and Rey beats him again and then she beats him again in IX that would be stupid. I doubt that's what will happen though.

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To be fair, it wasn't a clean victory. Kylo Ren was already shot and pretty badly wounded when Rey fought him, and he still beat Finn down, and was winning most of the fight with Rey, until the end.

 

I think in the Episode 8 rematch, Rey is going to pull a TESB Luke and think she is ready, but Kylo is going to hand Rey's ass to her.

Doesn't really matter. When setting up a rematch, you don't have the good guy win the first round. You've totally killed the build-up.

 

Personally, I believe that Kylo Ren ends up saving Rey in the sequel and then vanishing. Their decision to neuter him in The Force Awakens (wounded or not) tells me that they have no intention of maintaining him as a serious villain and threat to the forces of good.

 

If they do plan to make Kylo Ren a badass that we're scared of throughout the trilogy. Well, they just seriously messed up.

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To be fair, it wasn't a clean victory. Kylo Ren was already shot and pretty badly wounded when Rey fought him, and he still beat Finn down, and was winning most of the fight with Rey, until the end.

 

I think in the Episode 8 rematch, Rey is going to pull a TESB Luke and think she is ready, but Kylo is going to hand Rey's ass to her.

Doesn't really matter. When setting up a rematch, you don't have the good guy win the first round. You've totally killed the build-up.

 

Personally, I believe that Kylo Ren ends up saving Rey in the sequel and then vanishing. Their decision to neuter him in The Force Awakens (wounded or not) tells me that they have no intention of maintaining him as a serious villain and threat to the forces of good.

 

If they do plan to make Kylo Ren a badass that we're scared of throughout the trilogy. Well, they just seriously messed up.

 

Gonna have to disagree with you there. They gave him the failure to make him more driven to become more powerful and evil. He WANTS to be Darth Vader, and has a long way to go, and that was intentional.

 

He and Rey are on complimentary arcs-- one into dark, the other light.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

 

 

To be fair, it wasn't a clean victory. Kylo Ren was already shot and pretty badly wounded when Rey fought him, and he still beat Finn down, and was winning most of the fight with Rey, until the end.

 

I think in the Episode 8 rematch, Rey is going to pull a TESB Luke and think she is ready, but Kylo is going to hand Rey's ass to her.

Doesn't really matter. When setting up a rematch, you don't have the good guy win the first round. You've totally killed the build-up.

 

Personally, I believe that Kylo Ren ends up saving Rey in the sequel and then vanishing. Their decision to neuter him in The Force Awakens (wounded or not) tells me that they have no intention of maintaining him as a serious villain and threat to the forces of good.

 

If they do plan to make Kylo Ren a badass that we're scared of throughout the trilogy. Well, they just seriously messed up.

 

Gonna have to disagree with you there. They gave him the failure to make him more driven to become more powerful and evil. He WANTS to be Darth Vader, and has a long way to go, and that was intentional.

 

Hey and Rey are on complimentary arcs-- one into dark, the other light.

 

What Driver said. Kylo is the not just the dark side of the coin to Rey's light side, he is complete inversion Luke. This was Kylo's TESB moment. In order for Kylo to advance as a big bad, he had to be knocked down a few pegs, like Luke was in TESB.

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Gonna have to disagree with you there. They gave him the failure to make him more driven to become more powerful and evil. He WANTS to be Darth Vader, and has a long way to go, and that was intentional.

 

I think it's simpler than that. Kylo Ren wants to be evil, he's just not. He keeps doing evil things, but he keeps feeling it. He thought killing his father would kill what's left of his "weakness" and finally separate him from the Light Side of the Force that continues to seduce him. But it didn't work, and he ended up with his greatest failure minutes later.

 

I don't see this is a buildup. This is a tearing down.

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What you are saying makes no sense. If you do evil things, you are evil. End of story.

Well then, I suppose Return of the Jedi never happened.

 

Kylo Ren is conflicted. That much is not in question. It's the reason he killed Han. It's what he said while praying to Vader's helmet. It's what Snoke said.

 

I'm not just pulling this out of my butt by misconstruing subtext. The movie is plainly telling us these things about Kylo Ren.

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If we only have the movies to go on (and not our own notions of who Luke is), which is mainly the case other than some comic appearances, then I don't necessarily think there is a Luke problem. In the movies, Luke has consistently shown himself to be a good-to-great pilot and capable in combat, both by ship and hand-to-hand, but given the context of the prequels and even Rey and Kylo Ren, Luke never did anything that showed especially great power combat-wise. In ANBH, he destroyed the Death Star, which is no small feat, but I don't necessarily think that the Jedi of old would have had much trouble doing that either. In ESB, Vader was clearly toying with him the whole time in the duel, as well know, but he was hardly invincible before that. He got shot down on Hoth and then crashed onto Dagobah. Finally, in ROTJ, he easily handled Jabba's guards and some stormtroopers, of course, but his primary big heroic act was just simply not giving into the dark side and, in so doing, getting Vader to turn back from it.

 

I was always a Luke fanboy growing up and all of the old EU stories certainly built Luke up to be incredibly powerful, but, while I don't at all mean to diminish his roles in the movies, within the overall arc from the PT through TFA, he really hasn't been shown to be particularly bad ass compared to a number of the other Force sensitive characters.

 

Basically, my main point is just that, while Luke performed some impressive feats in the OT, there has been nothing we've really seen so far that really makes him THAT special beyond what he could represent. Given his advanced age and seclusion, it seems like it would be pretty straight forward to not have him completely take over the movie.

 

With that being said, I would love for them to have them make this post completely incorrect and irrelevant after Episode 8 by having him finally be really amazing while also not taking over everything.

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Gonna have to disagree with you there. They gave him the failure to make him more driven to become more powerful and evil. He WANTS to be Darth Vader, and has a long way to go, and that was intentional.

I think it's simpler than that. Kylo Ren wants to be evil, he's just not. He keeps doing evil things, but he keeps feeling it. He thought killing his father would kill what's left of his "weakness" and finally separate him from the Light Side of the Force that continues to seduce him. But it didn't work, and he ended up with his greatest failure minutes later.

 

I don't see this is a buildup. This is a tearing down.

 

I don't think you can say that before seeing Episode 8.

 

Killing Han and losing to Rey were about 5 minutes apart. I think Kylo thought killing Han would be his last step, but it wasn't. What Chalupa is saying is accurate-- you can't think of Kylo as the new Darth Vader failing in the first movie. The OT analogy would be if Luke was on the path of evil.

 

Again-- parallel stories between him and Rey.

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Can we backtrack to Rey never facing any struggles? You mea like her growing up in the freaking desert all by herself for 15 or so years? Like being captured and fighting up against Kylo? And almost being defeated? Yeah, things were sooooooo easy for her.

 

She didn't struggle at all for her power. It just came to her right on the spot. Her backstory may have been harsh, but her empowerment was almost effortless.

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Again-- parallel stories between him and Rey.

 

Like I said, I just don't see it. And even if that's the angle they're going for, it was still a mistake to have him straight-up lose to Rey. In that case they should have ended with a stalemate. Have Rey start to fight competently, Kylo Ren is a bit nervous. Then the ground separates them and they're forced to go their separate ways.

 

 

 

Vader failed in Star Wars anyway, he let a whiny kid and a half wit freighter pilot take him out at the end.

 

Technically his wingman panicked and crashed into him.

 

Either way, that was Vader being taken out by a sneak attack. His power wasn't diminished by the defeat. Kylo Ren lost a straight-up duel against Rey and even took a hit from Finn (which was probably worse).

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Again, you can't say that until episode 8.

 

What if next time Kylo has grown in power and bests Rey? Then in IX they are evenly matched?

 

I try to imagine sometimes how people would be complaining about ANH if the internet existed then.

 

OMG VADER JUST FLEW AWAY?

SO OBI-WAN JUST VANISHES WITH NO EXPLANATION WTF

 

On a level playing field I'd say no movie should ever try to set up its sequels and just focus on its own story-- but Star Wars is the exception. It's always been designed with the long game in mind.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Poe, its also worth noting that like Kylo, Darth Vader was also defeated in the first act (the end of ANH), too. Vader was ringed out by Han, and Luke then blew up the Death Star. That is as major a set back as it gets, but it didn't make Vader any less of a threat in TESB. It actually made him more of a threat in TESB when you think about it, because he was obsessed with crushing the rebels and finding Luke. He pwned Luke in Bespin. So, applying your logic that because Kylo Ren was stopped by Rey means he isn't a credible threat doesn't ring true. If anything, Kylo will be more dangerous. I am betting (hoping) Kylo is trained by Snoke, and when he learns all he can, he kills Snoke.

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