CoGro wrote:
You believe that his wanting the Jedi to end was "cowardly," when that's really just you taking on the baggage of two dead Jedi, who were shown (by George) to be part of a flawed dogmatic order, who were also shown (by George) to be wrong in how Luke should deal with Vader, and who are as responsible for the fall of the Jedi order as Sidious. They also both lied to Luke about his family, by the way.
So I ask you: if you're Luke, what do you owe to these two flawed wizards? He tried their way and it blew up in his face (just as it did for the Jedi Order in the PT). So he scoured the galaxy to learn more about the history of the Jedi and he discovered what we, the audience, learned in the PT: that they were a bunch of bureaucratic fuck ups. Remember that time Qui-Got didn't want to free slaves because it was "off mission"? Great guardians of peace and justice, amiright?
Luke is allowed to evaluate the Jedi on his own, and he determined that they aren't worthy guardians of the light side. After seeing their depiction in the PT: I agree. Not to mention, according to Yoda's teaching the Jedi path isn't about taking a heroic path. "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defence," right? Doesn't Luke do both of those in TLJ? I'd argue that his Force projection confrontation with Kylo is the MOST Jedi-like act, based on Yoda's teaching, of any Jedi in the entire saga.
I really dug this
opinion piece about Luke.
You can disagree with the direction of the character all you want, but don't try and make people feel "wrong" for appreciating a different, albeit challenging, interpretation of a story. If you didn't like the direction of the movie, which has plenty of arguable justification, that's fine but stop trying to make me, or anyone else here, feel like we don't know the canon just because you disagree. Otherwise, this place is not going to be very much fun.
Lucas was at pains to show that the Jedi order were plagued by beurocracy and complacency, which by default, benefited the Sith that waited in the shadows. However, the films (read Lucas) never depicted the Jedi as the antagonists. That Luke, in TLJ, believes the Jedi were as culpable as the Sith/Empire in measuring out misery to the galaxy, is an interpretation by the new writers designed purely as an act of deconstruction.... That Luke ultimately seems to not follow through on this way of thinking, only serves to underline the flakiness of the concept. Has the Jedi ceased to exist at the end of TLJ? Was Luke right to believe the Jedi to be as bad as the Sith? Clearly the answer seems to be a resounding ‘no’... it seems he was just a massive fuckup all that time between ROTJ and the last 5 mins of TLJ... where he repented.
In terms of agreeing/disagreeing... that goes both ways fella... and please don’t associate my distaste for the film with a distaste for those that like it. I have no issue with you, or others, liking the film (my critiisisms have always been aimed directly at the films and not fellow posters)... but that also does not negate my view that the sequels, particularly TLJ, are a poorly conceived, cinematically regressive cash grab. I am clearly not alone in that view...