Star Wars Topic

“But I wanted to go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!”

“Another season!”

“I care!”

-Just a few lines of Luke’s in ANH I found rather annoying. Besides, this is an opinion, so it’s not like you can disprove or prove it.

:thinking:

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Fun to the audience. He’s secluded himself so much from society that he’s grown sarcastic and delusional.

Two lines does not an obnoxious character make. If anything, I’d say Luke is one of the most compelling figures in A New Hope because of his choice to become a Jedi. Maybe his lack of tact in his comments annoy you? I personally find it to be just his youthfulness, but it is also a strength. Luke has clear morals and goals, which he will tell people.

For Empire… How in the WORLD could you say he’s emotionless? What about the distress he endures throughout most of the film? His anxiety on Dagobah, his hopelessness with the X-Wing, and his cry of bitterness when learning the truth about Darth Vader?

As for Return of the Jedi, we have a much more grown Luke who is intent on looking for answers, one of which being the truth about his family. Here he is more confident of himself, but his temptation to the Dark Side grew stronger. He lashes out in anger when Vader proposes turning Leia, and gives into hatred when fighting Vader. Luke is NOT emotionless. He is just a calm individual most of the time.

Original Trilogy Luke has a pretty fun and compelling story, and has clearly defined character traits of being an adventurous young man who is loyal to his friends but is horribly naive. His lure to the Dark Side was a good story arch and throughout the OT we see him mature.

First time reaching out to the force.

Temptation to the Dark Side.

Training with a Jedi Master.

Luke fights a Sith Lord.

Luke rescues his friend and stops a criminal empire.

Luke fights a Sith Lord AGAIN and falls to his temptation to the darkside.

Luke denies the Dark Side after defeating a Sith Lord, certifying himself as a Jedi Knight. This stand would lead to Darth Vader turning from the Dark Side to save the galaxy.

I dunno about you but this is a LOT of Jedi stuff.

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What I mean is, we see him as a Jedi in V, and then boom he’s a Jedi Knight. That’s a pretty major leap that happened entirely off screen. What I mean by emotionless is that he just doesn’t fee genuine in how he expresses it. There are always exceptions, but the way he does it doesn’t quite register with me.

As for ANH, he is incredibly obnoxious, and a few lines are really all I can give as examples.

Personally, the whole emotionless thing is just part of why I don’t really like OT Luke. He as a character just doesn’t interest me as much as he could, but I guess I kind of have that problem with all of Star Wars’ main characters, excluding Erso and Solo. They just don’t feel as interesting as Peter Parker or Bilbo Baggins.

And if you want to go even farther, I kind of just have it out for main protagonists in general. There are very few movies where the main character is my favorite, some of which being MCU Spider-Man and WALL-E. So, having Luke fill a different role other than that really made me like him a bit more, plus his whole loser side was fun.

So, in the end, this really is more of a me problem that I have with Luke. I’m not going to try to argue that he’s bad, he just doesn’t work for me personally. I still like him, I just liked him a lot more in TLJ.

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Maybe that’s part of the problem. Luke has become a massive cultural icon. Perhaps we’re seeing things in his character in the OT that aren’t really there.

And I would posit that it was a pretty good arc.

In A New Hope, we meet a young, idealistic, whiny, brash and impulsive Luke who wants to escape his boring home life. Unfortunately, adventure is suddenly thrust upon him when the Empire burns his homestead and kills his family. At that point, the only thing he has left is Ben Kenobi and his vague ideas about “the Force”. Luke gets catapulted headfirst into the crazy adventure on the Death Star, finds a foil/friend in Han, falls in love with Princess Leia and then suddenly loses his only remaining mentor figure. At the climax of the movie, Luke loses his last remaining link to his childhood (Biggs) but finds a new family with the Rebellion.

Empire Strikes Back puts Luke through a great deal more trauma. He gets Mauled by a Wampa, crashes his snowspeeder, fails to life his X-Wing out of the swamp, gives into temptation in the cave (this part will be important later), and recklessly runs off to try and save in friends. Empire ends with Han in Carobonite and Luke having lost a hand while trying to deal with the emotional bombshell of his biological father being the most destructive being in the galaxy. Talk about complicated paternal relationships…

In Return of The Jedi we jump ahead a bit, but notice the framing of how Luke is introduced.

Rob Hilton said it best when talking about his Episode 4-5-2-3-6 “Machete Order” :

If you’re looking for a fresh way to experience Star Wars, I recommend reading his full write-up. I’ll be trying the order myself soon:

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I hoped it was obvious that Luke in NH was meant to be a whiny child living in a dream world. Maybe he was a little too young to act like that, yet if he would have been physically younger then it wouldn’t really have made sense for the rest of the arc.
Luke Skywalker, the one in the new trilogy, is arguably one of the best characters in cinematic history. His arc is so iconic that now it is considered as the arc, the perfect model that every movie tries to copy-paste-edit for their movies.

Oh yeah, that scene when he drank green lizard milk cracked a laugh from anybody in every audience.

Exactly! He wanted to become like the father that his parents and family built him to be, like the Anakin that they knew before he turned into a black devil in edgy armour. And when Ben, a figure that was built by the ones around him as some sort of space Merlin tells him Anakin’s modified story, and gives him a freaking lightsaber telling him that his father wanted to see him just like him, confirming his wish from all of these years, his choice of becoming a Jedi becomes natural and reasonable.

Am I the only one who feels chills when hearing their exchange of lines?

Then you don’t have examples.
Not enough to convince somebody else.

Chronicle just proved that he isn’t emotionless.

Yes, this is my biggest gripe with young Luke: when he gets a hand chopped off he is like “ouch” and that’s it.

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That scene is such a 50/50 flip it seems.

I watched it for the first time and loved it. I didn’t laugh, but I did do a silent ‘ha!’ just from the thought of how gross it was. It was a great PG way to show this guy is a little washed up and not all what he used to be.

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Honestly I start to think that the small minority of people that liked old Luke isn’t that small after all.

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Small correction: his arc is an example of a larger trope, known as the hero’s journey. However, this is hardly a trope that started with Luke, instead being something that George Lucas decided to mold his hero around.

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic; he lets out a giant scream of pain when it happens and spends the rest of the movie cradling the amputated limb.

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It is a little gratuitous, but I think it’s fine. The one scene in TLJ that never fails to crack me up is the “reach out” scene where Luke smacks Rey with the palm branch.

Gasp! I feel something!”

“You do?”

“Yes, I feel it!”

“That’s the Force!”

“Really?”

“Wow, it must be really strong with you!”

“I’ve never felt anyt–”

SMACK!

“OW!”

TLJ’s comedy might be iffy overall, but that was funny!

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Can you name a more iconic/as iconic character that did it before Luke?

Oh, sorry. Then I must confuse him for Anakin.
Tho I remember both of them being like “Ouch… Oh noo! My haaaand!/s/s/s/s”.

Frodo Baggins, Lord of the Rings. Predates Star Wars by a good twenty years. Not to mention that this is a trope whose modern interpretation traces back to The Hero With a Thousand Faces, a book published in 1949 that draws its concepts from stories that predate that. Star Wars admittedly helped popularize the idea, but it hardly started it.

I seem to remember Anakin lying on the ground for the rest of that scene, needing Yoda to save him and Obi-Wan. I’m not sure what you expected, non-stop screaming?

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Remembers how much loves Frodo
Yeah, I’m sorry. I was wrong.

I was non-stop screaming when I broke the bones in my arm. Imagine what one with a detached arm would do.

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King Arthur? Hercules? Mythological or legendary heroes are the main kind at the top of my head since the hero’s journey is an archetypal story(granted I’m just thinking off the top of my head, some characters have variations on the journey)

Luke’s version in the OT is rather good all things considered

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Eh, I get that, but not everyone reacts to pain the same way. Speaking personally, silently hating your life is pretty much when I do when I get hurt, so having Anakin and Luke react similarly doesn’t seem too off.

I read Hercules’ legends multiple times, and he never had a lowpoint, or other points characteristic to his type of arc.

I don’t know anything about medicine or anatomy, but you might be able to chalk their quick “recovery” up to the nature of lightsabers, which essentially create and cauterize a wound simultaneously. Maybe the heat fries the nerve endings, meaning it’s not as painful as a straight amputation…

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True

I should probably not compare a demigod boi to a farm boi with mystical powers and a laser sword

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I loved it.

Which is not the point of an opinion.

While I find Luke either annoying or uninteresting to watch, I still do like the character. I love the Prequels to death, but I’d be an idiot to argue Anakin over Luke. And, as I’ve also said, I kind of just have unreasonable issues with main protagonists in general, and it’s usually the main ones, too, the iconic characters. Luke, Harry Potter, Frodo, Mike Wheeler, I really just have a taste for the side characters.

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