LogFAQs > #985114479

marthsheretoo posted...

Just popping in to offer a potential alternate characterization for Luke in TLJ, since certain people seem convinced that people who hated TLJ wanted to see a flawless, boring Luke. This change keeps literally everything else about the movie the same, but gives Luke a flaw that actually makes narrative sense.

Just have Luke buy into his own success a bit too much. He's juggling way too many balls post-Endor and so while he senses Snoke's attempts to influence Ben and Ben's growing darkness, he just thinks "yeah, if this gets out of hand, I'll just redeem him like I did with my dad." So he lets the problem get out of hand, and then when they have their confrontation, Luke tries the same love-and-compassion trick that worked on Vader...and this time it fails. Ben takes advantage of Luke leaving himself open and manages to knock him out and flee.

Of course, we'd still have the issue that Luke decided to hide away from the world and let the galaxy fall rather than lifting a single finger trying to help, but at least (imo) it's...better?

I honestly don't think it ever needed to go that far.

TFA literally set the problem up perfectly. Leia tells us, explicitly.

"He didn't need Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. I shouldnt have sent him away, thats when I lost him. Its when I lost you both." He needed his father, and mother. As good as Luke was, he was never going to be the person to quiet the troubles in his heart, no matter how hard he tried. We don't need "Luke saw bad things Ben might do one day, so he thought about killing him." Luke just wasn't the right person for the job. The greatest jedi can be a lot of things, but he can't be everything for everybody.

Bring the problem back to the relationship with Han and Leia.