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Love Sam Witwer, but really can;t agree with this take.
You don& #39;t reject darkness once and remain at your spiritual telos for the rest of your life. It is the depth of Luke& #39;s compassion and love that makes this his core weakness and temptation. Fighting that is the work of life. https://twitter.com/ScarifPodcast/status/1259227686330916875">https://twitter.com/ScarifPod...
You don& #39;t reject darkness once and remain at your spiritual telos for the rest of your life. It is the depth of Luke& #39;s compassion and love that makes this his core weakness and temptation. Fighting that is the work of life. https://twitter.com/ScarifPodcast/status/1259227686330916875">https://twitter.com/ScarifPod...
People aren& #39;t static, especially not decades after the & #39;glory days& #39; (so to speak) of your life. Being a teacher, shouldering the responsibility of another person (your nephew), is something Luke didn& #39;t have in the OT - that burden changes you, that conflict is so very different.
"And for the briefest moment of pure instinct, I thought I could stop it. It passed like a fleeting shadow. And I was left with shame and with consequence. And the last thing I saw were the eyes of a frightened boy whose Master had failed him."
To me, it& #39;s all in those lines.
To me, it& #39;s all in those lines.
We are not, and cannot always be our best selves. Just as the threat of turning Leia to the dark side from Vader was enough to take Luke to the brink, seeing a vision of his loved ones - just as Anakin did - dying from the darkness in Ben aroused that same dark instinct.
He didn& #39;t - and wouldn& #39;t have - swung that saber on Ben, just as he didn& #39;t with Vader. Luke gets pushed to the brink but recognises his weakness and doesn& #39;t go over it, but that interiority isn& #39;t what Ben sees.
In TFA, we& #39;re told: "He was training a new generation of Jedi. One boy, an apprentice turned against him, destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible... He walked away from everything."
People weirdly put this whole direction on TLJ, as if some other version of the film exists where Rey shows up on Ahch To and Luke is like "Sweet, thanks for the laser sword. Let& #39;s go kick some First Order ass with these cool Jedi secrets I found on this planet!"
It& #39;s not at all that Abrams dealt Johnson a bad hand here, it& #39;s that a compelling reason had to be created as to WHY Luke would exile himself - the & #39;what& #39; had already been established.
At no point in any of my numerous viewings of these films have I ever felt this to be anything less than one of the most complex, brilliantly-told, most human stories of the saga in how it plays out and where it goes by the end of TLJ - an earned affirmation of the legend.
