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Luke Skywalker and The Jedi Reformation
Immediately after watching The Last Jedi, I was not a huge fan. I’m still not sure how much I like the film. It was an improvement over The Force Awakens and there was some great character development (especially with Finn, Rey, and Ren). But I’ll just join with the chorus of folks already on the bandwagon who have had a hard time with the way Luke Skywalker was written in the film. His dimissiveness and abrasiveness seemed at odds with the way we left the character in Return of The Jedi.
But much credit to Rian Johnson because he created a film that I’m still mulling over months later. I know part of that is due to the soft spot I have for the Star Wars mythology and characters and part of that is just wanting to understand why he wrote Luke the way he did.
After considering it for awhile, I had an idea that helped me think about TLJ and speficially Luke Skywalker. I had been struggling to see how TLJ was going to connect to the previous films. It seemed like it was throwing out or changing so much of what came before. For Abrams and Johnson, a big part of the newest trilogy has been a reformation (or maybe a rediscovery) of The Force and the Jedi. The prequel trilogy gave us Jedi wielding massive amounts of wealth, power, and influence. They were often distant and separated from the plight of the common creature. Just think of the contrast between…
