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- Apr 25, 2016
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Sorry, If you're not wililng to read my whole reply to you then I'm not wasting my time reading yours.No I did read that entire post, not the second one but again as I said your basically making a case built on that same argument again and again and a response to it would be by repeating that again and again. Thats very different to you looking to focus from a single semantic argument from one of my posts, keeping up with the semantic argument even when clarified and ignoring everything else. Its the same with Luke's motivation, as I'd said before that post its not the ideas your raising I'm always disagreeing with but how effectively they are gotten across on screen.
There does seem to be a pattern in extreme defense of the prequels and the sequels that ultimately people end up belittling the originals. In ROTJ I think you clearly see that the pressure on Luke builds across the scenes with Vader and the Emperor, on Endor and then in the throne room you see Luke's ability to keep his anger and fear in check is repeatedly tested, Hamil gets a good 20 mins here to sell this. At the point he finally breaks you have him hiding under the platform in the dark clearly very disturbed before Leia is mentioned, if we'd simply gone from the cool Luke on Endor to "noooo!" screaming angry Luke when Leia is mentioned it wouldnt have been nearly as believeble. Those scene for me are actually the single greatest thing(even if ROTJ as a whole maybe is quite as good as ANH and ESB) associated with Starwars in how effectively they carry out this story.
You can put something down in words but that doesnt mean its been sold effectively on screen, Luke can say "this tested me more than even the confrontation on the death star" but that doesnt mean its been sold effectively as such. I think the problem the film really has is that like Force Awakens is dramatically confused as to its intension, it introduces new lead characters but struggles to make these characters dramatically interesting and instead has a tendency to return to the original characters as the dramatic center of the films whilst not giving them enough focus to do anything but replay stories from the originals which needs them to regress in terms of wisdom and morals, so Han needs to become ANH Han again.
The whole situation with Luke considering killing Ben in his sleep is a product of that for me, its basically reducing the plot to something which can be covered in a very short flashback but in doing this it diminishes its ability to build Luke's motivation and creates an incredably morally dubious situation out of character for him. To have a situation with a failure more in character with the Luke we see at the end of ROTJ would have needed more screen time and effort plus more respect for the character.
I do think Johnson was rather dropped in it in this reguard by Abrams who basically used Luke as a mcguffin AND took the big dramatic reveal of his return for his own film(what I suspect the light saber throw was about, didn't personally have an issue with that) whilst leaving the character and motivation a mystery. The whole resistance plot really is just a big load of nothing at that point, unlike ESB were Han and Leia are well built characters I don't think Finn and Poe carry much interest at all. Again I think hiring Abrams and TFA is really the core of were the ST went wrong, as with Trek it just took time for the issues to become a bit more obvious and pure nostalgia to wear off.
Again there was a fundamental choice at the start for me to either puit effort into a respectful relaucnhing of SW or to go with a cheap cash in and Disney chose the latter with Abrams, this probably ranks as the single worst choice made in Hollywood over the last 20+ years for me if your talking about economics and negative viewer reaction. The DC EU is arguably a bigger train wreck overall but I'm not sure you can put that down to a single decision as much.
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