The issue with the Star Wars story is that it can't end. This means Luke cannot have been very effective, because the same issues have to repeat historically to promote an endless cycle of protagonists and antagonists and battles that relate to the previous fan-favourites (because nostalgia sells).

Therefore Luke must simultaneously be an awesome hero, and also just some loser that didn't really do anything that worked.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 53 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I think legends handled it okay, that the battle of yavin was the tipping point, but the empire still had remnants that needed to be countered by the New Republic. And the New Republic has its own problems, but faces an entirely different threat than the empire too.

Whereas with the new movies, they just hit the reset button back to episode four, rather than developing on the trajectory in interesting ways, which would have given Luke's actions and the original trilogy more weight.

[–] Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone 37 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The point of a successful Disney media franchise is not to provide nuance and provoke thought, but instead to sell merch for profit.

[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

As if Lucas didn't create star wars for that sole purpose.

[–] TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world 19 points 5 months ago

Homie was a film school nerd who took a gamble that paid off. People that ONLY want to make money don't take such huge risks or put so much pretentious thought into pulp. He made it to make a ton of money because it literally couldn't happen any other way. How else do you get rich people to invest that much money?

[–] xenoclast@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago

Lucas capitalized on his success.. anyone who grew up with 80s cartoons specifically designed to sell toys to kids can tell the difference between the two.

Well at least until Return of the Jedi..

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago

... and did so without examining why the Republic fell in the first place, or how the Rebellion could fall to the same cyclical forces. Which is the sort of thing The Last Jedi kinda hinted at? That movie was an anarchist deconstruction fanfic that somehow got filmed as a major motion picture.

[–] Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

This gets to the fact that all stories are lies. No one lives happily ever after, for we all die. No one is strong and wins, because strength, weakness, winning and losing are just perceptions that are eventually erased from time.

When you start to intuit that human psychology is heavily based on such soporific narrative, you start to understand how people can be so stupid, both individually and collectively.

[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That seems a little glib to me. Not all stories are lies, not all stories have happy endings, some victors are known now thousands of years after their death. On a cosmic timescale I suppose that, trivially, nothing matters - but, conversely, the cosmic timescale is so vast that it doesn't matter to us...

Also I couldn't really parse what you were saying in your second paragraph so I'm gonna leave that there

[–] Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

but, conversely, the cosmic timescale is so vast that it doesn't matter to us...

I agree, stories only matter because we lack objectivity.

[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 3 points 5 months ago

I'm not sure that anything can objectively be said to 'matter'. So, yeah, I guess? Things only matter to us because we.care about them, sure...