Agreed, though I wouldn't go so far as to say that Luke "almost" killed Ben in TLJ. I think he just had an off the cuff overreaction more along the lines of Bilbo briefly going pyscho and reaching for Frodo's ring in Rivendell. Just an instantaneous moment of weakness that while tragic in no way undid his previous heroic deeds nor did it taint him forever going forward.
Interesting take but I definitely disagree. If ROTJ Luke was *not* well on his way to giving up on the "good" in Vader and killing him in anger then IMO it completely undoes his entire epiphany when he pauses and looks at his own mechanical hand in horror. If he had simply conducted a spirited and prolonged attempt to disarm his father and nothing more then why would such a turnaround be necessary. Just pause with lightsaber in hand and say "you have nothing to fear from me father, now please let go of your hate and come with me." No that is *not* what he said, he looked at his terrified dad (who was literally holding up a hand as a futile defensive gesture against the killing blow that Luke was on the verge of making), thought "holy **** what am I doing" and not only turned off his saber but flung the temptation as far away as he could.
That was the final test that Luke overcame. With your take there was no such test at all and Luke apparently just disarms himself out of sheer stupidity.
I think there are two things here.
First and foremost, is the dramatic weakness and mishandling evident in ROTJ on many fronts, one key one being Luke. The movie should have truly set up an actual dark vs light conflict within Luke (in alignment with his costume) and perhaps should have involved Leia playing some role at the climax where Luke has to make a choice, perhaps even seeing her die for his slide to the darkside. This would have tied her more to being Luke's sister, and to her force connection, rather than it being a bit random.
We are left with a lukewarm Luke storyline complete with a weak, endless "explain to Charlie" scene with Ben and has Yoda as almost a throwaway. This just at a point where Ben and Yoda's deception of Luke might have played a major role in Luke entertaining the dark side as a more real and truthful alternative (as presented by Vader, then Palps,) seeing Ben as something more complex and playing out further some of the "you will be..." evil-seeming Yoda. This was a massive missed opportunity.
The second thing is that what occurs is that Luke is 110% there to save/redeem his father, in a reverse of the "join me, father and son" from ESB - I mean you just have to look at
every piece of dialog and action Luke has, from his first meeting Vader on the platform next to the ATAT right up until 2/3 of the way through their saber battle. This is not a guy who has come to trick his father into lowering his guard in order to kill him. He comes with an open heart, and states and proves it over and over and over.
Then we get to the critical point - the "sister" moment, and the "no!" - which is the only evidence AT ALL that Luke might kill Vader, despite what people say to him, despite what the movie may have tried to infer (the movie tries to have its cake and eat it too - dress him in black, have people tell him he needs to kill Vader, but make Luke 98% pure.)
A key question: Do you know how long it is between Luke snapping due to "sister" and him looking at his gloved hand? 60 seconds.
One minute of screen time, in the context of countless (maybe 20 in total?) minutes of Luke saying "I sense the good in you" and "I won't fight you" etc etc etc.
And the most crucial point in all this? Luke
doesn't kill Vader, even after he's cut Vader's hand off, even while
still enraged, long before he looks at his own gloved hand, before he even has his "change of facial expression" moment from anger to "I've won."
In the second after he chops off Vader's hand and disarms him, why doesn't Luke behead Vader or drive his saber through him?
What no one seems to get is that a full thirty seconds - which is a TON of time in such a high-drama moment - passes between Luke cutting off Vader's hand and Luke looking at his own hand, which is in theory the "what am I doing?" turning back moment everyone cites.
And Luke, despite still being enraged and theoretically in the grip of the dark side, despite now being in a position to do it - DOESN'T kill Vader.
If Luke had indeed given in to the dark side, exploded, won - why didn't he continue for that last 1-2 seconds and kill Vader? People seem to remember it as Luke explodes, defeats Vader, then looks at his hand and changes his mind - they forget all about that "missing" thirty seconds - which is the book depository to your grassy knoll theory.
And finally, critically, Luke did not COME THERE TO KILL VADER. All evidence points to the exact opposite. TLJ, on the other hand... is different.
A critical point...if it were correct. But if you revisit TLJ (I'll leave that one up to you, lol) Luke actually doesn't go to Ben's hut to kill him, only to definitively discern the level of darkness lurking in his nephew's soul. What he finds temporarily shocks him so profoundly that he grabs and ignites his saber out of instinct. Which actually is explained beautifully by the TROS reveal that it was Palpatine because he was the one person who witnessed firsthand Luke almost lose it with Vader when Vader threatened his sister. He obviously used and magnified that very threat by showing Luke (through Ben's tainted soul) the "death and destruction of all I held dear."
So again like Bilbo briefly lashing out at *his* nephew Luke made a similar "in the moment" error.
So you need to walk all the way to Ben's hut -
armed - and
in the middle of the night - to "definitively discern the level of darkness lurking in his nephew's soul"? A guy who we are led to believe can discern and even communicate or project things mentally from great distances needs to walk all the way over to the hut, to sorta "check on things in person"? C'mon, Khev... that's ST/TLJ Koolaid.
Luke says "I was left with shame... and consequence" (spoken as he "changes his mind" with a shot of the saber) - so what shame is he talking about then? That isn't the shame of what he is clearly there to do? If not, what shame? That he "misjudged" Ben... and went to his hut to do some "discerning"....in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT while standing over Ben WITH A SABER IN HIS HAND?
C'mon, seriously?
To me this infers that you've been bamboozled by the weak cop-out mishmash of how they edited this gibberish together - flashbacks that are anything but clear, because in truth,
the filmmakers really have no idea what happened. They just want Luke to be "complex and dark" and more importantly, have to then die for it. You know, so we pay a little tribute then kiss goodbye the old?
Again, why did they never show any of this? We get drivelous garbage like endless Canto, slow motion bumper chases and a teary Rose, not to mention more of Rey Boringwalker's mythic Luke-journey retread.... yet we can't even see Luke and Ben in these critical moments surrounding these momentous events concerning THE core character of the OT?
The moments
that enable us to judge Luke's actions. It's like the problem I have with the whole TLJ force projection ending - there's zero rules for how it all works, so it's impossible to judge whether Luke is brave or a coward... in the moment of his DEATH. And don't ask the filmmakers - they have no idea either (as I always mention, even official sources can't make sense of any of it.) It was all just a half-*ssed attempt to undercut and shake up what we thought of Luke, then kill him off, so we can get back to Rey Boringwalker.
Those moments between Luke and Ben are the DRAMATIC CORE of the TLJ story, perhaps even of the WHOLE ST (including Han and Leia's reactions and actions,) yet 99% occur offscreen? I mean seriously - WTF, right?
Yet this is the kind of weak, lazy, dramatically murky, mythically no-pulse movie TLJ is. Any power it has is 100% lifted from other movies, even as it undercuts or even mocks those movies (which is SO much easier than building something new.)
Here we are arguing over a brief throwaway bs flashback that is totally unclear in both context and content. Solely because the filmmakers had no clue and therefore couldn't clarify it. And yet you're saying all of this "definitively discern" and "shocks him so profoundly" with dead certainty? Based on what?
