Okay, I'm just going do a quick reply to all three of you.
BobaFettSlave_1 that's okay man. You got Christmas break coming up real quick I hope!
HeartBlade, yep, my bad, just looked at my book this morning. I would say that her hotheadedness is something that they toned down. But she's still got an angry streak. Remember when she banged Luke in the back of the head, then drew a lightsaber on him? Also, Pablo isn't the one who changed things, that would have been Michael, JJ, and Lawrence.
So about Luke, here's my thoughts on it.
In ESB and ROTJ, it's shown that Luke gives in to his fear, anger, hate, aggression. Which if you remember, is what Yoda says is the Dark Side. It's important to also remember that having those emotions isn't the Dark Side, it's acting on those emotions that is the Dark Side. So I as I said we see that in ESB that Luke acts on these emotions when he fails in the cave, and when blindly runs off to "save" his friends. But ROTJ we see that Luke is getting worse. But we also see something else, not only does Luke have a weakness for the Dark Side, but he's ultimately able to resist giving in completely. When the Emperor stokes his fear and anger, prompting Luke to strike out and try to kill him. Vader intercepts the strike, and his anger Luke begins to fight his father, whom he said he wants to save. Whom he loves. But Luke does something remarkable, he's able to see what he's doing pull himself back. But then Vader is the one to fuel his fear and anger. And this time Luke really losses it. He flies into rage attacking his father whom he loves. And beats him down ready to kill him, but once again Luke is able to pull himself back from the brink of darkness to the Light.
But here's the problem. Luke was able to stop himself from going fully to the Dark Side. But that doesn't mean he's suddenly become a sinless Dark Side free saint. In fact, it means the opposite. It means that Luke will always have this Dark Side thorn in his side. Remember what Yoda said, "once down the Dark path you start, forever will dominate your destiny." I mean look how Doug Chaing describes Luke at the time they were meeting George when they first started on TFA "At this point in the story, thirty years after the fall of the Empire, Luke has gone to a dark place. He always had this potential Dark Side within him, being that his father was Darth Vader. So he is really struggling with that.
Also, remember too that Luke is acting on his Jedi instincts. That being destroying the Dark Side no matter what. I was just watching Rebels last week, and Kanan goes into the old Jedi Temple, and he has this vision of Temple Guards. And they tell Kanan that they need to kill Ezra because he's being tempted by the Dark Side, and they need to stop before he becomes a threat.
It's no wonder Luke cuts himself from the Force and disillusioned with the Jedi.
Definitely need a break lol. Graduating and seeking new employment if everything works out
As for Luke, Yes I agree that in ROTJ we see Luke use a lot of things we typically assign to The Darkside. That's entirely done on purpose for his character. He's lost to Vader, had his world destroyed, lost his best friend and now needs to rescue him from the SW equivalent of Al Capone. He's in a real fragile spot for a protagonist to be in and it's meant to make the audience feel that he could go either way (to add tension and all that)
Even still however, Luke remains true to himself and his ideals throughout the entire film, whereas Yoda and Obi-wan saw absolutely no possible way in redemption from the Dark Side, and try to convince Luke of such.
Yoda - "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will, as it did Obi-wan's apprentice"
Obiwan - "He's more machine now than a man... Twisted and evil..." *and when Luke still refuses to agree to face/kill Vader* "Then the Emperor has already won... You were our only hope.."
Both Yoda and Obi-wan, characters set up as Mentors, of "The wise old man" within the Heros journey arc, are both absolutists. They see no possible return from the Darkside once you've started down that path, and especially so once you're already well down it like Vader is.
Fast forward to the DS2 scenes, and we have the Emperor desperately trying to get Luke to change, and likewise Luke find that change within his own father
Luke does indeed seemingly start to slip down that Dark path once put in a point of desperation, watching the fleet be destroyed helplessly before his eyes while the Emperor whispers poison in his ear until Luke finally slips..., but Luke immediately catches himself. Its his own internal struggle with himself from that moment, and when Vader threatens his sister he almost falls right off the ledge plummeting to the Darkside. All true....
Right up until the moment he sees his fathers hand and draws the parallels to himself...
It's in that moment Luke surges completely back to good, throwing his lightsaber away and his possible path down the Darkside along with it... It's in this singular moment, what the Hero's Journey typically refers to as "Atonement", that he finally once and for all becomes the Hero he was meant to become within the story... and it is also in that moment of desperation soon after where Luke is literally going to die at the hands of the Emperor rather than turn to the Darkside, that his own father, the single most evil man in he galaxy next to Palpatine himself, finds his own redemption and comes back to the light seeing the strength of Luke's resistance to evil, and sacrificing himself in that moment to save the son who put literally EVERYTHING on the line in order just to prove anyone can come back from the Dark..
I'm a firm believer you can make any character do anything you want them to, and you absolutely can have Luke become what he is in the ST, as crappy as it is to see. But you NEED to write for it. That reason for change needs to be seen and be as significant as the consequences for the change itself to the character. We didn't even get a fraction of that for the gap between ROTJ and TFA. Yes all that stuff Ben and the Jedi temple did happen, but that's simply not enough when Luke in the past is a character who thought that it was possible for ANYONE to redeem themselves, and also proved that in the end that it is indeed possible, showing both Yoda and Obi-wan that they were themselves wrong in their own views.
And you can be sure as hell that Vader did a hell of a lot more horrible things than Ben ever did, and that's the problem with his change in the ST
It simply was not earned
