[Fish]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

It wasn't a cheap gotcha. It was a main pillar of the story.

Luke was a dumb ideal driven kid. As he has grown both in experience and use of the force, he learned that blind ideals don't necessarily lead to utopia. He defeated the big bad and the galaxy is still mired in shit.

He grew up, the world isn't black and white, good and evil, whatever. There are shades of gray, gradients, fringes. As such, he's jaded. The shit he did as a kid he doesn't do now. The shit he blindly believed as a kid he can't buy into now.

It resonated with me. I was an overly idealized kid when I watched ANH. I've grown in experience in a similar ways. Some of my best laid plans have went to ****. I've poured my soul into shit and been soundly defeated (Like his Jedi temple). It worked for me. I get that most people hated it, but it should have worked.

Look at some of the stuff Marvel has put out. Daredevil S2 with Punisher as the redeemable bad guy was the most successful TV series Marvel has done. Jessica Jones has a similar, but far less good character. The Purple Man was definitely a baddie, but when they dove into his backstory, there was definitely some empathy. Hell Barnes was all out good guy - bad guy - good guy in Captain America, which Winter Soldier and Civil War are universally heralded. House of Mouse has made damn good money by backing off the binary good and evil stories and dealing with more complex adult themes.

Applying it to TLJ, it makes good sense. The younger fans could buy into the younger characters gallivanting on their ideals, and the older fools like me can relate to the journey the original trilogy characters have been on. All this while explaining how we got from ROtJ to TFA. I get that it went over like **** on a stick, but to say it is an approach without merit is simply being a butthurt fanboy.

It did go over like **** on a stick. That's my point. This movie got more criticism than the Phantom Menace. It has underperformed. People simply didn't like the way they took 40+ years of cannon and mythology and made it irrelevant and treated it as unimportant. The way they handled that was a complete mess. Most people didn't like the progression of Luke. Hamill himself hated it and spoke out against it. Parts of the plot were completely irrelevant or just didn't fit. Much of the plot hinged on the reeruned slow speed spaceship chase that didn't make any sense, resolved by a MacGuffin that was even more ridiculous. The humor was awful. There are valid reasons why this movie wasn't well received. They tried something very different, and it fell flat.