Dave Filoni and Sequel trilogy Luke & Leia

[ChrisIII]

I've been reading the "Rise of Skywalker" art book and it contains some interesting details from meetings where they were sort of semi-mapping the sequel trilogy, and it's kind of got a curious take that Filoni has on Luke (From around 2014 or so):


“I think Luke understands that it’s not about what he wants. It’s not about what he gains. It’s frankly about what everybody else gained. Sometimes, you have to be the one that carries that burden and becomes that vessel. These aren’t characters that go and get married. They don’t get over the scar. Frodo [from The Lord of the Rings] carries the ring to Mount Doom and for the rest of his life is plagued with fear. On certain days, he remembers those pains. Because he has to carry that burden. And Frodo has no peace until he leaves that world. Luke is that character.”

He also has an interesting take on Leia's role in the sequel trilogy, which kind of anticipates Kylo's redemption.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/...equel-trilogy/


It's kind of curious, a lot of people seem to think the decision to make such a radical (and controversial) change to Luke was mainly the work of Abrams and Johnson, but it looks like Filoni-who is definitely highly esteemed these days for his Clone Wars finale and Mandalorian work-was also in a way responsible.

[thwhtGuardian]

The motivation he gives the change makes sense, I would have loved it if he had simply been given the sequel trilogy to start with. Over all I think Mark Hamil made it work but as it was on the screen did feel weak.

[Kingdom X]

The motivation he gives the change makes sense, I would have loved it if he had simply been given the sequel trilogy to start with. Over all I think Mark Hamil made it work but as it was on the screen did feel weak.

I’m pretty sure early drafts from Lucas also had Luke as some kind of hermit. It all comes down to the execution. They rushed Luke’s journey and killed him off too quick, and there wasn’t a lot of good material coming from the B and C plots.

[godisawesome]

I’m pretty sure early drafts from Lucas also had Luke as some kind of hermit. It all comes down to the execution. They rushed Luke’s journey and killed him off too quick, and there wasn’t a lot of good material coming from the B and C plots.

Yeah, I don’t think anyone objected to the broad concept of “Luke Skywalker is a broken man in exile”, which was clearly a part of Lucas, Arndt, and Arbams’s different takes on VII before it finally reached the screen, and well before TLJ did its thing to define what that would mean during its run-times. Heck, most of the people angry at the ST now spent the interim between TFA and TLJ excitedly speculating about what would show up in TLJ.

Nothing about anything Lucas planned, Abrams’s TFA set-up, or Filoni’s comments there, requires Luke to end up as a cowardly jerk who adds nothing the main plotline of the ST. Heck, Lucas, Arndt and Abrams’s different drafts and expectations clearly relied on the idea of Luke teaching Rey the ways fo the Force.

Heck, even Johnson’s LFL production crew seemed to think that idea, since they thought they were “correcting” Hamill’s objections to the story by telling him he was playing the oBi-Wan role instead of the Luke one... since an Obi-Wan role would have actually, you know, trained Rey,

[Sacred Knight]

I've always been for what happened to Luke except for the reasoning behind his seclusion. He should have been in hiding for reasons which were shown to be of necessity like Obi-Wan and Yoda. Just instead of having to hide from the Empire like they did, he was searching for something/doing something to help the cause in a way only he could. The added incentive of being ashamed of his role in Ben's fall would have also worked mixed in with that greater purpose. TFA's foreshadowing supported this very type of notion, but of course, that changed for "subvert expectation" reasons. Going there to die was stupid. Cutting himself off from the Force was stupid (now, an unwilling or grudging cut off, again for a specific purpose, could have been interesting). Main point being he shouldn't have been ready to give up and die until he did all he could for this latest threat. But everything else was fine. The general idea of being a loner hermit who had inner demons over a Legends take of highly successful married Jedi and father who restored the Order on his first try was not a sticking point with me at all.

[ChrisIII]

It's a bit unclear I think why he decided to stay at the first Jedi Temple of all places. The between-trilogies EU (and some hints in the ST itself) seem to imply he was a bit of a Jedi Indiana Jones, trying to find old Jedi sites and stuff, but it's still not exactly clear why he chose that particular place to retire.

[godisawesome]

I've been reading the "Rise of Skywalker" art book and it contains some interesting details from meetings where they were sort of semi-mapping the sequel trilogy, and it's kind of got a curious take that Filoni has on Luke (From around 2014 or so):


“I think Luke understands that it’s not about what he wants. It’s not about what he gains. It’s frankly about what everybody else gained. Sometimes, you have to be the one that carries that burden and becomes that vessel. These aren’t characters that go and get married. They don’t get over the scar. Frodo [from The Lord of the Rings] carries the ring to Mount Doom and for the rest of his life is plagued with fear. On certain days, he remembers those pains. Because he has to carry that burden. And Frodo has no peace until he leaves that world. Luke is that character.”

He also has an interesting take on Leia's role in the sequel trilogy, which kind of anticipates Kylo's redemption.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/...equel-trilogy/


It's kind of curious, a lot of people seem to think the decision to make such a radical (and controversial) change to Luke was mainly the work of Abrams and Johnson, but it looks like Filoni-who is definitely highly esteemed these days for his Clone Wars finale and Mandalorian work-was also in a way responsible.

I don’t think this shows he had any impact on the actual writing for Luke: for one thing, Rian Johnson has basically claimed all credit/blame/responsibility for the content of TLJ’s story, with no one ever disputing that...

...And for another, the TLJ story most certainly isn’t about what “everybody else gained;” it’s mostly about pretentiously wallowing in one’s own pain to the point of melodrama before a half-baked instance of “getting some groove back” and having the film torch the new story around it.

In terms of him trying to justify the idea of Luke being darker and forever single, it’s not bad, but it also doesn’t require being pathetic, failing to pass the torch to Rey, and even outside of that, has less adequacy in explicating Luke being single than, say, “Lucas would want him that way,” or “Jedi and no attachments is soemthing we still want for some reason;” Single!Luke was always a more limiting creative decision than not.

His feelings on Leia feel less like having an impact on the story, and more like just a statment of the conventional views that LFL would likely have and that unfortunately got wasted on the turd of Kylo Ren rather than on Rey or Finn.