‘The Last Jedi’: A Widely Hated Scene Might Actually Be the Most Important
The Last Jedi was a controversial film among Star Wars fans for a lot of reasons, and one of the major reasons was how the film handled Luke Skywalker’s scenes.
Luke was the main character from the original trilogy, and millions of fans from around the world loved the character. However, some fans thought that The Last Jedi ruined Luke’s character since the movie, in those fans’ eyes, made him do things that he wouldn’t do.
That said, one of those scenes in particular may actually be the opposite of that. In fact, some fans think that the scene where Luke throws his lightsaber away was the most important scene in the movie.
That time Luke Skywalker threw his lightsaber away
At the end of The Force Awakens, Rey finally found out where Luke has been hiding, and she travels there to seek his guidance. After she climbs up some stairs, she sees him and then she hands him Darth Vader’s lightsaber. The movie then cuts to credits.
At the beginning of The Last Jedi, this scene continues. Luke grabs the lightsaber, and after a brief moment, he tosses it over his shoulder. This moment, for some fans, set the tone for how they would view the movie. To them, it made Luke seem like a joke since this scene almost seemed like a comedy.
Why some fans hate this scene
Not only that, but some fans saw this scene as an inaccurate portrayal of who Luke was as a person. The last time that fans saw or heard of Luke, before the sequels, was in Return of the Jedi. At the end of the movie, Luke seemingly becomes a Jedi full-time.
However, as the rest of The Last Jedi showed, Luke hasn’t handled being a Jedi very well. He started a new Jedi academy and one of his first students was his nephew, Ben Solo. Luke made a terrible mistake and he almost killed Ben. This made Ben run away, and he’d eventually become Kylo Ren.
This failure made Luke feel like he needed to go exile himself, since he couldn’t trust himself to do what was right. That’s exactly what he did, and that’s why he was hiding out on an island.
When Rey asks him why he thought he had failed, Luke talked about how all Jedi had failed, and he blamed the Jedi for many of the galaxy’s woes.
Why this was actually a poignant scene
While many fans didn’t want to hear that, what Luke learned was actually easily summarized by him throwing his lightsaber away.
As fans on Reddit said, in the original trilogy, Luke also threw away his lightsaber. After defeating Darth Vader in a lightsaber duel, instead of killing him, Luke chooses to throw his lightsaber down in defiance of what Emperor Palpatine asked of him.
This action, according to fans, is to symbolize Luke’s choice. Like Yoda told him in Empire Strikes Back, Luke doesn’t need weapons, implying instead that he simply needs the force.
Surely enough, in the climactic moment of Return of the Jedi, Luke has become a true Jedi, and he doesn’t need his lightsaber anymore, since he instead is a true believer of the force.
That moment was paralleled in The Last Jedi when Luke threw the lightsaber over his shoulder. This scene wasn’t a comedic one, but rather a smart callback to the originals that also, at the same time, tells audiences exactly what Luke is feeling in the moment.
While Luke still believes in the force, he doesn’t trust the Jedi anymore. And, like the rest of the movie showed, that’s exactly how Luke sees things.
