This post made me realise something both important and hilarious.
How come Luke Skywalker became a mythical figure in only thirty years? While he’s still alive and doing stuff?
The best explanation for this is that Luke, as in Mark Hamill, does not fit the image of a traditional hero, the alpha male that turns back time and fixes things, that protects, etc.
In other words, one would believe that Han Solo would be the legend and not the “short for a stormtrooper” Luke Skywalker, who is also so very gentle and friendly.
This can also become hilariously meta, since Luke Skywalker was baptized as “whiny” by the fandom because this is how he was firstly advertised:
UM…
I MEAN…
WHO…
…THE FUCK…
…ARE YOU????
?????????????????????????????
…not THIS kid, lemme tell you.
Luke Skywalker should have been a He-Man type of character, if the original poster was anything to go by.
Kinda like this:
YES, THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE EXPECTED, I SWEAR. THIS WAS THE TYPICAL FANTASY HERO BACK THEN. HE EVEN HAS THE FUCKING HAIRSTYLE WITH THE BLOND HAIR AND EVERYTHING.
SO DAMN ALPHA, CARRYING A SWORD.
THAT’S FUCKING HERCULES AND LUKE SKYWALKER POSES LIKE HIM, JESUS.
But noooope. He “betrayed” the muscular alpha-male type of protagonist that was popular in the terrible fantasy films of the 80s, by being a boy who needed time to evolve and even then, he never became was the audience was used to seeing in the action protagonists. ROTJ Luke is a far cry from anything the 80s spat out in regards of its main heroes and Luke suffered for his differences (but he did become one of the greatest heroes of cinema anyway).
What if the mythical state of his being in TFA is inspired by the same notions the people in the Galaxy far, far away have for someone who is a “hero” and a Jedi, no less. Everyone expects a towering powerhouse and instead it’s average-height Luke, the farmboy-turned-pacifist-Jedi.
It’d be hilarious is Luke could slip amongst people who openly gossiped about him in front of him, because THAT skinny kid? No way he’s THE Luke Skywalker!
To Luke Skywalker, destroyer of toxic masculinity since the 80s. Bless.
I like this. I always figured poor Luke was used to hearing “You’re Luke Skwyalker? I thought you’d be taller” whenever he met a new person.
We’ve spent so much time wondering what Luke might say that we’ve ignored the likelihood Rey’s going to blurt out “I thought you’d be taller.” (Or “I remember you being taller.”)
Another interesting factor is wardrobe. I was talking with a friend who’d complained about the prequels putting all the Jedi in Obi-Wan’s desert robes. He had figured that Obi-Wan only wore that because of the desert, and that Luke’s ROTJ clothes were how Jedi really dressed. Which is a reasonable assumption.
However, since the prequels establish otherwise, we can probably assume that anyone whose heard legends of Jedi would expect an old wise dude in a robe.
So you have Luke wandering around, youngish, big eyed, and in stylishly cut black, and folks aren’t going to put it together. Until of course he acts. And when he does act, it will be in the usual Skywalker over the top fashion.
So no one’s really going to remember the normal dude they saw before hand, they just remember the crazy somersault off the balcony/force choke eight space lizards part of the encounter.
So since they don’t recognize him normally, and only remember the crazy shit, his legend grows exponentially.
…
It does make it really funny that he’s wearing normal Jedi Master robes when he meets with Rey, considering that we’ve never seen him wear them before in movies or supplemental material, and from the sound of it, he’s going back to stylish black…
I think he dressed up specifically to meet her. Aw.
“Aw shit someone’s on the island. Better go put on some pants before she makes it up the stairs.”
