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When Luke gazes at the twin suns there appears to be like a black speck. Is this just something trivial or was something there?

Probably trivial

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot

^ pretty sure it's way too big to be a sunspot

Nah, it's a sunspot.

Meh, it's cooler to think Luke had been hiding a star destroyer that he sent out before his death.

When I first saw it, I thought it was a Star Destroyer coming to kill him, but after rewatch I realized it was just a sunspot, tbh.

On that note, while most people complained about how Luke died, and that he died from making a projection of himself, I fail to see how it can be interpreted that way.

I saw it as similar to Obi-Wan's sacrifice on the Death Star. He accepts his death, as he knows he will be of better use to Rey/Ben through the force as a ghost. In that event, he almost "kills himself" or allows himself to be taken by the force.

If I'm correct, that means that although he could project himself and that could strain the **** out of him, it wouldn't actually kill Luke, if he wanted to live.

I'd say it was a combination of the effort of the Force projection (which was stated to kill earlier in the movie and was confirmed by RJ as Luke's cause of death) and Luke's total openness of the Force (hence "peace and purpose".

^ yeah if Luke really didn't want to die I doubt he would've, he gets up just fine and sits there looking at the sunset, when you die of exhaustion you don't do that lmao.

Obi-Wan died so Luke and friends could escape.

Luke died so Rey and friends could escape.



See it's like poetry, it rhymes.

Lucas's invention of the sacrificing oneself so others can escape plot was sheer brilliance.

Originally posted by The Ellimist
Eh that doesn't 100% confirm that it's what killed him.
Hence why I think it's a combination of the two factors. I agree Luke would have stayed alive if he was 100% resolved to stay alive, but factor in his willingness to merge with the Force, and you get him becoming a spirit.

I also don't think using the terminology "kill" or "death" is "right" to describe the scene. It's more like Luke ascending to a higher plane of existence and power, really.

However, though, like I pointed out, Kylo does state what Luke is doing would kill Rey, likely foreshadowing Luke's "ascension."

It was pretty racist of TLJ to have the Asian deny the black man's right to sacrifice himself for his friends just to make room for the white man to do it.

Originally posted by DarthAnt66
Hence why I think it's a combination of the two factors. I agree Luke would have stayed alive if he was 100% resolved to stay alive, but factor in his willingness to merge with the Force, and you get him becoming a spirit.

I also don't think using the terminology "kill" or "death" is "right" to describe the scene. It's more like Luke ascending to higher plane of existence and power, really.

However, though, like I pointed out, Kylo does state what Luke is doing would kill Rey, likely foreshadowing Luke's "ascension."

Luke is far more powerful than Rey but I get that the authorial intent suggests that.

It's probably analogous to being in a situation where you would die if you did nothing, but live if you tried to. As opposed to being doomed or being in no danger at all.

Unless Rey is another spawn of the force itself , I doubt she's ever going to be as powerful as a try hard Luke who reached his full potential. He probably still has a higher force potential.

Anyway, she's balanced with Kylo, who's a third in line Skywalker, so I doubt she's got the same potential as Luke.

Why couldn't she "have the same potential?" Even Luke was scared of her raw power, and she'd never had any training at all at that point.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Why couldn't she "have the same potential?" Even Luke was scared of her raw power, and she'd never had any training at all at that point.

Luke was scared of Ben's as well, and we can safely assume that even Ben doesn't have the SAME potential as Luke/Anakin.

I think what Luke said has been taken out of context, and seen literally. I think he means that Ben was a Skywalker. Ben's potential is still greater than even Sidious', and THAT IN ITSELF is scary enough to train, especially since Luke has to come up with training himself.

The f*ck is up with all this "potential" nonsense? There's way too much stock put into subjective tripe like that.

Force potential is canon though.

For whatever reason, I don't think the Skywalker blood diluted between Luke and Kylo's generation.

It's unclear whether it diluted from Anakin to Luke even.

Yeah, it's legit.

I'm aware that some people are all for the

{Skills > Potential}

Which is true in most scenarios, but when we get to people like Anakin and Luke ... it's sorta different. They're that strong in the force essentially. Plagueis was amazed that Palpatine was born of flesh and blood, yet Anakin was perhaps more than double as strong as Sidious in the force. That means that any extension of raw power could overpower most skilled combatants. Lucas hints that Anakin may have/could have killed the emperor if he had killed Obi on Mustafar, signalling his innate raw power, regardless of Sidious' unparalleled mastery.

@ Elm: I doubt we'll ever find out, either.

For what it's worth, and it's not much, the Lego Star Wars books being published by Disney (and works with the Story Group) published a book with a list of the top 4 most powerful Force-users (potential wise). It has Anakin as 1, Yoda and Sidious tied for 2 and 3, then Luke at 4, suggesting significant dilution. Odd list.

Why the **** is Luke number 4.

Originally posted by DarthAnt66
@ Elm: I doubt we'll ever find out, either.

For what it's worth, and it's not much, the Lego Star Wars books being published by Disney (and works with the Story Group) published a book with a list of the top 4 most powerful Force-users (potential wise). It has Anakin as 1, Yoda and Sidious tied for 2 and 3, then Luke at 4, suggesting significant dilution. Odd list.

Yeahhhh, I know it's "canon" but I'm not overriding a central theme of the Original Trilogy because of a Lego Star Wars book.

Originally posted by The Ellimist
Force potential is canon though. lol



But why bother caring about potential. It doesn't mean anything. Only what the characters actually do and are capable of doing matters. Not what they might be capable of doing at some unspecified point in the future given the right unspecified conditioning. If you're trying to rank fictional people in their ability to defeat other fictional characters, Yu Gi Oh style, then you compare demonstrated talents, not "what if it gets established later" talents. That's all this "potential" stuff is.

Lucas canon overrides it though? Lucas says that Luke could be double the emperor in power. It therefore makes no sense to contradict his word... ****ing Disney.

I guess the new logic is that Anakin's potential got halved when he had children, which makes it about the same as the Emperor/Yoda for Luke.

This in essence only makes Anakin stand out more as a bullshit force user.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
lol



But why bother caring about potential. It doesn't mean anything. Only what the characters actually do and are capable of doing matters. Not what they might be capable of doing at some unspecified point in the future given the right unspecified conditioning. If you're trying to rank fictional people in their ability to defeat other fictional characters, Yu Gi Oh style, then you compare demonstrated talents, not "what if it gets established later" talents. That's all this "potential" stuff is.

Like I said, it only matters for two people: Anakin and Luke, because of their innate connection to the force that exceeds even Palpatine's connection.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
lol



But why bother caring about potential. It doesn't mean anything. Only what the characters actually do and are capable of doing matters. Not what they might be capable of doing at some unspecified point in the future given the right unspecified conditioning. If you're trying to rank fictional people in their ability to defeat other fictional characters, Yu Gi Oh style, then you compare demonstrated talents, not "what if it gets established later" talents. That's all this "potential" stuff is.

But when you don't have enough information on what they do and are capable of doing, you have to make do with the data points you have. That's why professional scouts will try to determine a college athlete's potential/ceiling even though they haven't done anything in the pros yet. In this case, it's really vague how Kylo measures up to more established characters from earlier eras, but we can try to interpolate through potential + how much of it we think he's realized because we do have an idea of how their potentials match up.

Originally posted by samappo
I guess the new logic is that Anakin's potential got halved when he had children, which makes it about the same as the Emperor/Yoda for Luke. Like... what the f*ck does this even... sounds like a teenager wrote...



Ugh.

Originally posted by The Ellimist
But when you don't have enough information on what they do and are capable of doing, you have to make do with the data points you have. That's why professional scouts will try to determine a college athlete's potential/ceiling even though they haven't done anything in the pros yet. In this case, it's really vague how Kylo measures up to more established characters from earlier eras, but we can try to interpolate through potential + how much of it we think he's realized because we do have an idea of how their potentials match up. But those athletes still have demonstrated skills on which to base a prediction on, and then to gamble with.



F*ckin space wizards from the imagination have demonstrated abilities too. So judge them on that. Not this convoluted "watering down of potential" shit because Anakin/2=Leia/Han=Rey equivalence when measured against Ben... whatever.

It'd be dumb to look at the NFL's best players, then say that their children's football talents are proportionate to how many siblings each child has, or how many generations removed they are from said NFL star. That would be... f*cking retarded. But given all the concussions that actually just might be true.



And on top of that: why CARE about potential. It's meaningless.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Like... what the f*ck does this even... sounds like a teenager wrote...



Ugh.

Nice, cherry pick that line and ignore my actual argument. Let me restate again, Raw power matters for only two people that we know of so far: Luke and Anakin.

Originally posted by samappo
Nice, cherry pick that line and ignore my actual argument. Let me restate again, Raw power matters for only two people that we know of so far: Luke and Anakin. Lol I'm not actually arguing with you. I'm dismissing the topic of the "argument" entirely.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien

But those athletes still have demonstrated skills on which to base a prediction on, and then to gamble with.



F*ckin space wizards from the imagination have demonstrated abilities too. So judge them on that. Not this convoluted "watering down of potential" shit because Anakin/2=Leia/Han=Rey equivalence when measured against Ben... whatever.

It'd be dumb to look at the NFL's best players, then say that their children's football talents are proportionate to how many siblings each child has, or how many generations removed they are from said NFL star. That would be... f*cking retarded. But given all the concussions that actually just might be true.



And on top of that: why CARE about potential. It's meaningless.

I'm not making up a new concept here. Guessing a variable from statistical proxies or correlates is employed regularly both directly and indirectly, like the machine learning algorithms you were using every time you googled something today. Potential and training time correlate with power, so we can try to guess from them. Like we do this all the time in real life.

It would be absolutely better to have a good set of quantifiable feats but we don't have that. Now if there were some risk to making bad guesses we might just throw our hands up and say we don't know, but we're talking about Star Wars here on KMC forums, so there really isn't.

Even Lucas talks about Anakin and wanks his force potential, so you just personally do not like it, that does not mean it cannot be used in argument/discussion as fact and viable source material. Don't like it ? Your choice.

Originally posted by The Ellimist
I'm not making up a new concept here. Guessing a variable from statistical proxies or correlates is employed regularly both directly and indirectly, like the machine learning algorithms you were using every time you googled something today. Potential and training time correlate with power, so we can try to guess from them. Like we do this all the time in real life.

It would be absolutely better to have a good set of quantifiable feats but we don't have that. Now if there were some risk to making bad guesses we might just throw our hands up and say we don't know, but we're talking about Star Wars here on KMC forums, so there really isn't. Fair enough, no conclusions here mean anything to anyone of worth. Or even stay concluded for long.

You guys argue over who's more powerful or who can defeat who based on what a character IS, not what a character COULD be. Potential realized is just that character now, present-tense (IS). Potential unfulfilled is what that character might become in later material, or never became because they died or something (COULD). You don't determine if Whie Malreaux can beat Kylo Ren at Rocket League NOW by mentioning that Kylo's father had the potential to be the top-ranked player if only he hadn't visited Lava World with a chip on his shoulder. I mean sure, Kylo inherited his father's dextrous fingers and quick reflexes... but Whie's the current reigning champion, and Kylo's barely played the game. He COULD become better than Whie in a later novel, but NOW... not really.

...

Is what I'm getting at... I think...


Originally posted by samappo
Even Lucas talks about Anakin and wanks his force potential, so you just personally do not like it, that does not mean it cannot be used in argument/discussion as fact and viable source material. Don't like it ? Your choice. I like you. You care about what George Lucas has to say. That's cute

I think you're missing the point here. It's the immense force potential of a Skywalker that let's them get away with stuff. Force potential isn't just what the COULD be, it's also their raw connection. It means they can do stuff with minimal/no training.

Now, you're absolutely right. What you ARE, and what you COULD BE is entirely different. It gets just a little shaky for the 0.01% of people who have an unnatural connection to the force. Jedi Masters would be amazed beyond belief watching the Throne Room duel in Episode 6. Luke picked up and re-demonstrated an even better performance of Form V than Vader's own. Why could he learn so quickly without nearly as much training as Vader? His force potential/connection. Again, Lucas tells us that had Vader succeeded in killing Obi-Wan, he could have challenged the emperor, despite the emperor's vastly superior skill and mastery of the force - only because that raw power and command was that strong.

It only really applies to the Skywalkers, not really anyone else.

@Lucien my whole point is that the potential is useful to predict current ability, not that it's intrinsically important. It's a statistical correlate that you can use to guess at a fuzzy variable (current ability for ST characters who don't have many feats). We use this in formal systems like machine learning all the time, and informally when you make guesses based on intuitions and other random stuff. You might remember stuff like this from stat class back when you had black/blond/whatever hair.

Gheez how old are you guys xD

Originally posted by The Ellimist
@Lucien my whole point is that the potential is useful to predict current ability, not that it's intrinsically important. It's a statistical correlate that you can use to guess at a fuzzy variable (current ability for ST characters who don't have many feats). We use this in formal systems like machine learning all the time, and informally when you make guesses based on intuitions and other random stuff. You might remember stuff like this from stat class back when you had black/blond/whatever hair. Stat class? Pff, I was a liberal arts/humanities student. Ain't got no time for useful things. Blond, btw.


I'll give it to you that for analyzing current magic powers, using potential as a stand-in variable for determining ability is better than nothing at all. But I also think that it's vague and isn't defined by anything, so I would prefer to say "Who knows!" and then also "Who f*cking cares!"


But then I'm drowned out by unbridled fandom and an excess of computer time before mom turns the lights out. To wit:

Originally posted by samappo
Gheez how old are you guys xD Young. Shut up.