Luke was a "whiny" hot head until he finally put it all together in Return of the Jedi, which by the way worst title ever? The Jedi didn't even return long enough to make it in the next movie. If you think E4, E5, and E6 Luke are the same I must have been watching different movies.
Of course he grew, no one's claiming otherwise, but he didn't become a wise Jedi on-screen in any of them. He was still a hot-headed risk taker in RotJ, as evidenced by the continual set of risks he ran from Jabba's Palace through Endor to the confrontation with Vader and the Emperor. None of that was what a calm, collected, and centered Jedi Master would choose to do.
The argument you're making here doesn't deflect from the fact that Luke of teh OT isn't how you (and others) keep trying to portray him: as someone who would never have a moment of weakness.
That is my biggest issue, I can't see how the original 6 movies meant anything at this point since they have torn it all down. All the "heroes" that I cheered for ended up being kind of lame and failures. More sad than anything. Just wish they could have created a new Star Wars saga without needing to burn the old one down. But this is JJ Abrams.
Torn down?
How so? The Jedi Order is still going on, the New Republic still exists, if badly hurt, and there's still a chance that the son of Han and Leia will turn back to the light (I'm not sure what I hope about this, honestly). Did you really want a trilogy where everything was as awesome as you imagined it, with Han and Leia being happily-ever-aftering and Luke being a kick-ass Jedi Master at the head of a new Jedi Order? What, praytell, do you think would the conflict be? With all of the superheroes around, what could possibly function as a suitable crisis? Invasion from outside the galaxy (obviously EU sarcasm is obvious)?
To tell a hero's story, the hero has to fail at some point. They have to face that failure and overcome. We can't have the cast of the OT be perfect from the get go, they needed to be in crisis to tell a compelling story. Anything else leaves them as utterly fake. So, Han's crisis is his son. He rises to the occasion by reaching out to Ben, and dies for it (and I'm pretty sure he knew that was a likely outcome, so double points). Leia's crisis is the Republic. It has to be in jeopardy for her to have something to fight for. She rises to the occasion and doesn't back down. Luke's crisis is himself, as it's always been. And he rises to that occasion and shows that he's truly earned the title Jedi Master only at the end of TLJ, where he accepts himself finally.
So, no, the OT isn't burned down, because what was built in the OT wasn't those institutions, but rather characters -- characters who were and are flawed, and yet still show up for the job. I love Luke far more now than I ever did, because he was flawed but still showed up. Han, too. His death coming from walking towards pain and danger instead of running away was awesome -- a really summation of the movement he started in E4. And Leia, Leia is the least changing of all of them. She always fought, and she's still fighting, and I am deeply saddened that we'll never see the culmination of her arc the way it should have been. I have a feeling it was moving towards her giving the fight to others to carry, to finally resting. Also, I really, really hate that Google thinks Leia is misspelled. Everything the OT built is here, and these characters cannot breathe the honest and painful way they do without it. Don't think that the OT is some institution of victory or happily-ever-after because it's not. It's about characters and their journey, not their destination. This new trilogy is closing the journeys of those characters, and providing endings they
earned along the way.