Yes, in the same way a tomato is a fruit.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Star Wars is a mash-up of Sci-Fi and Fantasy - Luke isn't a superhero, he's a wizard (in the same you wouldn't call Gandalf a superhero).
Gandalf isn't a superhero because he's more like an angel. He played a part in the creation of the world, and is entirely inhuman. He's a primordial spirit masquerading in a corporeal form.
Luke Skywalker is much closer to a superhero because he's a mortal man who was inadvertently blessed with incredibly rare powers and chooses to use them for good.
Batman is a mortal man whose only super power is an obscene amount of money, and yet he's still categorized as a superhero.
Eh. People say that but heβs canonically in the same level of smarts as Luthor, Supes and Brainiac. He also has reaction times capable of hanging with supes and some sort of precognition (prep time)
Also if Luthor is a supervillain (never heard otherwise), then bats is definitely a superhero.
No, he's more like a wizard. Other force-users exist in his universe, he just happens to be an especially good one.
The Marvel and DC universes have loads of people with abilities, yet we call them superheroes.
Yes, but they all have different abilities. or at the very least don't have the same ones often. Captain America can't turn into a giant green monster, and so on.
I'm not so sure the definition provided is sufficiently narrow, but Luke Skywalker specifically doesn't fit into it as given.
Are there any superheroes in Star Wars? Leia?
That's where you reach the limit of my knowledge, at least.
It's literally this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
The vast majority of stories with a heroic protagonist will be a variation of this idea.
Seriously, Star Wars is about the best Joseph Campbell textbook you could ask for.
I would say no, only because he does it all in his own name. One of the key features of a superhero is the idea of separation of identity, which Grandmaster Skywalker* does not do. Not all superheroes wear masks, but even the ones that don't usually have some form of alternate identity. (Reed Richards, for example; everybody knows who he is, but it would be weird to call him by his real name while he's in costume.) I would say that Luke Skywalker is a hero, but not a _super_hero, specifically because he does not present himself as such.
*Grandmaster Skywalker, founder of the Yavin IV Praxeum, etc. etc. Fuck MouseWars.
I mean, he doesn't follow the trappings of a comic book super hero (don't @ me about Star Wars comics). He has all the powers and motivations of a super hero though. At the end of the day, Iron Man is just a rich guy, what makes him a super hero is the framing of his media.
He does not have a fancy logo nor a secret identity. Well. By this definition you cannot call Tony Stark a Superhero, neither Thor.
I would say, Jedi are wizards, in a way where Star Wars is more fantasy than SciFi.
I do think there's a good amount of characters who you don't think of as "superheroes" but really are...but I don't think Skywalker is one of them. His skills aren't rare, he's just one of the best, and his motivations are more that of a freedom fighter/terrorist (the difference is perspective) than a peacekeeper (I actually would argue that a superhero could be a freedom fighter, but most are peacekeepers.)
Nope.
Super-creeps exist in a specific universe where super-creeps make sense... ie, a world in which a billionaire can dress up in over-priced BDSM gear, beat marginalized people to death and be considered a "hero" for doing so. It's a very Randian universe... and it stinks.
I feel like superheroes have a plot constancy that forces them to stay superheroes. Their superpowers may lapse, but they generally get them back and feel justified in using them. Their main villains may fall or seemingly reform in one episode or series, but usually return as bad as ever. In Legends, Luke's fight with the Empire is almost over before it has begun. Cleaning up the Remnant and warlords falls to regular X-wing pilots and commandos in the New Republic era. Luke is more of a mediator than a fighter and mostly withdraws from heavy use of the Force by the New Jedi Order era. Even the new enemies of that era don't stay enemies forever. Instead of forcing constancy, Legends allows conflicts in these eras to be "solved" and to permanently change characters.