>=(

Luke was awesome!

but then the entire plot would be gone....?

You're right. We needed more Darth Maul.

but then the entire plot would be gone....?

Maybe that's the point...

Luke was whinily annoying, and Anakin was ten times worse.

Yes, if the main character was Darth Maul, I would fully approve.

Like father like son?

I've never actually had a problem with those two, maybe because I feel apathy when I watching a movie and don't analyze characters.

Luke Skywalker is the greatest. He starts of as a whiny, frustrated, kid. By RotJ, he's a calm, collected, kickbutt Jedi Knight. It's part of his character arc. He's supposed to be impulsive and slightly annoying to start with. Because otherwise the maturation process wouldn't be as compellingly done.

As Deevs said, it's part of the character.

You look at Luke, and you see at the begining of ANH, a whiny kid growing up on a farm not knowing a whole lot. by the end of the Trilogy he's a Jedi Knight and, in the Expanded Universe, he's the equivalent of Yoda. His journey is supposed to be similar to the viewers, in that they go in knowing very little, and come out knowing a lot.

Anakin is a different story, but there's still that tried and true process of Maturation - only in Anakins case it turns him against the galaxy as a whole. Whereas Luke comes to see the good in the universe around him, Anakin comes to see only the bad.

In the case of Luke, I've watched episode four at least four times, five perhaps two, and six once. He annoyed the karz out of me in four.

In the case of Anakin, he was bearable in episode one, but incredibly annoying in the other two. Regardless of how realistic, he still drove me nuts.