- They weren’t necessary
You could apply this dumb argument to just about anything. You could even say that TFA wasn’t necessary.
It doesn’t move the overall plot forward thus it’s unessessary in my opinion. The only purpose it serves is to establish that Han really did revert back to his old ways
Well besides the reason you gave yourself, it is also a crucial plot point that allows Han to escape from the two gangs of criminals.
Exactly why I like the scene, despite the Rathars being too obviously CGI, it gives them an excuse to escape the gangs. And all in all the whole scene, Han as a smuggler again, the Rathars running loose, Han having to deal with two criminal gangs at the same time, is a pretty awesome way to re-introduce Han. So the Rathars are played for laught, unlike the Rancor, Space-slug, etc. so what? This is supposed to be a fun scene where we’re show Han again for the first time in 30 years. And doing that with both the gangs and the Rathars was, to me at least, a pretty clever way of doing it since it kind of summarizes Han’s smuggler life into one compact scene that manages to serve a purpose in the actual plot, rather than drag it out from the main story-line. Some things could have been done better, sure, but I wouldn’t call it “the bad scene” from TFA. Also, like I’ve pointed out before, it’s one of the few original scenes that’s not lifted straight from ANH, or ESB.