Episode VII: The Force Awakens - Discussion * SPOILER THREAD * — Page 221

TV’s Frink said:

How do you feel about the coincidences in the OT?

There were indeed coincidences in the OT, especially Star Wars, but they seem to be of another kind. There was a reason for Ben and Luke to be in the same area on a desert planet, since Ben was watching over Luke. There are potentially good reasons why the Droids land near Luke and Ben, since they could have Ben’s coordinates and were piloting the pod in that direction (as the Radio Drama suggests). In Empire, Luke’s sensors die and his ship crash lands on Dagobah within walking distance of Yoda, which seems like a terrible coincidence. However, since it is established that Yoda can manipulate things even as large as X-wings, he could have brought Luke to his location through the Force.

However, there’s no given reason for Rey and Tekka to be in the same area on the desert planet, if Rey is indeed Luke’s daughter or has ties to the Jedi. It’s a coincidence of a different order, and then there’s the compounded problem of her working at the same outpost where the Falcon is stored. The odds of these three things all being found within walking distance of each other in a vast galaxy strains credulity to the breaking point. Then we have Rey just happening upon Luke’s old lightsaber. This shattered my immersion the first time I watched the movie. The very fact that his lightsaber was not lost on Bespin requires a explanation that Maz acknowledges, but we’re so caught up in how odd that is that we may forget that her stumbling upon the saber on one spot on one planet among millions of planets is wildly implausible in the first place. It is as if in Star Wars, Alderaan wasn’t destroyed and Obi-wan took Luke to one of his old haunts on Alderaan, and the bartender said ‘Oh by the way, here’s Anakin’s lightsaber’ and Obi-wan said ‘how did you get that?’ as if he didn’t know that Anakin was on such good terms with the bartender. I would use the cantina from Star Wars as the example, but keep in mind that Maz is on an entirely different planet that as far as we know, only Han visits among our three old heroes.

We have no idea what Tekka (I assume that’s the von Sydow character?) was doing on Jakku, he seems to have a history with both Leia and Luke and if Rey is Luke’s daughter, it wouldn’t seem implausible that he is watching over her. The Falcon ending up in the same spot is indeed a stretch.

Regarding the damn lightsaber, it should be obvious that a tiny lightsaber behaves very differently than a huge human body, so it may have passed the whole tunnel to whereever it leads, instead of being dropped like Luke. It’s then not hard to assume that Maz has a special interest to gather Jedi artifacts, given her age and knowledge about Jedi and the Force. She runs a bar that has dozens, if not hundreds, of visitors daily, so over a course of 30 years, she may have stumbled over a lost lightsaber, aquired it and stored it until the time would be right. When Rey came to her, the time obviously was right, so the saber “called out”, or whatever you want to call it, for Rey. That’s basically the Force at work, creating small coincidneces over a long time to get things ready.

Let me try to articulate why this contrivance bothers me.

It’s certainly possible that a lightsaber would end up in Maz’s castle, but it’s like Qui-gon picking the one place on all of Tattooine that has the part he needs to fix the ship while also being the one place where the ‘chosen one’ is hanging out. Sure, you could easily say that ‘the Force told him where to go’ but it feels too coincidental. The One Ring is able to choose who finds or loses it to some extent, but that’s because it contains much of Sauron’s very SOUL. A lightsaber is merely a weapon, not a horcrux. Could Rey sense it when it was in the basement like Luke sensed the evil emanating from the tree? Sure. Whatever. That’s not at issue.

The issue is the coincidental placement of both Rey and the lightsaber on the same planet as each other IN THE FIRST PLACE. Here are some other places that the lightsaber could have ended up, all of which are equally possible:

-Lost in the depths of Cloud City
-Lost on Bespin
-Scavenged from Bespin and secretly held by a local on the planet’s surface
-Scavenged from Cloud City and held by the Ugnaughts or incinerated by them
-Recovered by the Empire from Cloud City and held on Coruscant
-Recovered by Vader on Cloud City and held by him on his Star Destroyer, which was subsequently destroyed.
-Recovered by any number of scavengers or antiquities merchants and held by them on any number of obscure worlds.

Now include in the probability calculation how many places Han could have taken Rey to get a clean ship:

-One of dozens of inhabited worlds with a spaceport or even containing just a single bar.

So if we accept the given situation where Han was simply taking Rey to any suitable world that had a ‘clean’ ship, the probability is vanishingly small that she would have found this lightsaber. THAT is my problem with it, not the idea that it is tainted with the memories of its owners.

TV’s Frink said:

Oh no the lightsaber thing again I cant ggu btsxvhb. Bjjj: vbb

Zzzzxxxxxzxxzz

Then don’t. I get that you aren’t bothered by all the same things in this film that bother me, and that’s perfectly fine. I just like overthinking things. If you’ve had too much of that on this forum, perhaps consider taking a breather for a while? I dunno.

Oh I’m glad they didn’t explain it for sure. The thing is that when you are forced to explain something like how the heck it got there, something is wrong. And the lightsaber could have been easily integrated into the movie in other ways.

For example, Lor San Tekka could have it, presumably to give to Rey when she is ready, but when Kylo cuts him down at the beginning he could take it. Then when Ren is interrogating Rey in the forest, she gets a force vision from Ren, which alerts her to her latent ability. After she decides to free herself in Starkiller base using the Force, she finds the lightsaber alongside Vader’s burned helmet, and takes it. The forest fight could play out as before, except that she has the saber before being thrown against the tree, at which point Finn picks it up. This would also make more sense of Ren’s proclamation that the saber is his.

NeverarGreat said:

For example, Lor San Tekka could have it, presumably to give to Rey when she is ready

And where would he have gotten it from?

Also Han wasn’t taking Rey to some spaceport, he was taking her to Maz. She is Han’s connection to the Resistance. I don’t remember Han even thinking about any other place to go.

Frank your Majesty said:

NeverarGreat said:

For example, Lor San Tekka could have it, presumably to give to Rey when she is ready

And where would he have gotten it from?

Also Han wasn’t taking Rey to some spaceport, he was taking her to Maz. She is Han’s connection to the Resistance. I don’t remember Han even thinking about any other place to go.

Well where did he get the map fragment? I assume that Luke had given it to him, so it wouldn’t faze me at all if Luke had also given him his old lightsaber. It’s a lot more reasonable than Maz having it.

To your other point: I don’t recall if Maz knew where the Resistance was located. If she knew, why were there agents from both sides among the regulars? It makes me think that Maz had a reputation for being a neutral party. Also, I don’t think Han wanted anything to do with the Resistance before the Hosnian catastrophe. Finn and Rey knew where the Resistance was. They were just there for a ship, they didn’t need Maz’s help.

NeverarGreat said:

Frank your Majesty said:

NeverarGreat said:

For example, Lor San Tekka could have it, presumably to give to Rey when she is ready

And where would he have gotten it from?

Also Han wasn’t taking Rey to some spaceport, he was taking her to Maz. She is Han’s connection to the Resistance. I don’t remember Han even thinking about any other place to go.

Well where did he get the map fragment? I assume that Luke had given it to him, so it wouldn’t faze me at all if Luke had also given him his old lightsaber. It’s a lot more reasonable than Maz having it.

We are still talking about Anakin’s lightsaber here. Luke didn’t have it, as far as we know. Why would he give up his self made lightsaber from Return of the Jedi?

To your other point: I don’t recall if Maz knew where the Resistance was located. If she knew, why were there agents from both sides among the regulars? It makes me think that Maz had a reputation for being a neutral party. Also, I don’t think Han wanted anything to do with the Resistance before the Hosnian catastrophe. Finn and Rey knew where the Resistance was. They were just there for a ship, they didn’t need Maz’s help.

Just because Maz knows where the Resistance is, doesn’t mean she works for them. She obviously knows Leia and due to her knowledge about the Force, she may have met Luke, so that he can learn some Jedi history from her.
Han doesn’t want to face Leia, he wants someone reliable to bring the droid to the Resistance. this means he isn’t looking for some random passage on a spaceship, he’s looking for a trustworthy pilot and he knows that Maz can find him such a pilot. It’s not a coincidence that Han goes to Maz.

Anchorhead said:

NeverarGreat said:
There were indeed coincidences in the OT, especially Star Wars, but they seem to be of another kind. There was a reason for Ben and Luke to be in the same area on a desert planet, since Ben was watching over Luke. There are potentially good reasons why the Droids land near Luke and Ben, since they could have Ben’s coordinates and were piloting the pod in that direction (as the Radio Drama suggests).

The explanations you point weren’t explained until many years Later. In the case of the pod landing near Luke, it was a fix by a writer other than Lucas. In the story presented in 1977, that pod is in an obvious free fall. The NPR drama came out four years later and Ben’s reason for being on the same planet wasn’t explained until decades later. If the first film gets a pass because things are assumed, or left unexplained for decades, or there are “potentially good reasons”, then the new film should be given the same pass.

Your point about the pod is well made. However it brings to mind another possible convenience from TFA that I hadn’t even considered, that of the damaged TIE landing within walking distance of Niima outpost. To me, it is just as unlikely that Poe would have any control over the TIE (since it was in ‘obvious free fall’) as R2 would have over the escape pod. So I’m willing to call it even on that count. Both conveniences stand or fall together.

As to Ben being on the same planet, the reasons for him being there are given both in the Radio Drama, and as subtext within the actual movie. Obi-wan was the teacher to Luke’s father, and was tasked with giving Luke the lightsaber when he came of age. I don’t see how anyone could chalk Ben’s presence up to mere coincidence. Tekka on the other hand has only a tenuous association with Luke due to his possession of the map, and gives no indication that he is aware of Rey’s existence at all. So until there is even an inkling of a reason why they should both be on the same planet together, I feel justified in chalking it up to coincidence.

NeverarGreat said:

Tekka on the other hand has only a tenuous association with Luke due to his possession of the map, and gives no indication that he is aware of Rey’s existence at all.

We see him for about five minutes and there is no reason for him to tell Poe (or Kylo) about Rey, so I really don’t see the problem. And saying that having a crucial part of the map to Luke is “only a tenuous association” is an understatement.

Frank your Majesty said:

It’s not a coincidence that Han goes to Maz.

True enough. I’m not saying that it’s complete coincidence that Han went to Maz. I’m just saying that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Han would go there, since there would theoretically be other trustworthy captains in other ports. But yes, I’ll concede that point.

What is certainly true however is that Han didn’t know that Maz had the lightsaber. He’s as surprised as anyone that she has it, and that’s my point.

I should back up a bit and explain why this whole tenuous connection between Rey and the lightsaber is bothersome. With Obi-wan as the keeper of Luke’s lightsaber, Luke receiving it wasn’t coincidental at all. It presumably would have happened sooner or later, when Obi-wan deemed it necessary.
With Rey, she only comes in contact with the lightsaber because the Resistance droid happened to bump into her house in the desert, which led her taking the Falcon (as her second choice, mind) to escape the First Order, which led her to Han, who led her to Maz, who just so happened to have the lightsaber. That’s five leaps of coincidence, or four if you consider it a foregone conclusion that Han would send Rey to Maz. Although none of these alone are enough to take me out of the movie, when I realized that all of them had to happen in order for Rey to get the lightsaber, the compounded effect of them was enormous.

The takeaway here is that JJ clearly predicted that everyone would argue endlessly about this stuff, which is why he gave everyone 3 or 4 letter names.

Frank your Majesty said:

NeverarGreat said:

Tekka on the other hand has only a tenuous association with Luke due to his possession of the map, and gives no indication that he is aware of Rey’s existence at all.

We see him for about five minutes and there is no reason for him to tell Poe (or Kylo) about Rey, so I really don’t see the problem. And saying that having a crucial part of the map to Luke is “only a tenuous association” is an understatement.

Yeah, it is an understatement. It’s pretty clear that Luke trusted Tekka enough to give him the map.

You don’t see a problem with Tekka’s relationship with Rey? Should we make the assumption that Tekka was sent by Luke to watch over Rey? I would guess that this is JJ’s intent, since it yet again mirrors ANH, but the situation is quite different here. Rey is struggling to survive, eking out a meager existence in near slavery in a literal dump. At least Obi-wan was respecting the wishes of Luke’s uncle when he kept his distance. Here it seems like Tekka is either completely unaware of Rey, in which case this is another coincidental part of the film, or he is being a horribly neglectful guardian.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Rey used the force on JB-007 I think he wanted her for himself when really I was the one who had plans for her. Anyways to make a long story short I don’t expect him to talk I expect him to die.

Well, the dehydrating bread that Rey made was apparently a 100% practical effect.
http://www.mtv.com/news/2728173/star-wars-rey-bread/
http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/01/mtv-news-on-the-creatures-of-rogue-one-the-force-awakens-and-re-hydrating-bread-rations.html

(This picture also makes me wonder what the heck “Veg-meat” is supposed to mean. Is it fake meat like Tofu?)

NeverarGreat said:

when I realized that all of them had to happen in order for Rey to get the lightsaber, the compounded effect of them was enormous.

Well, I guess I just didn’t care that much about the lightsaber. The movie was not about finding it, but since it more or less coincidentally ended in Rey’s hands, it was more like a nice bonus.