MovieChat Forums > Star Wars (1977) Discussion > Not remembering having any droids

Not remembering having any droids


Nothing new in this post, but I don't know what's the official answer to this unacceptable hole in the script.
Is there no cure for alzheimer in the future?
Or how are we supposed to make sense of it?
Obi was lying because....????
Something happened that erased his memory of these droids we are not told of?
Should we just scrap it off as bad writing because, after all, it's just for kids?

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he is old I guess and just forgot...these are not the droids you are looking for...

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He said "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid."

We never saw him as the owner of a droid. I don't see any conflict.

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'Obi' was telling the truth because Lucas did not write the other movie scripts that contradict this statement for about 20 years.

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I see. So, with your genius BTTF timeline, once he DID write those script, he became wrong.
So, he is wrong now. I'm writing in 2019, so I'm right, Obi Wan is wrong, I'm asking what's the logic in that. Genius.

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? Lucas thought the movie would flop big time. He was suprised at the audience reaction
f this were a stand alone movie..the statement would not have raised eyebrows.

You shouldn't judge poor writing in a 1977 film based on writing years in the furture...follow?

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Obi-Wan DIDN'T own the droids, they just tagged along.

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Heisenberg, the point that Redsfan was making is that this is a flaw with the prequels when they gave Obi-Wan droids and had him working with R2-D2. You've posted this complaint on Episode IV's board, targeting Obi-Wan's statements which were written without the plots there. It seems like you're blaming Episode IV for Episode I-III's problem.

If you're looking for something in-world, I would say that Obi-Wan has probably owned a myriad of droids over the years, working with dozens, if not hundreds of them. His statement is less, "I never owned a droid," and more "I don't remember owning this specific appliance - there are a lot of them."

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How would I point out the line "I never owned a droid" in a prequel? He makes it in this one, hence it's in this one that it doesn't make sense.
I agree that this movie as a standalone doesn't have this problem, but you noticed how most everything else fits with prequels, sequels and above all previosuly made movies. This one is in our face, so I'm pointing out how in this movie it doesn't fit the narrative of the whole universe.

I like your theory to explain it, and also the one about him never "owning" them is kinda ok, if we have to go with something literal. But the reality is that in this movie, the second he sees these 2 droids, he should have remembered them right away, greeted them warmly like old friends, and understood what was happening.

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Do Jedi Knights own any personal property? Or are they like priests and monks, using property of their church but never actually owning things? Maybe someone else knows, but I'm willing to give that issue a pass as I think it's likely that Jedi don't own property, the Jedi Order does.

As for recognizing R2D2 and 3PO, well, are all droids unique? Or are they mass-produced like cars? Because I suspect the latter. I mean cars vary according to make and brand, and they have visible variation like color or types of rear-view mirrors, but the fact is they're mass-produced and there are thousands of cars in the world that look just mine (I know that because I've tried to get into other people's cars, they looked so similar). So if Obi-Wan saw a blue-and-white R2 unit, would he think "My old pal R2D2!", or would he think "Gosh, that R2 unit looks like the one from back in the day"? Really, this is kind if a non-issue, especially compared to Obi-Wan telling Luke that Darth Vader killed his father.

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Otter I think you're a bit reaching to give this blunder by Lucas a pass.

Ok, they are mass produced. But they also have a personality, so it's not like an old car, more like an old breed dog: they all look very similar, but you will remember your dog no matter how many look like him.
It's like seeing a Westie, your old Westie, who's brought to your attention as "Otter's Westie" because he has a medal with your name on it, and you say "I don't remember ever owning a Westie".
If Obi sees a droid exactly like R2, he should first of all think "I used to hang out with one exactly like him". And then, once the droid actually tells him it's his droid, he definitely should remember him.

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Yeah, I might be reaching a bit, but not too much. Droids are mass-produced, and Obi-Wan would probably have seen a hell of a lot of units who looked like his old acquaintance R2D2 if he hadn't been hanging out in the desert away from civilization for the last 20 years.

But really, in that context, droids just weren't Obi-Wan's primary concern, his full attention was on Luke because here he'd been concerned with the kid for all these years and this was their first proper meeting. So at the moment when R2 was introduced, his mind would have been occupied with wondering how to play this and how much to tell that kid, and whether this all-important heir to Force awesomeness was as dumb as he looked. He just wouldn't have given a lot of his attention to the droids, and even when he did, he would have known that saying "Gosh, that looks like a droid I knew back in the clone wars" wouldn't have been the right direction for the conversation. So, if he wanted to obfuscate by saying he never "owned" such a droid, he had his reasons.

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Allright, this makes sense, I can go with that. Good theory!

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Thank you, I actually like it when I can justify something canonical.

Not that ripping continuity errors to shreds isn't fun in its own right, but the reverse is also true.

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You wouldn't point out the line, just the flaw.

By posting on Ep.IV's board, it seems like you're blaming the problem on IV, wagging a finger at A New Hope because of a character error. If you had posted the exact same sentiment on Episode I, II, or III's message board, it would be perceived as attributing the blame to the culprits: the prequels.

There are a lot of logical errors of the same degree made by the prequels. The other one I see sited most often is Qui-Gon training Obi-Wan when in Empire it's established that Obi-Wan's master was Yoda.

But these are all problems with Lucas' poor recollection of the original films' nuances when he went to write and create the prequels.

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This movie also kind of shows you how the experts really don't know what the audience will latch onto. Nobody inside Hollywood predicted this would be a mega-hit, including Lucas. It was too new and strange, studio exces gave him a long leash because of his success with 'American Graffiti'

It is much different nowadays, movies are EXPECTED to have sequals. There was no expectation of one when Lucas wrote this script.

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I think it's a shame that the executives have discovered the cash power of sequels and "expanded universes". It makes many potentially-interesting properties get kicked into satiating a cookie-cutter style and leaving things open-ended to expand to other films. The MCU, as much fun as it has been, has really crippled a lot of potential cinematic wonders from happening.

The love of money is the root of all evil and bad movies.

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"How would I point out the line "I never owned a droid" in a prequel?"

you would say "see how he's owning those droids? well in the sequel he cant remember owning any droids"

Which brings us neatly to "At what point in the prequels does he own the droids?"
I cant even remember how many of them obi-wan is in!
As others have said - its not that he cant remember talking to droids in the past , he just cant remember owning one thaty looks like the one in front of him.

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I mean, even though they can travel at lightspeed and build sentient robots, as well as keep a guy alive who had his limbs chopped off and left to die in lava, they haven't come up with a way to prevent women dying in childbirth, so it's very likely they haven't yet cured Alzheimers.

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Well, that's possible, but it makes zero sense, like dying in childbirth.
It's as if Shakespeare wrote about our future thinking we'd grow robotic geese to get our metal quills from.

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Does it really matter? Pretty much every movie and tv show in history have these plot holes continuity issues.

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Obi-Wan never owned R2. Padame had him first and later, her adopted father owned him.

As for continuity errors between this movie and the prequels is not the fault of this movie. It would be the fault of the prequels.

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