SPOILER The camera pans down from scroll to an infinity of stars, overhead....

Well, either it is falling through space, or someone has carefully placed it right on the edge of the atmosphere.
The burning on re-entry has nothing to do with rockets, it is to do with the friction caused by passing into an atmosphere from somewhere with no atmosphere and therefore no drag.
But, y'know, some people buy the lightsaber thing, some people don't. Just strikes me as far fetched. *shrugs*

 

Well, regardless, I guess my point was you can't ignore people's expectations. Film does have a language of it's own, however ignorant of the facts it may be.
Explosions in vacuums make a sound; nighttime establishing shots have frogs chirping, even on continents where no such sound can be heard; anything filmed on a handheld camera within the movie world has on onscreen display with a little red flashing REC graphic on it; looking through binoculars produces a figure-eight shaped vignette; and things catch fire when they enter the atmosphere...

 

I'd just like to point out (or maybe ask since my memory is foggy) but Luke's green saber kind of IS unaccounted for.

He tossed it aside before the Emperor...then got tortured...then dragged his dad to a Space shuttle...then went to Endor...then credits.

Unless he grabbed it off screen after Vader killed Palpatibe, he never got it back.

Regardless, it makes more sense to be the Anakin saber because of its history (which, oh by the way, you don't KNOW that it ever left Bespin and dropped down into the clouds...just saying.)

 

It's back on his belt on Endor, so I guess he grabbed it.

I guess my point is exactly that, that saber most likely dropped onto Bespin. As in the gas giant planet, not the mining facility floating above it.
Whether Bespin is safe enough for someone to go down and retrieve it (it was in the Marvel comics - there was a whole ecosystem with Ugnaughts and Imperials running about down there), and whether somebody would actually have the inclination to do so is kind of irrelevant to me.

Let me put it this way. Aliens begins with Ripley being discovered in her sleepy pod, in space. This makes sense, because that is where she was logically going to be, given when we last saw her. It's done in a suspenseful way - you don't know what is going on straight away - but the point (for the audience) is - look, she's still in space after the end of the last movie. She hasn't been anywhere or done anything since the last one.
Imagine they made a sequel to - I don't know, off the top of my head - Fargo. And it started with someone finding a suitcase full of money. If it is anywhere other than where we saw it being buried, then that needs explaining as much as anything else and it becomes a redundant idea. If an unaccounted for item is sparking a new story thread, then it has to immediately remind of us its previous circumstances, and therefore its importance to that story.
IMHO, anyway.

And that's how I feel about Luke's saber. Either of Luke's sabers. It might be a cool opening shot if floating around in outer space was where we left it. But we just didn't. So how it got there needs explaining before we can move anywhere with this story. It just seems too messy, for the sake of trying to manufacture some iconic imagery.

 

I put forth a similar idea in my Luke as Zorro theory... the idea being that Boyega is on the attack, and flees... he gets in trouble... Zorro swoops in to cover his escape, but gets in trouble and looses the lightsaber... it gets found by Daisy, and not knowing that Luke is Zorro mistakenly thinks Zorro killed Luke, which is why she is hunting him, and leads to the "I am Luke" revelation moment

Of course, there is much speculation in that...

He has that neat "come to me" pull for the saber thing going on...

Ok, I think it is Luke's saber, but I think he drops it somewhere... himself...

First of all, we don't know there is someone looking for Sith artifacts... but for the sake of argument, let's say there is... Luke wasn't a Sith. Luke's saber would be no more important (in the line of "someone who fought with Vader") than Han's pistol he used to shoot Vader over the dinner table with... unless the galaxy is now aware that Vader is Luke's papa, which isn't going to do Luke any favors

An object may move slowly through space, depending on the force exerted upon it, because there is no atmosphere to slow its speed. This is pure Newtonian physics... once it becomes involved with a gravity source (such as a planet) it will begin an accelerated path to that source. Gravity extends outwardly from the planet at the effective ratio of 1/r² (where r is the distance from the planet) so the effect will dissipate progressively the further away from the planet it is and become stronger the close you got.

Using Earth as an example, the object would increase in speed by 32 feet per second, per second.... meaning every second, its speed will increase by 32 feet per second (or roughly 9.8 meters per second) Air resistance induces a drag force on any body that falls through any atmosphere other than a perfect vacuum, and this drag force increases with velocity until it equals the gravitational force, leaving the object to fall at a constant terminal velocity.

The "burning effect" of an object on entry into a planet's atmosphere is caused by the the object (more or less) pushing on the atmosphere as it moves, causing the gas to compress. As the gas compresses, the temperature increases. The faster the object moves, the more compression takes place, therefore the higher the temperature. As the object begins to "fall" into the planet's atmosphere, its speed will increase due to the gravitation constant, and therefore the pressure, and the heat, will increase.

There simply is no way for an object falling down to a planet which has an atmosphere suitable to sustain life and a gravity field strong enough to keep that life from floating away. Whatever happens, that blade is lost closer to the ground...

One of these actually makes sense... the rest don't... but I agree with you that the lot of them are expected by audiences, and audience expectations are something you really don't want to mess with...

 

It can explain all that in the opening crawl ^^^

 

Guys are we seriously debating whether or not the lightsaber reentry thing would be an awesome start based on the laws of physics?????
You do remember that Star Wars is the beloved spaceopera that gave us ...Sound in Space, eksplotion in space behaving like in an atmosphere, planet destroying spacestations, the ability to stop a laser beam in midair ( lightsabers ) and beyond the speed of light space travel ????
I for one don't expect physics to behave naturally in star wars ( we also have people doing things they would not be able to do in real life in the movies jedi/sith anyone? )
And would enjoy the reentry scene as a starter
It is a fantasy Saturday night adventure show after all ( and thats what I love about it )

and do we actually have a description of what material a light saber is made from and how strong is it????? does it behave like in our reality????

 

I guess I'm debating whether or not it would be awesome at all...

 

I agree that it's a awesome topic but so far I think the discussion seems to assume that it's not awesome because the laws of physics, not whether or not it would be good dramatic storytelling. ( witch I think it could be if done properly )

 

Ok, keeping in mind that this is a space opera, and you can do anything you want... my short answer to this is NO... a longer answer would be NOT JUST NO, BUT HELL NO

I think the real world physics show that no matter where in low orbit you dropped it, it would build up speed exponentially. You can reach terminal velocity within a matter of seconds... it just doesn't work. Nor do I think something as small as a lightsaber would have enough shielding to survive re-entry. Again, they can do anything they want, but...

I think the only way this can be done realistically, or in a way that does not require massive explanations, would be for it to be dropped within the atmosphere... and the only way to explain why it doesn't get smashed to hell and back on impact would be if it were not dropped from very high.

Again, they can do what they like... but believable...

No, I think its pretty well established that it wouldn't be an awesome start... I think what we were debating was how hard would it be for JJ to do it anyway...

There are so many other ways to get the lightsaber into the equation without having it tumbling through space and randomly hitting a planet without burning up on re-entry

^^this^^

Never let it be said that fanboys can't spend countless hours discussing trivial minute details... I should show you the 30 page paper my brother wrote one time on the difference between computed speed and derived speed in warp drive technology for Star Trek... and he speaks fluent Klingon...

I had a date that night, but... I can still dig into the details...

 

Another point:
Luke in a early(and I think deleted) scene of ANH/EP4 SEES the Star Destroyer/Rebel Blockade Runner incident.
Luke watches it with a pair of binoculars. He's wearing a tan sun/bucket/fishing hat too if you ever saw those Tunis set photos.
Luke see the laser blasts & moving ships but not the escape pod with the droids. It's a brief scene.
A valid argument could be made that Luke Skywalker could NOT have seen a event like that from so far away BUT.... It is a sci-fi movie.
I now get the Zorro bit too BUT I like my "Wizard of Oz" idea better. For Luke to be a pariah or MIA for 20/30 years then surface later revealing his fake android/clone was evil & part of a bigger plot that will fold into EP8.

 

I think he could see it because of the force because his friends couldn't see it and made fun of him.

 

I think he could see it because he was using his binocs... and even then he didn't see it clearly...

The original (cut) scene doesn't show it that clearly...

 

His friends make fun of him because they don't believe there been a battle. I think it's Bigs that says " it's not a battle they are just sitting there", so they can see it but don't believe in the battle part of Luke's statement because the battle is over