Rogue One Did Galen really expect Jyn to get the plans herself?

He named the Death Star plans "Stardust" which is genius and sweet and all but only two people in the galaxy get the reference, Jyn and Galen. Now I've only seen the film once. Galen sent the message to Saw so he must have thought Jyn was still with him or what? I don't think they showed the whole message though, he could have told them the codename I'm sure. Is this a plothole or did I miss something?

 

I wouldn't call it a plothole, nothing is contradicted within the story. It's unexplained, but it's easy enough to find perfectly reasonable explanations. Personally, I assumed he named the file Stardust so that he'd think of his daughter every time he opened the file. Knowing he had a child somewhere out there is probably what kept him going, giving him the courage to play the very dangerous game of sabotaging the Emperor's secret weapon.

 

I imagine that Saw would know that reference as well considering he spent some time with the Erso family. And I think Galen figured that Saw would be part of the group that would go after the plans. That was my take, at least.

 

"Jyn, if you are there, sorry for abandoning you. I love you, but **** happens. Okay, to business. Here is how you blow up the Death Star..."

 

I think he considers the high probability that no one will take his information seriously enough, if he were just to say "To anyone who finds that message, this is how you could destroy the Death Star..."

Does he really have another choice, than to get his daughter involved and ask her to accomplish that feat somehow? She's probably the only one believing him and even from an outsider's point of view, no Imperial is probably that cold-hearted to risk the life of his only daughter just to set up a trap for the Alliance.

It adds a substantial amount of credibility to his claim (and is perhaps the element than convinces Cassian Andor).

For poor Galen the outcome is equally tragic:

Should his daughter deny his request, she would probably be save and live her life, but millions of people will die in the trail of destruction the Death Star will bring.

Should his daughter accept, they will save millions of lives but he would have his daughter's life on his conscience.

Usually, when a character chooses whether "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one or the few" or "the need of the one or the few outweigh the needs of the many" nobody can say which decision is ultimately the right one.

In poor Galen's case it's clear from the start, that either decision is wrong, and I'm rather sure he ultimately wished he had never been born. One could argue that makes him a character even more tragic than Vader, IMHO.

 

Remember, Galen's hologram message cuts out early because of the DS blast on Jedha. He may very well have said, in his message, "the plans are codenamed Stardust." We just didn't get the hear the whole thing.

 

Galen was guarantying on Saw and Jyn being together and both working closely together to destroy the Death Star. He was not expecting his pilot friend to be kidnapped and mistreated by Saw or that his daughter had been taken by the Rebel Alliance. Also the major crisis that was the deteriorating situation on Jedha. Saw did not act by going directly to Scarif and seize the plans.

The Galaxy was in flux at this time so Galen being stuck in his Laboratory on Eadu had no clue to all these recent events. Give the message to the pilot and send him on his merry way deep into the heart of the rebel controlled areas. For Galen it was imperative for Saw along with Jyn to infiltrate Scarif and concentrate on retrieving the plans which would undermine the entire Death Star project causing panic among the Imperial officers. This is what i suspect Galen was intending.

 

Haha, that's true, although I remember in Air Force One one of the senior guys is like, "Do we save 100 people on a plane or 50,000 on the ground?" and he's asking this question all seriously like there's some massive moral dilemma here. I remember looking around the theater, like, this guy is joking right? I mean math wasn't my favorite subject but hmm, 50,000 people or 100, I don't know? Tough to say? Is 50,000 a larger number than 100? Jeez, it's been so long since grade school I forget now!

It would actually be a moral dilemma if you told me that it's 100 brilliant scientists and engineers, great thinkers of our time, versus 50,000 random people on the ground. Then I'd probably save the 100 personally because there's a very good chance that the scientists and engineers will develop breakthrough technologies that would save many, many lives and contribute more to humanity than the 50,000 randoms. But in the movie it wasn't phrased like that, it was like oh jeez 100 useless politicians and secret service agents or 50,000 people? Heck, if it was 100 politicians versus 100 regular people I'd save the 100 regular people!

 

In the novelization Galen starts off by addressing the message to Saw. Then he says he misses Jyn and he addresses her (in the hope that Saw can find her and pass the message on). He says he is equally proud of her whether she is fighting for the Rebellion or living a quiet life with a family. And in the end he returns to addressing Saw: "Saw, the reactor system, that's the key. That's the place I've laid my trap." And: "You'll need the plans... Sabotage from the inside is impossible: Krennic is too paranoid. But I've thought about this, Saw, prepared everything for you I could."

I don't remember if this is at variance with what we saw on screen, but from this I would take it that he doesn't necessarily expect his daughter to be part of the mission to Scarif. He expects Saw to direct the mission and to send his gang, which might conceivably include Jyn if she is still active in the Rebellion and wants to be involved, but needn't necessarily.

 

Not herself exactly but it does essentially require her or at least Saw (plausible he would know the nickname too) be there personally. If neither are themselves on the mission and at the point of extraction rather than something else for the mission it fails.

Not exactly a pothole but it makes it a plan with a very small chance of success, especially since even if you get the plans and interpret them correctly it still takes a one in a million type shot in a well armed trench in a base with fighter squadrons available to defend it when you add to the level of difficulty that two people in the universe spread where ever in a galaxy have any way of knowing that name to correlate it with the plans.

It is pretty desperate if this is the best you can do. I'm thinking "look for stardust" or some kind of clue in the message would have made success seem more plausible or at least less almost absolutely Jyn dependent.

 

Again, the hologram is cut short by the DS blast. He may have very well given the codename in the remainder of the message. So no plothole.

 

I doubt Krennic planned on dying. He may have intended to be right there with the rebels and grab the file personally. I think most people would choose that option rather than dying and passing on his insanely dangerous mission to his only daughter.

 

Yes, I do think that the whole naming the Death Star plans "stardust" thing is a bit of a plot-hole (though it nowhere nears ruins anything for me). However, I must say I love that moment when Jyn is going through all the project names and then she stops, Cassian asks her "what?" and she looks up at him, smiles and says "I found it". Cassian then says "How do you know that?" And Jyn says "I know because it's me." Great moment in the movie there.

 

No. It's just one of those movie things.

I mean if we really started breaking things down too much then the whole basis of the movies will fall apart.

It's like saying why didn't the Erso family have a secret back door to a waiting ship? How did they contact Saw exactly when they needed him to come? How did the Rebel's find Jyn in a few hours when the Empire couldn't for years? The Rogue One plan to get the plans was lousy as there was really no way they could escape without a fleet to back them up. Even if they got the plans how were they going to get away from a locked down base once the explosions happened?

The way I look at it is that these are stories being told by a storyteller to an audience. Hence the "A Long Time Ago..." or in the saga stories the opening crawl.

So if this is a tale told by someone reading from the Journal of the Whills then these histories are also being told as stories and maybe by different people so not everything is going to line up from story to story.

Agreed.

Now if someone wants a more literal in-movie explanation then if someone other than Jyn were to go looking for the plans then they would find another way to find the name or from a production stand point they would simply be labelled "Death Star".

 

The Reference is with me and I am one with the Reference.

 

Bowen wrote

Haha, that's true, although I remember in Air Force One one of the senior guys is like, "Do we save 100 people on a plane or 50,000 on the ground?" and he's asking this question all seriously like there's some massive moral dilemma here. I remember looking around the theater, like, this guy is joking right? I mean math wasn't my favorite subject but hmm, 50,000 people or 100, I don't know? Tough to say? Is 50,000 a larger number than 100? Jeez, it's been so long since grade school I forget now!

I really don't wish anybody to ever face such a moral Dilemma, but IMHO the issue isn't as simple as you are apparently trying to suggest.

And it's one - if not the biggest - issue in The Empire Strikes Back:

YODA

Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could.

But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered.

Here Yoda puts Luke in the very uncomfortable position to make a choice between the "few" (his friends) and the "many" (the galactic population), because Yoda anticipates that Luke will join Vader.

The teacher of Alexander the Great, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, once reflected on the moral issue and felt that you couldn't condemn a man that would make a choice on behalf of his friends or close ones but at the expense of a greater number of people that aforementioned person didn't know and would never meet.

 

Galen's message cut out before it was finished, so there's no plot hole.

 

Galen's message cutting out has nothing to do with what I'm saying. What I'm talking about is this: (1) how could even Jyn herself be so certain that the Death Star plan was the one called "stardust"? There is a big assumption on her part there. Yes, Galen's nickname for her was "stardust" but that doesn't add up to her knowing for sure that would be the name of the Death Star plans; (2) by naming it "stardust" that rounds it down to, at most, two people - Jyn and Saw - who could have possibly pieced that together and captured the correct plans.

But again, it doesn't affect my view of the film in the slightest. I stone-cold love Rogue One.

 

I like the point that the message was not completed, so there could've been more info to identify the file that was lost.

If I recall correctly, Galen admitted that he had no idea if Jyn was still with Saw or not; he included the personal message to her (at the risk of blowing the whole operation) to get one last change to reach out to her. With that in mind, it's probably a good bet that the retrieval plan didn't hinge on Jyn being there to ID the file.

(I actually took Galen calling the file "Stardust" as being separate from the mission; just a personal thing for him.)