I hate how every movie/tv series discussion eventually devolves into trying to poke holes into the plot like you didn't just watch a fucking movie about a moon sized weapon of mass destruction.
Agreed, and this is why the cantina jerks popping up here didn't bother me at all. Yes, it's a bit silly and clearly there for the fans, but is that a bad thing? The scene was a surprise to me because I really didn't expect it and it was funny.
Terry Pratchett had this universal force called 'Narativium' in his books - basically explaining that all the weird coincidences you get in stories like this just to give people an arc in their lives or to make people survive against incredible odds is just a law of nature. Basically, the laws of storytelling and the whims of the writer were a force similar to gravity. Just a normal part in his (mostly comedic, of course) world.
The same goes for movies like Indiana Jones, Back to the Future or Star Wars for me. It's not meant to be realistic, and these incredible coincidences are part of their style. The fact that it's a ludicrous coincidence that those cantina jerks would pop up there isn't a cheat on the part of the writers and they're not trying to trick anyone - that's the entire joke. It sometimes feels to me that people in general used to get that just fine when movies like Indiana Jones were still coming out, but the internet has made a lot more people more nitpicky, it seems. They're just goofy winks at the audience in a genre that's done it since the beginning.
Of course, you can overdo it. Revealing that Darth Vader made C3P0 or that Yoda and Chewbacca were old buddies is going to far - because then you're just connecting some of the biggest player in the series, and mostly because those scenes weren't clever, sweet or funny at all. It was just too much for those movies. The cantina jerks (I really don't know their names, forgive me) were fine - it's unexpected, funny, it makes you imagine the shitty week they are having and it's over within 10 seconds.
It's also surrounded by a better overall movie, of course. That helps.
But yeah, in the end you can nitpick any big action adventure movie like this to death, especially when it's sci-fantasy. If I'm happy and excited when I walk out of the theatre, that's all that matters. It sometimes feels to me like people watch these movies while mainly thinking about what points they can complain about when they get online afterwards. If you're not willing to suspend your disbelief for a little bit and accept it for what it is, any of these movies fall apart very easily. I dread to think what Gaf would think if Spielberg would have waited to make the first Indiana Jones movie until this year. People would tear it apart for its sillyness.
