Star Words: Episode V, Part 47

[matril]

Lots of powerful moments after Luke takes his leap of faith, as it were. Leia's face when she senses Luke's call for help and knows just where to find him. Luke and Vader's connection, across the reaches of space. The almost comical despair when the hyperdrive fails yet again, and Lando echoing Han's "It's not my fault!"

The funniest line, however, comes from the reliably hysterical Threepio. To be fair, he's gone through quite an ordeal. Stumbling across evidence of the impending betrayal and getting blasted apart. Enduring a rather sloppy repair, forced to hang from a net on Chewie's back. Finally getting fixed properly by Artoo, only to be interrupted when the droid ambles off, beeping something about the broken hyperdrive.

"I'm standing here in pieces, and you're having delusions of grandeur!"

I just love Threepio. His frantic reactions are pretty much the same as I would have in these situations, let's be honest. (Same with Jar Jar). I don't usually face adversity with stoicism and fortitude; I whine and shriek and flail. And feel very much put-upon when people aren't sympathetic to my complaints.

About Threepio's half-restored leg, by the way -- I read Anthony Daniel's memoir this year (well, I skipped the bits about the Disney Space Movies) and thoroughly enjoyed his explanations for how they pulled off the portrayal of a dismantled C-3PO. It was a surprisingly low-tech. This bit, for example, involved Daniels simple bending his un-costumed lower leg so the calf was hidden behind the thigh. Simply but effective.

Next time, the final line for Episode V....

Comments

[krpalmer]

I'm a bit inclined to "these all-too-ordinary characters caught in overwhelming situations just might hold up a mirror some fans don't want to look in" thoughts, although my own strange sympathy for fictional characters put upon from within and without the story probably made the years after The Phantom Menace sting that much more. In any case, getting to watch Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress did give me that stronger a sense of where the characters came from.

I do have to admit, however, that Threepio bluffing his way out of the Death Star control room in Episode IV might leave me with "he's stuck with his most capable moment showing up awfully early in 'production order.'" Still, I can at least suppose he did manage to notice the hyperdrive wasn't working before the take-off from Hoth; it was just that he couldn't get Han to listen. To speculate whether this would have made a difference seems a relatively low-level bit of story analysis, but I can at least form a theory or two about how things could have gone better. As for Artoo, he happened to know what had happened to the hyperdrive, but didn't bother to tell anyone until the most dramatic moment, which might allow for a bit of comparison.

I fear I'd just worry Anthony Daniels' memoir would indulge in cheap shots at the prequels, but I am wondering whether he says anything about an impression I've formed from some early "official behind-the-scenes narratives" that seemed to try and make the droids seem as impressive as possible to the point of downplaying there were people inside...

[matril]

Yeah, most of Daniels' complaints were about the original films, when he endured a lot of uncomfortable and even dangerous conditions because no one really knew how to make the suit work safely. And yes, the promotional materials seemed to completely erase his role, as if Threepio was a real, fully-functional robot. That had changed by the time the prequels rolled around.