|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Who owns R2D2?
2005.06.15 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Analysis | by Andrew Cole
R2D2 (AKA Artoo Deetoo) [official site | source] |
An odd thought has occurred to me since seeing Revenge of the Sith. The threads of the narrative are knitted together fairly neatly after nearly 30 years, but George Lucas leaves a weird and rather gaping hole in the form of one small robot. SPOILER ALERT.
When I first saw episode 4, the very first Star Wars movie, back in 1977, I didn't think much about who owned R2D2. It seemed like he was just one of a dozen robots on board Princess Leia's ship and was dispatched by her to find Obi-Wan Kenobi and deliver her message. His claim that his master was Obi-Wan made sense in that context: he was being given to Obi-Wan by Princess Leia, who naturally had some authority over Captain Antilles, the man C3P0 says is their owner.
But with the prequel series, the ownership of the robots is now a fair point of speculation, and more....
[W]hy a slave boy would waste his time and spare pennies building a 6-million-language protocol droid for his mother is a mystery.... |
When we first see R2D2 (in The Phantom Menace), he is one of several robots aboard Queen Amidala's space cruiser fleeing Naboo for Tatooine. He clearly belongs to Padme.
When we first see C3P0, he is in the final stages of being assembled by Anakin Skywalker. C3P0 clearly belongs to Anakin. ...Altho why a slave boy would waste his time and spare pennies building a 6-million-language protocol droid for his mother is a mystery. Did they host a lot of foreign diplomats? I mean before the queen of Naboo stopped by.
In episodes 2 and 3, the robots trade places. C3P0 starts hanging around Padme (which, really, is only natural; Lucas should have made C3P0 part of her entourage all along), and R2D2 starts hanging out with Anakin in his space-fighter battles (which, likewise, makes much more sense; Anakin could have built R2 to help him pilot his pod in the pod races). Since Padme and Anakin get married, we can assume that the robots are held in common.
But R2 gets to keep his memory for some reason. What implications does that have for the later episodes? |
At the end of episode 3, both Padme and Anakin are dead (or assumed to be). And both robots are given to Captain Antilles by Senator Organa. Organa orders that C3P0's memory be erased, so that takes care of him: Captain Antilles is now his master. But R2 gets to keep his memory for some reason. What implications does that have for the later episodes?
There is probably no way to know if R2 knows that Luke and Leia are the surviving heirs of Anakin and Padme. Let's assume not, since it's a pretty well-kept secret, and it complicates things even further and requires R2 to have his own probate subroutine. If nothing else, R2 knows that Senator Organa is in charge of him and is more or less his master. But he's been given explicitly to Captain Antilles. What's a droid to think? Isn't Antilles his owner?
Leia programs him with her message and the directive to find and serve Obi-Wan Kenobi. |
By episode 4—which takes place about twenty years later—R2 has decided that he belongs to Obi-Wan Kenobi (even tho Obi-Wan says he doesn't remember ever owning a droid). I can't find any connection that makes that make sense except the original one: Leia programs him with her message and the directive to find and serve Obi-Wan Kenobi. That means R2 was serving Antilles, maybe with the reservation that he "really" belonged to Organa.
However, none of this changes the other information R2 has. R2 knows explicitly that Anakin Skywalker created C3P0. He knows that Anakin is related (thru his mother's marriage) to Owen Lars of Tatooine. He may not know that Luke and Leia are the children of Padme and Anakin but he does know that Anakin is Darth Vader, since he accompanied Vader to Mustafar, where he would (nearly) be killed.
[H]e should be telling everyone that his master is Darth Vader. |
So, in episode 4, R2 should be spouting off frequently and repeatedly most of the things that are secret thruout the next couple of movies. Then again, since he knows that Vader is Anakin, then he should be telling everyone that his master is Darth Vader. And that should get his memory wiped PDQ.
Of course, that doesn't change Vader's memory. When he sees Obi-Wan and Luke in the company of a gold protocol doid and a blue R2 unit, surely he must wonder: "Are those my old droids from childhood? Ohmigod, I've got to pet them or something."
"Are those my old droids from childhood? Ohmigod, I've got to pet them or something." |
If you assume that both droids had their memories wiped by Antilles and that Leia re-programmed R2, then you also have take a step back and ask yourself what an incredibly unlikely coincidence it was that Leia would randomly choose a robot previously owned by the dead mother she never knew to send a message to her mother's old friend (while fleeing her father, no less).
This is an even bigger coincidence than, say, flying to an alien planet and immediately encountering the person you're searching for, a feat that occurs in the Star Wars saga about a dozen times.
Antilles suggests that she use R2 and 3P0 as her servants because they once belonged to her mother.... |
My theory is this: altho Antilles is given the order to wipe only C3P0's memory, he actually wipes both. Then, when Leia comes aboard twenty years later, Antilles suggests that she use R2 and 3P0 as her servants because they once belonged to her mother, Queen Amidala, whom Leia knows a little about (and presumably gets her "princess" title from), even tho she doesn't know who her father is. Knowing something of the relationship between Obi-Wan and her (foster) father Senator Bail Organa, Leia decides to send R2 to deliver the message to Obi-Wan, hoping that he will recognize the little robot.
It's not perfect, but it's a theory.
f e e d b a c k
Respond to this page by your e-mail client. Please be sure to mention the title of the article.
