Lit Can C-3P0 be salvaged?

I think many are way too picky about how annoying C3PO is. He's not that bad. He doesn't need 'salvaging' for me.

 

C3 P0 has always been "useless" plot wise to me, even in the OT, but he's still one of my favourite characters in Star Wars.

 

Ever since Vector Prime I was hoping this would eventually get addressed. How exactly did the Yuuzhan Vong language happen to be close to that language from a minor Outer Rim tribe? I was confident that this was going to come up again at some point in the NJO, like they'd go to that world and find out the tribe had been a lost Vong colony or crashed scout crew or something, and the heroes would learn some big secret about the Vong from it.

Instead, never even alluded to again outside of the paragraph it's first mentioned.

 

He goes from being "the kind of annoying yet useful" guy on the OT team, to pure comic relief. The bad kind of comic relief. Especially in Rebels where he actively calls the EMPIRE down on the crew of the ghost. Can you imagine the C-3PO that you see in ANH doing that?!

 

And Peter Cushing has a knighthood.

I think it's fair enough to distinguish the characterisation from the OT and the PT. Yes, maybe it's the programming but it's hardly by choice. Those faint traces of guile would have kinda made sense coming from Anakin programming him.

I don't think it's any great revelation that Lucas genuinely forgot how the comic relief worked in the OT, insofar as it came chiefly from the humans and how they relate to 3PO (and each other). In the PT there's this need for a designated, unorganic "clown" character that 3PO becomes after Jar Jar was phased out due to overwhelming negativity.

Hopefully Daniels got more input, maybe he has a greater understanding. I mean, I know I mentioned it before but one of the fleeting moments I really love in Empire is Leia's terse "shut up!" when they're fleeing from the Avenger... it's that brilliant comic concept of the only sane one there or, the one who's right getting drowned out because people just don't want to know about the reality of their situation. That's what made the character endearing, and he was a sneaky exposition merchant as well.

In the PT he's just there. There's no tonal or plot input for the character, no need to exist. Same goes for Artoo, actually.

 

To each there own. I don't think 3PO is useless or dumbed down or whatever.

 

As long as there's no "It's really sad that people do think this",

then people don't object to differences of opinion that avoid subtly putting down the other opinions.