PT Did Lucas forget that Uncle Owen meets C3PO for the first time in ANH?

By this logic, Owen Lars shouldn't have wanted a protocol droid either. Except, he did have a use for one. Clearly, there is more to these droids than serving drinks and being annoying.

The whole point of both these droids is that they are relatively inconsequential, but we sometimes get to look at events through their eyes, which is a fun narrative. Sometimes, we can have a fun character that, if taken out of the plot, really wouldn't have affected it all that much. See: Han Solo in ROTJ. He could have died in that carbonite shell and it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Except, it would have made things less fun.

 

Perhaps, like C-3PO, Owen also had his memory wiped.

 

The Lars were not natives of Tatooine. So any encounter could have come from off world, before becoming a resident. As to encountering one over a twenty year period, it is entirely possible given the size of Mos Eisley and Mos Espa, that a few could come through there in his lifetime.

All Protocol droids have a distinct and annoying personality. That's a trademark of the programming.

Again, there probably isn't a labor droid in Watto's shop. But a Protocol droid was. We even see the coverings inside the shop in TPM. Anakin pilfered from Watto, not his competitors. When we see Threepio in AOTC, he's working on a sensor, showing that he has other uses besides translating. Then Owen purchases Threepio years later, knowing the issues of a Protocol droid, simply because he could speak Bocce and work with vaporators.

How so? Watto didn't visit the hovels and Anakin had plenty of time to do so, as we saw in TPM. First doing so after the sandstorm and then getting up in the middle of the night. Not unreasonable. Pocket a few things here and there and cook the books.

 

If he hadn't encountered other 3PO droids & he then meets the same one that he lived with for years I'd say the chances of him not recognising him would be approximately 3725-1. Esp when it should be quite important to Owen not to introduce the protocol droid that left with Luke's father all those years ago with Luke himself! Owen had been lying to Luke all these years about his father after all. Sorry but this all just doesn't add up.

& the distinctive personality of this particular one makes him very memorable. To someone who'd spent 5 minutes with him let alone someone who lived with him in a small home for years.
& also someone who has alot to lose by overlooking this fact (exposing his lies about Luke's father).

IMO you guys are reaching to try to adequately explain this. Fact is (IMO) it's an example of flimsy storytelling bordering on being a plothole. A bit like how Leia remembers Padme but Luke doesn't. Even though Luke was born first & had a minute or two more time with their mother. This one's along those lines. Not as bad as the Padme/hangar goof but still highly dubious.

 

Okay, but why? Beyond saying that you think he should, you're not giving any reasons why Owen should be expected to recognize a droid who was a different colour to the one he owned 20 years before. If he thought all protocol droids sounded and behaved the same, and he didn't get C3PO's full number or learn much of anything else about him in the scant few moments he spent with him, why should he be expected to recognize him?

Speaking of odds, I should imagine that Owen would think the odds against Jawas randomly turning up at the Lars homestead - of all the places in the galaxy - with the very same droid the family owned 20 years before would be astronomical. In fact, I would think that if the thought even ocurred to him, he would have dismissed it instantly as too far fetched.

That's true, Owen would not want Luke to have contact with anyone who knew his father. But we've yet to establish any reason why Owen should suspect that this particular protocol droid did.

In your opinion.

 

Your argument isn't impossible. That's why this isn't technically a plothole. However I find it highly dubious & it stretches credibility to breaking point that anyone who lived with 3PO for many years wouldn't instantly recognise him by his voice & personality. To me that's an absurd concept, even if he looked a bit different & all of the other reasons you've thrown up. What's key here is that C-3PO has a personality. A very distinct one. In essence he's an artificial person. Irrelevant that he's a droid or even that Owen considers him just a walking tool. He has distinct mannerisms, habits, demeanor & speech just like any other person. In fact he's more memorable than most people. He only took 5 seconds to annoy old Owen while talking to him & was told to shut up. Just like you'd assume he did dozens if not hundreds of times earlier when they lived together on that very same homestead. So I don't buy for a second that Owen wouldn't recognise him. The answer to this of course is that when Lucas made ANH he didn't think of 3PO having lived with Owen for years at an earlier time. If he had I'm sure he would've played the scene differently. Or perhaps young Lucas may've thought (if someone had mentioned it) that Owen & 3PO having once lived together was a lame idea.

 

I understand what you're saying. To us - to the viewer - C3PO does have a distinct peronality. But it has not been established that the same is true from Owen's point of view. As previously stated, it's quite probable that Owen thought all 3PO droids had the same basic personality traits. So, as far as we know, he had every reason to expect this droid to sound and behave like the one his family used to own. And, like I said before, I can only imagine that since the odds are stacked so highly against it, if Owen ever considered that somehow the same protocol droid had made its way back to the Lars home 20 years later, he would very probably have dismissed it out of hand.

 

Well that's the best that can be done to explain it, I guess. Like I said, this explanation is possible & therefore this isn't a plothole.

 

All these explanations are valid but the question is why are they necessary? GL should've done something else with c3po's story that actually made better sense.

 

They're not necessary. They only become necessary when people start trying to pick holes in the movies.We can all find logical flaws that were created by movies made subsequent to the original Star Wars; it's not exactly difficult. Like pointing out how ridiculous it is that Leia could undergo intense interrogation by Darth Vader without him noting her Jedi potential or getting any inkling that she was his daughter. Something like this reveals the obvious fact that Leia was clearly intended to be Luke's love interest - not his sister or Vader's daughter - and only became his sister later on when Lucas had to find some way to resolve the love triangle. Which worked out OK, providing one decides not to dwell on the time she stuck her tongue down his throat...

I've said it before and I'll say it again: those who criticize the PT for the very same types of inconsistencies for which the OT gets a free pass are hypocrites.

It makes sense as it is. As the one and only creator of Star Wars, what George Lucas should have done is told the story he wanted to tell. Which is precisely what he did.

 

Agreed, & so it follows that those who nitpick TFA for the very same types of inconsistencies for which the PT or OT gets a free pass are hypocrites

 

No argument there.

Of course the problems with TFA - which is a movie I watched 3 times and enjoyed very much - go somewhat beyond nitpicked inconcistencies

 

Whether there are other problems is a matter of opinion. I was purely talking about the nitpicking. R2 getting the map, the Starkiller lasers being seen from other worlds, a few other plot contrivances. As you point out, all of the other films have them too.

 

I never really thought about Owen's failure to recognize 3PO, just because he is a different color and what are the odds that the droid his stepbrother took was going to wind back up on Tatooine sold as salvage?

Personally I feel that Obi-Wan and Vader's non-reactions to the droids were more problematic. If nothing else, Vader knew how resourceful R2 was, and to him, R2 was never a toaster, so I just thought it weird that Vader wouldn't restrain or destroy R2. Instead he just gets ignored.

As for the toaster argument to begin with, I don't by it. My toaster doesn't have a name. Not in the same way that characters refer to their droids. My toaster does not talk back, try to reason with me, take initiative, annoy me, nor have a name.

So, if C3PO did state his name, I'd think Owen would have every reason to recognize him. And the protocol droid that is "rude" on Bespin has a completely different voice, so I don't think it can be argued that 3PO sounds the same as every other protocol droid.

But if 3PO never stated his name, then I think there's enough wiggle room to almake the case that Owen may not recognize him.

 

I'd agree with that. Those little things, like R2 waking up at the end of the movie instead of earlier when BB8 first rolled up to him, don't bother me. That's just movies. It's like complaining about the Death Star, a weapon with the power to destroy planets, waiting to clear the planet of Yavin when it could have just blown it up. Obviously this was done to give the final act greater suspense.

 

When did Vader and R2 interact at all in the OT?

 

Maybe my memory is just getting rusty, but I don't recall Vader coming into contact with the droids in the OT.

 

He could hear 3PO babbling on in the carbon chamber in ESB. You can tell he's thinking "why did I ever build this annoying damned droid!?"

Of course he blew R2's head off in ANH but didn't interact with him.

 

Thanks, I'd forgotten all about the carbon freezing scene. D'oh!

 

Huh. Yeah, I guess I was wrong. I guess I thought he shared a scene with R2 in ESB, but he didn't. My bad.

 

I'm pretty sure that there has never been a time that the PT has gotten a free pass on anything with fans. Exhibit A: this thread.

Let's not say toaster then. Let's say I am in 1992 in California and have a Tamagotchi with a purple case that I got from a friend. Inside is a brown dog with a dark spot over one eye. Even then, it has a weird quirk where when it barks, it also raises its paw and then shorts out for split second. I have this thing for years, and play with it all the time.

In 1996, I go to college and give it to my sister. My sister goes to another college and takes that tamagotchi with her to share with her friends in Nebraska because Tamagotchis are still wildly popular and all the kids continue to have them. Then she goes into the Peace Corps and spends some years there and I don't see her. One day this year, I walk into a Salvation Army and look at some of the kids' toys for my daughter. I see a Tamagotchi with a green case. Inside is a brown dog with a dark spot that, when it barks, raises its paw and shorts out for a second. I look into the gaming history of it, and it looks like for the last 20 years it was hanging out in New York, a place I've never been to.

What are my thoughts? Well, logically it's "damn, these things really are similar in internal design!" rather than "this MUST be the very toy I had as a child despite its completely different case and history!" I mean, thinking the latter would make me sound nuts.

 

Yes, I totally agree! C-3PO, in terms of the 6 movies, is not an overly important character that needs well articulated answers to his story. He's a sub-character, so his story can be left to some logic and a common sense approach to answer some of these "issues" that people want to bring up. C-3PO is not Anakin or Luke in terms of importance to the story, so we aren't going to get those minute details, we actually need to pay attention a little to find those answers and often time it's found in throw away dialogue.

Usually (which means not always) when these types of conversations come up it reeks of an already established bias against the movie, and the people asking the questions or have issue with something that can be easily answered, refuse to look deeper into the movie because they've already established to themselves that they don't like it so the answers will never be there for them. Now I'm not saying that's indicative of anyone specifically in this thread because I don't know anyone personally to pin that on them, I am talking in broad generalizations of what my experience with these matters tells me. Only the individual knows if they are a part of my broad generalizations or not.

To Anakin, a 9/10 year old child he is building a droid to help his mother. He is a slave with limited resources, so he is using what is at his disposal. He obviously isn't in a position to go shopping at Droid-Mart and pick out the exact model that would be practical for what he intends the droid to do. Obviously he is rummaging Watto's junkyard for pieces, and his options are limited. Obviously, as we see in the movies, protocol models are used for mundane everyday labor. As servers, as field hands (moisture farming), the models aren't simply delegated to sitting in meetings between delegates or heads of state doing translations or being used at important functions. The citizens of the GFFA use droids for what they need them for, which isn't always their intended purpose.

What use does Shmi have for a droid that speaks 6 million languages? Who said that C-3PO can speak that many languages at the time of his creation? Why would anyone think it's feasible to assume that just because he says it in ANH, that it means he was created that way? Especially when we see C-3PO start off as a junk droid owned by a slave for the purpose of everyday chores, only to change hands numerous times and end up as a droid to a senator than a princess. Isn't it more feasible to assume that C-3PO was never created with that intention, but, the translation programming came after he switched hands from the Lars family to the Senator from Naboo?

Once again there is a detail in the movies that gives us a hint that could lead to an answer if people actually wanted to have it answered.

In ANH, Owen asks C-3PO if he's programmed for etiquette and protocol, the key word there is programmed. So obviously protocol droids programming can be changed for other purposes. If a protocol droids only use was for protocol and etiquette than Owens question to C-3PO was redundant. Owen asks the question because he's making an assumption but his question is still open ended and Owen waits for the answer before dismissing C-3PO as being useless. However we then find out that C-3PO has other programming, binary locators, very similar to what Owen needs him for, thus Owen buys him.

So this train of thought that somehow Lucas's introduction of C-3PO was done wrong because it doesn't make sense as to why Anakin would create C-3PO, for the reasons given, just isn't supported in the movies. There is nothing stating that C-3PO's programming at the time of TPM and AOTC included translation, we see that the citizens of the galaxy use protocol droids for manual labor and what would be considered household chores, and we see, from dialogue, that just because they are protocol droids, there's a possibility that their programming may not even include protocol and etiquette and if it does, there are other things that a protocol droid can do that are valuable even on a backwater planet like Tatooine to a moisture farmer like Owen Lars.

Now my last point and example about how droids are used in the GFFA. Look at R2-D2 in ROTJ! I have never, ever in my 35+ years as a Star Wars fan, heard someone say that Lucas ruined anything or was lazy in how he got R2 aboard Jabba's sail barge! Clearly Jabba had no use for the intended purpose of an astromech droid, but, that didn't stop him from repurposing R2 into manual labor as a server droid.



Clearly once again, the citizens of GFFA use droids past their intended use and programming, and the fandom has accepted that for years prior to the PT,as there hasn't been an outpouring of criticism for what Lucas did to R2! So I really don't get the whole Lucas was wrong thing when it comes to C-3PO being created to help Shmi. This is why these issues stink of bias against the PT, because, as I said, the issue of droids being re-purposed beyond their intended programming was established in the OT, yet, it's wrong in the PT?

Lucas can't even be accused of retconning anything because it's the OT that establishes that protocol droids can be used for manual labor (ANH) as well as chores outside being a protocol droid (laundry-ESB) as well as droids in general being used outside of their intended use (ROTJ).

So even if someone was of the unwavering belief that Anakin installed 3PO with millions of languages, that doesn't automatically reject 3PO as being useful in helping Shmi in everyday life! When combined with the fact that Anakin was scrounging for parts and was limited to what he could use, that droids are constantly used outside their intended purpose as setup by the OT, than any issue with 3PO's backstory is strictly a subjective opinion and not based on anything that is unbelievable within the story itself.

 

You gotta remember most people in the Star Wars universe don't think of droids like people, they think of them as piece of equipment really. Like would you remember a old toaster one of your friends had 20 years ago? Especially if your friend gave it to somebody else and they refinished it to look even better than it did back then?

Yeah in the SW universe droids are the equivalent to toaster as far a social status goes. Only a few people treat them like living beings (Luke, Rey, Poe).

 

I'm able to accept the hand-waving explanations, but the truth is that Lucas isn't really all that concerned about continuity. He changes stuff when he wants to for story purposes. I find it annoying, but not annoying enough to really let it bother me.

 

Terrible analogy. Toasters don't talk & don't have personalities. Status has nothing to do with how memorable something is.