3PO's lack of memory

As it has been pointed so many times. Protocol droids and Astromech droids do look a lot a like. We have seen droids that look exactly like 3PO in all the movies. And R2 units are very similar (though I don't recall off hand any one looking exactly as R2D2).

So Owen, or OB1 can't assume that that droid is the very same droid they met 20+ years before. It's like I sell my car (VW bug) to another country and 20+ years I see a VW bug with a different color drive by my street, I probably won't recognize it by just looking at it for two seconds.

That aside, the locked memory works even better than most of you think. In ANH, Leia uses a "security card" or something like that on R2 before she records the message. Could this card that she inserts in R2 be the method to unlock its memory?

It could work!. Also, 3PO says, I don't know which planet we are in (to Luke in ANH), and Luke doesn't say, we're in Tatooine. Of course the fact that 3PO doesn't remember the homestead or the Lars is a long stretch, but maybe he did got his memory locked in EP3.

And yes, OB1 has yet to meet 3PO, unless Anakin has explained to him about how he built a droid when he was a boy.

 

doesn't C3P0 talk about the rebellion to Luke in ANH?
"I'm surprised he is in as good condition as he is, what with all the action we've seen" or something like that."

or the line
"he's always getting into mischeif"
these lines (although probably not accurate in my quoting them) show that C3P0 knows more than he lets on.

 

They saw some pretty good action on the Tantive IV!

Remember that if they do get their memory wiped, it will have happened twenty years ago, at the beginning of the rebellion. C3PO may be referring to events in that time period, not before.

 

"Well, one, his brains have, his (Threepio) memory system has been erased and so has R2's. So, they don't remember anything from the first trilogy. I'm telling you something from Episode III, but I shouldn't be telling you that, but I think most of the fans already know that."
--George Lucas

 

D_Lowe no spoilers.

 

I almost don't consider it a spoiler, especially since he said, "but I think most of the fans already know that." That is why Lucas said that because we have seen the original trilogy and we know that Threepio doesn't remember Tatooine and the Lars homestead. Is it a spoiler if I quote Lucas saying that Anakin becomes Darth Vader? We never saw it, but we know it is going to happen. It's one of those givens.

 

D_Lowe is right though and anyone who got the rerelease of the SE Trilogy with the Ep III footage saw that interview.

As far as the "3PO never having his memory wiped", I'm not sure where it came from originally but I know it did pop up in the CCG on the C-3PO card which can be seen here. But that source does leave the possibility that he doesn't know he has.

However, it does say he's 112 years old which is obviously wrong by PT source. So all that really counts is that 3PO has his memory wiped, and no one seems to remember him or artoo.

 

If I had posted how Threepio had gotten his memory wiped, then that would be a spoiler. It's like I said earlier, if I post a quote from Lucas saying that Anakin becomes Darth Vader, I didn't post a spoiler. But if I posted how it happened, then I posted one.