During the part where they were both in the droid factory on Geonosis, R2 deliberately pushes 3PO off the edge of that ledge, not knowing that 3PO was going to be caught by that large droid. I've always wondered, why was R2 that cold-hearted? He clearly did not care if 3PO fell to his death!
I think we need to keep in mind that at this point, they had only just met for the first time in a decade. They haven’t had the time to develop the bond that we know exists in later movies. At this point, R2 was focused on the mission and 3-PO was just...standing there. He probably wasn’t trying to kill him, but he definitely put the mission first over this bumbling droid the humans picked up from a desert planet.
Droids can't be murdered, can they? They're machines. I know that Disney films want to push the idea that droids can "die", but I'm very much unconvinced. If you can just keep the memory drives, you should be able to fix the rest of the stuff or transfer to a brand new body. However, having a droid shut down someplace they can't be fixed does seem pretty.,,, terminal.
I think that there are a couple of factors to consider in determining whether or not Artoo tried to murder Threepio. One angle to take is the legalistic angle. Murder can have varying definitions from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in essence the legal concept of murder generally boils down to the unlawful and premeditated killing of someone. So, that definition in turn raises the question of if Threepio counts as a sentient enough being to possibly be considered a victim of murder if he had "died." Somebody could throw a microwave or a laptop on the floor, for example, but however deliberately the person did so, legally it would be inaccurate to argue the person murdered the laptop or the microwave. Droids are more sentient than microwaves and laptops in our world, but they don't seem to have the status that humans and other species like Mon Calamari have in the Star Wars universe. They seem to be poised somewhere between the machine and the sentient. There is also the question of whether what Artoo did would be considered unlawful. Droids seem to attack and "kill" other droids in the Star Wars galaxy during war (for instance, Artoo attacks other droids during the space battle of Coruscant) so there may really be no laws regulating how combative droids might become with one another. Or it is possible that it would only be a matter of damage claims for ruined property when the sentient beings who own the droid seek credits for damaged property from the owner of the droid who did the damaging. So, the evidence again is inconclusive about whether Artoo's actions would be deemed unlawful. Then there is the final question of whether Artoo's actions were premeditated. To me, Artoo nudging Threepio off the ledge didn't seem premeditated (as if Artoo had been plotting that action for awhile) so to me on that grounds alone I would say that Artoo didn't attempt to murder Threepio. Without premeditation, there can be no murder or indeed attempted murder. At least from the legalistic angle. So, on legalistic grounds, I'd tend to say that Artoo didn't attempt to murder Threepio. Apart from the legalistic angle, I would also say that I don't really think of Artoo as being cold-hearted there so much as just being somewhat feisty and just nudging Threepio forward because Threepio was in the way and interfering with the rescue mission. I personally thought of it as Artoo nudging the Nervous Nelly also known as Threepio forward, and honestly I got a chuckle out of it the first time I watched it in theaters. It also just seemed like a fun, playful extension of the banter that we see between these two droids throughout the saga. Overall, the relationship between the droids doesn't really suggest that Artoo would murder Threepio, but it does suggest that Artoo would nudge Threepio forward if he thought Threepio was being slow and a Nervous Nelly. So, from a more emotional standpoint, I would say the overall effect of that scene for me especially in the context of the overall depiction of the relationship between Artoo and Threepio in the saga is not that Artoo tried to murder Threepio. The effect for me is a lot more playful and humorous than that. From an artistic angle, I'd also be inclined to consider the director and creator's intent. I don't really have the impression that it was George Lucas's intent to depict Artoo attempting to murder Threepio in that scene. Rather, I believe that his intent was something more humorous and light-hearted, a sort of playful nudge between friends. It's certainly fair to interpret the scene differently as a viewer, but in terms of discussing what I think the creator's intent was I don't believe that the creative intent from George Lucas was to show Artoo trying to murder Threepio. So, considering all the legalistic, emotional, and artistic factors, for me the answer ultimately is no, Artoo didn't try to murder Threepio in the droid factory on Geonosis.
R2 also pushed 3PO off of Jabba's sail barge in ROTJ - at least this time he knew they would both be rescued immediately. But it occurs to me that it's kind of an ongoing thing between the two of them.
I think Artoo just figured he'd land somewhere and be fine. If Artoo didn't care about Threepio, he wouldn't have gone out of his way to re-attach his head to his body in the arena, would he?
Not in the sense we humans can understand. Though droids are just machine, human attachments to them like with Rey with BB-8, or Luke/Anakin to Threepio makes the droids’ human’ enough that for all intents and purposes, if they’re destroyed by an enemy, they were murdered. Though I agree that if you are able to keep the memory drives/whatever it is that makes the droid what it is intact, then they’re still alive. It’s implied in Solo when they uploaded Lando’s droid friend into the Falcon. For all intents and purposes, the Falcon and his droid friend are now one and the same. The ship is now the droid’s new body. However, even that could be destroyed. If you’re unable to recover the drives necessary to basically ‘revive’ the droid, then yes the droid is considered basically ‘dead’.
All I'll say is that I don't see droid memory erasure as being an act of "killing." I think C-3PO is the same entity in the prequels as he is in the originals. He has amnesia, but his identity and personality are intact.
I agree on that. We naturally forget lots of stuff, you can't remember everything. You're still the same person if you forget what you got up to get or don't remember what you did last week. Same with robots.
Correct. He’s still the same droid, only he has amnesia due to his memory wipe. The only way to ‘kill’ him would be to destroy the hardware that makes him who he is.
It's the other way around, the hardware merely houses the programming. It's like when you get a new iPhone or an iPad and you start it up and restore all your data from the cloud.
R2 knew exactly what he was doing. He was giving 3PO a much-needed adventure, full of bad jokes and not-getting-shot-somehow.
In context, Artoo had just met 3PO and all he would have gathered about 3PO is that his self-preservation was all that mattered to him, even when his own "Maker" required help. Artoo went all "sink or swim" on him.
