CT Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, pretty laid back after seeing the droids, again.

So C-3P0 and R2-D2 are casually purchased by Uncle Owen and he doesn't even recognize either of them? It's crazy, C-3P0 worked on the Lars Homestead for many seasons and he is not recognized? Even after being paired up again with R2-D2? What kind of Space Spice have these two love birds been smoking?

 

I was going to post a snappy response, but I've got nothing....

 

Please stop reminding me of the countless idiotic little inconsistencies that resulted from the (IMO terrible) decision to include R2 and 3PO in the PT resulted in...

BTW - I think it was more likely Meth.... that fire in ANH that burned them up didn't result from a dropped joint.... but a meth lab accident? Hmmmmmmm

 

For one thing, droids are treated as property, and it's been 20 years. Owen and Beru can hardly be faulted for not recognising them. Also, they only saw R2 once, for a few seconds, and were likely more wrapped up in Shmi's funeral to remember the details of the droid. As for 3PO, well he looked completely different back then, a completely different colour. TC-14 is an example of another protocol droid, who is not the same colour as 3PO, and thus recognised as a different droid, as Owen likely did when a golden protocol droid turned up with the Jawa's. It was highly unlikely that he would think "hmm, I wonder if this gold droid is also that grey droid we owned 20 years ago".

 

What tends to get overlooked with C3PO is not just how he looks, he also talks and has a personality.

If you had a car that could talk and had a distinct voice and personality.
If you had it for five years and then not for 15 and then got it back, there is more than just the car you can recognize.
The voice, the personality, the manners.

Would you be able to recognize a voice over the phone, say from an old friend or family member that you haven't heard from in years?

Most other droids don't talk with human voices, just beeps and the like.

To me, this made the SW galaxy a little too small and C3PO's presence in the PT was mostly fanservice the whole time.
To me, he didn't really do much.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

We don't know if Owen had ever encountered another protocol droid besides 3PO. He might think they all have the same voice. And as TC-14 shows, most do have very similar upper class accents. And droids are looked down on, just appliances.

 

There are more than one of both droids in the GFFA. In fact, you can see a second R2-D2 aboard the Queen's ship in TPM.



Also, he's never identified as Artoo Deeto in front of Owen, in AOTC and ANH. He's only identified as Artoo when he rolls up to inform Anakin and Padme of Obi-wan's message. Likewise, Luke refers to R5-D4 as an R2 unit. As to Threepio, he never identifies himself in ANH to Owen. He only does so to Luke. Not to mention that he has different armor on in AOTC and in ANH. Owen is also rather dismissive of him. It is only when Luke tells Owen and Beru that he believes that the droids belong to an Obi-wan Kenobi, that we see them react. That's when he tells Luke to take them to Anchorhead and have them wiped.

LUKE: "You know, I think that R2 unit we bought might have been stolen."

OWEN: "What makes you think that?"

LUKE: "Well, I stumbled across a recording while I was cleaning him. He says he belongs to someone called Obi-wan Kenobi."

Owen is greatly alarmed at the mention of his name, but manages to control himself.

LUKE: "I thought he might have meant old Ben. Do you know what he's talking about? Well, I wonder if he's related to Ben."

Owen breaks loose with a fit of uncontrolled anger.

OWEN: "That old man's just a crazy old wizard. Tomorrow I want you to take that R2 unit into Anchorhead and have its memory flushed. That'll be the end of it. It belongs to us now."

Except for all the Protocol droids, Battle Droids, Super Battle Droids, FLO and EV-9D9, in the films. They all speak words.

 

To bring in a bit of recent Marvel canon, Luke was tricked by Triple Zero (a protocol droid that has been outfitted with as an assassin) into thinking it was Threepio by a simple paint job so the (likely) fact that some protocol droids out there sound the same is a thing.

Also Owen's entire interaction with Threepio is about four lines when he's trying to figure out of the damn thing will work the moisture vaparators and Artoo he barely glances at him (like he barely glanced at him at Shimi's funeral anyway) because the other one blew up. There's enough wiggle room there that is skates by.

 

Neither R2 or 3PO are unique in look and 3PO is not in voice. There really is no reason to believe that there are not plenty of other "3PO's" that look exactly the same. We see then around.

It certainly does get overlooked. This assumption that each droid is totally unique in every respect doesn't work. There are likely thousands of 3PO models that come off the line with the same voice.

Owen sees him in ANH for a few seconds, buys him, tells him to shut up and never sees him again. The C-3PO name is not mentioned and merely even if he was called 3PO that is simply the line designation.

The point is story-wise there is no reason to believe that Owen would connect the golden droid to the grey one he knew and last saw 22 years previously based on a few seconds of inspection.

Too late as Vader is Luke's father and Leia is his sister. Lucas said in 1977 the droids were in the prequel movies so anyone complaining about fan service really needs to reassess.

 

this has more to do with "personality types" more than anything. Sure more receptive people would have remembered him, but Owen doesn't seem a kind of a people/droid person. He's more of a "lets just get on with the job" type.

And even if he DID recognise him Owen wasn't the sort to want to converse about the good old times or ask him what he'd been up to for the last 20 years.

In all honesty Owen seemed to be a bit of a grouch.

 

some people just don't give droids the time of day. owen is too inattentive to notice.

 

The Protocol Droids are established to be prissy. We see that with TC-14 who has the same mannerisms as Threepio. In fact, let's look further as TC-14.



And compare it to other Protocol droids like E-3PO.



Or U-3PO.



All three look alike. We see a red Protocol droid in TPM.



R-3PO. Later on in TFA, Threepio has a red left arm.



These droids are a dime a dozen.

 

But there's only one Threepio

 

Not to mention there are several red R5 droids identical to the one that blew running around in ANH.

 

There were even two more silver Protocol droids in the PT. Spotted watching the films over the last few days due to the 40th anniversary.



This one in Mos Espa when Qui-gon, Padme, Artoo and Jar Jar enter the spaceport. He even limps as he's walking.



We see one behind Threepio on Coruscant in ROTS.

 

I think the problem of Owen not recognizing C-3PO and R2-D2 is not so much the fact that he doesn't recognizes them, but the fact that they had met before ANH. I felt the large number of connections between characters really shrunk the Star Wars universe. Anakin building C-3PO, the Lars family owning C-3PO and living on the same moisture farm as in ANH, young Boba Fett, young Greedo (even if it's a deleted scene), it was a bit much...

 

I always find that odd considering the OT connections that already existed therefore did the same thing and in a far smaller galaxy than the massive one represented in the PT. Then in the ST we have those connections yet again but now in a once again incredibly smaller universe.

So the real question is why would the one bother anyone if the others don't? In TFA the actual universe is literally so small that Han Solo can run across the Falcon minutes after it's left Jakku's surface.

 

What OT connections? As far as ANH is concerned C-3PO and R2-D2 were just two droids on the Tantive IV, that Obi-Wan denies knowing. Boba Fett is just one of many bounty hunters with a reputation, just like Greedo. They didn't have any connections, that lead back to previous generations owning them, building them, or growing up with them. The only example I can think of is the Leia is Luke's sister reveal, which I felt was pretty terrible. Beautifully rendered backgrounds do not a massive universe make, if main characters and even the side characters in two trilogies decades apart are pretty much all related to each other. If TFA had made Finn Lando's son, Hux Tarkin's nephew, and Uncar Plut Chewies half brother you might have a point.

 

For all we know, Rey is Luke's daughter. We do know that Kylo Ren is related to the Skywalkers. But anyway, the point is that Lucas had intended to have some of these connections for quite a long time. Boba was connected to the Stormtroopers as per his initial backstory, he was wearing the armor of the Shock Troopers who fought during the Clone Wars. Concept photos depicted Fett's suit as being white originally. And Lucas already decided that the Stormtroopers were clones, back in the 70's. So there was already going to be a connection, it just took using Lando's abandoned backstory to make it work.

The droids were something that was important to Lucas since they would serve as narrators to the OT. Witnesses to important events. That's why he didn't want to have Threepio killed in ANH and why he insisted that they be in the other two. It was therefore a foregone conclusion that they'd be in the PT. Especially when the backstory for Threepio put him as being 112 years old, by the time of ANH. And Obi-wan doesn't deny knowing them, just that he denies ever owning a droid.

Your argument only works when you take ANH by itself and are unfamiliar with backstory materials and without knowledge of what will come. The universe only shrank because Lucas was choosing to focus on a generational storyline, which made it easier for him to tell a storyline.

 

Haha. Too much sun; and Tatooine is kind of like the deep south of the galaxy and they're probably too focused on catching the early bird brunch special with some local Jawas. Seriously Owen seems to have a Han Solo type relationships with droids and bought lots of old ones that quickly needed replacing. That's the best I've got.

 

There is a simple answer here - Horrible continuity! Not the first time a connection was forced

 

C-3PO also had a dirty bronze coloration in AOTC, rather than the bright gold he had in ROTS onwards.

 

The desire to shoehorn R2 and 3PO is to the detriment of the PT because it throws up inconsistencies like this. File it on the same pile as Leia remembering her mother and also Obi Wan not recognising R2 (the "I don't remember owning a droid" isn't enough to get by either).

Using the TFA and Han coming across the Falcon is not the same thing, thats a typical blockbuster plot coincidence (some may say lazy piece of writing) just to get people to meet up or to advance the story quickly, you can find them in all kinds of big movies. Having R2 and 3PO in the PT is more than just a plot coinicdence.

 

Obi-wan never said that he didn't recognize Artoo. He does after Luke says that Artoo claims to belong to him. Remember, Luke doesn't know that Obi-wan is Ben's real name. Owen didn't tell him that and neither did Beru, as we see during the dinner scene. Thus the only ones who know that he's there are Ezra Bridger, Chopper, Bail Organa and Artoo. And since this Astromech looks like Artoo and knows Obi-wan's name, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. But as ROTS also showed us, he didn't exactly hold Artoo in high regard with the loose wire jokes that he's made at his expense during the war. Much less trusting him to free them from the ray shields. The most that he's ever talked to him was when he was barking out orders. He didn't talk to him like Anakin, Luke and Threepio did. He was never friendly with him, nor the Astromechs that were aboard his fighters. He's more friendly towards organics as we see him hug Dex and is much more courteous to Padme than he was the droids.

As to Leia, she said that there were images and feelings. Not actual memories. So seeing the past in her sleep, which we know that she can do because her father saw the future in his sleep, is perfectly reasonable.

 

True, but he has the same snooty accent in all of the films. All of the droids have distinct voices.