Why does luke call the droids 'robots'?

In ANH, Luke says "If they traced the robots here, they may have learned who they sold them to. And that would lead them...home!"

This is the ONLY time that droids are referred to as robots. Was this deliberate, or was it something that just slipped through the net?

In the 1st draft of the script, "robots" is used throughout in the scene descriptions, but only the word "androids" is ever spoken

In the 2nd draft, "robot" is never spoken, but "android" has been placed by "droid" in the dialogue

In the 3rd draft, exactly the same. No "robots" in the dialogue.

So, why just the single utterance of "robots" in ANH?

 

It may well be just a holdover from earlier versions - Lucas was going to use the common term 'robot' but then replaced it in favour of 'droid' which he liked better. Perhaps in the end he did want both terms to be used (to reinforce the idea that a robot and a droid were the same thing) but didn't want to switch between them all the time and so only a single reference survived.


starwars.com's Q&A section used to have an answer that discussed this issue as well:

There's nothing wrong with the word "robot." It's a primitive, more provincial synonym to "droid," in the same way "spaceship" is to "starship," or "laser sword" is to "lightsaber." Before more Star Wars stories were published, proving the preference for the term "droid," the term "robot" could be found more frequently in early Expanded Universe lore. Terms like "robo-hauler," "mouse robot," and "robo-bartender" can be found in these early sources.


So it is Luke who uses the term on Tatooine and perhaps it is in more out of the way places where older (and perhaps more 'Earthly') terms like that persist.

 

Maybe Mark Hamill mispoke the line (or changed it himself) and GL being under such pressure to get the film finished, said screw it, its fine, Im not doing another take ?

 

My suspicion is that it is there just to establish, for those who have yet to figure it out, that the droids are, in fact, robots.

 

It's just another word than means the same thing.

What's the big deal?

 

It's not a MASSIVE deal, but it's certainly odd that it's the ONLY time where the word droids is not used in all six films (with the possible exception of 3PO's "Machines making machines")

 

TBH, I think this is most likely...


But I also like the definition given in the Q+A section,(referenced above) that helps rationalize it, IMO.

 

It's interesting to note I guess, but both words are pretty much interchangeable. It wouldn't be any more odd to have a movie where one guy called a tissue a tissue, and someone else call one a kleenex.

 

Android

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An android is a robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act human.

The term "droid" - invented by George Lucas in Star Wars (1977) but now used widely within science fiction - although originally an abbreviation of "android", has been used (by Lucas and others) to mean any robot, including distinctly non-humaniform machines like R2-D2

End of Wikipedia definition.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My thoughts;

An android is a robot that is made to look and act human.

A robot is a general term to refer to a machine like R2-D2 that is a robot
that doesn't look or act human, although I have seen several short, fat humans who
do resemble R2-D2, but they are human and don't communicate with whistles, beeps, and plaintive "screams" like R2-D2 does.

R2-D2 and C-3PO are both robots.

A truck, a van and an 18-wheeler are all vehicles, but
they are all different kinds with different appearances, sizes and uses.

If you make a movie with a car and a truck, but your script says "If they traced the vehicles here, they may know who sold them to us and that would lead them back........home!" I'm going to come on here and ask why your script didn't specify that one of the vehicles is a truck and the other is a car.

Okay?

 

It might have been a sequence that was shot early-on in the filming, and probably before the term "droid" was coined as a Star Wars term.

 

"droids" was used in all the draft scripts. "robots" was never used.

 

I'm gonna say it was an accident. Maybe it was something that they couldn't fix, they were to busy moving onto other things...?

 

It isin the annotated screenplays as robot, so my guess is that's what Lucas wanted. I mean this is the same guy that had Anakin call a lightsaber a laser sword afterall.

 

Using an interchangable word is no big deal. It's not like they called him a totally different word. I think if this was an accident and Lucas decided he didn't care, it was because he didn't figure anyone would notice, although, how everyone examines the story word by word, detail by detail, it was bound to be discovered eventually.

 

That may be better than my answer. In early 1977, nobody knew what a droid meant.

 

Robots : Droids is the same as Hyperspace : Lightspeed. Two names for the exact same thing.

 

I thought you had to accelerate to lightspeed to then enter hyperspace...

 

That's what I thought too. Hyperspace is a "place", not a speed.

 

Hyperspace clearly involves traveling much faster than the speed of light.

 

Sorry, I guess my level of geekdom isn't as high as the rest of yours.

 

Hyperspace is definitely "faster" than the speed of light. In Hyperspace you travel at the Speed of Plot

 

Just watch out for the holes.

 

Thats why you need that special modified navigation computer.

Luke (Chris Griffin): Is it a fast ship ?

Han Solo (Peter Griffin): Are you kidding ? Its the ship that made the Kessell run in less than 12 parsecs.

Luke (Chris Griffin): Isnt a parsec a unit of distance, not time ?

Han Solo (Peter Griffin): Nah, Nah, Nah..................

 

He was (as I recall) a bit frantic. After all he was checking out the Sandcrawler and perhaps through the force felt his Aunt & Uncle had fallen prey (which they did) so in all the fuss he blurted out Robot.