Maybe this is a good time to bring this up, with the first of the new batch of Star Wars movies sitting on the doorstep. The problem with the last batch was not Jar Jar. Jar Jar was annoying as all get-out, but no more annoying than the fur bears in the previous movies. These are films that chose not to grow up with their audience. I’m all right with that.
The real problem with the last batch (Episodes 1-3) is R2D2.
Watch the films chronologically. You will see a droid with rockets in its feet, that can take down a battalion of battle robots, that was built by Darth Fuckin’ Vader himself, only a few years later get zapped by a little dude with glowing eyes — the galactic equivalent of a dumpster diver — while tottering along over rough terrain at about half a mile an hour.
The same robot.
And apparently Artoo forgot that he knew intimate details of his creator, information that might have, you know, saved everyone a lot of trouble. Like the name of the guy who built him from a Radio Shack kit. Anakin what? Skywalker? You don’t say!
Sorry if that was a spoiler. Vader was Luke’s father. Big shock to everyone — except R2D2, apparently.
This urge to add superpowers to R2D2 in movie sequence, while ignoring the story timeline, is what really gets my goat. As I watched Artoo level up time and again in Eps 1-3, I grew increasingly annoyed. Rocket feet and battalion-blasting just made me throw up my hands and say, “fuck it, this story’s broken.”
Brief timeout for goat runner-up: People with the Force forgetting they have the Force. One example: giant spaceship battle. The Empire comes up with one of its few actually intelligent weapon systems: little robot fuckers that latch on to larger spacecraft and start taking them apart. (By the way, that’s a weapon of the future. As a young adult, imagining integrating myself into the Star Wars universe, that was the stuff I imagined building. Clouds of little things that would weasel into big things and break them.) Anywho, one of the Jedi dudes is flying his spaceship in this big battle and a little robot fucker latches on to his boat. Right outside his cockpit! It’s a tense moment that requires some really sweet flying by another Jedi pal to resolve. (My spelling checker accepts Jedi, by the way.) IF ONLY… If only this Jedi pilot had some way to affect things happening three feet from his head… some sort of, I don’t know, force he could have applied from where he sat.
If only.
OK, Timeout’s over, back to my original beef.
Time, it seems, is not kind to R2D2. In the years between Episode 3 and Episode 4 it lost a lot of functionality, as well as its memory. When (not if) I watch Episode 7, I expect our favorite trash-can-shaped robot will be deep into senility, barely able to move at all, and unable even to remember C3PO’s shiny metal face.
C3PO: What’s that Artoo?
R2D2: Twee chrp mmbl mmbl
C3PO: No, Artoo, I don’t think Lord Vader has been stealing your email. Lord Vader turned nice before he died.
R2D2: Chrp squoo blttt.
C3PO: As you are well aware, Artoo, as a cybernetic being I have no colon.
If the droid is portrayed in any other way, Lucas has some explaining to do.
