He's one-half of the droid every Stormtrooper is looking for, he's the protocol droid, C-3PO.
Until actor Anthony Daniels brought C-3PO to life, every other sci-fi robot had come across as a hokey attempt to get a cool robot on screen. The comedic role in Star Wars fell to C-3PO and R2-D2.
Just think of Robby the Robot intoning “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger” in Lost in Space and you'll know what we're getting at. That said, Robby totally influenced the C-3PO character.
Daniels' turn as a robot made robots a fun watch. He made “human-cyborg relations” mean something. More often than not the joke was on C-3PO as he missed “the big picture stuff”‘ – does he have Aspergers? Some might say he simply had to suffer the torment of being R2-D2's best buddy.
“Oh, dear!”
But really, Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker were one of the movie industry's best comedy duos. Amusingly, it's been said that Daniels and Baker didn't really get along in real life.
Did you know though that Lucas decided to tell the story of Star Wars through the eyes of these two robots – an idea he took from Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress?
Either way, C-3PO's lines of dialogue from the Star Wars movies served him well and are endlessly quotable.
Here's a taste of his best quotes:
- “I suggest a new strategy, Artoo: let the Wookie win.” – Aboard the Millenium Falcon, R2-D2 is beating an agitated Chewbacca so C-3PO suggests the strategy to placate the hairy goof. Sidenote: that game was never actually finished. In The Force Awakens, Finn accidentally turns off the Dejarik board and the game begins exactly where R2-D2 and Chewbacca left off!
- “Sir, it's very possible this asteroid is not stable.” – From The Empire Strikes Back. Turns out Golden Rod was right and the Falcon had been parked in the throat of a giant space worm.
- “Don't you call me a mindless philosopher you overweight glob of grease!” – From A New Hope in response to a cheeky comment by R2-D2 as they escape the Tantive IV.
- “R2 says the chances of survival are 725… to one” – A New Hope.
- “Wait. Oh my! What have you done? I'm backwards, you filthy furball!” – Chewbacca has put together C-3PO wrong after he was torn apart on the Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back.
- “We're doomed“ – C-3PO cries out as Vader attacks Leia's ship the Tantive IV in A New Hope.
- “R2-D2, where are you?” – Once again our robot has lost his best friend.
- “R2-D2, it is you, it is You!” – Once again our robot has found his best friend.
- “Excuse me sir, but that R2-D2 is in prime condition, a real bargain” – C-3PO plays salesman to encourage Luke Skywalker to purchase them both in A New Hope.
- “If I told you half the things I've heard about this Jabba the Hutt, you'd probably short circuit” – C-3PO to R2-D2 in Return of the Jedi.
- “Die, Jedi dogs! Oh, what did I say?” – C-3PO having an out-of-body experience in Attack of the Clones.
- “R2-D2! You know better than to trust a strange computer!” – How prescient was C-3PO in The Empire Strikes Back?
- “Don’t you call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease!”
- “Goodness! Han Solo! It is I, C-3PO! You probably do not recognize me because of the red arm…” – In The Force Awakens, the Golden Rod demonstrates a severe lack of emotional intelligence as Han and Leia meet each other for the first time in years.
- C-3PO also made a very short cameo appearance in Rogue One. While standing next to R2-D2 on the Yavin base he complained “Scarif? They're going to Scarif? Why does nobody tell me anything?”
- In The Last Jedi, Leia Organa says “Wipe that nervous expression off your face, Threepio,” to which he replies “Oh, well, I will certainly try General… Nervous?”
- “Master Luke!” – C-3PO seeing Luke for the first time in a while.
- “Taking one last look Sir, at my friends” – So says our man with the silver leg to Poe Dameron just before his memory is wiped so he can decode the Sith artifact in The Rise of Skywalker. Sniff.
- “I am C-3PO, human/cyborg relations. And you are?” – Says our boy in The Rise of Skywalker after having his mind wiped so he could decipher the Sith coordinates, which turned out to be Bef Kir, another moon of Endor. He also repeats the line when he meets R2-D2 again.
The key thing to bear in mind is that the success of most of these jokes and quotes is because of the relationship between Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels in bringing their characters to life on the silver screen.
Many times C-3PO is completing the punch line after the set-up has been given by R2-D2 “bleeping away,” thus making them one of the greatest comedy duos to ever grace the silver screen.
This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.
Paul Rose Jr is the Editor in Chief of Wealth of Geeks & manages the Associated Press program for The Insiders network. He has worked as TV News Producer, Forensic Analyst, and Train Conductor, among many other things. He’s the former TV Editor for InfuzeMag and owns more books, DVDs, and comics than most people have seen in their lifetimes. When he’s not writing or editing on Wealth of Geeks, he exercises his creative muscle writing screenplays and acting in film and television in Los Angeles, CA.