(electronic music)
- [Voiceover] This video is sponsored by Crunchyroll,
the streaming service for the largest line-up
of classic and current anime.
In Star Wars: The Force Awakens,
we're introduced to some new characters,
and we get to see the return of some old ones.
The gap between the movies has left us
with a lot of questions.
Most importantly,
what happened to C-3PO's arm?
Why is it red?
I need an answer.
(rock music)
- [Scott] In A New Hope,
C-3PO debuted with a mostly golden body,
and one oddly silver leg.
About which the movie-going audience
was given absolutely no explanation.
And, heck, many people probably never even noticed.
Anthony Daniels, the actor who portrayed the golden robot,
explained that the silver shin would act like a mirror,
and reflect the gold off of the other leg,
and the sand in the desert,
making it blend in, rather than stand out
as a way to give the character, some, well, character.
- [Scott] So, in Episode VII, director J.J. Abrams,
decided to take things a little bit furthur,
and make it much more noticeable,
by giving Threepio a red arm that is impossible to miss.
When Threepio first shows up in The Force Awakens,
he makes a comment about his new red arm.
- [Threepio] You probably don't recognise me
because of the red arm.
- [Scott] But, similar to the silver leg,
we never got an explanation behind it in the movie.
A cynical person might say that the only reason
he has a red arm is so that they can make
some new C-3PO merchandise,
and get some of that sweet, sweet toy money.
But, there is an in-continuity reason, as well.
We received a vague clue about this red arm,
in The Force Awakens visual dictionary,
explaining that it's a memento of another droid's sacrifice,
but, that's it.
Thankfully, after months of waiting and questioning,
and many sleepless nights staying up pondering the history,
and significance of the crimson limb,
we finally have the full story in the form,
of a canon Star Wars comic book, entitled:
Star Wars Special: C-3PO: The Phantom Limb:
The Electric Boogaloo.
Also, spoilers, spoilers for all of the things,
here's a bumper.
(horn sounds)
Admiral Akbar is captured by the First Order,
it won't be long before he is interrogated,
and subsequently, executed.
- [Scott] Luckily, the Resistance managed to capture
a First Order droid named Omri,
who knows the coordinates to where Akbar is being held.
Unluckily, their ship crashes, killing all of the humans,
and only leaving a rag-tag team of droids,
including two security droids,
the L-44 and PZ-99,
a construction droid, C-O34,
a medical droid, 2-MED-2,
and two protocol droids,
Omri, the First Order prisoner,
and, the champ himself, C-3PO.
In order to get off the planet safely,
and deliver Omri to the Resistance,
so that they may get Akbar's location,
- [Scott] the droids must traverse the terrain,
in search of a crashed First Order ship,
which has the homing beacon they can use to signal for help.
But, the planet they land on is anything but forgiving.
Indigenous monstrous creatures start picking the team apart,
one by one, PZ-99 sacrifices himself,
fighting off a swarm of Spy Spiders,
so the rest of the team can escape.
Later, the team must cross a tar-filled swamp,
so C-O34, the construction droid,
transforms into a raft,
and the team rides across.
Suddenly, a devastating attack ensues,
by some tentacled creatures which kill 2-MED-2,
sink C-O34, and violently rips Threepio's left arm
clean off.
Immediately afterwards,
a group of giant insectoid abominations,
attack and carry off VL-44, the last security droid.
Where there were once six droids,
now there remains only two protocol droids,
each on opposing sides of the war.
But, they must work together if they hope
to leave this wretched planet.
- [Scott] Omri makes the observation that he and Threepio
are the oldest of their group of droids,
they each have a past.
Droids get programmed and reprogrammed,
their memories wiped.
Perhaps, the two of them have been on the same side before,
they just don't remember.
The two remaining droids arrive
at the crashed First Order ship.
They're almost home free, all they need to do is
activate its homing beacon and summon help
from the Resistance.
However, just when you think that this hellish planet,
has thrown everything it has at the marooned droids,
it starts to rain acid.
If Threepio and Omri don't find shelter soon, they will die.
And even if they survive,
the acid rain might destroy the beacon,
trapping them on this world, forever.
Then, the unthinkable.
Omri transfers the coordinates of Admiral Akbar to C-3PO.
He's choosing friendship instead of choosing sides.
Omri goes out, into the acid rain, towards the downed ship,
to activate its beacon, sacrificing himself
to save Threepio, his enemy, a droid he's despised
since the beginning,
even though hate isn't in his programming.
- [Scott] The acid rain eats away at Omri,
revealing a red primer,
a glimpse of a past life.
He tries to make it back to safety,
but Omri collapses at C-3PO's feet,
just as Poe Dameron and BB-8 arrive on the scene.
All that Omri left behind was his red left arm,
which Threepio uses to replace the one he lost.
Even though it offends his aesthetic sensibilities,
he keeps it, as a way of remembering the fallen droids,
who sacrificed themselves so C-3PO could survive,
and deliver the location of Admiral Akbar,
for the resistance
Until it goes back to gold at the end of the movie.
- Simply put, I loved this book.
It humanises droids, and put Threepio
at the centre of a story,
where he's not simply used for comic relief
and slapstick humour.
There are a lot of challenging themes
presented in this book.
One of the most prominent
is the idea of the persistence of identity,
which is represented in a few ways in this story.
First and most obviously,
would be the reason for the story itself.
C-3PO's red arm.
It didn't belong to him but now it is him.
He's not physically the same Threepio,
from the beginning of the story,
but he's still Threepio.
Isn't he?
Same with us.
Parts of our bodies are always dying
and being replaced with new parts,
but we still maintain our identity.
LIke the Ship of Theseus,
a famous thought experiment used
to demonstrate this exact point.
But, to keep it Star Wars-y,
let's use the Millennium Falcon.
As Han Solo traverses the galaxy far far away,
on his iconic ship as some sort of star...trek, if you will,
parts of the Falcon get worn, or damaged,
or broken off completely.
Naturally, Han, being a responsible ship owner,
keeps replacing those parts over time,
Eventually, Han replaces every single part
of the Millennium Falcon, with new parts,
so, is it still a Millennium Falcon?
It feels like it is, right?
Yet, nothing about it is identical to the original,
other than it's name and the fact that it belongs to Han.
But, hey, even that could change.
Furthermore, imagine that you collected
all of the broken down and damaged parts
from the original Falcon,
and reassembled them back into the ship they once were.
Which ship would be the real Millennium Falcon?
Why?
We can carry this over to C-3PO as well.
In the comic, we see him replacing his arm
with Omri's arm,
even though he's physically different now,
he's still Threepio.
But imagine if Omri wasn't disintegrated,
and the two droids just kept swapping parts.
To help visualise this,
let's say that Droid One is C-3PO,
and Droid Two is Omri,
represented here by a red-tinted Threepio.
If they swap an arm here, a leg there, a torso perhaps,
and so on until every part of them is swapped,
is Droid One still C-3PO?
Or did the identity of C-3PO switch to Droid Two?
If so, at what point?
Was it when Droid Two became comprised of over 50%
of Droid One's components?
Or, maybe, it's when we swapped over the head, right?
Because the head is
where Threepio's personality and memories are.
Remember in Episode II, when C-3PO, no no no,
please, don't leave, I know I don't wanna talk
about this movie either,
but just, hear me out.
Near the end of Attack of the Clones,
there's a mix-up at a droid foundry.
- [Scott] C-3PO gets his head attached to the body
of a battle droid, and vice versa.
The two droids are sent out to kill some Jedi dogs,
- [Threepio] Die, Jedi dogs!
- [Scott] Which droid would you identify as C-3PO?
Surely this one's comprised of more Threepio parts,
but this one has his head,
for all the good that does,
both are still firing at the jedi dogs.
- [Threepio] Die, Jedi dogs!
- Memory seems to be the criterion for personal identity,
rather than physical sameness.
For example, I could be and pretty much am,
a completely different person now,
than I was when I was a kid.
I'm physically different, on almost every single level,
I have different believes, and thoughts, and values,
and ambitions, but my memory,
and therefore, my identity, persists.
Even if the memories of my childhood are faded with time,
and, more likely, disinterest,
I maintain my identity.
How, you may ask?
Even if I don't have a memory like a computer,
able to store and recall every single personal
experience in full detail,
I at least have a chain of memories,
going back to my previous selves.
I don't have to remember being a child,
as long as I remember being somewhat younger,
like, say, the person I was before I started
this YouTube channel.
And that younger me, remembers being even younger,
and so on until we create a chain of memories,
that links us all as the same person.
We are all Scott.
Except you, ugh.
And this subject of memory as the criterion for identity,
is brought up a lot in this Star Wars comic.
Especially through the character of Omri.
Here we have a droid who reflects
on what it means to have an identity.
A droid's memories and programming
are subject to its makers.
Omri is old, like Threepio.
Yet, he remembers nothing.
Who is he?
What has he done in the past that he can no longer remember?
Were they grand events or nothing to speak of?
How important has he been?
If we're stil going by the chain of memories idea,
as a way for our identity to persist,
then Omri represents someone whose chain is broken.
He's old, he's lived through many adventures
but he can't remember any of them.
"Red primer...I never knew. When was it applied?"
"How long ago?"
Threepio isn't much better off.
You recall that Threepio's memory was also wiped
at the end of the prequels.
Even still, he hasn't forgotten everything.
Threepio remembers fragments of past events,
"For just a moment, places, rocks,
a factory of droids,
an arena in the middle of a battle,
my body not my own,
a green world with hills,
underwater cities, a single city spread
as far as my optical sensors could see,
a temple on fire, smoky mountains
of magma and fire, suffering."
These are all direct references
to the events of the prequel trilogy,
Threepio might have some recollection
of the events he's been through,
but for all intents and purposes,
his mind, or, droid-equivalent of a mind,
was rebooted.
Which raises a big question:
Is the C-3PO in the original trilogy,
the same C-3PO from the prequels?
Of course, he is!
Isn't he?
- [Scott] Well, let's look at it another way.
Imagine if we didn't erase his memories forever,
but copied them and stored them on a computer somewhere,
Then we reboot his physical body and mind,
like they did at the end of Episode III.
It seems like the rebooted droid
would have a different identity than C-3PO right?
Same name and body, sure,
but the Threepio with the memories
of all the prequel adventures,
is actually stored on a computer hard-drive.
Or, whatever they use in Star Wars.
And this new rebooted one is someone else,
someone new with no recollection
of C-3PO's journeys up to this point.
For all they know, it's their first day on the job.
But unfortunately, the hard-drive on which we save
the original C-3PO's mind gets destroyed,
and I forgot to back it up to the Cloud.
So now the outcome is exactly the same
as if we just rebooted him.
C-3PO's memories are wiped,
the original effectively dies,
and a new one with a new identity
takes his place for all of the adventures
from the original trilogy,
to the mission where he receives his red arm,
to The Force Awakens and beyond.
The prequel Threepio and the current Threepio,
are completely different characters,
with completely different identities.
Of course there are counter-examples to this
involving malfunctioning transporters,
but that revolves around another Star franchise...?
- [booming voice] Die, stupid bitch!
- What do you think?
Do you like how C-3PO's red arm was explained?
And is the Threepio from The Force Awakens
still the same Threepio from the prequels,
even though his mind was erased
and parts of him replaced?
Did I almost break out into a rap right now?
Let me know what you think in the comments.
And if you wanna hear me talk about these ideas
with other people, we recorded an episode
of the Nerd Sync podcast a while ago,
but related to Cyborg instead of C-3PO,
links will be in the description.
And, hey, this video was sponsored by Crunchyroll,
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because we both know that
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- [Anakin] She went into the club, master.
- Patience.
- [Scott] Go to Crunchyroll.com/NerdSync
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I even watched a ton of anime in my times
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Rwby and Erased, and I sat down and watched both of them,
and they're great.
And, they're both on Crunchyroll,
along with other popular anime like Sword Art Online,
Sailor Moon Crystal, and Cardcaptor Sakura.
I remember that last one was a show when I was a kid
I don't remember too much about it, but it's there,
I'm probably gonna watch it.
Once again, that's Crunchyroll.com/NerdSync
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And tell me more shows that I need to watch.
And if you want more Star Wars videos,
check out this one on how Star Wars
actually saved Marvel Comics from bankruptcy.
A lot of fun history behind it,
and a special cameo by...
a goat?
Click right here to find out what that's all about,
and if you want some more comic book philosophy,
we've got a whole playlist that you can binge-watch,
about Batman v. Superman,
whether or not The Avengers are actually real, really real,
and more,
Lots of interesting mind-bending stuff.
You can click there, or there'll be links
in the description.
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My name is Scott, reminding you to read between the panels.
Grow smarter through comics.
See ya.