Analyzing C-3PO's Character in George Lucas Film Star War

Character Analysis on C-3PO in Star Wars: A New Hope

C-3PO is an interesting character because despite not being the main character or protagonist, him and R2D2 were seemingly the main characters at the beginning of the movie, and we get the chance to understand their characters well before Leia, Luke, Han or any other character. During that time, their actions really get the story moving and help newcomers to the series understand the basics of star wars.

As for archetypes, C-3PO is the intelligent archetype due to his ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills, as well as being a helpful aide in just about every scene he is in. Despite the knowledge he definitely possess, he still has low self-esteem and believes he is dumb, mentioning it throughout the movie. This I found really interesting because he also is a bit of a know-it-all and not afraid to show off his intelligence through lines such as “Well of course I speak Botchi!” and “Don't you call me a mindless philosopher you overweight glob of grease!” showing that he is defensive at the same time.

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C-3PO is incredible as a translator and knows over six million languages across the galaxy, but has ended up with a bit of a worry-prone personality as a result of such knowledge.

The character C-3PO has the role of being the voice of reason in Star Wars. He is often by the side of Luke and R2D2 keeping a level-head in even the most stressful of situations such as escaping the death star in the pod when R2D2 hopped in and he said “What are you talking about? I’m not getting in there!”.

He tries to keep everyone safe and sound although he can be stuck in his ways often such as when he and R2D2 split ways in the desert shortly before being kidnapped and sold on the black market for farmers to buy. In some ways this event actually brought out the dynamic character that C-3PO is with R2D2, quickly going from “don‘t you dare let me catch you following me!” when they went their separate ways to “R2! R2! I am so happy to see you!” when they are both captured. In addition to this he also advocates for R2D2, to keep them together through the line “Excuse me sir, but that R2-D2 is in prime condition, a real bargain" where C-3PO plays the role of a salesman that eggs on Luke to purchase both of them.

He is also a resilient character by the event where C-3PO was discriminated in the cantina scene because he was a droid but just compliantly left so as not to cause trouble because he knew it would be the best decision to help aide in the mission of rescuing princess leia and destroying the empire. With a little bit more research as to why the bartender kicked the droids out I found out that Wuher (the bartender that kicked C-3PO out) “claimed this was mainly due to the fact that they took up space in the cantina and did not require refreshment” but there is a popular theory among the fans, that droid style robots are the only creatures he felt like he could remove due to the fact that they would not be offended. In some way I feel like C-3PO understood and that is why he compliantly left without causing a scene.

I feel like it is unfair that the character C-3PO is such an underrated character in the Star Wars world because even when I was looking up some more information to aid in my own personal notes about the character when I came across an article by the smithsonian national museum website that was “Why Do We Love R2-D2 and Not C-3PO?” and while they mentioned R2D2 plenty, they didn’t mention C-3PO one time outside of the title itself. Honestly without C-3PO Luke would not have been able to communicate with 90% of the people he interacted with and the empire would have never been defeated. C-3PO is a very valuable character that more people should appreciate.