voiceofreason467

Fun fact: When Alec Guinness first read the script for the original Star Wars and agreed to play Ben Kenobi, the character was a cyborg with a mechanical left arm. At one point in this version of the script, inside his home shortly after meeting Luke, Ben Kenobi slams his mechanical arm down on a table in frustration while trying to explain why he isn't the man he used to be. The arm splits apart, "spewing forth wires and electronic components," a symbol of his impotence. Ben admits he "lost control" and apologizes, and subsequently he is described as resting his head in "his one good arm" while he explains the Force to Luke. By the time they set out for Mos Eisley the next morning (Luke has already agreed to come along), Artoo has repaired Ben's damaged left arm, and Ben "emerges into the sunlight and stretches his new arm," clearly feeling renewed and in much better spirits. After Guinness was cast, this plot point was completely written out of the script, and all the business about a damaged mechanical left arm was, interestingly enough, transferred to Threepio. Now it is Threepio whose left arm is damaged, splitting off at the shoulder to reveal the wiring inside, and now Luke has to reattach and repair Threepio's arm in the subsequent scene in Ben's home. But for whatever reason, Guinness appears to have retained aspects of this earlier characterization of Ben Kenobi. As the scene in his home begins, Luke temporarily pauses his work on Threepio as Ben sits down next to them. At the very moment Luke resumes fiddling with Threepio's left arm, Ben moves to stroke his beard, and in this same motion he seems to go out of his way to hide his own left arm from view as he fondly reminisces to Luke about his father. Ben's left arm remains obscured like this until an idea occurs to him, and he gets up to give Luke his father's lightsaber. Then, on at least two other occasions throughout the film, Ben seems to exhibit a tic of gingerly grabbing his left arm when warning of impending danger or experiencing acute anxiety. This habit of the character is pronounced enough that Ewan McGregor even adopts it as a nervous tic in the prequels, though, interestingly, he swaps the arm. Another interesting data point: Originally, in The Empire Strikes Back, it was specifically Luke's left arm that was to be severed, not his right. The description of Luke's mechanical left arm in a script insert clearly evokes the discarded scene from the first film where Ben's mechanical left arm is split open, and the innards of Luke's mechanical arm are also specifically likened to what we've seen of Threepio: "Luke's lower left arm is exposed, revealing metal struts and electronic circuits, similar to Threepio." Most of the scenes in the first film where Ben exhibits this tic were filmed after George Lucas had decided to kill the character off, so it seems relatively unlikely this had to do with him wanting to seed hints about Ben that he could potentially choose to pay off in later films. A likelier explanation is that this is something Guinness developed as part of his conception of the character based on the original script he received, and he decided to keep it; maybe Ben simply has a bad left arm. However, it is curious that Lucas actively chose to transfer this visual symbol of impotence to Threepio and to keep it as part of basically the same scenes involving Ben. It is even more curious that (to my eyes) Alec Guinness seems to be deliberately making himself resemble an amputee in that first wide shot where Luke is reattaching Threepio's arm, dropping the apparent affectation only when he rises to retrieve Anakin's sword.

Actually, the way Lucas related the backstory in a story conference for Return of the Jedi in 1981, Anakin was basically just a serial killer. He secretly became evil and went around the galaxy for a while waiting for Jedi "to turn their back on him" so he could kill them. Not exactly "villainous mastermind" stuff. I think when it came time to actually make the prequels, this aspect of the backstory became dramatically cumbersome for various reasons. Also, I think Lucas probably realized it didn't make much sense. How many Jedi could Anakin possibly kill this way without them putting two and two together? The only way the Jedi getting taken out en masse like this would make sense is if the betrayal could somehow be committed across the entire galaxy at the exact same time. Otherwise the only Jedi you could really fool like this would have to be literal eight-year-olds. Hey wait a second.

In his late 1977 story conference with Leigh Brackett for The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas was already proposing that C-3PO be "completely blown apart" and that his disassembly be somehow thematically connected with Darth Vader: "We might be able to tie it in with Vader. Have Vader take his heart and smash it or turn it into an alarm clock or something." While the underlying concept being proposed is serious, the part about Vader turning Threepio's heart into an alarm clock is obviously a joke. But it's also an allusion to the scene at the end of the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz, in which the Tin Man receives a heart-shaped clock from the "Wizard." Lucas also compares Threepio to the Tin Man (Tin Woodman) on the 2004 DVD commentary for The Empire Strikes Back. He notes the parallel between Threepio's plight in the film and that of the other characters, especially Darth Vader: "The idea of Threepio being disassembled and then trying to get himself put back together again is a motif that is carried through with Luke and also even with Han. It's a motif of the movies. "In this case it's physical. It's a physical manifestation. But in the rest of it, it's either an emotional manifestation or a personality manifestation of somebody who's sort of ripped themselves apart and is trying to put themselves back together again. "So it's fun when you can take a literal character--in this case, a Tin Woodman or a Humpty Dumpty--and break him all apart, and then have part of the movie be about how he gets put back together again physically, which is what Luke is trying to do, what Han is doing in terms of his morality, but more importantly is what, in the end, Darth Vader is trying to do." What's particularly interesting is the way the imagery of Darth Vader seizing Threepio's mechanical heart and hatefully breaking it apart seems to invert the dramatic sacrifice made by Annikin Starkiller's cyborg father in the 1974 rough draft of Star Wars: ------ KANE "You won’t have to. My power unit has more than half life…. Use it." The withered Jedi opens his tunic revealing a metallic chest covered with electrodes. With his one good arm, he grabs his chest and rips loose a miniature power unit similar to the one on the table. ------ Here Kane Starkiller, who has been deteriorating physically and emotionally as he increasingly finds himself "losing control" to the machine, rips his own mechanical heart out to save one of Leia's two young brothers, affirming his humanity through self-sacrifice. He proves his heart is a human one by literally giving it away so that a little boy may live. So it is interesting to see Lucas, in this early story conference, symbolically connecting Threepio and Darth Vader in this specific way. The obvious implication is that Vader would feel compelled to smash Threepio's heart because of something he sees in it that reminds him of some hateful fact about himself.