As one of the founders of this site, an automotive site, I reserve the right to do a few things that, most likely, my co-founders are not thrilled about me doing. One of these things is writing in exhaustive, painful detail about the fictional robots that are somehow able to feel joy and pain that appear in the Star Wars cinematic universe. I did this a great deal at The Old Site, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop now. I was spurred to do this because the trailer for the new Star Wars series Ahsoka was released today, and as I watched it, something grabbed my attention like a chimp grabbing California rolls at a conveyer belt sushi place: a face. A droid’s face. It was familiar, yet strange. It was a face I knew well, not because it had ever appeared in any Star Wars movie before, but because it was the face of something that had bothered me since I was a child. I’ll explain.
First, why don’t you watch the trailer; the face gets a nice close up:
Do you know the face I’m talking about? It’s this one:
See that? It’s clearly some sort of droid head, and looks a bit like an R2 astromech droid, but if you look at what R2 droids have looked like in Star Wars, you can clearly tell that’s not it, exactly:
Could it be some other type of astromech droid? Let’s look at all of the R-series droids, from R1 to R9:
Hm. No, it’s not any of those! Luckily for you, I know exactly what this droid is supposed to be, and it’s really something of an inside joke, perhaps especially to old-ass people like myself. That head is very clearly based on this:
That’s the Kenner R2-D2 action figure from the original 1977 release of the original Star Wars. I remember going to see the movie as a little kid, and by far my favorite character was R2-D2. He was so resourceful and brave and fun and small, like me! When I’d play Star Wars with my little friends I’d get down on my knees and use my arms like that droid’s legs and bleep and beep and get shit done while all my dorky friends ran around pretending to be boring old Luke or Leia or Han Solo or Chewbacca or Storm Trooper #6 or whomever.
I was, of course, thrilled when the action figures came out, and, unlike my friends who collected all of them, I only had three, all droids: C-3PO, R5-D4, and R2-D2. Of these, they were all impressively accurate with one colossal, glaring exception: R2-D2’s head.
Look at that face up there, and compare it to the image of R2 right on the damn box. It looks nothing like his actual face! Why did anyone think this would be okay? They sort of got the absolute bare essentials right: one big cyclopean eye, one smaller red light, one other round lens (the holographic projector deal) but they got the sizes and shapes and locations and, well, everything wrong.
Why? The sticker used for R2’s body is far more complex in design, and that they got incredibly accurate. What was so hard about that face? Did Lucasfilm hide pictures of R2’s head from Kenner out of spite? A dare? Morbid curiosity? I’ve researched this off and on for years but have never found a plausible explanation.
It took years and years before a properly on-model small R2 figure would be made, and I have no idea why. I mean, look, here’s the R2-D2 that came out with the release of the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi, in 1983:
They had six years to get the face right, and they didn’t. What the hell? Why? This drove me absolutely batshit as a kid.
Now, though, it seems like someone in the droid design department of Lucasfilm is giving a little bit of a shout-out to all of us who balled up our little fists in feckless rage at the wrongness of our favorite droid’s visage, and made that face – which, to be fair, had a certain strange charm of its own – into something “real,” since it’s now a canonical part of the story and so it can actually be, for once, after all these decades, accurate.
After all these years, it’s nice to feel seen, to share this little strange inside joke. Sure, maybe this is the definition of Fan Service or whatever, but I don’t care. I want to be served, sometimes, and this feels good.
At last, a sort of closure.
am I the only one who has a problem with obviously sentient droids being slaves, even in the “good” rebellion/new republic?
their minds are routinely wiped, restraining bolts, being destroyed/broken down for parts willy nilly?
yes, may of them are treated well by their masters, but a slave is a slave.
Yes, you’re the only one
Hot(?) take: Fan service is fine. Fan service is even good. Fan service must happen in the context of a good story aside from the fan service though, which is where it tends to go wrong.
Example: Stan Lee appearing in all of the Marvel movies. Pure fan service, but the movies are still good even if you have no idea who he is. It’s an addition to the experience, not a replacement for telling a good story.
Good one! Unlike revenge, takes are best served hot!
i have had that exact navdroid mounted to my dashboard in my last dozen cars or so. faithful, fun, reliable, subtle and barely noticed. Sometimes i get a rare thumbs up for the little astromech.
Now to just integrate actual nav/ electrican/ door opening capabilities… 10 to the sixth (sith? nah) power $ idea – use the built in R2 projector for HID, bluetooth or hardwire to OBDII for diagnostics (voice commands would be SIIICK), and a button/radio for my garage door opener. I think i could build this. Off to the garage for another 2 years.
I meant HUD, not HID. someone should redesign the qwerty keyboard so U and I aren’t next to each other. Hmmm, now that i read that aloud, it sounds almost sad.
I am sort of over the whole Disney/Star wars thing. I can’t even keep up nor care about any of it. Its super depressing these days that in general, none of the studios seem very interested in making new content. Its all about remaking something out of pre-existing films and content. Just one Marvel/ Star Wars/ and now apparently toy brands ( Barbie) and remake of a remake after another. Depressing because the whole reason star wars was so successful was because Lucas and the rest of the crew dared to go far out on a limb and took some risks to make a very new type of film.
But I guess that is what people want now. The new Pixar Movie didn’t do very well. Its one of the few actual original story movies that came out this summer. And now Disney has gutted that studio and is gonna’ have them make a bunch of new Toy Story and Cars movies.
I understand that with marvel, it’s gotten so convoluted. Star Wars really hasn’t, most of the shows can stand on their own.
It’s a whole galaxy, there’s room for new stories without feeling like they’re just churning out the same stuff to continue existing stories that didn’t need to be continued (which was the sequel movies problem admittedly)
With Ahsoka, they are continuing a story that very much had room to be continued. Plus, adapting a book series that many people wanted adapted to the screen.
Surprise! It’s all Tattooine.
They’ve redeemed that with Andor and the latest Mando season, but I hope they keep spreading out with Ahsoka.
“Oops! All Skywalkers!”
I’m choosing to believe your name is a reference to the obscure character from the Thrawn trilogy. 🙂
I’ve read the books and wouldn’t call Rukh “obscure”.
No spoilers!
My biggest peeve is the need to fill in all of the backstories. Everything has to be delved into instead of letting the viewer use a little imagination.
yes and…
Andor is one of the best things ive ever seen on TV. please give it a shot if you haven’t already!
Mattel has 45 movies based on toys in development. That is an actual number, not a joke.
The Kmart price tag is a nice touch!
I dimly remember a documentary where one of the crew from Star Wars said the random droids and creatures in the movie had no names, they were referred to as “the trash can robot”, “wolf face” or whatever, and only when the toys were being made did Lucas start retconning all these names and series to them.
I am a former plastic bottle top designer, and I have the answer.
Moulding a hollow single piece hemispherical head for the droid forces the tooling axis to be vertical. Any features that won’t de-mould vertically require a tooling slide. Slides cost money, and tooling space, which is more money.
R2’s head has sticky-outy (technical term) features that require tooling slides. Moulding it right would have cost more, and fixing it later when they knew the had a hit, would have mean a whole new expensive tool.
You also can’t fix this with a sticker, because stickers don’t work on double curvature surfaces. Hence the low-res printed blobs on the head.
They could have made the head in two parts that pin together for fractionally more money on tooling, but the assembly and printing operations would cost more.
Anyway, it all comes down to money.
This is the most unexpected intro with the most appropriate content for an article that I’ve seen in a while!
Also, I realized now that almost everything in my field of vision right now relates somehow to what you just explained. You have the ultimate sleeper job!
I actually was expecting some kind of head light arrangement. An alfa maybe?
There must be something out there with at least the 2 triangular ones, adding the left round one might be a challenge.
Not just you, I was expecting a reference to a taillight arrangement of an obscure car from the former Eastern Bloc.
…an advertisement featuring a well-endowed young woman. To prevent “Wait, what?” moments, maybe edit references to the next paragraph or pictures so they don’t appear above ads…?
You do realize a lot of ADVERTISEMENTS are linked directly to your browser history?
I think you just told us all a bit more about yourself than you meant to share.
!!!
I’ll own that, even though the advertisement was for selfie fails.
The current set of adverts is for the 30-DAY MILITARY WORKOUT CHALLENGE. With my body (a selfie fail in its own right) I’ll own that, too!
I’m just playing. My advertisements are..
I’d rather keep them secret.
(there are apparently a lot of battle axe’s for sale)
I have gotten the buxom lady before and, as a card-carrying homosexual man, I can confirm that the buxom lady is not something that I personally have an interest in.
Though right now I’ve got kittens and quantum research. I suppose I’m qualified for a kitten.
Oh good. I was worried I’d done something to garner the attention of “the buxom lady” add bot.
I mean, I google some actresses I appreciate sometimes…
Upon further investigation, my wife says she gets them too.
Nice to know we all get it.
Apparently “the buxom lady” add folks are incredibly inclusive.
Some real forward thinkers.
Kinda refreshing really.
Really Torch, you went through all that and didn’t once mention that the little guy is sitting in a goddamn E-Wing? Its first appearance in live action!
Had to look it up to make sure it was actually in the shape of an E. Can’t be too careful ever since I learned the B wing is actually shaped like a “t”.
Their language is something called “Basic”, that sounds like English but uses a different writing system. So, who knows how their “B” letter looks like?
Jason, you obsessive buffoon.
To summarize this article with a Yodaism.
Answers you have, it’s questions you seek.
Credit to Spaceballs, not one inaccuracy in any of the figurines Mel Brooks released. Merchandising!
artoo-detoo?
Crap… I completely forgot about that.
Wow! I’d forgotten all about Star Wars….
Torch, I bet you went nuts when Din Djarin first appeared with the long rifle that cartoon Boba Fett wielded in the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special (which I saw when it aired).
You had one job!
The joke is bigger than Alt-Universe R2. The entire Disney Star Wars multiverse is an uncanny valley. All the elements are there but something is missing. Maybe it is the chemistry of the original cast or the freshness of the galaxy far far away. Just like the Kenner R2, these new things look like Star Wars, but they aren’t.
“These are not the ‘droids you’re looking for …”
Maybe they should go back to re-purposing Japanese samurai movies.
Also, maybe someone could create an outline for the trilogy with key plot points to be touched one throughout the trilogy. Then they could hire writers and give them a little freedom to do something interesting as long as they hit the plot points in the outline.
The Disney trilogy didn’t feel cohesive from one movie to the next. I felt like everybody got a lobotomy before The Last Jedi. When Rise of Skywalker came out, I wasn’t even sure what I was watching. Force Skype calls, Force teleporting lightsabers, Force lightsaber fights. Did Palpatine also whip up a crew from the dusty planet surface to man all those ships?
Like how basically an entire extra Empire with all the trimmings was built and staffed without anyone noticing at all, I mean until our heroes figured it out. Or rather, just stated it.
I’m reminded of Contact, where the alien space travel machine that pretty much took the resources of the entire earth to build is blown up…but it turns out okay b/c we’d built another one in secret that nobody knows about.
First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
I think it’s partly because the new Star Wars stuff takes itself waaaay too seriously. I still like it and I’ll still watch it because I’m a sucker for the Star Wars aesthetic more than anything else, but the original trilogy and even the prequel trilogy have an optimistic and sometimes campy joy to them which is missing in a lot of the new stuff. Even when the new Star Wars tries to be a little silly with things like “baby yoda” in The Mandalorian, it’s offset by everything else in those shows being super serious all the time. As a result, the sense of wonder is lost. There’s no “Wow, spaceships! Wow, droids! Wow, the Force!” when the show’s message is “EVERYTHING SUCKS, take us seriously pls.” Even when old Star Wars had its fair share of dark moments, it used them sparingly so they actually made an impact.
The other thing is pacing, all the Star Wars shows are very much a slow burn, which ties into the whole taking-itself-too-seriously thing since it’s clear they want the viewer to have a more thoughtful relationship with the show. But slow burns are fun when you have a balance of different aspects of slice-of-life storytelling, new Star Wars instead is grim constantly so it feels like you have to push through the boredom of the first several hours/episodes before you feel like anything fun or interesting is happening.
I don’t want to be too hard on them, the people working on Star Wars stuff right now are clearly huge fans of the franchise and are clearly working hard trying to do justice to the parts of Star Wars they love – I think they just missed a few aspects of Star Wars that a lot of other people love.
Since new Kenner R2 is in some kinda vehicle, it fits the Autopian charter.
Speaking of closure, does your jacket button up the back and feature wrap-around sleeves?
Jason.
Buddy.
I am a huge fan of your work. Your insights, your humor and your observations are the highight of my day. I’m pretty sure my wife is tired of watching your Autopian videos on Instagram that I insist on showing her.
However.
Please write the damn car reviews.
I’m getting concerned.
I think too much attention has been given to David’s hoarding and questionable eating practices and not enough light has been shown on your procrastination.
This comes from a place of love.
xoxo,
Trust
uggggg fiiiiinnnnneeeee. They take SO LONG though. But okay.
You’re reviewing the X-34 Landspeeder?
Not my take. It’s (partially) your web site. As long as your writing pays homage to Hunter S Thompson and you keep hiring the type of authors you’re hiring, I’ll continue my membership.
Wild guess, but as someone who built a lot of plastic model cars back in the day, that chrome-coated plastic always seemed harder to get accuracy on from a mold because it looked like the chrome was added after molding the plastic. Maybe that was the best they could do until plastic molds got better/budgets got bigger?
also, marking a small toy-sized hemispherical surface is likely to be awkward.
I have a 1977 R2-D2 I inherited from my uncle and never noticed how off his head was. This is great.
The real in joke would be to make this droid’s head look like R2’s when it gets released as a toy.
I hope this is like some knock off Astromech brand from a planet that has no respect for intellectual property rights.
Astromech factory on Chi Nuah.
“I hope this is like some knock off Astromech brand from a planet that has no respect for intellectual property rights”
I think if that were the case it WOULD be exactly the droid you were looking for, lawsuit be damned.
That’s why those giant Tweety bird knockoffs for sale in Tijuana have a single, thin lock of hair painted on. Its JUST different enough from the real Tweety bird to keep the WB lawyers away. It might even be protected as a parody.
This explains a lot.
Obviously Jon Favreau and/or Kathleen Kennedy have a shit-ton of the original trilogy R2-D2 figures and are trying to pump up the value.
I wonder if there was something else going on: the packaging on the RotJ R2 unit says it is “No. 69420”.
Weird things happen… Illinois randomly assigned me 42069 as a license plate on a car I was about to sell. I ended up going through an elaborate 3 car swap to get it transferred to the car I wanted.
If you still have the plate, Elon will buy it from you.
Months after I installed collector vehicle plate 3981G on my car, I realized that those numbers are the year of the vehicle (1983).
Then a year later, when I met another owner of the same make/model from 1986, we lost our minds when we discovered that his collector plate number ALSO was an anagram of his car’s year!
Weird things do happen, but this haunts me.