The Essential Guide to Droids (Page XI)

Introduction

"Did you hear that? They've shut down the main reactor. We'll be destroyed for sure. This is madness!"

―C-3PO to R2-D2

When Star Wars: A New Hope unspooled across theater screens over two decades ago, the audience's first glimpse of the strange denizens inhabiting this 'galaxy far far away' wasn't of a hot-tempered princess or a black-garbed Dark Lord. It wasn't of a self-assured smuggler or a wide-eyed farmboy. It wasn't even of a Jawa, Ewok, or Wookiee. The individuals George Lucas chose to inaugurate his epic space saga looked like a stiff golden statuette and a squat, warbling fireplug. They were droids, and as See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo, the peculiar pair would become one of the most beloved movie duos of all time.

The word 'robot', derived from a Czech term meaning 'forced labor', was coined in 1920. It wasn't long before the silver screen took notice. In 1926, Fritz Lang's silent classic Metropolis introduced the first-a statuesque stunner named Maria whose graceful art-deco lines would later help inspire the conceptual design of C-3PO. A number of memorable movie mechanicals followed, including the mute brute Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, the delightfully deadpan Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet, HAL 9000, the coldly calculating computer from 2001, and Yul Brynner's turn as a haywire theme-park attraction in Westworld. All were unforgettable characters, but their advanced silicon brains couldn't hide the fact that they were hardware without heart and software without soul. Lacking personalities audiences could identify with, movie robots fell into two neat categories: subservient drones and emotionless menaces.

Star Wars broke that mold. Artoo and Threepio were bickering buddies more akin to Laurel and Hardy than clockwork and cogwheels. Thanks largely to the men inside the metal, actors Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels, the droids were just as human as anyone else in the cast-and they got all the best lines, too. Threepio might be a sophisticated translation machine fluent in over six million forms of communication, but it is his exasperated response to a door slamming shut in his face ("how typical") that elicits a sympathetic laugh. And despite the fact that Artoo could speak only in whistles, sound engineer Ben Burtt created a warmly expressive nonverbal language by mixing synthesized electronic tones with the sound of his own voice.

See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo may have greeted us at the door, but more droids- many more-waited for us in the dusty corners of Mos Eisley and the cavernous hallways of the Death Star. The movie trilogy's 'lived-in" design scheme meant that most of these whirring gadgets hod rust spots and flaking paint jobs, but their appearances were always funny, intriguing, and bizarre, from the gleefully sadistic torturer in Jabba the Hutt's boiler room to the marching carton aboard the Jawa sandcrawler that unaccountably blurted out ·gonk, gonk.'

The sheer variety of sizes, forms, and appearances hammered home one obvious fact — when folks in the Star Wars universe have a problem, they build a droid. Specialized robots fill every conceivable niche from trash collection to surgery, and it has taken twenty years of novels, comics, computer games, television cartoons, and newspaper strips to showcase their full product range.

The Essential Guide to Droids is proud to present one hundred of these universal gizmos. We like to think we covered all the cool ones.

Daniel Wallace — Detroit, Michigan