So recently I watched all six episodes of Star Wars (again) and while the general idea of the story is a good one, I can’t help but find that these days I don’t really like any of the main characters. Mostly because of the excessive killing.
Obi Wan is pretty cool in the original trilogy right? Well the first three episodes show Obi Wan as a bit of an ass hole. He doesn’t show much respect for other creatures of the universe, and while he seems to do his ‘duty’ well, he’s not very endearing.
Luke doesn’t really do it for me either. Yes he’s generally a nicer person than any of the other Jedi in the movies, but it’s not until right at the end that he seems to be a well rounded guy.
R2-D2 is the only character in the movies who gives without asking for anything in return, and while he does protect himself by setting fire to a couple of battle droids in Episode III, he doesn’t kill any other living* beings. This is quite different to the ‘enlightened’ Jedi in the movies, who seem slice through anyone in their way in every other scene.
He shows qualities that few of the other characters have including compassion, bravery, intelligence, comedy and friendship. I like him a lot.
Finally, one of the things that makes Artoo the real hero of the entire saga, is the fact he’s the only one who knows the full story, unlike C-3PO, he never has his memory wiped – despite letting other people think he doesn’t know what is going on at times. He is pure awesome.
* Clearly the droids in the Star Wars universe are shown to be intelligent, have emotions, feel pain and fear death. It’s up to you to decide if R2-D2’s taking of another droids life to save his own is acceptable behaviour or not. The validity of these droids as sentient beings is outside the scope of this blog post. ;)