8 Early Star Wars Character Designs You Won’t Believe
3. C-3PO
Everyone's favourite mechanical stress-head C-3PO has roots in vintage sci-fi, his design evoking classic robots from at least a dozen old-school movies.
This was even more apparent in Ralph McQuarrie's first attempts at putting the character down on paper as the artist stuck closely to George Lucas's guidelines.
The Star Wars creator wanted a robot which resembled Maschinenmensch from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and the early sketches may have taken this literally enough to spark a legal complain from the Austrian filmmaker's estate if they had been realised.
This version of the protocol droid is also reminiscent of the gigantic antagonist from the 1950s version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and it seems only fitting that Threepio went on to be just as influential as his iconic robot predecessors.