10 Things You Missed In Star Wars Deleted Scenes
7. C-3PO Got His Plating From Padmé - Attack Of The Clones
At the end of The Phantom Menace when Anakin (Jake Lloyd) leaves home with the Jedi, C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) is still very much in his proto-skeletal form, yet by the time Attack of the Clones rolls around, he's now suddenly fully plated-up.
It's never explained in the movies themselves who did this, though Attack of the Clones' novelisation states that Anakin's mother Shmi (Pernilla August) completed the droid.
Yet on the film's DVD release, a featurette about C-3PO's costume tells another story. A few seconds of discarded footage from a deleted scene show Padmé (Natalie Portman) fitting the last piece of plating to the droid and completing his new look.
The scene was apparently cut by George Lucas to improve the film's pacing, and while Attack of the Clones was certainly already long enough, these few seconds of footage do nevertheless explain Threepio's unexplained glow-up.
C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels has since expressed disappointment that the scene was cut and wasn't even preserved in full on the film's DVD release, calling it "rather moving."