Star Wars: 12 Stupid Decisions From The Prequels That Actively Ruin The Originals

9. Everyone Knows C-3PO (But Keeps It Quiet)

Anakin successfully building C-3PO is the Star Wars equivalent of a kid managing to make an iPhone 6 Plus indistinguishable from Apple's official model without any technological knowledge. It's that far-fetched.

Throughout all six movies there's lots of protocol droids walking around and C-3PO doesn't stand out as being any different from them (assuming stand-offishness is a programmed trait), yet in The Phantom Menace Lucas chose to make him super special, built by the future Darth Vader. Now, to be fair to Lucas here, this wasn't totally made up on the fly with total disregard for the originals - he always had it planned that Threepio was built by "a young boy working for a junk dealer". But that twee moment is just the start of the problems with goldenrod.

It's the later films that actually make it confusing. When the "naked" protocol droid pops up again in Attack Of The Clones he's got some typical plating, meaning at some point in the intervening ten years former-slave Shimi and rugged moisture farmer Cliegg Lars managed to fix him up to industry standard. Is Tatooine the backwater desert of the galaxy or home to all its tech refuse? And after spending so long with it, why didn't Lars Jr., Owen, realise he was buying the droid his step-brother stole from him all those years ago in A New Hope?

By the end of the trilogy Lucas appeared to have realised the degree of his mistake, having the droid's memory wiped, but that doesn't explain why Owen, Beru, Obi-Wan, Darth Vader or the countless other people Threepio has been retconned to interact with didn't connect the dots.