So, it?s been a while since I published the first of my article debunking the alternative media meme ? the Mandela Effect. Finally here?s part 2 of 3 written by Doug McKay.
Star Wars odd couple C-3PO and R2-D2 in Empire Strikes Back. Note silver leg! Lucasfilm
Heh? What?s that? C-3PO never had a silver leg? Oh yes he did. That?s why this makes this particular theory my favourite. I?m a Star Wars afficionado so to say, one of the biggest, so naturally I know these things. My brain contains a lot of Star Wars trivia, and I mean a lot. I?ll admit it, I?m a total geek.
In the original Star Wars film, once that huge behemoth of an Imperial Star Destroyer has neatly parked itself over the Tantive IV CR90 Corvette and the action pans inside we see our two robotic protagonists wandering the corridors of the ship as panic ensues all around them. People naturally focus on the top half of the frame seeing Threepio all in gold above the waist so naturally assuming? Holy Shite! He?s got a silver leg!
You need to remember that this is the mid 70?s, gold foil photographic reflectors were used during the filming of scenes of C-3PO especially in Tunisia, where they were filming in the desert. Now, what colour is sand? Yellow-ish right? OK, so when you reflect a yellow-ish substance onto a silver object that silver object then appears to be coloured??
Now here?s how I know C-3PO had a silver leg. Archival and fully documented evidence, stills photography, exhibitions predating the Special Editions, interviews with George Lucas and the actor Anthony Daniels, the living human incarnation of the protocol droid for Christ?s sake! Daniels was asked about it on the red carpet before The Force Awakens world premiere and he mentioned the anecdote of the day the stills photographer asked him why he had a silver leg. I have a book, a huge book, one of the best on Star Wars called the Star Wars Chronicles ? cost about 100 when it was first published. In there in the C-3PO section there?s a picture with an annotation that says ?Though C-3PO was originally planned to be entirely gold plated, modifications were made during shooting, such as a change to his silver left leg?? And that?s from somebody who actually worked on the film back in 1976. I took a photo of it otherwise you?d never believe me.
Oh would you look at that, a quote form one of the original production team! Screenshot taken from Star War Chronicles by Deborah Fine & Aeon Inc.
Then there?s Stephen J Sansweet?s Star Wars Encyclopaedia published in 1998 to quote ?C-3PO (See-Threepio): A golden protocol droid with one silver leg and the personality of a worrywart? and in the book The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film by Jonathan Rinzler there?s a lot of on-set photography which show? guess what?
So there you go. I don?t feel I have to justify the prissy droids silver leg anymore. It was there, it?s always been there, it was there in Empire Strikes Back and in Return Of The Jedi. I even have a Kenner action figure of Threepio and that has a silver leg (although the originals were all gold cos they were cheaper to produce ? you can have that).
In the next and final part ? which will be up next week we?ll look at some of the more ridiculous examples of this face-palming excuse for ignorance.
This snippet was part of an original article written and pubilshed here by consent by a contributor in issue 2 of my self-published e-magazine Shadows Of Your Mind which is available to download for free from www.shadowsmagazine.co.uk/back-issues
