I can think of about six films off the top of my head where a robot taught me how to be a better human. My god I’m lonely. Star Wars in particular taught me that there’s nothing quite like having a best friend in in your corner to fight with you, support you, and do a bit of Taun Taun spooning.
Appropriately, I learned this from two robots, one a lovable mute, trundling through the movies like a wheel-bound Huck Finn, and the other ripped from the pages of steampunk homoerotica. There really is nothing quite like the friendship between C-3P0 and R2-D2.
See, it’s the other friendships in Star Wars that push me towards the mechanical Mork and Mindy. They all just fall a little short in the BFF Olympics. Take Han and Chewbacca for example. Their friendship would likely take homeboy gold, but their arrangement is really just a semi-legal situation that blossomed into a lifelong commitment. Han was just a really handsome imperial lieutenant ordered to kill Chewie. He refused, and Chewie ended up owing him a ritual life debt.
That it worked out so well and they became such good friends is nice, but its an affair born out of insubordination and obligation, two things that rarely form the foundation of a healthy friendship (but sometimes work pretty well for marriage, especially of the shotgun variety).
Han and Luke just weaken SoloBacca. I suppose it doesn’t matter where Han gets his appetite if he gets his meals at home, but there is a little bit of bro competition going on in this triangle. Han and Luke are another friendship that grows out of a sub-optimal arrangement and continues through convenience and warfare. Though there’s nothing as reliable as a war to bring on the bromance, it’s not near as organic as the one experienced by our non-organic duo.
This is compounded by the fact that Han and Luke are too absorbed in their own lives to really maintain the friendship. Han is too busy getting frozen in carbonite and trying to use the Force on Leia’s brass undergarments to support Luke through his trials at Uncle Yoda’s Jedi Community College, and Luke is too busy carrying senile old men on his back through swamps (my god, the innuendo) to care about anything Han is doing (other than Leia). Friendships can span distance and time, but the amount of effort needed is just not there between the two.
Leia and Luke are even worse. Harry and Sally knew the sex thing would always get in the way, and I can only imagine accidental incest to be a dealbreaker in that respect.
This is all why R2-D2 and C-3PO have such an exceptional relationship. They met by chance and had chemistry right away, if not affection. Forced apart early by fate, they lived their lives autonomously, their meetings sporadic and unmemorable. When they finally are together, that obvious compatibility starts turning into something deep and defined. They escape crashing ships, wander the desert, get kidnapped, and go on missions to save the universe together.
Their wit and banter is a pillar of the Star Wars experience, this made more incredible by the fact that one of them is incomprehensible to an English-speaking crowd. Like any good friends, the armour comes off when needed, sarcasm falling to emotion when danger and mortality are involved.
C-3PO insists that his injured friend take any of his own parts if needed, and when R2-D2 is going off to fight, C-3PO tells him to make sure and come back alive. Knowing his friend is unable to have his back and feels guilty about it, R2 makes sure to make a good-natured wisecrack to assuage this feeling in his friend despite the looming personal danger. He takes one for the team, a selfless act for their friendship. Thick, thin, and Three Laws Safe.
Rather than just comic relief and foils for the mostly dire attitude of the human leads, George Lucas imbues these characters with an added depth; he gives something created by humans the ability show compassion perhaps (in the given context) even beyond that of their creators. Their dedication to each other is unsettling, and forces you to wonder if you have anyone that would donate their parts to aid in your recovery, someone to follow you through whatever desert you find yourself in.
And let me tell you, if you can say “Yes, by god, I do,†Star Wars is going to put a sizable lump in your throat.