It's all about the droid

At a science fiction convention I attended a few years back I hosted a Star Wars discussion group. In fact this was the last convention I went to before I swore off these things (15 conventions is more than enough for the novelty to have well and truly worn off...). At the time Attack of the Clones was still reasonably recent and nothing as yet was known about Episode 3. The topic I came up with for the discussion was that armed with the knowledge of what occurs in Episodes 1, 2 and 4-6, it should be possible to make a fairly educated guess at the events of Episode 3.

A lively brainstorming session ensued. I think from memory that most of what we predicted was proved correct when Revenge of the Sith came out, and I was particularly pleased that my own prediction that very last shot of the film would be Obi Wan handing over the baby Luke to Own and Beru outside the Lars homestead on Tattooine was pretty much bang on.

One day I intend to watch all six movies in order to appreciate just how well the saga works as a cohesive narrative. Apparently watching A New Hope directly after Revenge of the Sith casts Darth Vader in an entirely new light as a more tragic than truly evil figure. For my money though it's R2D2 who is revealed to be a key player in events.

Crucially R2's memory is not wiped (though C3PO's is), so throughout episode 4-6 this little droid is working with the full awareness of what happened in the first three movies - and armed with this knowledge most likely helps to move things in the right direction. R2 knows full well who Obi Wan is, and probably knows about Luke and Leia's parentage too.

I've discovered a great article which speculates on this very theory, and even more interestingly credits another secondary character with a much greater role in events than hitherto had been suspected. Read the article here.