Originally posted by epicenter00:
In many ways, Star Wars robots are probably the biggest moral failing of those supposedly moralistic films. Nobody takes them seriously, they're always the butt of jokes. They're comic relief like the bungling "darkie" from old serials.
Which is why R2D2 saved the rebellion from certain destruction... whoops.
And the end of ESB. Who fixed the hyperdrive? Who healed Luke in the Bacta tank? Who delivered the twins?
And who smuggled Luke's lightsaber onto Jabba's skiff? Saved Queen Amidala's cruiser when it broke the Trade Federation's blockade of Naboo? Saved Padme's life in the Geonosian robot factory? It was this guy:
"Beep-whirr-whooo-teep-beeb!"
The point is, there are different kinds of robots in Star Wars. You have the whiny prissy Threepio, the sassy attitude and general badassery of Artoo, the medical droid that healed Luke, (and hell FTW who delivered him when he was a baby? a droid), the disturbing assassin and torture droids, and the combat droids that don't have a copy of Asimov's three laws. You have robots build other robots, destroy other robots, and some robots don't do anything other than walk around fixing things.
They're given control 'bolts' and such stuff to keep them in line.
Would you trust Asimov's Three Laws to keep robots in line, or a control collar that a droid can't interfere with? Keep in mind I've read "Robot and Empire" so I already know that R. Daneel broke his own programming by
thinking his way out of it.
(Nevermind that Robots can be telepaths too.)
You're creating a machine that can crush your head into pulp because it really is THAT much stronger than YOU are. You're creating a machine that can shoot you with a gun quicker than YOU can shoot it; it's reflexes really are THAT much faster. It's immune to diseases, biological agents have no effect on a metal frame. They're more accurate, their memory is more efficient and can probably store more raw data than yours can, and at the end of the day they're just simply better than we are or ever can be. In any honest depiction of 'man vs machine' machine comes out on top every time.
Hell, this is precisely the reason WHY Asimov invented his three laws. Because noone in his right mind would accept an indentured servant that's totally superior physically and mentally to the 'master' race in every single gorram way without some pretty hefty overrides.
They're bought and sold and property even though they're quite aware of their status. Heck, there's business that won't serve them like it was 1950s America or Apartheid South Africa with their "Whites Only" laws.
And this is all okay.
No, actually, it's NOT. We see a cantina in Mos Eisley - described as 'a hive for scum and villainy' by one Gen. Obi-wan Kenobi - have an apartheid-like policy. This is MEANT to depict racism. But I must have missed the subtext that showed this was a GOOD thing, or that Tattooine was representative of a galaxy that according to canon has tens of millions inhabited star systems, and in every representation of the planet it is nothing but a backwater filled with miserable people.
There is also the fact that robots don't treat each other particularly well either, or other sophonts. Jabba has a full-time torture droid, and the Clone Wars was fought with massive armies of combat droids that had no moral restraint. You can't just say "Star Wars shows droids as poor widdle servants that show us it's really a racist world they live in!" Star Wars has a multitude of different droids that do different things, some good and some bad, while the universe is large enough that frankly, attitudes and cultures would differ wildly.
There's another reason why 'robots' would run amok. Don't forget Blade Runner when the robots start wondering why they're property when they have feelings, desires, and dreams just like human beings, yet they're not treated with the dignity and respect that should be due to sentient beings.
For some stupid reason, replicants were made to have those dreams. And I always thought they were less 'robots' and more 'genetically engineered humans'.
And the main motivation for rebellion in Roy Batty and his confederates was because replicants are made with a 4 year lifespan, and he wanted to live longer than that.