It’s been kinda boring around here, so there’s you topic for today.
Well, I’d concede Artoo has the Force if it weren’t for that danged Phantom Menace! Can a non-organic being have midichlorians? Or should we discount Ep. 1-3 and just go by 4-6?
Well, if we go with the horrendous addition of Mitichlorians to the Star Wars universe then there is no way R2 could have force powers.
I was always kind of unsure of robots’ status in the Star Wars universe. On the one hand they are dealt with like any other mechanical device and no one cares much. So your toaster got blasted…who cares? On the other the characters occasionally express a lot of concern for their robot companions.
Either way though no force for the robots. R2 was just wired particularly well.
He does seem very lucky and Obi Wan doesn’t believe in ‘luck’.
But I don’t think he ever sort of ‘predicts’ what is coming. He just responds to what’s happening.
Plus, he didn’t vaporize when hit in ANH.
So, I don’t see it has having force powers.
The exact nature of those stupid mitochlorians wasn’t explained very well.
The Force is first described as an energy field created by all living things, yet non-organic things can still be mainpulated with it. R2, the X-Wing, and many lightsabers were all moved about using the Force.
R2 could possibly be able to manipulate the Force without having command and control, just enough to increase his luck.
I think they’re treated more like cars than small appliances, Whack-a-Mole. There’s more than a few people who treat their car like it’s a member of the family and take pride in caring for it, while lots of people just use their car as a conveyance and don’t give it much thought beyond that.
In one of the books that takes place after the original movies, somewhere in the Zahn trilogy, Luke mentions that ever since R2 came to him, he’s never performed a memory wipe, which is supposedly routine for droids. Because of this, R2 has a much greater bank of available experiences to draw on and thus is highly perceptive, more than one would expect an astromech droid to be. This doesn’t answer the question of what happened before Luke got R2, and isn’t an answer from Lucas, of course.
I strongly doubt it’s a Force-sensitive thing. If he’s smarter than most astromech droids, it’s possible all Naboolean droids are like that, and we just don’t see it because the only Nabooboo droids we see other than R2 were blown away in Ep 1. It’s entirely possible that had the ship’s position been a meter to the left, R2 would’ve been vaporized and C-3PO’s life partner would be R3-J9 or some such.
It’s possible he was custom-upgraded by a mechanic, or there’s a ‘defect’ in his circuitry that allows him to respond to situations with more insight than a normal AI, or any one of a number of mechanical/electronic explanations. It’s also hinted at and possibly explicitly stated in some of the books that Force-sensitive mechanics also make higher quality creations, and that may have had a part in it, though no sensitivity would’ve been imparted to R2 himself.
Say what you will about those $&%^#(@! midichlorians, R2D2 just doesn’t have Force powers. No droid does, as far as we know. If Artoo did, he (it?) could have better protected himself against those pesky Jawa scavengers. Hell, he could have beeped, “We’re not the droids you’re looking for” to those stormtroopers in Mos Eisley. Plus, Luke and Yoda would have sensed something in the droid when Artoo was poking around Dagobah.
Lucas wasn’t just a royalist (IMHO, Return of the Jedi should be scrapped along with Episodes 1-3), but was also a carbon-based chauvinist. R2 kept his cool no matter what. When whichever of Obi-Wan or Yoda said, “No, there is another,” that other should damned well have been R2D2, not Princess Leia.
I doubt that it’s canon, but in reading the first edition of the Star Wars Role Playing Game, I remember replacement, mechanical body parts increase Dark Side Force sensetivity/power. It could be that the Force’s interaction with mechanical things is not fully and properly known or percievable to Jedi.
There certainly could be many things about the Force that the Jedi have lumped all together under the Dark Side label and stopped there, not realizing that this little astromech droid has been saving the galaxy’s ass with it.
The Zahn trilogy introduces anti-Force bubbles created by creatures on a Jedi-ignored planet, along with predators that hunt using the Force on that same planet. The Jedi of old failed to even investigate the phemonemon, choosing to ignore it completely. This could be similar.
If R2-D2 had it, would it be called the 4ce?
That’s the coolest (or nerdiest) thing I’ve read all day, thanks! I’m in San Jose next month, maybe I can buy you a beer.
I remember that also. Did R2 get a memory wipe after RotS? C3P0 did, but R2 claimed to remember being owned by Obi-wan, which he was in a sense before being parked after Padme’s death.
Didn’t work that way for C3PO, did it? Anyhow, I can’t think of any instance of R2 doing anything that seemed to involve the force. The closest is walking across the corridor at the beginning of ANH without getting hit, but C3PO did that also, and Jedi don’t seem to be able to halt blaster bolts without a light saber.
…nobody has mentioned Skippy the Force Sensitive Droid?
From Wiki
"In one issue of the Star Wars Tales comic series, there is a story that R5-D4, or Skippy the Jedi Droid as he’s called, is force-sensitive, due to the concentration of midi-chlorians within his oil. When chosen by Luke, Skippy senses that R2-D2 will be important for the future, and so blows his own motivator and influences the choice of R2-D2. Most say the R5 series was poorly designed from the start, which is stated in the book “The Essential Guide to Droids.”
…
Go over to FARK and sit there. We’ll let you know when you can return.
Hey, I’d like to see you try to implement 6 million forms of communication in a fully-functioning if naive and prissy AI at the age of 9. 
Uncle Owen almost bought a different R2 unit, but it blew its circuits at a very convenient time.
Coincidence? I think not.
(If R2 has ninja, um I mean Jedi powers, he is not trained in the use of the Force but is just an instinctual User.)
Hell, I don’t recall Luke doing anything involving the Force until Obi-Wan took Luke under his wing. The mythology, as developed through the first two movies, didn’t seem to exclude the possibility of sentient robots’ being open to the Force. Only with RotJ did that change.
That’s what got me thinking about this in the first place. R2 was kinda freaking out at the time, too. He was also able to con Luke into taking off the restraining bolt.
Wasn’t his ability to bullseye a whomprat in his T16 indicative of his force sensitivity?
How the fuck did midi-chlorians get in his oil? :dubious: 
This whole thing is just bizarre.