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Filming test footage of performer Kenny Baker inside a metal droid body, early in 1976. The guy in the blue/green jacket appears to be production manager Robert Watts. The guy in the brown shearling jacket is of course writer/director George Lucas, and the bearded guy on the right is special effects head John Stears. I wonder who the young child to the left is, and whether he remembers this moment today! Another fun note - check out the windscreen of the landspeeder on the table.

Although narratively there was obviously only one robot named R2-D2 in the Star Wars universe, in reality many props were built for filming purposes. Rather than create a single robot that could actually do everything, the filmmakers built different R2s which could perform individual functions or meet specific needs, all to create the illusion of a complex and talented multifunction droid.

A collection of R2-D2s being hoisted aboard Jabba's barge set for the filming of Return of the Jedi.

The movie R2-D2s can be mostly divided into two basic configurations and four chronological eras.

The two physical configurations

R2-D2 can be in one of two different configurations. In standing or two-legged mode, R2-D2 was usually a costume worn by a very small performer – Kenny Baker throughout the Original Trilogy. These human-operated two-leg droids were used for scenes where R2 needed to show emotion or shuffle in a walking-like fashion.

However, R2 wasn't entirely stable on two legs, and so when scenes required him to roll around on concealed wheels, his body was tilted back by 18 degrees and a third leg was extended from the base of his body barrel. The three-leg droids were mainly motorized radio-controlled (RC) droids.

This scene from Star Wars shows both physical modes. Two separate droids were used – the filmmakers just stopped the camera and swapped the robot props out. In the final film a reaction shot of C-3PO is used to cover the transition from the shuffling two-legged “Kenny” droid to the three-legged “RC” droid.

The four chronological eras

When it comes to R2-D2, the Star Wars films can be divided into four basic eras.

Era 1: ANH/1977

The first R2-D2 props ever built were, of course, constructed for Star Wars, which was released in 1977. This first film of the Original Trilogy (1977-1983) was retroactively renamed Star Wars: a New Hope in 1981, and so droids of this era are commonly referred to as ANH robots. Most of them were hand-built from solid aluminium sheet, and have a lot of minor continuity differences in terms of physical appearance.

A pair of ANH droids. Left: the three-legged remote-control R2. Right: one of the "Kenny" two-legged droids. They were both painted white - the seeming colour differences arise from lighting and weathering.

Era 2: ESB/1980

The Empire Strikes Back (ESB) was released in 1980. This film had a new set of mechanically improved droids, with fibreglass bodies for weight reduction purposes. The ESB droids have many minor differences in appearance from the ANH droids, but mainly look the same as each other since they all came out of the same moulds. They were reused for Return of the Jedi (ROTJ, 1983).

Visual effects supervisor Brian Johnson (centre) and his crew work on the fibreglass-bodied R2 units constructed for the Empire Strikes Back. Note the dome on the far left, which has a bunch of small rectangles in it. According to Johnson those were tiny pictures of pinups, cut out from an issue of Playboy magazine, and added for Kenny Baker's benefit.

Era 3: Prequel Trilogy

The Prequel Trilogy of The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005) employed a variety of robots. Many were rebuilt Original Trilogy droids, two were built new in the UK, one was the "Uber R2" built by Don Bies and his team at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic; George Lucas' effects company) in California, and some were pure computer-generated imagery (CGI).

For the purpose of chronological categorization I consider the newly-built UK and US physical droids to be – very roughly since they were quite different visually and mechanically – third gen droids.

Era 4: Sequel Trilogy

The Disney-era Sequel Trilogy of The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019) featured physical R2-D2 droids built for the films by Lee Towersey and Oliver Steeples. They were hobbyists elevated to full-time droid professionals, to the envy of geeks everywhere, by being hired by the production.

Oliver left after the first sequel film wrapped, but Lee continued on in showbiz, and built a variety of robots for the other Star Wars films produced by Disney/Lucasfilm, including Rogue One: a Star Wars Story and Solo: a Star Wars Story. One of the Force Awakens R2-D2s makes a cameo appearance in Rogue One's Massassi Base hangar scene.

"My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts."

There were also modified droids for public appearances over the decades, and droids built or modified for the Star Tours and Galaxy's Edge amusement park attractions, but the focus on this article is droids that hit the silver screen from 1977 to 1983. Mostly. It appears that some of the ESB-era droids were provided to Star Tours as background props, but there's relatively little public documentation in this regard.

At first glance, R2-D2 droids from the various eras look pretty much the same. It's only when you start examining photographs and screengrabs that you notice all the subtle differences. There are also obvious continuity errors in the movies; often within the same scene. So which droid is “correct” is really up to you!

On to part I: Designing R2-D2.

Thanks

Most of this crap came from a lot of poring over old R2 photos, doing endless amounts of research, reading books and articles. But online discussions have also been massively valuable.

Thanks to Robert Jackson and Mark Kiger of OpenR2 for a number of excellent comments and corrections. And Chris Reiff, Oliver Steeples, Chris Trevas, Don Bies, and Astromech's FrettedLogic and Edwardo for useful contributions to R2 Builders Club and Astromech.net discussions. Thanks also to some of the original crew who were interviewed for these pages.

Thanks, all!

Copyright

The photos are copyright their respective owners. They're either the property of Lucasfilm or of various people who have posted images online; specific provenance is mostly not known. They're reproduced here for the purpose of criticism and research.

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