I Am C-3P0: Review

First hand Star Wars books are surprisingly hard to come by. Most of the non-fiction books about Star Wars come with people who have collected information from those who were there. Our hopes of getting a George Lucas, Harrison Ford or a Mark Hamill autobiography are slim. We do have a bit of writing from Carrie Fisher, who published her diaries from the Star Wars production. We do, however have a new autobiography from Anthony Daniels.

Anthony Daniels now remains the only member of the Star Wars cast to appear in every film. His career outside of C-3P0 related projects is very small. Star Wars has been his bread and butter for more than 40 years and he hasn't missed any of it, so I was quite excited to read this book.

I have to compliment Daniels for his ability to remember the productions behind the Star Wars films in such detail. I don't know if he kept a diary during this time and that help him while writing the book, but he seems to remember nearly everything from each scene that he participated in for each movie.

Daniels is able to provide a perspective that we don't get to hear often. Even now, with his legendary status among Star Wars fans there are still plenty of casual fans that probably don't know him at all. Its interesting to hear about his struggles of maneuvering the C-3P0 suit and the daily struggles of delivering his performance. Over the years it seems as if the suit was a bit more forgiving, but there are some times where being in that suit would probably be hell.

Daniels gets very candid in this honest memoir. He talks about how he often felt like the odd one out among the far more famous human characters of the film. It was years before he ever felt like he really got credit for playing the character because the media seemed insistent on claiming that the droid was actually a real thing. He is also not afraid to share his opinion on certain other aspects of the trilogy. He even briefly mentioned his known conflict with Kenny Baker, which is something he easily could've danced around if he chose to.

Most of all what is noticeable about this book is just how much passion Anthony Daniels has for the character of C-3P0. At the end of the day it just seems like he loved it and it has gotten to the point where no one could possibly know the character as well as he does.

This book comes at the perfect time now that Daniels has completely his work as C-3P0 possibly forever. I burned through this book pretty quickly and I'm sure if you are on the fence about it as a Star Wars fan you'll find it fairly informative. It gets a recommend for me.