By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 27 seconds ago

If you’re ever really hungry for new Star Wars content, you don’t need to rely on Disney+. Instead, all you have to do is bust out your old Blu-rays and check out the special features. There, you will find deleted scenes that may completely change how you see the movie. For example, 2005’s Revenge of the Sith may be a goofy movie, but it has deleted scenes featuring Genevieve O’Reilly killing it as Mon Mothma nearly two decades before she played the character in Andor.  Of course, the movie also has a deleted scene that will remind you of just how batsh*t insane George Lucas really is.

This deleted scene has been making the rounds on social media lately, and most who watch it have the same question: “is this AI?” The answer is no, this scene is very real, but it does involve the most famous artificial intelligence in a galaxy far, far away: droids. In this scene, we see Anakin and Obi-Wan discussing droid language, and then Anakin repeatedly speaks the droid language, complete with beeps and boops. It is (and I don’t say this lightly) one of the stupidest things in Star Wars history. However, in a bizarre twist, this scene plays a major part in some largely forgotten franchise lore.

The Dumbest Star Wars Deleted Scene

The deleted Revenge of the Sith scene takes place early in the movie, when Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker have boarded General Grievous’ ship to rescue Chancellor Palpatine. They have been in communication with R2-D2, but Anakin’s translator breaks. He asks his mentor if he can understand what the astromech is saying, and Obi-Wan responds by reminding his former padawan, “I’m not a protocol droid.” Anakin then tries to translate part of what R2 said, complete with droid noises. He does so again when Obi-Wan corrects him about the interpretation (namely, that the droid wants them to go up, not down).

The scene is wonderfully absurd. It wouldn’t be so crazy for Anakin Skywalker to simply know what R2-D2 is saying. At different points in the franchise, we have seen characters like Luke Skywalker, Poe Dameron, and Rey understand droids’ binary language without the use of a translator or a protocol droid. But actually having Anakin speak that language out loud, with perfect robotic inflection, is insane. Could anybody do this (kind of like how Han Solo learned to speak Wookie), or is this a Jedi thing? If nothing else, the scene is hilarious because it sounds like Anakin is cursing, and his vulgar language has been bleeped (or should we say beeped?) out.

Did Obi-Wan Use DuoLingo?

As stupid as this Revenge of the Sith deleted scene is, though, it arguably plays an important part in the lore. For example, many fans think that Obi-Wan Kenobi can understand what R2-D2 is saying in A New Hope because he speaks to the droid conversationally and finds Princess Leia’s hidden message so easily, possibly because R2 had told him what to do. If that’s true, then it’s evidence of weird character development. Obi-Wan couldn’t speak Binary (the droid language) in Revenge of the Sith, but he may have found the time to do so while watching over young Luke Skywalker (after all, there’s not much to do on Tatooine).

Additionally, the Anakin in this deleted scene is a bit more like his later portrayal in the Clone Wars cartoon. Over the years, some fans have felt like there were basically two different Anakins: the brooding, future Vader of the prequels and the quirky, slightly wacky Jedi warrior of the cartoon. Here, we see that these two Anakins are one and the same, and the same guy who would be slaughtering children by the end of the film is doing robot impressions at the beginning. 

This isn’t the most important deleted scene in Star Wars history, but it might just be the weirdest. It shows us a different side of Anakin Skywalker while also injecting a bit of sideways humor into an otherwise very serious film. In its own way, this scene also hints at Anakin’s future transformation into Darth Vader because (based on his goofy beeps and boops) he was clearly “more machine than man” long before his duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi.