Man Creates Life-Size C-3PO Costume

The Star Wars Saga is set to be released digitally, and just in time, a super fan has constructed the ultimate way to pay homage by creating his own C-3PO costume.

Find out why C-3PO is wandering round Ashbourne http://t.co/lrT3Rq0grr #starwars pic.twitter.com/cTdceAsdOG

— News Telegraph (@AshbourneNews) April 8, 2015

Paul Wadley has spent the last two years constructing his life-size C-3PO costume. According to the Derby Telegraph, Wadley was even willing to wait “for around a year” for the original costume “to be crafted and shipped from a specialist in America.”

Wadley then took the C-3PO and “spent a further two years modifying and altering parts of it to make it even more realistic and to ensure he was able to walk round in it.”

Speaking of walking around in it, Wadley had to lose “a stone,” which is about 14 pounds, just to fit into his life-size C-3PO costume.

Wadley will be taking his C-3PO costume out and into the streets of Ashbourne in the U.K. this weekend.

According to the Ashbourne News Telegraph, “He will don the £4,000 costume and plod around Victoria Square from around midday to help his wife, Sonja Riley, officially open her new barber’s shop in the town.”

Wadley is so serious about the authenticity of his C-3PO costume that he will be “using an electronic voice-altering machine built into the suit” so that he can use C-3PO’s “familiar well-spoken voice to point passers-by towards the relocated Diamond Geeza salon.”

So why exactly would Wadley want a life-size C-3PO suit? And why exactly would he wear it to promote his wife’s salon?

Wadley has admitted to a Star Wars obsession in the past. The British man began by “buying miniature models of the film’s characters” before moving up to wearing costumes from the iconic sci-fi saga.

Wadley “has previously walked the streets of Ashbourne in Darth Vader and Storm-Trooper outfits.”

But why C-3PO?

Wadley told the Ashbourne News Telegraph, “People go crazy when they see him.”

Wadley added, “I think a lot of people get used to seeing Darth Vader or Storm Troopers and they’re much easier costumes to wear, but you just don’t get to see C-3PO up close.”

Wadley has taken his C-3PO suit out before for charity events, but says that it’s not easy.

Wadley admitted, “I once did three and-a-half hours in it and it nearly killed me…It’s not just a case of just slipping it on, it can take up to three-quarters of an hour – you have to be screwed in to it. It’s like a second skin, the helmet is right up to your face and you only look through two little eye-holes, so your vision is very limited.”

Wadley added, though, that because of his love of the Star Wars Saga and specifically C-3PO, along with “the buzz I get from people’s reactions,” it’s all worth it.

[Photo Courtesy of the Derby Telegraph]