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This question about C-3PO quotes the Alan Dean Foster novelisation:

And while Luke considered this turn of events, Threepio took the opportunity to throw Artoo a furious look of warning

The movie C-3PO seemingly had an immobile face, so making the look both furious and warning would have required some pantomiming (and being visible to R2-D2 at all...) Does the book C-3PO have more of a "tin woodman" face?

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    I wouldn't be surprised if the passage were meant to be somewhat figurative. 3PO has a…well, complicated relationship with R2-D2, and I'll bet that R2 would understand the meaning of a quick glance.
    – Bob
    Dec 6, 2016 at 16:33

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I can't speak for what Alan Dean Foster was thinking as he wrote that. However, one of the things that makes Anthony Daniels' performance as C-3PO so effective I'd that he communicates so much character. A lot of that is through the way he speaks (rendering lines that Lucas wrote with a very different kind of character in mind), but his body language is also extremely communicative. Think of the way he half-heartedly kicks R2-D2 when they separate in the desert, or the way he looks terrified when Luke activates the restraining bolt in the garage. Now, Foster had not seen any of this when he was writing, but it is certainly not unreasonable for a droid like C-3PO to be able to communicate silently to his counterpart through body language alone (posture, head position, etc.), even without a pliable face.

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