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The other day, my children came up to me. They needed my help.

"Dada," they said to me, because this is what they call me, "We need your help."

"I would love to help you," I said, because I am a caring father. A father who refuses to help his children, or does so with hate in his heart, is no father worth speaking of. So let us speak of it no more.

"We can't find the movie we want to watch," my children said to me. This is a normal affliction for a child. In this age the menu for every streaming service is a labyrinth of dark patterns, drawing you away from the expensive movies you want to watch and towards bizarre effigies in the shapes of TV shows, where people fall into water from great heights or inexplicably become cake.

"This is a normal and expected part of growing up," I said, because it is important to speak words of assurance to your children in times of crisis. "I shall help you navigate the bowels of Netflix."

"The movie we want to watch isn't on Netflix," my children say, "It is on Plex."

Now, dear reader, you may be familiar with such as Netflix but find the name Plex unfamiliar. Most unfamiliar streaming services are uniformly filled with strangeness. Movies watched by nobody and made by nobody. Movies that exist solely as an entry in a studio budget until some poor soul presses "play" and collapses the waveform. Plex is not a strange streaming service. Plex allows you to make your own streaming service. With it you can fill a computer with movies and watch those movies on a TV like a normal person. You get these movies by procuring them from the Dark Web.

Popular movies, the good movies you actually want to watch, don't last long on streaming websites. They continually cost money, because the people who made them deserve to continue getting a cut of the money that studios continue to make on them. Streaming services don't like spending the money you give them for your subscription. They would rather you watch their bizarre effigies because you do not have to pay residuals to a man who is made of cake.

"Oh," I said, "I see." What I saw was the future, dear reader, or at least a possible future. A future where the movie my children wanted to watch was not on Plex, or perhaps was an ancient file I downloaded a decade and a half ago before they were even born. It was a future where I went deep into the Dark Web where Hollywood lawyers fear to tread, to procure another movie.

"What movie are you looking for?" I asked, expecting a simple answer.

"We don't know," said my children. This was not the answer I was hoping for, but also not entirely unexpected.

"Does it have Minions in it?" I asked, hoping to narrow the field of possibilities.

"No," they said, eliminating a significant number of possibilities.

"Does it have Elsa in it?" I asked, "Or her beautiful husband Spider-Man?"

"No! They're not married!" They shouted, and I was glad that I had successfully deprogrammed them after an unfortunate encounter with YouTube.

"Can I have a hint?" I asked, hoping that perhaps they could provide a single detail pertaining to the movie they desperately wished to see.

This is when it happened, dear reader, this is when the descent into madness went from a gentle slope to a vertical dive into the mouth of madness.

"It has Lady C-3PO in it." Said one child, a lone voice speaking madness at the edge of the universe. My pulse quickened. Cold sweat beaded my forehead. Lightning arced across the abused sponge I called my brain. I was not prepared for this. I was, in a word, confused.

"Lady... C-3PO?" I croaked. My mouth was bone dry.

"Yeah!" My kids shouted in unison. There was no mistake. The world had gone mad and left me, the one sane soul remaining, behind.

I knew what a lady was. I had children, after all. And I knew who C-3PO was. A Droid. Trained in etiquette and protocol. Speaks Bocce. These are mutually exclusive categories, however. No C-3POs are ladies, and no ladies are C-3POs. My children want to watch a movie with a non-existent concept.

"Are you sure? Lady C-3PO is on Plex?" I asked, in a desperate act of optimism. I knew that a question like this, asked in this tone of voice, has never once solved any problem.

"Yeah!" They shouted. It was no use. With great reluctance I picked up the remote and brought Plex up on our TV. I was leaden. I could see no path to victory.

Plex seemed reluctant too, loading slower than I had ever seen it load before. I scrolled through the many available offerings; my Plex was a great temple of worship for the moving image.

Something caught my eye. A gleaming hope of salvation. It came back to me, this had been an inspiration for Ralph McQuarrie, the brilliant artist who had contributed so many iconic designs to Star Wars, including the design of C-3PO. It seemed impossible, but there it was. There SHE was, Lady C-3PO.

"Is this what you want?" I asked.

"That's her!" Responded my kids. They saw her too. There could be no mistake.

"A silent black and white film from 1927? Written and directed by the brilliant Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang? An film that is incomplete and may never be seen in full because of the ravages of time and loss? The one with an iconic lady robot made only a few years after the invention of the word 'robot'? The distopian fable, Metropolis?"

"Yeah!" shouted my children, with more enthusiasm than I could have ever expected. My children had before now expressed no interest in silent films, or black and white films. I doubted they even knew such films existed, and certainly did not understand why anyone would make a film that was not in color with at least five annoying CGI sidekicks in it.

My children did not understand the groundbreaking cinematography on display in this film. They did not know about German expressionist cinema. They would not understand the symbolism and nuance of the story. I barely understood it myself, but I was eager to teach them, because often the best way to master a topic is to teach someone else about it.

My transformation was nothing short of miraculous. I no longer felt the grim spectre of death grip my heart. I felt light, I had hope. My knees didn't hurt for the first time in months. I was about to begin a journey I never thought I would get to take with my children. I was about to introduce them to a titan of film history that casts a long shadow on the decades of film that came after.

I popped some popcorn. I got everyone settled in, blanket and bucket at hand. It was going to be perfect. I pressed play and eagerly watched my children's faces to gage their reactions.

It was wrong. Right away it was wrong, and once again I felt the burden of my mortal coil. The truth was clearly written on their faces as if God's own sharpie had scrawled it there. They did not want to watch Metropolis.

They just wanted to watch Star Wars. They thought C-3PO was a lady.