CT That Old Man Anakin

There is simply no way you can apply "logic" to ghosts in the SW films (or anywhere else for that matter) because it opens up a can of worms.

For example, why is it that Obi-wan had to "sit" on the log when talking to Luke in ROTJ? How do ghosts "sit" if they have no corporeal form? You got the impression that ghost Obi-wan was sitting so he could rest, but why would he need to rest if he was a ghost? However, discussing this is counter-productive - there's no answer, and it's really irrelevant to the story anyway.

The bottom line is that, for those of use (like me) who grew up with the OOT back in the day, old man Anakin/Sebastian Shaw was the force-ghost at the end of ROTJ, and the scene worked extremely well for years - if not from a "logical" standpoint (i.e., Anakin was whole, with hair, non-robotic & unmarred body, etc. as a ghost) then definitely from an emotional standpoint, i.e. when Anakin became a ghost he was made "whole" again in spirit form.

In 2004, Lucas decided to significantly alter this scene for whatever reason, and IMHO it was definitely as unecessary & ridiculous of a change as Greedo s. first in ANH.

 

No, it means that because Mortis was one giant conduit for the Force, he could be seen as if he were standing there. Away from Mortis, he could not be. When Lucas was planning out the scene in ROTS, in which Qui-gon speaks to Yoda, Lucas initially considered having Qui-gon appear in a reflection in a mirror. But Lucas didn't like that, so he dropped it. Then he was just going to have Yoda talking to Qui-gon like he had Luke and Yoda do in TESB. But he found that wasn't going to work either so he dropped the scene all together. The novelization and comic adaptation, both use the version with Yoda talking to thin air. Later books where Obi-wan talks to Qui-gon have him talking the same way.

And this changes what exactly?

Which has to do with what? Lucas couldn't predict in 2005 that he was going to sell his company to Disney, in 2012 and that they would want to make more films. The two don't even compare.

The corporeal form is when we see them walking, talking and sitting. That's what Lucas talks about when describing Obi-wan and Yoda in comparison to Qui-gon. The latter cannot be seen and cannot interact other than speaking.

I grew up with that version of the OT for years, as well. I started when I was about four in 1982 and had seen all of the films long before the SE's came out. But having a younger version doesn't change that for me and it doesn't for other people as well. The scene is still the same regardless of it being an old man, or a younger version of himself. The end result is still the same.

 

Hayden>Shaw

 

Do you mean "Ben and Yoda"?

 

The whole conversation on Qui-Gon was very interesting, that's pretty cool stuff from George. Thanks guys!

 

For me Shaw is Anakin, not because that was how I 1st saw it, but because it doesn't make sense that Anakin would become 25 years younger and Yoda and Ben remain old. Shaw as Anakin also has a more fatherly look when he looks at Luke and is the face Luke saw under the mask. Hayden as Anakin looks like a child molester when he looks at Luke. It's also weird to see Luke looking at his dad, who appears younger than Luke does.

 

No, I mean Luke and Yoda talking to Obi-wan as if they were talking to thin air.

Because the dark side made Anakin age just like it has with Palpatine, whereas Yoda and Obi-wan aged normally. Anakin was forty six, but looked seventy seven. Obi-wan was fifty eight and in real life, Guinness was sixty two during the making of ANH. So the point is that Anakin is reversed in age because it is his soul that we are seeing, not the physical effects of the dark side.

 

They why didn't we see Ben and Yoda's souls? Since their's remained pure surely they should appear younger.

and the ghosts aren't souls anyway

and if you need to contrive an answer as to why he appears younger and the others don't, it doesn't make sense. Shaw made sense. Hayden doesn't - unless they made him look older.

That's the point. Young Hayden doesn't make sense.

 

Obi-wan and Yoda never tread the path of darkness. When they died, they used the Force to shift their bodies into the Netherrealm of the Force and thus could be physically seen by Luke. That's why their bodies disappeared. But because Anakin had turned evil when he did, he began using the dark side and it had a corrupting effect on his physical body. When he died and the Jedi Masters helped him to retain his identity, the corruption of the dark side was gone and what was left was his true self, which had not been ravaged by the dark side, but his physical self on the mortal plane had been. The soul stopped aging, but the body didn't because it was the dark side tainting his body.

Palpatine was conceived as an old man, who had lived a long time and had used the dark side for so long, that it was corrupting his physical features. Palpatine wouldn't look like he did, if he had turned away from the darkness and became good again, before he died.

 

Why would turning to the Dark Side stop your soul from aging? I can understand that it could twist and poison the soul, or even destroy it. But keep it young? Anakin's body, like Dooku's and Palpatine's grew older because they, like all other living things, age. Obi-Wan lived, grew old and was killed and his ghost looked like and talked like Obi-Wan just before he died. Same thing with Yoda, except he never says anything as a ghost so we don't know if he sounds like when he was alive. The logic is very simple, the ghost is a contiuation of the person in death as he/she was in life. Ghost Obi-Wan knows all he knew when he was alive, he sounds, talks and looks exactly like when he was last alive.
This logic is now gone, Anakin not only had different clothes, looks different but is also much younger than he was when he died.
As for Anakin, I would imagine that the worst effects on his body was the loss of all his limbs and being badly burned and keep in an iron lung for 20 years. Dark side or not, I would think anyone's body would not look very nice after that. If a Jedi had suffered something similar and been horribly wounded. They did not turn and stayed good and died twenty years later. Would their ghost show all the wounds they suffered?

Take Dooku, he turned around TPM, in AotC he doesn't look all the worse for wear. He looks old but if Dooku is supposed to be as old as Mr Lee, then him looking old is hardly suprising or much evidence of dark side corruption.
Let's assume he turns back and then dies a hero's death. What would his ghost look like, AotC Dooku or TPM Dooku?
Or say he turns back but doesn't die and lives on for another twenty years. How old would his ghost look like?

I am sorry but I find this logic somewhat baffling. A twenty year old Jedi turns to the Dark side, stays there for 20 years, turns back, lives for another 20 years and then dies. Would his/her ghost look 20, 40 or 60?

The logic that used to exist was this, a Force ghost looks the age of the person when he/she died, minus any wounds the person had.
As it is now, Hayden looks to have both arms, and in RotS, when he turned, he had lost one already. So does his ghost have one arms or two?
If two, then it isn't a representation of RotS Anakin, but rather AotC Anakin, but then the hair style don't match

To me, Shaw works better AS IT IS NOW. To me he represent the full character arc of Anakin Skywalker, the good man who turned bad, went to hell but crawled back up again and redeemed himself. Hayden was the angry, fearful and confused young man he was, the one who made all the wrong choices. Shaw made many wrong choices too but at the end, he makes the right one. Hayden had not learned to let go, Shaw did learn that. Shaw died at peace with himself, Hayden was never at peace with himself.

If you are going to use Hayden, put him in the unmasking scene and then in the ghost scene, with suitable old age makeup and allow him to actually act. This just seems lazy.
Also, in the RotJ script, Anakin's ghost is called "Elderly" so when RotJ was made, Lucas did not intend for the ghost to look young and this means he didn't have this "The dark side freezes your soul" thing going.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Yeah, that's my point. His true self wasn't 23 years old. No way Anakin's ghost should look 23.

Darkside aging you is EU. I don't remember seeing that anywhere in the OT. This thread is in the OT forum is it not?

Once again, if you have to make things up to try and explain it it doesn't make sense. Older Anakin, whether Shaw or an aged Hayden, makes sense.

 

Do OT novelizations count?

The RoTJ novelization refers to Palpatine as "shrivelled with age and evil" - with the implication that both age, and "evil" can shrivel a body.

 

It was more or less the intent behind Palpatine's appearance in ROTJ ( I think this is addressed in Rinzler's book ) though perhaps the same cannot be said for unmasked Anakin.

That is interesting, because it's pretty much the same thing Ian said in his Insider interview from the prequel era.

 

I think just by appearance alone in ROTJ you can make the case that it's more than just age. He has a very unnatural appearance. That's artistic choice is as much a part of the story as anything else.

 

Indeed. That does not look like the face of a 46 year old man. Though 20+ years without sunlight could be what does that (referring to Anakin, in this case).

 

Yep, even if you've never seen another Star Wars anything, you would know what Palpatine is about just by looking at him. He's the evil old wizard, who's dark magic has consumed him.

 

Wasn't there an early idea that Palpatine is supposed to be REALLY old. Like many centuries? That he has used his evil power to keep him alive all these years. I haven't read Rinzler's RotJ book but I think that some people mentioned it.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

For the most part, novelisations do 'count', as they tend to be based on shooting scripts and supporting material supplied by the man himself - e.g. Darth Bane in TPM, or Owen as Obi-Wan's brother in the ROTJ novelisation. You have to take a certain amount of creative license into account, though.
Just what GL came up with and what the author did is a matter for debate - here's the place to do it for the OT, but the Saga forum is the best place to discuss weird discrepancies as the development of SW progressed.

 

Tippett: "Our intention was to create through makeup an age-wrinkled face with a large split cranium that was beginning to grow apart. We felt the Emperor should be ancient, not old, so the quality of the wrinkle was important." - Rinzler, p160

 

Yes, that was it, thank you.
So, with this in mind, it doesn't seem like Palpatine in RotJ is an example of the Dark Side causing extreme old age very rapidly.
Rather, Palpatine was very old and he has achieved that old age through the evil power of the dark side.
Dooku did not look like he had aged beyond what would be normal.
RotJ Anakin looked messed up but a large part of that would be burns and lack of sunlight for 20 years.
And Palpatine was initially thought to have been very old.

So it doesn't look like there is much that suggest that turning to the dark side will age you much quicker.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

Honestly, I think that Hayden's replacing of Sebastian as a Force ghost is another example of why too much CGI isn't necessarily a good thing. In my opinion, if you were to compare and contrast the images past to present Hayden seems to be out of place--like most CGI--or something to that effect as I can't quite put my finger on it; just feels like something is missing from the image with Hayden. 'Tis likely I'm just more familiar with Sebastian as Anakin and so I've developed a slight bias, I guess. In addition, Hayden's expression in association with the slight bow of his head in the prequel trilogy usually were synonymous with his character falling ever closer to the dark side. On the plus side though, Hayden's appearance in Return of the Jedi does tie the two trilogies together. So there is that.


Dunno. I guess the thing that I would have liked to have seen would have been the original Force ghosts (Sebastian & Alec) with perhaps the Force ghosts of Hayden & Ewan superimposed over them, only slightly more translucent, so as to represent both trilogies all at once.

 

Looking at them side by side (or top to bottom I suppose it should be) the Sebastian Shaw one looks more in place than Hayden does.

 

There are three different shots of Hayden as Anakin's ghost during the celebration... in two of them, he looks Ok, relaxed, proud... in one he looks a bit creepy... why do people always choose that shot to compare him with the original ghost???

 

It's not just the wounds, it is about the physical toll of the dark side which ages and twists one's physical self. That's why Palpatine's forehead looks like it does. He's been using it for far longer than any of the Sith Apprentices in the films. It's mutating him.

Dooku would look like he did in TPM era.

At the point in which he or she died, they would look like they had when they died.

The physical wounds are gone, just like it is with Shaw and the dark side damage is gone. This is who he was when he died, because it is his inner self restored. Without the bionics. It would be the same way with Obi-wan. In fact, it is, because he's not split in two from Vader's lightsaber.

That's because Lucas wasn't going to show Anakin in ROTJ. Early in the writing process in 1980, when Lucas was breaking down the story beats, he intended for Anakin to be reappear from the Netherrealm of the Force, intact and whole and alive. Just like Yoda and Obi-wan. This was then dropped afterwards for the longest time, until Howard Kazanjian talked him into doing it. It was a late change and the only reason he looked old, was because Lucas decided to have Shaw film that scene late in the post production phase. Shaw didn't even realize he was going to be the Force ghost version of Anakin, as he was only hired for the unmasking scene. He thought it was something for the publicity photos. With Hayden playing Anakin in the PT, Lucas went and had him film that during the screen tests for the costumes in ROTS. Like Shaw, he had no idea that this was what he was doing until he was given a copy of the 04 boxset and told he was in it.

As to retaining Shaw, Lucas still wanted the old man in the suit representing the corruption of the dark side. He just changed the eyes and eyebrows to match up to Hayden's look in ROTS.

It was as he was before he became evil.

 

oierem

Ah, I know of the picture you speak. This one, right?



Sorry 'bout that as it was my first choice, but I didn't copy it correctly beforehand, and so I pasted the other photo instead--also, it seemed to work better with my "argument" .

Just the same though, I still feel that Hayden feels misplaced in that particular scene. Looking at the photo now even, something just seems off. Perhaps it's the grittier look to Obi-Wan and Yoda's garb? I'm really not sure, but it just feels too much like Hayden's likeness was copied/pasted from the prequel trilogy into Return of the Jedi. To tell you the truth, the Sebastian Shaw scene always carried more weight with it--it did for me at least; though I can't speak for everyone. The OT introduced us to Sebastian as the man behind the mask near the climax of Return of the Jedi. Fast-forward a little ways, and in the final seconds of the movie he/Obi-Wan/Yoda being at peace really brought the experience full-circle. Some moments are better left unchanged, in my opinion.