CT What is wrong with Hayden as Anakin in the end scene of Return of the Jedi

I initially was aganist the change of adding Hayden to that scene. However over time, I have come to appreciate how it somewhat helps tie the prequels to the original trilogy. It no longer bothers me like it did before.

 

I dislike it (and HC's Anakin) that much that even seeing this thread in the OT area and the "Hayden in the ST" thread in the ST area actually annoys me haha

 

Maybe so, but it worked with Shaw's footage. For me and many others, it didn't work at all with HC.

 

Huh? Shaw showed perfect emotion for that moment and many agree, you can't even compare to the very odd cardboard look Hayden gave, for the life of me I just dont understand why Lucas didn't explain to him he was shooting a scene like that.

 

Because Hayden wasn't told anything other than to turn left and then back to the camera and smile. That's it. The instructions were pretty much the same with Shaw.

 

I honestly don't see depth of emotion or what have you in Shaw's visage as a force ghost. He and Hayden both look like they were just 'there' doing whatever in that moment.

 

For one, who says Luke didn't look up info on his father in the events between ESB and ROTJ? I'm sure there's some info and pics of Anakin around for the public to look up.
And second, why couldn't Luke just sense it was his father? Vader could sense specifically Kennobi on the Death Star in ANH.

 

I always preferred the partial explanation which suggests that seeing and communing with "old friends, long gone" through the Force was down to the level of ability in the living person rather than the person who had died.

 

I don't recall ever hearing about that and so it explains why Lucas did it again with HC as he did it before already.

Except they aren't as Anakin is impossibly old. He's supposed to be the veteran Obi-Wan's young pupil. Before he was merged with Vader Anakin Skywalker was slightly younger than Obi-Wan. SS is not middle-aged but an old man. So it really doesn't work but in the context of the filming it wouldn't make sense to cast someone else to be Anakin and the decision to have any ghosts or Anakin's at all probably went through various iterations. In the context of the entire saga a SS ghost makes no sense at all.

There is nothing "sinister" about it at all to my mind. So where that comes from I don't know.

Yet it bears direct relation to Luke's own face. As has been gone over many times on this thread it seems alright that this original image bears little relation to the revealed Vader face for some reason but it's alright.

Besides Luke isn't going by visuals anyway but by feeling his father's presence in the Force as he did the entire movie not by visual sighting.

 

He isn't slightly younger, he's around 15 years younger than Obi-Wan (TPM Anakin is 9 or 10, and Obi-Wan at least 25) and would have been in his mid-forties or so at the time of his death, with Obi-Wan representing a man around the age of 59/60.

Sebastian Shaw's ghost then is a believable representation of a person at that age in my opinion, and a more palatable image than using Hayden, which made even less sense.

 

It comes from this, which makes one feel like a youngling about to get hacked down by him.

 

Bob Effette

If you asked him to look as creepy as he could - This is the face he would pull! Ugh

 

"Wait 'til they get a load of me."

 

In the PT yes. In the original ANH backstory Vader is the young pupil of the veteran Jedi Obi-Wan and Anakin is like Luke is to Biggs.

Obi-Wan was likely supposed to be about 10 years older in ANH initially as AG was 62 at the time of shooting. After the PT instead of being a few years older it's a few years young. Doesn't really make a difference though. Anakin as young Vader now had to be younger than the original Anakin.

An old man who is clearly a senior is believable as someone who would be in their 40's?

How does Anakin looking like Anakin make less sense? Over a decade on from ROTS he still looks like himself. He certainly isn't going to look impossibly old like SS's image.

No sorry don't get that at all. I get it that some people like to project that. Obviously as Hitchcock pointed out he could make a man look happily staring and if he cut to children it's a warm smile and happy man but if he cuts to a scantily clad young woman then he is being lecherous.

In this case Anakin is happily smiling at his children.

 

Lol, he looks more evil than ever in that shot. There are quite a few posters here who seem to agree with me as well. If Anakin is happy there I would hate to see him p**sed off ha ha

 

It makes less sense to use an image of Anakin that, in terms of the timeline, was obviously at least 20 years younger than he would have been at the time of his death, and that is the salient point. In 1983 Sebastian Shaw, born in 1905 was indeed an old man, as he would have been 82. However the image used in that ghost footage does not look like an 82 year old. Not at all. He was portraying a middle aged man, which was the age Darth / Anakin needed to look. To that end, the effect was satisfactory, and it reinforced the idea that this man was the father of Luke (now in his mid twenties?) To show an image of Anakin, also in his mid twenties, as they did with Hayden, does not work as well in relaying to the audience that this is Luke's father, formerly Darth Vader, now redeemed. The audience could recognise that Shaw is the same man as Vader unmasked.

 

"I am Saruman, rather Saruman as he should have been" Gandalf (Paraphrasing here)

Darth Vader becomes the Anakin he should have been in that very moment that he joins Yoda and Obi Wan, and reveals himself to Luke! He looks old, proud, wise, powerful and (most importantly) ...happy! HC looks wrong in every single way

 

Exactly. I don't know why Anakin would choose to show himself as he appeared during probably the worst and darkest times of his life.

 

Yes, from what I've read Obi-Wan was supposed to be around 70 in ANH.
Him being made about ten years younger does cause a few issues.
Why would Tarkin think he would have died by now? Around 60 is not very old.
Why is Owen calling him an "old man"? The actor was around 60 himself so Obi-Wan is not really older than him.

If Shaw's age is a problem then how does the new version fix this problem?
Shaw is still IN the film as redeemed Anakin.
It is like if you have a car that has a flat tire and a broken engine. And you fix the flat tire but ignore the broken engine. Have you really repaired the car? It still won't run.

And on top of you not fixing the problem, you now add a problem in that Anakin's ghost looks far too young to be Anakin when he died and so cause an inconsistency with the other two ghosts.
Both of which look the age when they died, but now Anakin looks much younger and with no explanation.
So instead of having one problem, now you have two. I can't really see how this is better.

I know people argue that a healed Shaw Anakin didn't really exist.
Well a RotS era Hayden that has two arms likewise never existed. When Hayden's Anakin had two arms, that was in AotC.

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So Lucas was lazy and didn't care about the actor giving a good performance in RotJ and now he is equally disinterested in that plus he is being cheap.
And on top of that, he didn't even bother to tell Hayden this, he had to find out through the press.
Shaw at least knew he would be IN the film.

To me this is lazy and cheap, a little disrespectful and indicates that Lucas doesn't care about performance.
Telling the actors and allowing them to do their job, that was not a priority. Doing it quick and cheap, that was.

Also, in RotJ, I would think that sir Alec was told as he looks to his side towards Anakin.
And then down towards Yoda. So this bit is shot like Anakin would appear.
So it possible that they didn't have Shaw available when they shot that and had to shot his bit later.
Or Shaw had left the project when they decided to do this and they couldn't get him back.
I know there was considerable cost overruns on RotJ and it had to gross over a 100 M to be a hit.
So maybe money was the issue here.

But Lucas had Anakin when making RotS and it would not cost much nor take a lot of time to simply tell him what he had in mind. Thus giving Hayden a chance to do his job.
The only explanation that makes sense, besides being cheap, is that Lucas worried that Hayden might say no. Lucas had hired him to play in RotS, not RotJ. So Hayden could have said no or asked for more money.So to avoid that, film him doing something else and cut and paste into the film.

Either way, the way Lucas did this does not speak of a man very concerned with quality or one who wants everything to be perfect.
To me it instead suggest that good enough is sufficient.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

I don't get that pre youngling hacking vibe either. It looks to me like he was in mid smile and they just snapped the photo which makes it seem sloppy and rushed.

In the films he definitely wasn't walking into the Jedi Temple looking lecherous or creepy. He was clearly distraught enough to have shed tears.

Something I just noticed that does bother me about the image is that he's wearing the wrong robes. If George was going to use Hayden's image at least use the darker robes Anakin wore.

 

Well this is my point right there. I've rarely seen it done with a straight face. It's more of a humorous slant as opposed to being serious.

As opposed to 30 years older? So on the one hand an Anakin that actually existed (the boy who Obi-Wan trained who was "consumed" by Darth Vader) as opposed to one that is 30 years older and who never existed and never could exist?

Well 77 at the time of shooting ROTJ but whatever. The point is he is a senior older man.

We'll simply have to disagree on that then. If you think SS looks 45 then you do. To me at best he's seems around 60-ish at best give or take. Either way he's pretty contemporary with and distinctly not the young Jedi who was a pupil of Obi-Wan's.

Obi-Wan and Yoda's images are from when they "died" and so is Anakin's. Not Anakin's spirit that was in the tomb of Vader's body. The body that Vader had was in effect Anakin's dead body. Once he became Anakin again then that spirit couldn't exist for long in a dead body and had to leave.

The effect was satisfactory at the time of ROTJ but only that. To show an image of Anakin in his 20's works very well in relaying that this is Luke's father on various levels not the least of which is that there are two entire movies with that Anakin facing an inverse journey to Luke's where he fails and falls to Sidious' temptations because of his own inner faults that Luke is able to overcome.

The point is that Anakin really is not anymore the same man as the Vader unmasked. That is Anakin's renewed spirit in the wreck of Vader's body. Just as Vader consumed Anakin's body and soul the good that was left in Vader from Anakin is like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. The further point is as made many times on this thread by myself and others is that clearly even the SS image of Anakin in ROTJ is not the same man as Vader unmasked.

Either way the Anakin be it SS or HC is a human being not some scarred, battered husk of a human in Vader's armor. That is gone. That was left behind and burned by Luke. The spirit of Anakin emerged. The Anakin that existed before his consumption by Vader.

By that standard then I don't see how HC isn't the preferred version. SS is completely out because he can't be the above Anakin because Anakin couldn't ever be that old. The preference then would have to be HC but made to look 40-ish instead of 22. The difference between the two images would be like HC of ROTS compared to not too far of what he looks like now which is older but recognizably the same person.

We can go on and on around this (and we have) but in pure movie presentation terms we know who Anakin Skywalker is and that is simply HC as Anakin who was the young Jedi who was Obi-Wan's pupil not the as old if not older SS image.

This is in the movies, TCW, Rebels and every book, comic etc etc and very likely in TLJ or IX in the future.

 

Having a senior moment with my maths I think.

What you are ignoring is that this isn't about Sebastian Shaw's actual age, nor for that matter Hayden Christensen's, but the age of the character that they are attempting to portray. Shaw was portraying a man who died in middle age at least, because he was playing the father of Luke Skywalker, a character in his mid twenties. It makes more sense therefore to use the senior actor to portray him as the Force Ghost relative to Luke, especially as that actor had only moments before appeared as Vader unmasked.

It isn't about whether he "looks 45" but whether he can successfully convey to the audience the intent that this was Vader who had become Anakin again, and the father of mid-twenties year old twins. Hayden certainly doesn't "look 45" either, so artistically, I think Shaw was the more logical of the two actors to appear.

But that is a woolly and roundabout concept compared to the very simply done original shot which used the same man for the unmasking, and the subsequent redeemed Force Ghost. Especially confusing if you recommended to somebody to watch the classic trilogy prior to the prequels, as they were filmed. It doesn't make as much sense to have an apparition of a father the same age as the children.

Why did it have to be the Anakin from before his turn though, when he had obviously returned prior to his death?

 

HC will never make sense...

The OT came first so the Anakin we got as unmasked Vader/ghost Anakin was the one the PT should have lined a younger cast Anakin up with! If Luke & Leia are meant to be 23 at the end of Jedi and Vader was about 60ish then he should have been around 37 at the time he had them. The PT needed to adhere to whatever was already set... But just like half the continuity - It was just thrown out! Hence us being here years later still arguing about it