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

Agreed. And my point was that Obi Wan's advanced age appearance falls right in line with SS. Visually both look consistent with each other. If SS "looked too old" then so did AG by that rationale (both were fine IMO).
But darth-sinister's post is kind of ignoring what this particular discussion is about. It wasn't about criticizing GL as much as it is debunking FAN claims that SS couldn't work based on out-of-universe reasoning. No one had a problem with SS's age because no one really knew how old he was IRL as the magic of movie making was able to hide it. SS's ghost looked like a slightly younger pupil of the white-haired Alec Guinness. Movies did/do that all the time. 20 year olds playing high school kids, etc.

But now we live in the digital, wikipedia / IMDB world where fans start looking up actors height, weight and ages and immediately try to dismiss someone as able to play a role because of it. It's just silly. Fans were doing that with The Dark Knight Rises, flipping out over Tom Hardy being too short to play Bane and suggesting that he should be played by The Rock . As if Christopher Nolan was never going to be able to find a way to make Hardy look taller.

 

oh I do agree with what you say about the actual concept of whether SS is okay or not, he certainly is and I don't have a problem with the age thing either, you explain it well in your post too, my response was just to say that one shouldn't get mad at people who have a problem with it by claiming that they are ridiculing GL unfairly....if there is any doubt on what the age should be of characters even in universe, GL created it himself by changing things constantly thus causing his own problems.....

 

Absolutely. It was consistenly inconsistent.

 

All true. What's notable though, as I've said before is that by the time of RotJ Lucas had these facts at hand. Anakin & Vader were the same person. Due to various dialogue it was clear that Vader/Anakin was quite a bit younger than Obi-Wan, who clearly appeared to be in his late 50's or 60's. So, armed with this information Lucas still made the decision to select SS for the role. He could've chosen an actor at any age that he liked. Therefore we must accept that SS, as a fuzzy ghost image is what Lucas chose Anakn to look like at the age that he died. If he'd been healed of his wounds. There's no point questioning the age of the actor. There are countless examples of actors portraying characters who are older or younger than themselves.

 

Spot on, Lucas wanted an older Anakin.
In an early version of the script, both Obi-Wand Anakin come back in the flesh and there Anakin is described as "Elderly".
Also, other bits and pieces in the films speak to an older Anakin.
Owen and Beru in ANH. Either Owen is Anakin's brother or Beru is his sister.
Both are older people. The actor playing Owen was 60 I believe.

You have Obi-Wan say that both he and Luke father were Jedi Knights but Vader was just a pupil.
Of course then Vader was still separate from Luke's father.

Also Obi-Wan is implied to be quite old in ANH. At least three people call him that.
And Tarkin was sure that Obi-Wan would have died by now.
If Obi-Wan is not yet 60, why would Tarkin assume that he had died of old age?

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

"Where did you dig up that old fossil!?"

 

The thing with unmasked, scarred Anakin is that Lucas had different ideas about what he should look like. When you look at the different concepts drawings and what Lucas himself said, I don't think it mattered too much if Shaw was too old or not, since his face was going to covered with makeup.



The final version of Shaw as he originally appeared, is one who is ravaged by injury and time. It is the inclusion of Force ghost Anakin that creates the wrinkle since Lucas added him late in production and opted not to recast and may or may not have had ideas about the dark side aging, as a factor. But this then leads to another issue, namely Palpatine.



As we know, Ian was playing a very old and decrepit individual, whose visage is not normal in the slightest. It was unclear how old Palpatine was supposed to be and if he always looked like he does. Around the time AOTC was being made, it seemed like Lucas was going with the idea that the dark side ravaged Palpatine over time. Making him look like the way he was in ROTJ. But then Lucas changed this and we know that it is supposed to be his true face, revealed by the lightning and his dark side usage. This lends credibility to the idea that Lucas was originally intent on being older, but that also the dark side is a factor in aging.

True, but then there was also the fact that Lucas wrote that Vader was young. That lends credence to the idea that Vader has to be younger than Obi-wan, for that part to remain consistent when he merged the two characters into one.

That's a bit of an assumption to think that Tarkin assumed that he had to have died of old age. Not an incorrect assumption, but an assumption. If we're to follow the line of logic that being a Jedi was a death sentence and that not only were the Sith and the Empire hunting for them, but so were bounty hunters, it is reasonable to assume that Obi-wan one of them killed him.

Besides, even fifty seven year old people aren't incapable of dying unexpectedly.

 

Obi-Wan does not describe Vader as just a pupil. What he says is this

"A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil"

What he is saying is simply that.That Vader *was* a pupil *until he turned to evil*

 

One problem with Hayden is that he only makes sense to viewers that have seen the prequels first. If you haven't seen the prequels yet and don't know anything about them then you don't really know who it's supposed to be.

 

It's not a wrinkle. Lucas made the deliberate decision to have Anakin appear as SS in that ghost image. Perhaps he wasn't bothered about the age of Shaw given the ghostly image would be blurred & somewhat unclear. Given that fact Lucas was probably happy enough that he could pass for someone in their late 40's. Let's also recall that Lucas could've used make-up & effects to make Shaw appear even younger if he wanted to (as the ghost). Then years later, when he made the SE's he did all kinds of tweaking & tinkering. In one edition he even removed Shaw's eyebrows digitally. So again, he could've made ghost-Anakin look younger with modern effects if it were an issue for him. The fact that Lucas didn't simply means that SS as he appears in the movie is what Anakin looked like at the age that he died. That was GL's decision, & that's the way it is.

 

There is quite detailed time-line written on Canon part of Wookiepedia. You just need to do some math.

Anakin was 9 in TPM, 19 in AOTC and 23 in ROTS.
Luke on the other hand was 19 in ANH and 23 in ROTJ.

Meaning Anakin/Vader was around 46 when he died. 23 years after he became Vader.

There you have that symbolic where both Luke and Anakin have the same choices at 23, but they choose different paths.

Now, for the thread itself...

There are pros and cons for both versions. It is only a matter of which people prefer.

I won't go into detail what those pros and cons are because I think that pretty much everything is written already.

But I will say one thing that bothered me here. There is no need to offend someone because some people didn't recognize SS force ghost as Anakin immediately.

Honestly, I was one of them. I was a kid and it was confusing to me at first. He didn't look like the guy behind the mask to me at all. And I am not the only one. I saw people talking about that more than once.

 

...So, as I was saying all along, there is absolutely nothing that talks about that in the actual movies, which is what ultimately matters. And it especially matters when one strongly asserts that Shaw was too old and so he needed to be changed. Now we know that, in fact, the narrative flow of the actual movies doesn't preclude the Shaw ghost from making sense.....only Wookiepedia does. As George Lucas once said, "the movies are Gospel, and everything else is Gossip".

 

The issue is that Obi-Wan is making a distinction between himself, Luke's father and Vader.
He and Luke's father had become full Jedi Knights but Vader left before his training was complete.
This was some time ago apparently as Luke has no memory of his father, whom Vader murdered.
But it does imply an age difference between Lukes' father and Vader.
Luke's father had become a Jedi Knight, same as Obi-Wan but Vader had not.

There is an implied timescale when it comes to the clone wars and the empire.
Note, I am just talking about ANH the film, nothing else.
Obi-wan fought in the clone wars and it is implied that Luke's father did the same.
Both as full Jedi Knights.
The empire is something that came after that.
Vader, the pupil of Obi-Wan, turned to the dark side and murdered Luke's father and help the empire to hunt down the other jedi.

@darth-sinister

If we use the 70+ age that Obi-Wan had in ANH, not mentioned yes and later changed.
And say that Vader is close to 60 in that film.
That makes him younger than Obi-Wan by 10+ years.
Then when he dies in RotJ he is 62-63 years old and Shaw could certainly pass as that.

Yes, Lucas had a choice in choosing between the younger Vader age and the older, father Skywalker age when he had to merge the two characters.
And with RotJ, he choose the older age.
But changed his mind when he made the PT.

It is also a bit of an assumption to think that bounty hunters were after the Jedi as nothing of the sort is mentioned in ANH.
Vader and the empire hunted down the Jedi.
Given that Obi-Wan was apparently quite a well know Jedi, if he had been killed by imperial troops then odds are good that word would have reached Tarkin and Vader.
And Jedi are not that easy to kill so if Tarkin assumes that some random people had managed to kill Obi-Wan, then doesn't that also imply that Obi-Wan has been weakened by old age?

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

I'm not arguing otherwise. Yes, he made the deliberate choice to include Shaw because he wasn't going to hire a younger actor to play Force ghost Anakin. Especially if he wasn't intending to make anymore films after ROTJ. And that's even if the idea of a younger ghostly image was even on his mind back then. With the PT and following the SE's, he could now do that.

So the audience is then stupid? The audience isn't capable of putting in the Blu-Rays right afterwards?

So, basically the Clone Wars lasted what, fifteen years and then it was twenty five years to when Luke became a Jedi and then what, so that Vader can be sixty? There's nothing that says TFA is thirty years later, either. For all we know it's been five years or a hundred.

There's nothing in there that suggests that bounty hunters wouldn't be employed by the Empire either.

And yet, he was able to hide by changing his first name.

There was nothing in ANH that said Jedi weren't difficult to kill.

 

Luke looks a lot more than 5 years older, and a lot less than 100 years older. Same with Leia. And Han. The figure of 30 years given in tie-in media, between ROTJ and TFA, is supported fairly well by what we see.

 

But it could be fifty years. Nothing says that it was thirty years on screen. Or that Luke was only eighteen in ANH. According to theMaestro, tie-in media doesn't count. Only what is in the films.

He partied really hard after Endor.

 

And that's wrong because?

 

My niece watched the OT with me recently, her first SW movies she's seen.
She was a little confused when a young man she'd never seen before showed up with Kenobi and Yoda at the end. She thought he might be Anakin, but the confusion took her out of the moment.
I generally like seeing young Anakin in that moment, restored to his more innocent self, but I see now how it doesn't work so well if you haven't seen the prequels (and I firmly believe a new viewer should watch the OT before the PT).

 

TFA was supposed to be 30 years later? Cool. I didn't know that (I'm being serious. I used to read books and watch other media, but I don't anymore).

George Lucas said that too, not just me. But anyway, I didn't mean that it doesn't ever count for anything whatsoever. What I'm saying is that it can't be used as a valid criticism for a film. Others were criticizing the Shaw ghost in ROTJ as not working well because Anakin was "obviously" supposed to be 45 and Shaw was "obviously" not a 45 year old man and so the Shaw ghost "obviously" doesn't work in the movie. And to me, that is a pretty weak argument. If you're going to criticize the film, then criticize the film on its own terms, not all the other supplementary material. The job of ROTJ as a film is to be consistent with itself and with previous Star Wars movies. With regards to the Shaw ghost, ROTJ not only accomplishes this, but it also manages to maintain consistency with the later prequel films! The only area where it doesn't maintain consistency is with sources outside of the movie itself, which most viewers probably aren't even aware of. So the "Shaw ghost is too old" argument against the original version is a very weak one and doesn't really hold up despite its common use as a rallying cry against the Shaw ghost.

 

I still really don't get this argument that the Shaw ghost "doesn't work". You can prefer the Hayden version over Shaw, that is perfectly fine, but where in the films is it stated that Anakin can't look like Shaw?

 

I (probably most/all of us) have had some ridiculous Star Wars conversations and arguments with family/friends/work colleagues/total strangers over the years... But one that NEVER came up was "SS doesn't work as Anakin" ...NEVER!

Everything in the OT was pulled apart and dissected a million times by every fan I knew but never this - It never came up. Yoda was extremely old, Obi Wan was very old and Anakin was old too - He just looked worse because of his injuries. Even when he is revealed as ghost Anakin he still looked younger than Obi Wan. It wasn't until we found out his actual age and the PT came along that it was an issue.

I had Obi Wan at 60 - 65 and Anakin at about 55...which meant he was in his early 30's when he had Luke and Leia Worked for everyone for years without an issue. Also if Obi Wan was about 60 - 65 when he died in ANH and Anakin was 55ish when he died at the end of Jedi that still would put Obi 10 + years older than Anakin = Doesn't mess with any of the continuity. Like I said though - This is before the PT came along...

The following quote was not contradicted at all - (apart from the lie) So he was young when he was Obi Wans pupil. He turned to evil. He helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knight. There could have been considerable gaps between each parts of these sentences! He may have had Luke and Leia to their mother whilst going through his dark side transformation etc

"A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force."

 

Shaw's eyebrows are intact in the 1997 SE, they were removed in the 2004 DVD version. But the question is why?

Because GL changed his mind, that's why. If he wanted them gone in 1983 all he had to do was have Shaw shave his eyebrows... that could have been done at the same time the make-up artist did the rest of his face/head and would have taken no time at all. Most likely he removed them because they are thicker and darker than Hayden's eyebrows.

 

The eyebrows were removed due to ROTS and some of the crew on the film feeling that it wasn't realistic for him to still have his eyebrows (I guess him surviving after losing all his limbs and being set on fire was realistic though).

 

Sure that might be explanation given, but I think the real reason is that Shaw's bushier eyebrows looked nothing like Hayden's.

It's the same thing with Leia saying she remembers her mother, but then Padme dies in childbirth. The problem for GL with Episode III was that he either had to move events that originally occurred later than Ep III but still well before Ep IV into the Ep III timeline, or he had to leave them out of the movie. And I guess leaving Padme alive to start raising her children by herself to face an unknown fate soon after was for some reason not acceptable.

 

Leia never remembered her mother. It was left open.