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

No. He doesn't need to look exactly as he died. This argument shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what I've been saying. See my first paragraph on the matter here:

My position is that the "physical" aspect of any argument (anti-Shaw or anti-Hayden ghost) is an extremely weak one because it discredits both forms of the ghost. It is not an aspect of my argument. What I'm actually saying is that the ghost should be the "same person" as the guy Luke unmasks. And "same person" doesn't mean "exactly the same with all scars and limbs missing"....no. "Same person" means that the ghost should embody what this older version of Anakin represented: a more mature individual who has learned from his mistakes to become a truly good person in the end. That doesn't mean that he needs to literally be the exact same deformed version of that person. But what better way to have this ghost embody all that then to be played by the actor that Luke saw under the mask?

The "handsome" thing I said was one throwaway question. Did you not see that sentences after that? The ones where I talked about Anakin's character and what his young form represents? Look, I'll show it you (you even quoted it):

I've explained this repeatedly, but I guess it's much easier to latch onto one little buzzword rather than engage in real discussion and address the actual arguments being made.

The young Luke vs. Anakin comparison is interesting. One the one hand, Luke is a young man who does represent a non-corrupted good character. The same cannot be said about young Anakin. While there were obviously good qualities to young Anakin, he gradually became closer and closer to the dark side, starting with his slaughter of the Tuskens (including the women and children). ROTS Anakin especially was at the peak of his confusion and visually represents a desperate man about to give in to the temptations of the dark side. Therefore, while the older version does still need to dig deep to "remember" Anakin, his change is not simply one of looking in the rear-view mirror. Forward progression is absolutely essential for real character growth to occur. If he is simply stuck looking in the past, then he hasn't learned anything. The real lesson he should be taking away is that it's okay to care about the ones you love; just don't turn that into greedily possessive "love" that leads you astray. Visually showing the young ghost doesn't convey that nearly as well as showing an older ghost does.

Hayden may be the face of Anakin. Just like Ewan McGregor is the face of Obi-Wan (way more screentime than Guinness). And CG Yoda was on screen way more than puppet Yoda. Yet.....the latter two don't take on their earlier forms that more people may associate them with. You see, having visual tie-ins to other movies is great, but not if it comes at the expense of the story. And that's exactly what the young Anakin ghost feels like: a visual tie-in, but one that doesn't necessarily make much thematic sense, and feels out of place given how the ghosts next to him look.

 

He has learned something. The Anakin from the prequels came back, realized his error, and corrected it. But he didn't insta-age into an old man. That doesn't make any sense. The only part of him that aged that way is his physical body. But that has nothing to do with his soul, which was hibernating somewhere within Darth Vader just as Han Solo was hibernating within the carbonite (Lucas has pointed out this was an intentional parallel).

The pre-fall Anakin and Luke are equivalent characters. Both of them have faced temptations and have given in to them. Both of them have struggled with calls to the dark side. Anakin's transgressions were more extreme, but until he pledged himself to Sidious in Episode III, he wasn't lost. That's the Anakin we want to get back and that we want to save. We want to see that Anakin finally making the correct choice, and at long last finding peace and leaving pain behind.

Alec Guinness and puppet Yoda are clearly older version of the characters from the early chapters of the story. They come across as those characters. But Sebastian Shaw doesn't feel like Anakin at all. Watching the episodes in order, his appearance is jarring. When obscured under heavy makeup, the bridge between



and



is manageable. But sans makeup Sebastian Shaw just doesn't cut it.

And note that Lucas could have easily digitally aged Christensen, and this was even suggested to him. But he specifically chose not to for the reasons he stated. So the rationale for the Anakin ghost being youthful has nothing to do with Lucas simply wanting to put Christensen in there for familiarity. That's a separate issue.

e: And the ghost only looks out of place to you, because you're used to it being another way. To someone who grew up with the prequels and strongly identifies Christensen with Anakin, the Christensen ghost will be far less perplexing than the Shaw ghost. Obviously Anakin isn't going to come back looking like Uncle Fester, so him returning as we saw him last before he became Vader makes as much sense as anything else.

 

Star Wars is about visuals. What we see on screen makes us feel certain ways and various things have meaning beyond just what we see. So sure, the young Anakin ghost can be explained as having "corrected" his error. But what does his presence visually represent? When we see that Anakin, who is the character we are remembering? I'm remembering a character who has already begun his descent into darkness. I'm remembering a character who has already done terrible things. I'm remembering someone who has already given in to some of the temptations of the dark side. Which leads us to the Anakin vs. Luke comparison...

Right there within the bolded is the contradiction. If they are equivalent characters, then how is it possible that Anakin's transgressions were more extreme? The fact of the matter is that they are not equivalent characters. We are defined by our choices. And when Luke is faced with the ultimate choice, he decides to spare Vader and therefore defies the temptations of the dark side. When Anakin is faced with these choices, he makes the wrong ones over and over and over again. They are not equivalent characters, nor are they even meant to be equivalent characters. They are meant to be inversions of one another. The prequels show how one makes all the wrong choices to ultimately fall to the dark side, while the originals show that another character makes the correct choices where they count to bring his father back in the end.

So while Anakin, until he pledges himself to Sidious, isn't "lost", he certainly isn't a character whose return we should be cheering for. We should instead be hoping that he has learned what his flaws were, and where he went wrong so that he can grow to become a better person. And that brings us back to the ghost discussion and what each ghosts represents. The young ghost is a visual representation of the flawed individual who has already done terrible things, while the older ghost is a visual representation of the more psychologically mature individual whom Luke has saved. From a storytelling perspective, I know which one I find superior.

For a viewer, the "hibernating soul" explanation is anything but intuitive. Why would the soul hibernate? Why does the soul not age? The movie goes out of its way to tell us that "Anakin" is not dead, he has simply been "forgotten" by the Vader persona; so the "Anakin" soul being frozen does not make sense given that "Anakin" is still very much apart of Vader, just suppressed. And you say he didn't "insta-age", but it's obviously been many many years since the prequels. The movies don't tell us how many years, so no advancements in appearance really seem out of place.

Well you forgot to include another bridge. That bridge being the one from this:

Spoiler

to this:

Spoiler

The bridge between the guy who is unmasked to the older ghost we see clearly works and has worked for many years. And the bridge between young scarred Anakin face to old scarred Anakin face also works. So there's really no problem whatsoever.

Fun fact: I was a kid as the prequels were coming out. And it was still jarring to see a young ghost standing beside two older ghosts.

 

I don't know when this thread got revived (I think it faded away a while ago) and I think that the heroes on both sides have gone over everything but offhand I don't recall this exact variation but the point in pure visual movie storytelling terms is I think a point that could be said Lucas is making.

In ROTS Anakin can decide to be the Chosen One and destroy the Sith (Sidious alone at that point). He chooses not to and then becomes Darth Vader. So from that standpoint the last time we actually see the Jedi Anakin is when he chooses to aid Sidious against Mace. The next time Anakin is a Jedi is when he does chose to destroy the Sith and pitches Sidious down the reactor. The Jedi Anakin is revived and all that was him as Vader is left behind with that body. The distinction as I noted before is that his spirit is revived and once that happens then it can't survive in the decayed physical form.

The space operatic point is that Anakin died and Vader is a walking tomb of himself and what he used to be kept alive by hatred and machinery. Once the hatred was gone then he had to leave the physical plain and rejoin the Force.

The spirit of Anakin is now free from the Dark side and we see him as he was supposed to be. That is poetic and makes complete sense in the visual driven storytelling of Lucas' Star Wars.

Of all the ways to tell the story the SS version simply doesn't fit in any credible visual way. SS simply isn't Anakin. The best argument is that maybe HC should have been made to look older.

That's the underlying problem for all of the arguments against HC. Throw everything else out and it comes down to this. Does it make more sense for Anakin's ghost to look like Anakin as seen in AOTC and ROTS or for him to look like someone who we've never seen at all in any of the movies?

 

Except Anakin doesn't die, so his soul/spirit would always be with him and represent his actual age, despite the fact that his physical body is injured.

We've never seen the person the young ghost is either since the long-haired Anakin should be missing an arm. So the real question is: does it make more sense for Anakin's ghost to represent a character regression back to a darker & more troubled individual, or for him to represent a wiser and more mature father figure to Luke?

 

In my opinion it should have been David Prowse as the force ghost at the end of Jedi.
And, of course, David's face when Luke helps him take off the mask.
Hayden appearing as Anakin in this instance doesn't respect the span of time that has elapsed and it feels out of place since ROTJ is the conclusion of the Original Trilogy. It also feels very disjointed as we just saw Anakin as an old man when the mask was off. So to appear as Hayden just doesn't seem chronological.

 

David Prowse was not an experienced dramatic actor, and I doubt he'd have played the role of dying Anakin/Vader as well as Shaw did. The original version worked beautifully in '83 and no one had any criticisms or confusion with Shaw's role, so if those scenes weren't broken, don't fix them.

 

Because there was nothing to compare them against at the time. That SS's image was at least as old or older than AG didn't really matter at that point (nor that AG ghost was older as well) nevermind that Vader was Obi-Wan's young pupil while Anakin was Luke to Obi-Wan's Biggs.

Once the prequels did come about then it was "broke" and needed to be fixed. There is no way around it. SS's image simply is not Anakin who is decades younger. There simply was no reason to not use the actual Anakin in ROTJ and the actual Sidious in TESB.

The argument for is basically, "Well it doesn't fit the saga anymore but that's the way it was so why change it?" Not exactly a compelling argument.

Yet that Anakin that we saw was only Anakin in spirit. Not in body. That body was left behind was Vader's and that was burned. Only his spirit (the good left in Vader) went into the Force. So again perfectly consistent to the story. The SS image is actually inconsistent to the story. Obi-Wan and Yoda took their bodies into the Force and looked as they did then. Anakin didn't take his Vader body into the Force and obviously he looked nothing like that Vader body afterwards anyway. So once again it goes to the previous point made about how he looks.

Anyway it's played the SS image simply doesn't work.

 

For as many flaws the prequels had, they didn't actually have anything in them to necessitate changing the ghost. If anything, it's more broken now than it ever has been. Whatever defense Lucas has for it is not intuitive nor is it based on anything actually conveyed in the movies. Most of the defense is based on things Lucas has said, or time gaps he has established that are never conveyed in the actual films. And even the defense itself (that the soul is frozen or hibernating) is based on the erroneous conclusion that Anakin "died" even though ROTJ makes a point of telling us that Anakin was very much alive, just forgotten. And the "he never looked that way" argument works against the young ghost just as much as it does the older ghost.

So if we put in-universe logic aside, it's really about which one works better from a visual & storytelling perspective. Given how troubled and morally ambiguous young Anakin's actions were, his image as the ghost negatively impacts the story in that version of the movie. And it's not nearly as effective as showing the older ghost.

 

I was a kid too. And it was jarring to me to see the Sebastian Shaw ghost who is clearly not an older Anakin from the prequels. So what now?

He "died' in the same way Han Solo died when he went into the carbonite. It was a metaphorical, spiritual death and resurrection. Han Solo "died" and he was also frozen/hibernating. You're just playing word games now.

This doesn't make any sense because that's not what young Anakin represents to anyone except you. 23-year-old Anakin isn't any more or less a symbol of darkness than 23-year-old Luke is. Darth Vader is the symbol of darness, not Anakin. Anakin is fundamentally a good person.

 

Here you are again using the age of the actor as the age of the character.
Shaw as the Anakin ghost can pass for ten years or so younger than Obi-Wan.

And, as has been pointed out to you before, "Too old Shaw" is still IN the movie, as the face of Anakin Skywalker.
So if he doesn't work, he should be removed from both scenes.
And if you say "Well the years in the suit and use of the dark side has aged him."
Great, the ghost can reflect that. His wounds are healed but the not the wear and tear the years inside the suit and using the dark side left on him.
That way the ghost shows the years spent as Vader but not the horrible wounds.
He is healed to show that he has been forgiven but his "old age" is still there to show that what he did is not forgotten.

As for how much younger Anakin is supposed to be.
In ANH, Anakin was said to have been a Jedi Knight same as Obi-Wan. While Vader was just a young pupil.
Also Owen and Beru, who knew Anakin and Luke called them uncle and aunt so either Anakin was Owen's brother or Beru's brother. Both of them are fairly old.
All implying an Anakin that is of an age with Obi-Wan.

No it wasn't broke and had Lucas never changed it, few if any would have raised any issue over it.
And as I said, Shaw is still IN the film so Lucas only "fixed" it partly.
And thus made it even more broken.
Now the young ghost is not consistent with the older Anakin we see not long before, the young ghost also breaks established logic of ghost looking the age when they die.
And if you think Shaw is too old, then you have two different Anakins, one who is too old and one who is too young. Hardly an improvement.

And Shaw IS the actual Anakin as he still plays him in the unmasking scene.
And to me, he is a "better" Anakin than the one we see in AotC and RotS.
His Anakin has finally been able to let go of his hate, anger and fear. He is no longer clinging to life, he no longer fears death. He has been enlightened.
The older Anakin did what the younger one never could, not killing Sidious, but learning to simply be.
Be at peace, accepting death as a natural part of life.
All the things his younger self could not, the one who was afraid, clung to things because he didn't want to loose them. The one who never wanted change, who was afraid of it.

To me, Anakin is a better Jedi in his final moments than he ever was in AotC or RotS.
Yes he has done very terrible things but the has taken responsibility for them, not hiding them or blaming other people. He knows what he did and that it was wrong and he is willing to pay the price for that.
And he is genuinely sorry.
He lays down his life for his son and kills his evil master and he is at peace at long last.

It does fit the saga and what you have now is worse as you have "too old" Shaw in one scene and then "too young " Hayden in another.
So the film is not consistent with itself nor with the other OT films.
It wasn't broken before but it is now.

[/QUOTE]

The young ghost is totally inconsistent with the story.
It is not the age when Anakin died, he far too young for that.
It does not look like any young Anakin that ever existed.
It breaks established logic.

And your idea that Yoda and Obi-Wan look old because they took their bodies with them.
Qui-Gon left his body but the voice of his ghost is the same as when he was alive.
And since Anakin's body did not vanish, why does he even get a ghost?
If the ghost is not working of a body that was brought into the Force then it can look like anything.
So healed Shaw, AotC Anakin with short hair, Rots Anakin with long hair, kid Anakin from TPM.
All are equally possible.

And calling the body "Vader" is to me, attempting to say that Vader and Anakin are not really the same person. They are. Vader is Anakin's dark half, the angry, hateful side of him. The one who values order over justice. The one who can kill without pity or remorse.
But it is still Anakin.
Anakin was always there, even when his body was burnt and he was put inside a suit.
Even when he did terrible things, Anakin did that. He didn't like to think about who he used to be.
He wanted to forget who he was, but he never really did. The light inside him never went out.
Oh it was very dim for a long while.
But Anakin's soul was always there, twisted and corrupted by the venom of the dark side, maybe but there.

If you want Hayden there, have him in the unmasking scene and then in the ghost scene with old age makeup.
That would be consistent.
But since that would cost more money and take more effort and would require Lucas to tell Hayden about this, he choose to be cheap and lazy about it.

@The_Phantom_Calamari

Well if you want consistency then Shaw should be totally removed from the film.
He is still in the unmasking scene.
And since that is apparently not an older Anakin from the PT, he should be removed.
If you can accept him in one scene, why not in both?

No, THIS playing word games.
Anakin did not die in any way what so ever.
He choose to give in to his fear and hate and they twisted him.
He choose to turn a deaf ear to his good sides and concern himself with power.
He let his fear of death make him do more and more evil things until he was comfortable with them.

But Anakin was always there, he never went, away, was never frozen or in limbo.
Anakin was always there under the Vader suit, he didn't like to think about it and tried to forget but he failed.
And when Luke came before him, a conflict began, one that grew stronger and stronger, much as Vader might have wished otherwise.

Han was not dead in any way, he was in hibernation.
Bears can hibernate but that does not in any way mean they "die".

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Well you had made this claim:

The first sentence was false. The second sentence is sometimes true and sometimes false. The takeaway is that the "you're used to it being one way" argument is baseless and doesn't really add much to the discussion.

Oh no, I'm being just as metaphorical as you. And I'm saying that he absolutely did not metaphorically die. Obviously, I'm not talking about actual death since he's clearly still walking around. But in metaphorical terms, when Return of the Jedi makes a point of telling us that the Anakin persona was still within Vader, just forgotten, then the conclusion is that Anakin is not metaphorically dead...he's just metaphorically forgotten. Seriously, this is a big point of ROTJ. Obi-Wan and Yoda are convinced that the Anakin persona is truly dead, but Luke has faith in his father. And in the end, they were wrong and he was right. As Anakin Skywalker says in his dying breath, "You were right about me. Tell your sister......you were right".

I didn't say he was a "symbol of darkness". Read carefully and you'll see that I'm calling the young Anakin ghost a visual representation of a troubled individual who has already begun his descent to the dark side. Is that really up for debate? By the time we get to ROTS, Anakin has already begun his journey towards the dark side. Even Lucas would back me up on this. It started with the Tusken slaughter. It was further punctuated by beheading an unarmed prisoner. I'm hoping for that version of the character to grow and move forward, not celebrating his "triumphant" return.

 

Here's my actual reason for why the change doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective: it makes the redemption about Anakin, and not about Luke. If you're deadset on looking at Episodes I-VI as Anakin's story, then fine, you'll probably prefer HC. But I don't believe the text of the films supports that notion. Episodes I-III is Anakin's story. Episodes IV-VI is Luke's story, with Anakin's story intertwined with it as a subplot. But the narrative arc of those three films revolves around Luke's character, around the changes he undergoes and the choices he makes. All throughout the trilogy, Luke is searching for a father figure.

He never really had one in Uncle Owen, and he found one temporarily in Obi-Wan before he died. He finds one in Yoda, but abandons him in a foolhardy attempt to save his friends, and his mentor dies upon his return. The only consistent father figure Luke has is the idea of his own father, one he never knew, but one he can idealize and romanticize into a perfect shape. That's dashed against the rocks when he discovers that the man who killed his father, this evil figure of hatred and violence, is his father. But he reconciles that knowledge, and attempts to save him regardless, because Luke embodies love above all else.

At the end of the film, Luke's faith that his father is still capable of good pays off, and his journey to find a father figure to replace the void his own father left is now filled by his true father himself. When looking at this as Luke's journey, in order for that reclamation to have meaning, Anakin must manifest in the form of a fatherly figure. Sebastian Shaw's visage does this perfectly. Hayden Christensen's does not, because it reframes this as Anakin's victory, not Luke's, and it's impossible to look at a young man of Luke's own age as a fatherly figure to Luke. It changes the meaning of the final shot of the Force ghosts from being about Luke regaining his father, to Anakin regaining his innocence, an innocence he never truly had at that age when taking into account the events of Episodes II and III. And as such, it makes the shot utterly meaningless.

 

That's exactly what young Anakin represents to me, too. And I'm reasonably sure we're not alone. To many of us, Hayden-Anakin represents a creepy, selfish, prideful fool. That's not the ghost I want to see at the epic moment of triumph.

 

However, those scenes were changed a couple of different times. David Prowse was experienced enough as an actor to handle those scenes, especially with Mark Hamill right there to bounce off of. In 1983, criticism against Star Wars was gentle; it was the Holy Trilogy back then and still is to a lot of fans. Of course they didn't question George's wisdom back in the '80s. In fact, the only ones who did give George 'constructive feedback' were the people that knew him before Star Wars became so successful.

 

Me neither. I disagreed with changing that scene in Jedi Special Edition to Hayden.

 

You are correct - the finale of Jedi encompasses the first six Episodes of the saga. But to change the ghost back to pre-Episode II Anakin is to forget all of that agony that Anakin experienced while being on the Dark Side, and the light was still in him. If you show an experienced Anakin at the end of Jedi, then you get the full journey of Anakin - the young Anakin, the tortured Anakin and the redeemed Anakin all in one. With Hayden there, we just get the young Anakin, which only represents a third of his spiritual journey through the force. He's more than just an Apprentice. He's a Force Master now, been through the initiation, then through the purification, and now a Master at last, but at great cost. It means so much more to me to have that last bit, the cost of redemption represented also at the end of Jedi.

 

This.
My thoughts exactly.

 

Not to mention the bonkers idea that ghost Anakin will apparently look like 20 year old Anakin yet have the memories & personality of old Anakin. What's the point of that? A person is surely defined by their personality, not by their physical appearance.

Any idea why young ghost Anakin has his limbs back, seems uninjured yet still has the facial scar? Just something Lucas forgot, or is someone going to find some deep meaning in it?

 

Yet physical appearance is exactly what some want as opposed to spirit. Except only in part adjusting it point by point to what they want it to be as opposed to the actual storyteller.

Any idea why old ghost Anakin has him limbs back yet seems uninjured and has lost all of his scars? Just something Lucas forgot or is someone going to find some deep meaning in it?

Interesting points but I don't see how it's not really about both of them. In Lucas' narrative it is about the father getting redemption through the son and then becoming the person who he could have and should have been when he was his son's age.

Anakin did have that innocence (in AOTC and ROTS) though so again it works. Luke looking at a false father image that never existed would only work for himself. It's Vader as father as opposed to Anakin as father.

It also makes Obi-Wan and Yoda standing beside that image that never was a really odd finale. It's not Anakin they are standing with but now some selfish image of Vader generated by LUke as opposed to the true selfless Anakin. Which would mean that Luke is just seeing what he wants to as opposed to what is.

 

The storyteller chose what he wanted & let that stand for 30 years.

I see what you did there. Note that you say all of his scars & limbs though. Not some of them while keeping other injures. It's the incomplete spiritual make-over of ghost Hayden that's perplexing. Any answers? Just a Lucas blunder?

 

Well 20 actually. He could hardly do it sooner since he has to make the movies.

I don't find it perplexing in the least because it's what he wanted to do and he has his reasons. He doesn't have to tell us. The perplexing thing to me is why it's OK for old Anakin to be healed (and old) but it's not OK for some for the actual Anakin to be young (when he was) or to have scars (when he did). Clearly unlike Obi-Wan and Yoda he didn't take his body into the Force with him. Yoda tooks his clothes but Obi-Wan didn't.

 

Oh yes, "reasons". Any guess as to what they might be? Couldn't it just be a production goof? HC was filming RotS & Lucas forgot to remove his scar?

 

Some of these are separate points so I'll try to organize them for clarity.

1.) The young Anakin ghost has his right arm healed & intact, yet his scar remains. The issue people have with this is that one thing is healed, while another is not. So it's inconsistent with itself.

2.) The old Anakin ghost is healed and the young Anakin ghost is healed. It's not that some are okay with the former and not the latter. The purpose in pointing out the latter is to show how your argument is inconsistent. Here is the argument you have used:

This is your argument in favor of the young ghost. It is a flawed and contradictory argument because the young ghost is also someone who we've never seen at all (because the long-haired Anakin always had an arm missing and never wore those traditional robes). Do you get it?

 

Sure. We've gone over them again and again here. We can guess all we want to but ultimately "they think it should be their way, which is fine, except I'm making the movies, so I should have it my way."

Could be. We know that Lucas loves whimsy and when something strikes him he'll just go with it because it appeals to him. This is the same man whose has decided over the decades to add or subtract things before, during and after he was making the movies.

Force ghosts at the end of ROTJ? Maybe yes. Maybe no. No. Then yes.

Many people think that the SE's were something new for Lucas. He was doing it all along but they didn't notice because we really didn't know about it.

With the consistency they want and as they see it.

So then they would want the SS image with the Anakin scar for consistency or with all his Vader scars for that consistency. In which case they would want a change from the original. Also since Anakin did not ever have Jedi robes like that then they would want SS in the kind of robes we did see Anakin wear as a Jedi like ROTS. So again they should want SS but changed.

I have many arguments I can and have put forward here but the actual point is that there is no argument but the mere fact that these are Lucas movies and he has it his way and that is exactly what he has done.

So by that argument you'd rather not have any Anakin at all then. Because if the HC image shouldn't be used because we've never seen him like that then that goes Ad infinitum for the SS image who cannot possibly exist.

Again though this all sees to be based on exacting physical presentation of the body. A body which clearly has been left behind and an image that is clearly from the spirit of Anakin saved by Obi-Wan and Yoda from joining the Force.