What were your thoughts upon seeing Vader's face for the first time?

I saw ROTJ in the cinema when when it was newly released (I was quite young at the time), and to be honest I was just glad that his face was shown.

What stuck me most was probably the shape of it, - it resembled an egg. I thought this to be very strange, and rationalised it be assuming that Vader was not human. I knew that he had been horribly scarred, but as I say, the shape threw me off. Did anyone else find this strange?

Was his face as you expected?

Your thoughts...........

 

It was in the area of what I expected. I thought it was very cool to actually see Darth Vader's face!
This was in the nineties, though, so obviously, I had heard about it. Before I actually saw the movies, the thought of seeing Vader's face was unreal. For years, I had only seen pictures of him in his mask.



Vader - he likes darkness
/LM

 

I hated it, to see him unmasked really changed him, I thought he was real cool black guy but then he had the body of a white guy just like Hamill said in that documentry I can't remember

 

How weird - Luke, who is white, has a white father!



That's mindblowing
/LM

 

I couldn't believe that this big tough guy looked like that underneath the helmet.

 

we all thought he was black, why else have james earl jones do the voice?

 

James Earl Jones doesn't really sound "black" as Darth Vader--when combined with the mask and the breathing and the suit he just sounds like a huge, robotic bad guy. In fact, in ANH JEJ's voice was pitched up to make it sound more neutral.

As for Vader's face, i saw ROTJ as a toddler so there was never any moment of realisation for me. But i imagine if i was old enough to see it freshly i would have been surprised to find a sympathetic old man and not a horrible monster underneath (especially after that misleading glimps in ESB). Love the old Vader though--very clever.

And you are right--his head IS egg shaped! I always noticed that too! Sebastian Shaw's head isnt though since we see (or at least we saw) his ghost at the end--i am guessing it is the result of the prosthetic scarring at the back of his head.

 

He was supposed to be changed at that moment. You were supposed to see that he was just a crippled man who loved his son. I mean, look at the emotion in his face. It shows years of pain and torture. And then how he smiles just before he dies...classic. It shows how for the first time Anakin Skywalker: a slave boy, a Jedi Knight, and a Dark Lord of the Sith can finally find peace.

The scene is classic.

 

I thought he appeared a little too frail for being such a bad *** dude. It never bothered me though.

 

To tell you the truth, I was sorta scared, knowing I'd see his face...I was about 10-11 when I saw RotJ for the first time, and I remembered how in ESB we saw his head from the back, and it was all scarred...so I expected his face to be really messed up and scary looking...but it wasn't that bad. He looked like a kindly old man, honestly. So I was surprised/relieved.

 

by the way this a good post, actually my dad thought he would be black, i dont remember what i thought

 

don't really remember what i was thinking since I was only 8 or 9 when we saw it in the theatre. I remember, my brother, being ticked off and my family making fun of him because it took him about 3 viewings to finally stay awake through the whole movie to see the end and vader's unmasking. He was only 4 years old and would get sleepy half way through the movie. think he finally saw it on tv or vhs...

 

i don't remember what I thought. if anything I was more or less disappointed as a child. Vader was this big cool bad guy in black and in the end he is just this old looking guy with big bushy eyebrows that justed extremely out of place. i was glad when they removed them for the DVD lol.

 

yea those eyebrows are horrible he looks like liam gallaghers father

i saw the movie in the cinema in 1983 aged 11
i thought he was too fat and old and too nice in a way i was expecting him to look like darkman for example say for his face to be eaten away and the gums exposed

 

Kinda wierd really. I thought he looked like the Wizard of Oz, all weak and pathetic. Which IMO was good. It was humbling, and I think it was that scene alone, which inspired GL to do a PT. That is not fact, only speculation.

 

What do they have instead (on the DVDs)? I have not seen them.

 

I never imaginede that he was so old the first time i saw RotJ . And always imagined that Vader had his Face completly scared and disfigured , just like Irvin Kershner said in the "Empire of Dreams" documentary.I only looks pale , with alittle scar in the head , nothing like we all saw in ESB.

 

AHHHHHHHHHHHH. I was horrified, becuase I watched the movies 1,2,4,5,6 and so I knew how Anakin looked when he was young. And that was a huge shocker. But after I got over that, It was just downright sad.

 

That's more than a little scar, my friend.

[image=http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/ep6/ldvader4.jpg]

 

His eyebrows are removed and his eyes are colored blue to match Hayden Christensen's.

 

I remember mostly being kind of grossed out.

 

[image=http://www.giftsonline.net/catalog/images/humpty_dumpty.jpg]

[image=http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/ep6/ldvader4.jpg]

Any questions?

 

I don't remember my thought on seeing Vader's true face for the first time. I don't it affected me too much. If it did, I would remember it.

 

I was abit disappointed because I thought he was too old and frail. That said, I *loved* Luke's reaction to it

 

I was really surprised to see that he was a frail old man, but he already began to show this side of himself upon meeting Luke in ROTJ.

In ESB, I still had no idea who or what Darth Vader was. From the scene where his helmet is being put on, I thought he might have just been a brain. It was only in retrospect that I realised that Luke's vision of Darth Vader's face in the cave was meant to be a premonition...