PT Who would you have cast as (adult) Anakin?

Good lord... You do not actually believe that. You just compared HC's acting to the man who sat across from De Niro in Heat in some of the best acting ever put on film??

 

Hayden Christensen.

And Shaw was 30 years too old for the role.

 

Hayden Christensen. Hayden bulked up quite a bit in order to show George he was willing to do whatever it took to wear the suit.

Matt Lanter has the benefit of better scripts for TCW and that's about all.

 

I wouldve casted CGI Sebastian Shaw. Shaw really is the best Anakin. His character development in ROTJ was so incredible. Probably the best character development ever. I think there's a reason why ROTJ>>>>Citizen Kane>>>>The Godather>>>>>poop>>>>SW Prequels.

Obviously.

 

That was so uncannily on point that I legitimately thought you were an actual troll.

That said, Lucas totally should have actually waited 10 years between movies, so he could have cast Jake Lloyd as older Anakin.

 

Because Pacino in Heat and Pacino in the first Godfather are obviously the same performance... /sarcasm

And what if he does believe that? Is he wrong? No, it's a perfectly valid opinion on a subjective topic.

 

Yes. I'm not bothered by whatever else HC did in other movies or what AP did in other movies ( like them both in other things as well). I am talking about HC as Anakin in AOTC and ROTS compared to AP as Michael Corleone in Godfather I and II due to the nature of those characters. As with anything it's not just the actor but the entire package of the writer, director, script, story, characters, making the movie and all that entails.

So as much as one wants to hang it on the actors as the avatar of the entire production then as I have said before I think HC arguably gives the two best performances that we've seen in Star Wars movies.

The other connector of course is that they were specifically chosen by the directors who were also the writers and film-makers (the only difference is that SW was original to GF being based on a book). Remember though that Lucas could make his choice while FFC had to fight to get Pacino who studio guys didn't think he could do it (some reports say even he wasn't sure at times).

It's an easy comparison for me because I place all 6 of Lucas' Star Wars movies (we can probably add AG and THX as well) as among the greatest ever made right alongside Godfather, Vertigo, Citizen Kane, The Searchers, Apocalypse Now, Singin' in the Rain, Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Taxi Driver, Metropolis, Psycho, Some Like It Hot, City Lights etc etc.

Here's the real question though. Whether it was them or Dicaprio or anyone else I really question that anything that anyone thought of their performances wouldn't end up as the same place as many think of HC.

I know people who truly despise EVERY SINGLE performance in the PT. People who love NP, SLJ, LN, EM etc in just about everything else they do but for the PT they can't stand them. They believe it's wooden, emotionless etc etc. In fact these people like HC far more in his work outside of Star Wars.

I think it's not too much to say that if LD had played Anakin they would be considered the two worst performances of his career by many because what they wanted Anakin to be and what Lucas had him as were two different things.

As we see with Kylo Ren. Saying or suggesting your conflicted and having some temper tantrums while having little real confliction for some comes across as being really good and nuanced while actually having conflict and really being nuanced can come across to people in extremely different ways.

The Kylo Ren approach is clearly obvious and many people prefer and like that while the Anakin approach is clearly very different and far more subtle. Some love it, some hate it and others lean more to one way or the other.

I have little doubt that if Lucas had made Anakin an obvious bad guy from the start then it'd be more popular overall or conversely just an obvious good guy who suddenly and for no really good reason just goes bad (because he has to for the plot) then that would work as well.

 

And for the record, the first Godfather film is one my favorite movies of all time, but Pacino is far from being one of the contributing factors. His performance is overshadowed by virtually everyone else, even those not part of the main cast. Then again, virtually everyone else is more mature, has more presence and the role required/allowed more range from them.

 

Hayden was great as Anakin IMO.

I don't get why there's this pre-conceived notion that Anakin was supposed to be this big, manly-looking guy. Luke wasn't.

 

I speak with a "generic" General American accent and I can say with certainty that Hayden Christensen's accent is virtually indistinguishable from mine. Standard Canadian English is already virtually indistinguishable from General American English except for a few key features that everybody is familiar with ("about" sounds like "a boat" or "a boot" etc.) but among many younger people and especially younger people from British Columbia (like Christensen) even those features are absent.

Hayden Christensen doesn't have an accent that stands out in any real way from the sort of English spoken by American newscasters. This is what amounts to an objective linguistic fact. I don't believe any American watched him and immediately went, "That dude's Canadian." I don't even believe you did. I assure you, that really makes no sense.

e: And no, you would absolutely not have an easier time finding someone in America who sounds like James Earl Jones as Vader. JEJ voices Vader with a faux-British stage accent that is quite literally made up and doesn't actually exist in the general population in any meaningful fashion.

But Sebastian Shaw 30 years prior to ROTJ wouldn't line up with Anakin's canonical age range as established by A New Hope.

Why would Lucas cast someone as Anakin who doesn't fit the requirements of the role?

 

I actually think HC was a good casting choice. The issue, I think, is more on the directing/writing side. He's a good actor, as is Portman, and I think they would have been great if things were done differently.

 

Edit.

 

Yeah that was a mistake to begin with. He should've been 50 tops.

As for Hayden, I get a feeling it's mostly the romantic scenes in AOTC that give him bad rep. Other than that, I don't see what's so bad about him. He had a role of a conflicted teenager and that's what he played.

 

I have come to like Hayden as Anakin. I think there's a lot of tragedy in his eyes.

Anyways, my pick would be Heath Ledger (two years older than Hayden). He could do dark, deranged, badass, and likeable. His voice is naturally lower and a bit more threatening than Hayden's, who didn't quite pull off a lot of the lines at the end of ROTJ imo. I imagine Ledger also could have pulled off a more Shaw/Jones-ish accent. It's one of my big complaints with Hayden's Anakin (and Lloyd's), though that's more of a Lucas complaint than anything.

 

Shaw always seemed too old for being Luke's dad. I love his acting though.

 

There’s a way that he says words that does give it away slightly. I’m particularly good at picking up accents, so maybe it’s just me. There’s a Canadian character in The Bridge on the River Kwai who almost sounds just like Christensen.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with Christensen’s accent (although it may explain why some people find some of his line delivery slightly awkward).

As for the General American accent, there’s no such thing. Different parts of the country have different accents. Boston, for example, is distinct from New York City. NYC is different from Philadelphia. Philadelphia is different from Atlanta. Atlanta is different from Pittsburgh or Cleveland, which are different from Minneapolis or Milwaukee, which are different from Chicago, etc. Is it possible that Christensen could pass as someone from maybe Minnesota or Seattle? Maybe. But he sounds a bit more Canadian to me.

Also, I’m sure that you can find a definition of what’s considered “General American”, but (especially in the Trump era), I’m very skeptical of any talk about “real” Americans. A New York or Philadelphia accent is just as real as that of someone from Indiana or Missouri. (With that said, people from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa do have a very strange accent.)

He sounds like a Southerner who’s lost much of that Southern twang over the years due to living on either the West Coast or in the Northeast, but he retains some traits (he’s non-rhotic, for example). Him having such a deep voice also hides some of it. I could easily imagine someone who spent the first 12 or so years of their lives in Georgia but then moved to, say, Philadelphia, talking like that.

And he doesn’t have a mid-Atlantic accent. This is mid-Atlantic:



William F. Buckley, Jr. probably was the last public figure I can name who really had that…and James Earl Jones really doesn’t sound like Buckley or FDR.

Well, Michael Corleone is simply a better written character, and we’re really talking about a set of films that, when you combine them, arguably represent the apex of American cinema. I think it helps that Michael doesn’t seem dangerous and disturbed from the outset, like Anakin does. You truly believe that he wants to break away from his family and that he’s on the path to doing so, whereas with Anakin, it pretty much seemed like he spent his entire adult life on the path to the dark side, and that there was no real chance of him ever NOT turning. More of a story of how all a guy’s resentments and insecurities lead him to eventually snap and shoot up a school than the tragic fall of a great hero.

We actually get time to see Michael interact with his family, with Kay Adams, and talk about how he wants to be different from his family. Thus, it has more impact when he does get sucked in. And his initial steps seem more rational and understandable than Anakin’s violent bursts of rage. If I had to describe Michael in three words, I’d say that he’s intelligent, strategic, and ruthless. Anakin would be aggressive, angry, and fearful. Michael’s ultimate flaw is that he lacked his father’s warmth and compassion, whereas Anakin pretty much seems defined by his flaws, his weaknesses and his insecurities in a way that Michael isn’t.

He’s closer to a Travis Bickle in that he’s already very disturbed and dangerous, he’s full of resentments against the world, which he feels owes him greater recognition, and that he ultimately decides to take out his anger and resentments on the people he’s spent the entire story complaining about (Travis takes it out on “the filth on the streets”, Anakin takes it out on the Jedi). Even his interactions with Padmé Amidala have a very creepy, unsettling overtone to them, more like Bickle than say, a truly “adorkable” character like George McFly. This is adorkable:



This is just creepy:



Maybe it’s because of the fireplace, but it really made me think of this scene:

I honestly don’t think he’s that good at all in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones. He’s better in the next movie, probably because he was able to learn from his experience the first time around, and that he was a bit more mature, and that George Lucas actually hired an acting coach to help the actors out on that, but even then, he seems to struggle at times, like in this scene:



The dialogue certainly doesn’t help, as it feels more like something out of a bad romance novel than something a real person would say.

And I know that Hayden Christensen had trouble with some of the lines because he said so himself:

http://bit.ly/2DBGLZv

And given Lucas’s hands-off approach to working with actors…not the best mix.

I’d place the original and The Empire Strikes Back on that level. Certainly not the other 4. George Lucas has undeniably made some great contributions to cinema. I don’t think the prequels are among them, at least not artistically. I’d put them more on the level of some of the lesser contributions of some of the great directors- like Hitchcock’s Family Plot, Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg, Spielberg’s Hook (yes, this one has a huge nostalgic following, but I still think it’s pretty bad), Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, etc.

The same exact thing could be said of Hayden Christensen vis-à-vis the lines of Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, Christopher Lee, Pernilla August, etc. It also helps that I think that Al Pacino is simply a better, more talented actor than Christensen is…and I actually think Christensen’s a good actor. It’s just that Pacino’s a great actor.

Sometimes, it’s just a matter of raw talent. I’m actually a pretty good singer, for example…but I don’t have Freddie Mercury’s raw talent. It’s really a bit unfair to Christensen to compare him to Pacino…and it would be unfair to compare me to Freddie Mercury.

 

Lol Deli!


Edit: AotC is better than poop, c'mon don't be cruel now bro.

 

So the comparison is valid.

 

As for who I would’ve cast, that’s easy—Tim Curry. If anybody can make these lines and this character arc work, it’s Tim Curry.

 

Hayden Christensen

 

I would've used computer technology to merge Macaulay Culkin and Arnold Schwarzenegger into one actor. That way you channel Anakin's vulnerable side while also portraying a guy with big muscles who could smash things.

 

look no further.

 

I answered a question on the Quora website a while back about how you could reconcile Vader's stature and size to someone who is Hayden's size. Like many in this thread have stated, the helmet and the prosthetic legs could add some inches. Also my personal canon (personal interpretation), due to his ruined lungs, perhaps certain medicines that made him not so slender anymore. Just throwing in my 2 cents.