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

You're just trying to come up with some in universe explanation to fit how a young Anakin was suddenly there. We all know this scene was originally made 20 odd years before ROTS and the (rather weak) explanation they gave for Qui Gonn returning. If you really believe that when they re-did the ending of Jedi the film makers really hoped that a glance from Yoda and Obi-Wan meant they had suddenly learnt a dead Anakin the ability to come back as a force ghost then thats really clutching at straws.

Originally it was fine as it was, a Jedi dies and he can return as a force ghost. It needed no further explanation. Anakins appearance at the end reinforces that he had turned back to the light side of the force. So for me when viewing Jedi originally, and throughout the years since, I've always taken their glance to Anakin as them being pleased that he had turned back to the light side of the force. His robes I always thought were of the same design that he wore before he became Darth Vader (a standard Jedi uniform if you like). Thats how I always interpreted it. But now the tinkering and the appearance of a younger Anakin and the weak Qui Gonn 'explanation' leaves us with more questions and another inconsistency that never needed to be there.

Samuel Vimes has it spot on with novelisation tie ins having to explain stuff we don't see on film. I don't read comics and its lazy of the film makers to assume that the millions of people going to see these films will read comics and other EU material, because the reality is that they won't. It conveys the lazy attitiude of "never mind that now, someone will figure it out when writing a comic instead".

 

It's a brilliant purposeful change and looks awesome.

I don't see how.

That doesn't follow. It doesn't make it "necessary" We know it's Luke's father. You know the guy who actually looks like Luke!

As opposed to all the other thousands of gratuitous connections? It's not. It's the story.

You mean tell the story of Star Wars?

Just as other people are trying to come up with an in-universe explanation of how an old Anakin fully healed and healthy looking was suddenly there which does not fit at all with either Obi-Wan or Yoda's appearances or the process seen.

So obviously more is going on with Anakin than either of the other two and always was.

Actually Lucas went into it back then about how it had happened and the part they played in saving Anakin.

But it did have further explanation but as Lucas did over and over again in the movies he didn't explain it onscreen. That is his method. He comes up with all kinds of explanations in his own mind that he knows aren't going to be used in the movies.

So you prefer you explanation over the actual story Lucas has. That is the basic problem right there.

Inconsistency with your story. Not Lucas'.

 

Lucas' story has evolved over time, as such there are multiple versions to pick from. Which one you prefer is up to the viewer, not Lucas. Before the change, the OT and specifically the redemption arc in ROTJ represented a self-contained story. The guy appearing to Luke is the same guy, that Luke witnessed minutes before. After the change Anakin's appearance makes no sense, if you haven't seen the PT. It's that simple. Lucas sacrificed the integrity of ROTJ as a single entity, or as part of the OT, over the integrity of the saga as a whole, although it's debatable whether it actually improves anything on this level.

 

He clearly is not the same guy. Within the OT itself if makes no sense the way people are talking about it based on what is in the movies themselves.

They came up with an explanation they like but it doesn't work unless you accept it to.

 

In what sense? Jedi die, and come back as Force ghosts. Obi-Wan was chopped in half, and comes back looking healthy, and so does Anakin, looking fatherly and proud. Makes perfect sense to me, and probably almost everyone who saw the film in 1983.

 

It makes perfect sense to everyone on planet earth except you

 

Well, I guess you are free to believe anything you want to, but I don't know how anyone can look at Hayden Christensen's head poorly overlayed onto Sebastian Shaw's body and see it as "awesome" or "brilliant".

 

Nobody had a problem with Sebastian Shaw as Anakin's Force ghost for 21 years. Nobody questioned it. Post-2004, you have a bunch of blindly loyal Lucas surrogates, defending every decision he makes, not just on the basis of the argument that he has the right to do so, but on the basis of the argument that every change Lucas makes is a change for the better, actually arguing that Sebastian Shaw as Anakin's Force ghost doesn't make sense.

 

That's something I've noticed too. So, what you people just accepted stuff like Clive Revill as Palpatine, Jason Wingreen's Boba voice, Shaw as Anakin's ghost for almost 30 years until Lucas changes it? Then, all of a sudden, the original doesn't make sense to you, even though you had no problem until it was changed? If that isn't being a blind fanboy, I don't know what is. I wonder how you guys would feel if none of those changes were made, and the originals were left alone to this day.

 

In what way does it not make any sense? If you see this from Anakin's POV, the last time he was a good person was in ROTS, not the one we see in the second Death Star. That's not how he sees himself, maybe because he doesn't relate to the scarred man who tried to pretend Anakin was gone for decades. If we see this as Anakin's choice of who he really is liberated from the grip of the darkside influence, then it does makes sense.

 

Anakin was never closer to the light than when he saved Luke from the Emperor.

 

Except that since 1981, Lucas has gone with the idea that Yoda was the one who helped Anakin to retain his identity when he died.


In the rough draft…Ben explains that…if "Vader becomes one with the dark side of the Force, he will lose all identity. If he turns to the good side, he will pass through the Netherworld" and in the revised rough draft, Yoda "will rescue him before he becomes one with the Force."

--Laurent Bouzereau, explanation from Return of the Jedi; The Annotated Screenplays page 300.


In the rough draft, Vader is escorting Luke to the Sith Tombs when Obi-wan appears and tells him that he can be redeemed and retain his identity. Vader blows past him, after igniting his Lightsaber when he first appears. After they leave, Obi-wan disappears. After the final battle ends, Luke sees Obi-wan and Anakin in the flesh and we learn that the former rescued the latter when he died and was able to restore him. In the revised rough draft, Obi-wan becomes completely corporeal again and when Vader sacrifices himself to save Luke, Obi-wan tells him that if he turns back, Yoda can help him. After a minute, Obi-wan smiles and says that Yoda was successful. The only part that changed was Obi-wan and Yoda appearing during Luke's confrontation with the Sith. You, like the rest of us, were going by limited information that was available to us at the time. When Lucas finally decided on the role of Qui-gon Jinn in relation to Obi-wan, as he had two different ideas at first, he decided to revisit his earlier backstory regarding Force ghosts. You have to remember that when Lucas was writing the OT, he was trying to get as much of the story out there as possible.

“There are four or five scripts for Star Wars, and you can see as you flip through them where certain ideas germinated and how the story developed. There was never a script completed that had the entire story as it exists now. But by the time I finished the first Star Wars, the basic ideas and plots for Empire and Jedi were also done. As the stories unfolded, I would take certain ideas and save them; I’d put them aside in notebooks. As I was writing Star Wars, I kept taking out all the good parts, and I just kept telling myself I would make other movies someday. It was a mind trip I laid on myself to get me through the script. I just kept taking out stuff, and finally with Star Wars I felt I had one little incident that introduced the characters. So for the last six years [1977-1983] I’ve been trying to get rid of all the ideas I generated and felt so bad about throwing out in the first place.”

--George Lucas, "Icons" by Denise Worrell, 1989.

And that still applied to the PT, when he began working on them. That's why we had stuff like the Naboo invasion in TPM, which was based on the blockade from the first draft of ANH. Lando's backstory of being the son of a clone, being reused for the Fetts, in AOTC. Or the Wookiee battle being in ROTS, after being in the first draft of ANH. Or Darth Vader and Obi-wan Kenobi fighting each other at the end of a great war, when the former revealed himself as a traitor to his fellow Jedi.

So, no, it isn't mental gymnastics. It's based on stuff that Lucas wrote and spoke about.

Lucas didn't sacrifice anything. He had long intended to have all the films connect together, ever since he opened himself up to the possibility of sequels and prequels. And when he committed himself to making the PT, he committed to the idea of the films being viewed a certain way, regardless of how well they were received.

If you see them in order it completely twists things about. A lot of the tricks of IV, V and VI no longer exist. The real struggle of the twins to save their father becomes apparent, whereas it didn't exist at all the first time [audiences saw Episodes IV, V and VI]. Now Darth Vader is a tragic character who's lost everything. He's basically a bitter old man in a suit.

"I am your father" was a real shock. Now it's a real reward. Finally, the son knows what we already know.

It's a really different suspense structure. Part of the fun for me was completely flipping upside down the dramatic track of the original movies. If you watch them the way it was released, IV, V, VI, I, II, III - you get one kind of movie. If you watch I through VI you get a completely different movie. One or two generations have seen it one way, and the next generations will see it in a completely different way.

It's an extremely modern, almost interactive movie making. You take blocks and move them around, and you come out with different emotional states."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith.

"It's a downer, the saving grace is that if you watch the other three movies, then you know everything ends happily ever after. Nevertheless, I now have to make a movie that works by itself but which also works with this six-hour movie and this overall twelve-hour movie. I'll have two six-hour trilogies, and the two will beat against each other: One's the fall, one's the redemption. They have different tonalities but it's meant to be one experience of twelve hours."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith, page 62.

Speaking for myself, while I didn't mind Revill being in TESB and McDiarmid in ROTJ, once Lucasfilm announced that the SE's were coming and that things would be changed, I had wondered if Palpatine in TESB would be changed. It took a while, but it did. Not because it didn't make sense, but because of consistency. If Lucas was going to commit to changing things like Han shooting first and inserting Jabba, the Wampa and more Boba Fett, then at least he should have switched Palpatine's. I only understood later that he decided to wait to do this with McDiarmid while making the PT, as opposed to flying him out to the Ranch and spending a couple of days working on this. Boba's voice wasn't an issue until after AOTC and two years later, Lucas made an adjustment. Anakin's ghost was an unexpected bonus. It works either way and I'm not overtly fussed.

 

Boba's voice wasn't an issue until AOTC? See, that highlights the exact mentality you people have. You watched these films for decades, and had no problem with Wingreen's Boba Fett voice. But then Lucas decides to change it "cuz continuity!", and all of a sudden the original is bad and the new version is amazing. Even though it's never stated in ESB that that was Boba's actual voice, and it could have easily been a voice changer.

Also, off-topic, but the Boba change makes no sense either. Yes, he's a clone of Jango, but so are the Stormtroopers if you watch the films. The whole "the clones were retired" excuse wasn't even canon until a few years ago, and it wasn't ever stated in the films. Lucas probably didn't think about the Stormtroopers having the same voice, and thus came up with that as an excuse.

 

We didn't know that Boba Fett was a clone in the 80's and 90's. No one did, possibly not even Lucas. That's why the old EU was allowed to create a backstory with Jaster Mareel being Boba's true name. Once Lucas decided that Boba was a clone of Jango, then yes, it should have been changed since he was unaltered and would still have an accent as an adult. As is often the case in science fiction stories that deal with clones. And yes, Lucas could have gone with a modifier, but he didn't. Jango doesn't, so Boba wouldn't either. Remember, he was going to have Revill dub his voice over McDiarmid until he decided that he liked his performance enough to not do that.

I did take issue with Lucas not changing the Stormtroopers voices, back in 04. Later on, Lucas came out and said that they weren't clones of Jango, but still clones, which fit in with what was said in both the script for AOTC and was in TCW, a few years later.

OBI-WAN: "Where is this bounty hunter now?"

LAMA SU: "Oh, we keep him here. After a few hundred thousand clones, the genetic pattern starts to fade, so we take a fresh supply. He lives here, but he's free to come and go as he pleases."


LAMA SU: "I understand your concerns, Master Jedi. Ever since the unfortunate death of Jango Fett, we have had to stretch his DNA to produce more clones."

 

Huh? That doesn't really make sense. Just because Jango didn't have a voice modifier, doesn't mean Boba would copy every little thing he did. If anything, it would be more in his character to have a voice modifier. I doubt Boba would want to be looked at as "just another clone"

 

Why would he need to worry about that? How is it in his character? We don't know much of his character if you go by the films and what little was shown in TCW, he had bigger concerns than that. Why would he need a voice modifier? As to copying his dad, he didn't copy everything as it is. Different blaster type, different armor and a cape, but much of what he had was similar to his old man. Even right down to using Slave I after all those years.

 

In different ways apparently. Also don't forget Vader was a Jedi before. The basic idea that all Jedi become Force ghosts makes no sense as obviously Vader doesn't know that Obi-Wan can do that. If Vader knows about it then it changes the entire context of the story as presented. Obi-Wan says he will become more powerful than Vader can possibly imagine. If he knew Jedi become Force ghosts then Vader could easily imagine that because he would already know.

No, he wasn't actually. He disappears before that. Yoda also disappears. This is clearly different from Anakin.

So again this strange dance where you accept that Vader as an Anakin Force Ghost can be healed and healthy but not healed of all influence of the Dark Side that came upon him when he was a young man. Instead he becomes a man decades older than Anakin could have been as Obi-Wan's student.

This is where it all falls down over and over again. Who else IS it going to be but Anakin? That it would be anyone else makes no sense at all so this idea that people would be confused if it's a young man who BTW happens to look like Luke himself doesn't work. This is like those who actually argue having the Emperor from ROTJ and the PT being added to TESB is confusing!

Also the reality is this. HC IS Anakin in the movies and the image of Anakin in TCW, Rebels etc is based on him. So having some decades older guy who doesn't look like him at all doesn't work.

Now if you want them to replace the current version with other shots of HC looking older around his mid-40's then that can work as well. So it would address your concerns.

The true version also makes perfect sense to everyone on the planet except for some reason those who want to believe that audiences got it then but don't get it now regardless of the reasoning being the same. Who else is suddenly going to appear alongside Obi-Wan and Yoda except Anakin's spirit? So in the broader context the actual visual appearance of both the SS version and the HC version are clearly not the Anakin seen on the Death Star. His body does not vanish like either Obi-Wan or Yoda who one presumes by their actions had some training unknown to the Sith and therefore unknown to Vader or when he was Anakin before.

So something must have went on in regards to those two Jedi being a part of it because Anakin himself didn't know about it because he couldn't possibly imagine it.

Boba Fett's voice was totally irrelevant to me as Boba Fett himself was. To me he was next to a total nothing.

Jango Fett was a great character. He made Boba Fett finally interesting to me.

Character continuity. The original isn't bad at all. It's just irrelevant and out of place with the character.

 

I'm sure you could come up with plenty of reasons as to why he'd need a voice modifier. And much of what he had was similar to Jango? Only his voice is similar. His armor and ship are completely different color schemes.

 

It think what you mean to say is, you don't agree.

Wholly unnecessary and inappropriate to pretend that it's anything other than a mostly subjective answer.

We only know that because he resembles the person that was behind the Vader mask who happens to be Luke's father. If you haven't seen prequel movies you have to make a few assumptions that this completely unfamiliar smiling person standing next to Yoda is a young version of the last person we saw die, Luke's father. We have no point of reference for why, if it is Luke's father, he appears as the way that he does.

You're ignoring "tangible". Is there any other actor conspicuously playing the same character in the PT and the OT? ( besides Palpatine who is introduced in this movie, and the droids)

Are you serioulsy suggesting that Anakin's appearance in the original ROTJ was only that way because of technical problems that prevented Lucas from telling the real story of Star War? Anakin appearing as he did when he was 22 years younger in the final scenes was not part of the story until Lucas changed the story round about 2004.

If it was purely about telling the story the way Lucas wanted to then that means that Anakin's younger appearance as a ghost would have been understood and appreciated by the audience in 1983, but Lucas just didn't have the technology to do it.

If you follow Lucas's mantra of how the story was meant to be told, the you have to wonder why he decided to tell the story from episode IV?

(P.S. You don't have to. We already know that it was expediency and that he just wanted to get a film made which he later reconceived as part of continuing story that he could fill in both forwards in backwards following the success of the one film he got to make and has since maintained that everything he has changed is as it was meant to be, which we know to be false.)

 

It doesn't really answer my question. Both versions show us Anakin, but before the prequels we didn't know how Anakin looked like as a Jedi so I guess the best solution was to show him as an elderly man but now that we do know his appearance in the prequels when he was a good man and before he turned to the darkside, then doesn't it make sense for him to choose his younger self instead of the form of a man who never existed because he wasn't good? He was the wicked, scarred and broken, more machine than man.

 

The Anakin in the PT wasn't exactly a great hero. What was one act he did as a Jedi in the PT that was on par with destroying the Emperor and saving his son?

 

Defeated Count Dooku and rescued the Chancellor almost single handed. Then piloted a massive stricken starship away from populated areas of Coruscant.

 

And being a hero of the Clone Wars in general, and training an apprentice if you count TCW which he did a good job considering how she survived order 66 while most didn't.

 

Defeated Count Dooku? Don't you mean killing an unarmed prisoner, an act he even admits "wasn't the Jedi way". And he didn't just rescue the Chancellor, he rescued the Dark Lord of the Sith. And all his heroic acts in the Clone Wars aren't shown in the PT. You shouldn't have to watch an animated series to see the protagonist of a movie series actually act like a hero.

 

Murdering Count Dooku and rescued... I don't think his decapitating a defenseless Dooku is meant to be seen as good or heroic.

On the other hand, killing Sith Lords is apparently the Jedi way, otherwise Yoda and Obi-Wan would have instructed Luke to incapacitate Vader, not kill him...