Saga Is Captain Antilles really in Episode IV?

I find this thread really interesting. I once also examined the Captain Antilles problem from the perspective of his relation to Wedge and ran into similar realizations.

As @Iron_lord points out that Wedge himself is played by two actors in ANH, maybe the only acceptable explanation is that the entire Antilles clan is made up of Shi'ido.

 

Wedge is played by two different actors because the role had to be very quickly re-cast in the middle of shooting. Surely you can see how that situation does not relate to this situation, like, at all.

Remember, we're not talking about whether we can accept that these two actors are the same person if we so choose. We're talking about whether these were intended to be the same character by the maker of the films.

 

It shows how little Lucas cares about what an actor looks like, and how much he's willing to fudge continuity, within that one movie.

A person more fussy about it, would have specifically changed all bits of the script that refer to "Wedge" but have the wrong actor, to have a new character saying them - exactly as the Disney canon did with "Col Takbright". And reprint the novel with the right name. But Lucas simply didn't bother.



Applied to ROTS - is it "in character" for Lucas to not go to extreme lengths to make "ROTS Captain Antilles" match "ANH Guy Choked By Vader" - and yet still intend them to be the same person?

I'd say yes. The fact that the second actor, for the prequel, is a lot younger than the first actor, seems like a hint in that direction. Only 12 years younger rather than 19 years younger - but a 20 year old would be a bit less convincing than a 27 year old as the captain of a diplomatic ship.

Just assume that Peter Geddis (the ANH actor) was playing a character who is a bit older than Peter Geddis himself was, and it works.

My view is that this is incorrect and that the cutting of the line "Only the Commander knows" (as well as giving him lots of pips on his chest that aren't present on the soldiers fighting in the halls) are good reasons to believe that Lucas intended him to be "Captain Antilles" from the beginning. The EU writers didn't extrapolate for no reason - they extrapolated because it made sense.

I think it's safe to say that news article writers would have called him "Captain Antilles", like here:

https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/living/2017/05/04/reviewer-first-time-watched-star-wars

even if they'd never read a single EU book - the movie alone gives watchers good cause to assume "choked guy" is Captain Antilles.

 

Since the edit window has expired:

No - that's an actual still from ANH deleted scenes - extended version of the scene:



This is a Rogue One scene for comparison: not the same guy:



Rogue One chest badges are metallic - that chest badge is plastic. It's also positioned differently along the pocket.

 

I see no reason to think this when the character is identified only as a "Rebel officer" in the script, rather than as "Captain Antilles" or even as "the captain."

And this goes back all the way to the third draft script. Here's Threepio referencing the captain of the ship, with a line that was later changed to talk about the Princess:

THREEPIO
There is no escape for the Captain this time…

And here's Vader interrogating the rebel:

Darth Vader, the black knight, takes a short restraining pole from one of the guards and brutally jabs a captured rebel officer in the chest.

VADER
Where is she? Where is it?

The rebel cries out as the spooky looking Sith Lord begins to twist his arm, creating a gruesome snapping and popping of broken bones.

The script refers to him as (emphasis mine) "a rebel officer" and generically as "the rebel." Same as in the fourth draft, where the character is referred to as ""a wounded rebel officer" and generically as "the rebel." There's no reason on earth, given that the Captain is a named character in the script--and in the third draft a character who was referred to only a couple scenes previously--that Lucas would choose to refer to the rebel being interrogated in such a generic and undefined manner. There is also no reason that he would then have that character refer to a "Commander" who is superior in rank to him. Unless he didn't intend for them to be the same character, which is backed up by the fact that he--uncharacteristically for him--made absolutely no effort to cast someone who looked like the character in Episode IV as Captain Antilles in Episode III, which is the whole premise of the thread. There's just no positive evidence whatsoever that Lucas meant for these to be the same character--none. All you have is the EU. But there's lots of clear evidence to indicate otherwise.

What makes much more sense is that this is simply an officer in the royal guard corps stationed on the ship, which is why he is wearing a combat uniform, whereas Captain Antilles is merely the captain of the starship, which is why he is dressed the way he is in Episode III. In an analogous manner, in Episode I Panaka is dressed in a combat uniform like that of the royal guard troops under his command, whereas Ric Olié, the captain of the royal Naboo starship, is not.

Okay, my mistake. Does it change the point? Does that guy look remotely like Rohan Nichols? Or does he look like Peter Geddis?

 

Edit window expired for me too!

They were literally in the middle of shooting, and even ignoring those constraints Denis Lawson actually does reasonably resemble Colin Higgins, which is presumably why he specifically was brought back in from the pool of actors who had initially auditioned for Wedge (since it was such short notice, that's who they had to choose from). It was obviously important to Lucas that Wedge be introduced before the battle, probably so that the interactions they have during the battle have more weight--otherwise why specify that the character in the briefing scene is Wedge in the first place? It's the same reason he re-inserted the scene with Biggs in the hangar.

And both Higgins and Lawson were dubbed over by the distinctively voiced David Ankrum in Episode IV. I can tell you personally I never even noticed Wedge was played by a different actor until I was older and read about it in some trivia blurb, whereas I noticed immediately that the Captain Antilles in Episode III didn't match the character who the EU said was Captain Antilles in Episode IV. And yes, my borderline face blindness may account for me not noticing the different Wedge actor, but that just makes it all the more significant that I did realize something was off about Captain Antilles!

 

There's unfortunately a lot of that.

 

I figured that this line being cut, was significant.

I will agree that the change would have to have been very late - so late that the script never got edited to reflect the change. But the line was still changed.

 

There's no reason to think this line was cut because Lucas suddenly decided this character was actually Captain Antilles, rather than for the myriad other reasons lines are usually cut. That's a completely unsupportable assertion.

This raw footage shows that the line was spoken by the actor and filmed, and cut out only as part of the editing process:


It's a huge stretch to assert that Lucas, in post-production, suddenly decided this minor character in fact had to be Captain Antilles, and left that line out specifically for that reason, rather than to make the scene flow better as is the case nine times out of ten. The absence of the line may have cleared the way for the tie-in authors to make the mistake that they did, but that's totally incidental.

Again it must be stated, in the absence of the EU, there is no reason in the first place to even think this character is the Captain Antilles later referred to by Threepio, rather than an officer belonging to the guard corps on the ship, as is stated in the script. In fact the whole idea is that this is nominally a diplomatic vessel, so it makes little sense for the captain to look like a combat trooper, complete with flack jacket and protective helmet.

 

How about the radio play script? Lucas was partially involved with the radio play - if that were to say "Captain Antilles" for that guy, would it convince you, or is it too "EU-ish" to count?

What about toys and figures - given that Lucas made much of his money from the merchandise?

What would it take to convince you?

I might point out that the "ordinary troopers seen on the ship" all wear blue - only that guy wears beige, and rank pips. He's clearly more important than them.

That combo of jacket and pips is seen on the senior staff at Yavin IV. The only oddity is the helmet.

 

No, because the extent of his involvement was his agreeing to let them do it.

We're talking about Lucas's intentions with the film. Why on earth would the label on an action figure be relevant here?

Yes, he is an officer, as stated in the script.

 

If Rohan Nichols was wearing the helmet and chin cover, all three would look moderately similar.

 

No, they wouldn't, and they don't. The only similarity is that they are white men. There isn't even a moderate resemblance.

And again, there is no reason in the first place--aside from the EU--to think that the characters are the same. This is clearly the reason why the character in Episode III was not cast to resemble the character in Episode IV. There's no reason to even be making these reaches.

 

It's not like the topic hasn't been discussed before.

https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-two-raymus-antilles-why.26323889/

 

What's interesting (probably only to me!) about this, vis-a-vis Lucas's intentions vs. what's canon due to ancillary material is that I've always taken the presence of Antilles to to be one of the many, many things (the chief one being narrative logic) that indicating that the ship in ROTS is intended to be the same one as in R1 and ANH, but it canonically isn't.

In other words, I believe Lucas made Antilles the same guy in ROTS and ANH -- which stuck in canon -- in order to reinforce that the ships in ROTS and ANH are the same ship -- which didn't.

I know the models are different, but this franchise has had scaling problems from day one until literally today, so this still seems off.

 

Yup. The novelization actually called the ship the Tantive IV, as did the ROTS Visual Dictionary, and the Incredible Cross Sections compilation book Complete Cross Sections reinforced this by adding lines about the ship having been extensively refitted to Princess Leia's needs, as well as having its original blue markings replaced with red ones.

Eventually though, someone decided that the shape is just too different to justify "refit" - and renamed it Sundered Heart, and the Complete Locations rerelease finally settled on "Tantive III" at some point after TCW (which had included the Tantive IV as well, but identically shaped to the ANH version).

The "they're different ships" retcon ensured that it wasn't a case of "ANH ship looks exactly like it does in TCW, then changes shape for ROTS and only ROTS, then changes back to the original shape" - but instead "Bail owns at least two slightly different-looking corvettes at the same time and uses whichever's available and not being fixed."

 

The actors playing the same character look nothing alike, I don't even think they tried. ROTS version also went outve its way to make him look different. Rohan Nichol would not morph into those other actors, 19 or 20 years later either anymore than would than the actor that played Wedge change his face into a different looking actor by TROS.

 

If they'd wanted to hammer home that the characters are different, in ROTS, they could have picked a black actor, an Asian actor, a woman, or an actor significantly older than Peter Geddis. They picked none of these.

 

I'm not sure what that has to do with it. The visuals alone tell the story:



Image 1 The Rebel Officer from ANH directed by George Lucas

Image 2 Captain Antilles from ROTS directed by George Lucas

Image 3 "Captain Antilles" from R1 directed by Gareth Edwards

Lucas went as far as recreating the interior of the first ship as seen in ANH along with Bail Organa handing them over to Captain Antilles himself.



That Lucas specifically had Antilles identified by name and made sure that he in no way looks anything like the Officer in ANH is the "hammer home".

A regular viewer watching the movies in order going from ROTS to ANH is not going to confuse Captain Antilles and a Rebel Officer.

When Lucas wanted to connect things he made a point of it hence the Jedi fighters being precursors to the TIE fighters.

What should have happened is that the Captain in R1 should have matched ROTS and be seen piloting the ship while the Rebel Officer from ANH could also be seen.

 

I've watched other things with the characters being the same, but played by different actors, and not looking super-alike. Star Trek Discovery's TOS characters (Pike, Amanda, Sarek, Pike's first officer, Spock, etc) spring to mind.

When I compare "Rebel officer" to "Captain Antilles" - to me, they don't look any more different than TOS Captain Pike and Star Trek Discovery Captain Pike do, or TOS Amanda in the episode Journey to Babel, and Star Trek Discovery Amanda do.











The differences in uniform are due to the fact that the Rebellion itself does not exist yet - and the differences In facial appearance are not immense.

As was mentioned in the thread I linked to:

 

To me the shape isn't any more radically different than a lot of other mismatched or misscaled models throughout the films, but as with Antilles here that's clearly subjective. Of course the sad epilogue is that they brought the Tantive IV back in TROS for far less sensible story reasons... and mis-scaled it way the hell worse.

 

Well then we'll just have to disagree on that. The recast Pike above is very distinctly done to match the look and feel of the original casting.

Now compare that to the previous referenced image below:



One of these does not belong. Place ROTS Antilles in ANH Rebel Officer's garb and he's still not going to fit in.

Alderaan does exist though. The description is "Rebel Officer" but the uniform is Alderaan Royal guard personnel/Diplomatic core. Just as the ship isn't actually called the Rebel Blockade Runner. Lucas made a specific point of not having him in anything resembling the garb from ANH unlike any number of other elements he did connect in (like the ship's interior itself). Most notably the look of the Jedi when he placed Obi-Wan's desert hermit look combined with elements of the "military uniform" look from ROTJ into the PT Jedi look.

Which further makes the point. The original image of the Emperor and the final one are very distinctly made out to be the same as the Pikes' are.

On the Lucas side I think it's pretty plain what his take was. The question as to why the non-Lucas canon wants them to be one and the same is also fairly simple. The Rebel Officer character was identified as Captain Antilles at whatever point and they don't want to change that so for the relative few seconds of screen time they just jammed the two together.

Another point is the recasting of Antilles for R1. They got the Australian actress who played Mon Mothma from ROTS back but not the Australian actor from ROTS back.

 

Nope - the blue uniforms are Royal Guard. The beige uniforms are only seen on him and on personnel at Yavin Base.

I believe the first source to specifically identify him as Captain Antilles was the 1981 radio drama.

The first source to specifically identify ROTS Antilles as "Raymus" (the name the EU gave ANH Antilles) was the ROTS Visual Dictionary. Prior to that there were theories that one might be the son of the other - but Lucasfilm Licensing material such as the online Encyclopaedia, came down firmly on the "they're the same guy, not father and son" side.

 

Knowing Licensing, it could be worse. It could be "Antilles the Elder" worse.

 

"I understood that reference." And you're right!