Saga Anakin Skywalker - Character Discussion...among other things.

@The_Phantom_Calamari I'd defiantly consider someone in their (early) thirties "young" (I'm in my early thirties myself, after all, so I'd like to think I'm an expert) and one also has to keep in mind that A) Obi-Wan is (apparently) an old man at the time he's saying this* and B) is currently deceiving Luke so is not really a reliable narrator.

As for what Lucas and Marquand's discussion, that BTS stuff and, while it's defiantly informative as to Lucas's position, it's not the assumption that the (old) canon itself seemed to be operating on (which is to be expected as he did'nt exert oversight over it because he did'nt care about the stories it was telling), which is part of what led a lot of fans to think the way they did. Also "not as old as Alec" doesn't equal "is a nine-year old boy."

*a person whose in their twenties might not call a man in his thirties young, but a man in his sixties (which is how old I assumed Obi-Wan to be prior to the release of the PT) defiantly would, as people a fair deal younger then that (in their fifties and even forties) call me a "young man/guy/dude/person" all the time.

(For clarification pre-PT my assumption for Anakin's age when fell was around 28 - 31, and I assumed the Empire had already existed for at least a while BEFORE he turned (or at least fully turned) to the Dark Side and the Jedi Purge began).

 

No one said it meant he was always supposed to be nine years old when he met Ben. We're talking about how old Anakin was supposed to be when he turned to the dark side.

I don't see any reason Ben would emphasize that Darth Vader was young if he was in his thirties at the time. The intention, even at that early date, seems to have been to draw parallels between what happened to Vader and what might then also happen to Luke. Luke is a young man in his late teens to early twenties, making the transition from childhood to full adulthood. Luke's journey is a coming-of-age story. The implication was always that Vader was once on the same journey but made the wrong choice. That's why Lucas went out of his way in the first movie to establish that Vader was also a young man when the turn happened. The parallel is less powerful if Vader was actually meaningfully older than Luke is. It is expected that one is already an adult by the time they reach their late twenties to early thirties. Vader would not actually have been dealing with the same conflicts and pressures as Luke if that was the case.

There's also no reason to think Ben would just randomly lie about Vader being young. That makes no sense.

That's not the backstory Lucas was operating under when he wrote ROTJ:

"Well, anyway, Luke’s father gets subverted by the Emperor. He gets a little weird at home and his wife begins to figure out that things are going wrong and she confides in Ben, who is his mentor. On his missions through the galaxies, Anakin has been going off doing his Jedi thing and a lot of Jedi have been getting killed—and it’s because they turn their back on him and he cuts them down. The president is turning into an Emperor and Luke’s mother suspects that something has happened to her husband. She is pregnant. Anakin gets worse and worse, and finally Ben has to fight him and he throws him down into a volcano and Vader is all beat up.

"Now, when he falls into the pit, his other arm goes and his leg and there is hardly anything left of him by the time the Emperor’s troops fish him out of the drink. Then when Ben finds out that Vader has been fished out and is in the hands of the Empire, he is worried about it. He goes back to Vader’s wife and explains that Anakin is the bad guy, the one killing all the Jedi.

"When he goes back his wife, Mrs. Skywalker has had the kids, the twins, so she has these two little babies who are six months old or so. So everybody has to go into hiding. The Skywalker line is very strong with the Force, so Ben says, “I think we should protect the kids, because they may be able to help us right the wrong that your husband has created in the universe.” And so Ben takes one and gives him to a couple out there on Tatooine and he gets his little hideout in the hills and he watches him grow. Ben can’t raise Luke himself, because he’s a wanted man. Leia and Luke’s mother go to Alderaan and are taken in by the king there, who is a friend of Ben’s. She dies shortly thereafter and Leia is brought up by her foster parents. She knows that her real mother died."
--George Lucas, Episode VI story conference

Palpatine is "turning into an Emperor" while Padme is pregnant. Anakin becomes Darth Vader (or betrays and murders Anakin, as Ben put it) within six months of the twins' birth.

e: And here's the line in the revised fourth draft script (note the underlined):

BEN
He was betrayed and murdered… by a young Jedi, Darth Vader. A boy I was training, one of my brightest disciples, one of my greatest failures… He used the power of the force for evil – to help the empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights, now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the force and it consumed him.

So as we can see, Lucas was indeed intending connotations of true youth here. Vader was a boy, just as Luke now is.

 

The thing is prior to the release of the PT we had no (as far as I can recall) set dates for his birth, so it was really up to inference (which is naturally going to differ from person to person); IMO I could see it be anywhere from his teens to his early thirties, but I always lean towards late twenties/early thirties based on Shaw's physical appearance.

Because to a fifty/sixty year old man a thirty year old IS a young man; this is a very common thing. I get called young all the time by people even in their late forties.

That's an interesting perspective, but I never read it that way. Then again I always imagined Anakin as having a very different personality and ambition then the character we were ultimately given.

IMO before the PT and the PT-era works fleshed out the character and what really happened in the past his deceit about Luke's father and Anakin/Vader being the same person made him something of an unreliable narrator when judging anything in that conversation in ANH at face value.

The point is that, either because he's streching the truth or because I don't consider early thirties to be anything but young, I never read that scene as meaning Anakin when he fell had to be as young as he did (nor did I think that he was) - speaking for myself I was VERY surprised when the PT ultimately came out and Anakin circa 32 BBY was as young as he was, as I always imagined him being around 18/20 at that time and already a Jedi.

No, it's not. But Lucas never put any of that on screen or in any canon material prior to the release of the PT. The implication made by the films themselves (at least in the eyes of myself and some others fans) is that Anakin and Obi-Wan were older then they ended up being and that seems to be the assumption that the EU writers took (along with the assumption that the timeline was laid out somewhat differently), which only *reinforced* that assumption.

 

But I think he was still placed as a skilled pilot in the movie. His age doesn't change that. That and the other stuff isn't said or shown in the movies.

 

I agree with this. The older we get, the more our perception of what constitute young changes. To a thirty year old man, a twenty year old man is young. To a nearly sixty year old man (?), a thirty year old man is definitely young. So it wouldn't be out of place for old Ben Kenobi to refer to Anakin as a "young Jedi" if he had reached that age when he "betrayed and murdered (Luke's) father"

I always thought that Obi-Wan and Vader were around the ages of seventy and fifty respectively in A New Hope before the prequels. I would have preferred them to have gone back twenty five years or so and had the prequels start when they were around forty-five and twenty-five respectively. I think it would have fit better.

Having Obi-Wan as an apprentice and Anakin as a child felt like a waste of a movie to me.

 

True, but my point is I doubt anyone watched the OT before the PT came out and interpreted "when I first knew him, you father was already a great pilot" with "also, he was a child."

Speaking for myself the assumption that I myself had was that when Obi-Wan first met Anakin the latter was already in his late teens/early twenties and was working as a pilot, and Obi-Wan, who says he "took it upon himself" to train him as a Jedi, recruited the younger man into the order after being impressed by his force connection (keep in mind I also did'nt imagine the Jedi Order as being so formal and rigid)

Yeah, I myself always guessed something like 50/55 for Anakin (making him 27/32 when everything went down) and Obi-Wan as being in his sixties when we meet him in ANH.

 

You never read it that way? There's a scene where a dream image of Darth Vader's face mask explodes and reveals Luke's face underneath. This wasn't exactly subtle stuff.

There was no implication in the films themselves that Anakin was as old as you thought him to be. All we have is Ben describing Vader as "a young Jedi" and the behind the scenes backstory, which contradicts you. You're simultaneously trying to claim that the onscreen implications support you, while stretching the definition of "young" to mean early thirties, even though we can see from the revised fourth draft that Lucas meant for the word to imply that Vader was a "boy" when he turned, just as anyone picking up on the obvious paralles being drawn between him and Luke would have assumed, and just as the prequels eventually depicted it.

 

STAR WARS Chronicles (released in 1997) has a timetable in the first few pages. I don't have the book in front of me, but I do believe it says that Vader fell to the dark side when he was in his early thirties. I may be mistaken. Does anyone in here have that book?

 

I've always taken that scene to indicate either A) Vader and Luke are tied together somehow or B) Luke is at risk of becoming like Vader or C) a mix of both A and B. It's a trippy (Dark Side influenced?) Force vision in a cave - like Rey's vision in TLJ it could mean just about ANYTHING.

I never read it as "Anakin was like Luke, and his journey mirrored his save for the ending" - I mean, heck, aside from coming from Tatooine and being trained by Obi-Wan in the Jedi arts, their stories (and their characterizations) don't really strike me as analogous in the way your saying.

Actually there is; Sabastian Shaw's physical age - assuming that he was meant to represent what Anakin/Vader actually looked like sans burns and wounds at the time of ROTJ then I guesstimated him to be around 50/55, which would make him around 27/32 when he fell (I have no idea how old the man actually was, mind you, I'm just going by what young late-90s me thought he LOOKED like.

Okay, well first off as myself and others have said early thirties *is* young - at least to a person in their sixties (as I've said, I'm thirty and I'm regularly called young by people in their mid to late forties). Secondly that line from the script never made it into the film, so it's non-canon, and even if it did it would be retconned away by the fact that Anakin obviously wasn't a child when he turned.

Thirdly (and no offense but I'm not sure how you missed this) but I'm talking about my impression for the character from BEFORE the PT was released, based not just on what the films implied, but what the EU implied as well. I'm not claiming he actually WAS that old when he fell, just saying that's the impression I got from the films and the EU in the days before the prequals were released.

The simple fact is prior to the release of the PT we had no actual canon evidence in the lore (at least as far as I can recall, save for perhaps the timeline provided Chronicles if flights recollections are serving him correctly) regarding not just Anakin and Obi-Wan's ages, but even how exactly the events of the PT era played out sans the birthdate of the twins, so back in the "wilderness years" it really was a game of personal impressions.

 

Well, that is what it meant.

And we have Lucas behind-the-scenes indicating he cast Shaw to visually look close in age to Ben. If he were intended to actually be close in age to him, then Lucas wouldn't have said "visually." He would have just said, "Yes, they are close in age."

When Shaw appeared without makeup, it was a last-minute decision. At that point, Shaw had already been cast as the character under the assumption that he would only appear as the withered, unmasked Vader. So they used Shaw, but that doesn't mean the intention was for his apparent age to reflect the reality. Lucas intended from the beginning that Vader be a "boy" like Luke when he turned, and that's how it was depicted in the prequels. The apparent age of Shaw's Force ghost is the anomaly here.

Surely you're not really saying we should take the apparent age of Shaw's Force ghost as gospel, because otherwise we would have to accept that Anakin is actually about nine years older than Ben.

It doesn't matter if it wasn't in the script. It establishes that when Lucas had Ben refer to Vader as "a young Jedi," he meant young as in "boy," as in like Luke. Given that this was Lucas's thought on the matter, it makes no sense for you to assert that we were meant to think that Vader was older when he turned.

 

Agree to disagree; we interpreted that scene differently, apparently.

Can you provide a canon source telling us, one way or the other, what Anakin's age was intended to be prior to the release of the PT?

No, I'm just saying that, back in the "old days" before the PT provided us with Anakin (and Obi-Wan's) actual age it was really just a case of "well how old do YOU think they are?

My impression, based on what the movies shows us and what little information the EU provided prior to that point, was that the two characters were somewhat older then the PT ultimately decided to show, whereas you seem to have taken a literal interpretation of the "a young Jedi" line and focused on BTW stuff. And my impression led me to assume that Obi-Wan was in his sixties when he died and Anakin was in his early fifties circa ROTJ.

First off Luke's not "a boy," he's a teenager/young adult. Secondly it's super unlikely that Lucas meant "this small child conspired with Palpatine to betray the Jedi and killed all these powerful space wizards*" and thirdly we're discussing canon, and I don't recall any canon sources (prior to the release of the PT) that give us Anakin's age.

*and neither force-ghost, Shaw or HC, would indicate that Anakin was a boy when he betrayed the Jedi; heck, based on how the PT ultimately played out we KNOW that cut line doesn't actually mean "a boy."

 

Neither did Lucas at that point but TESB changed everything. Now Anakin was far younger because he had to become the much younger Vader. The only thing that changed from that point was that he kept pushing Anakin to be as young as he possibly could be.

“But that isn’t the story. It is important that he be young, that he be at an age where leaving his mother is more of a drama than it would have been at 15. So you just have to do what’s right for the movie, not what’s right for the market.”

Yet even at that point we know that Obi-Wan was the one who trained Anakin as opposed to Yoda who may not have been so keen much like with Luke. There is plenty of room for all kinds of inferences and assumptions on how things worked.

That the Jedi were so formalized an organization traces back to The Star Wars where they were personal bodyguards to the Emperor and architects of the Imperial Space Force that expanded the Empire across the galaxy so even though we didn't know it that was already in play.

That's an interesting question because the real answer is that it's exactly whatever Lucas wanted it to be whenever he wanted it to be that.

Vader called Luke "a boy" in TESB and he was then the same age as Anakin in ROTS.

 

Anakin being fifteen when he started his training would work perfectly with the impression I was operating under before the release of the PT; as I said, my assumption was that he was around 27/32 when he fell, which would mean he was 14/19 when he started his training.

Exactly

There's only one "correct" answer, and that's what the PT and subsequent works have told us, but I'm talking about by impressions/assumptions from BEFORE the PT was released, made based on inferences from the scant canon information that existed. I'm not disputing that Anakin/Vader was nine when he started training and forty-something when he died, I'm just saying that's not the impression the pre-PT lore gave me back in the day.

True, but that draft never got used; the old EU sorta implied that the Jedi were less formalized and rigid then the PT ultimately decided they were; for instance in Tales of the Jedi we're not given any indication of a Jedi Council (with the Jedi instead making major decisions by gathering together in huge conclaves and deliberating as a sort of convention) and there's no heavy restrictions such as them being anti-marriage and whatnot.

Back in the day I always imagined them more as questing knights or something, going around and following the will of the Force, rather then a rigidly-organized clositered order who worked for the government; an entire order of Qui-Gon Jinns, basically, and that Obi-Wan was just wandering around when he stumbled upon Anakin, working as a pilot, and went "wow, your connection to the force is strong, I'm going to train you."

I'm talking about what the canon (not Lucas) told us (or rather, what it implied/what I felt it implied), though.

I always read that line as him just being dismissive (or at least trying to appear as if he's being dimssive) of Luke; villains often call the hero a "boy/girl" even when their grown adults (for instance Rey is regularly called "the girl/a girl" in the ST even though she's 19/20, and IIRC Dooku calls Anakin a boy in ATOC.

 

Which goes back to the bolded point. In comparison to Vader actually turning out to be Anakin anything else is wide open. I'd say what Lucas actually did was very clever because he was able to blend it all together. On the one hand we got two movies with Anakin being parallel to Luke with TESB and AOTC to ROTJ and ROTS but the curve was that he did in TPM which was effectively a prologue by pushing back Anakin's training start.

That has no relation to Lucas. They were pretty much allowed to do what they wanted for the most part.

Considering they were guardians of the Republic that were generals serving in the Clone Wars the government angle was always strong.

It could be I but I'd say it'd be more about the lack of experience. He's certainly at best a boy Jedi i.e. apprentice level at best.

 

Hu...that's a very interesting perspective. I'm wouldn't really call Anakin's story in ATOC and ROTS parallel with Luke's in ESB and ROTJ (though certainly I do see superficial similarities, like both of them losing a hand) - what exactly is it that you see as being parellel, if you don't mind me asking?

True, but the point is pre-Disney they were canon, and before the PT the EU was the only source (outside of the OT) that have us implications regarding what the era in question looked like.

I'm not disputing Lucas did'nt care about the EU (he did'nt) and I'm not claiming most of the scant information it provided was later contradicted by the PT and subsequent PT-era works (and even by ESB and ROTJ in some cases) I'm just saying that to me (and I would assume some other fans) who basing our assumptions on what we felt the films implied and what little the EU told us we had different ideas regarding the Obi-Wan and Anakin's ages and the PT era as a whole.

I never really read it that way; as I said Tales showed the Jedi as Guardians of the Republic while *also* presenting them as significantly less organized then the PT ultimately showed them to be, so I just assumed they operated like that even during Obi-Wan/Yoda/Anakins time, and IMO I always assumed that Obi-Wan's rank had nothing to do with him being a Jedi; kind of like how my grandfather being a freemason had nothing to do with him ALSO being in the navy.

Well speaking based on what the PT ultimately *did* show us he was what, twenty-two? When he fell. To bring this back around to an earlier discussion I *would* consider that young, but the only reason I can think of that an older person would refer to person that old as "a boy" is to be rude/dismissive/contemptful/mocking in a friendly/nonfriendly way (which fits with the times it's actually used to describe grown-up Anakin in the PT, as well as how it's used towards both Luke and Rey*). As for his experience he wasn't apprentice level - Anakin was a fully-fledged Jedi Knight when he fell, and that was the impression I got even from the OT BEFORE ROTS came out.

Who knows what Lucas meant when he wrote that line? It doesn't really matter either way, though, because the line did'nt make it into the film.

*ditto for "kid" in regards to how Han uses it in regards to Luke; he's using it like how my roommate's friend uses "kiddo" to refer to me (even though I'm older then her, lol)

 

None of the OT said that either way.

 

About the ages of Obi-Wan, Anakin and Vader based on the OT.

We have nothing solid but there is some.

Obi-Wan: In ANH, based on what I've read, he was to be about 70. It isn't said but Owen, who looks to be in his 50's, calls him old. Tarkin says that "Surely he must be dead by now." Implying that he would have died of old age.
The PT made him about 10-15 years younger.
Anakin: We have the apparent ages of Owen and Beru, both look to be in their 50's. Since Luke calls them Uncle and Aunt, Anakin is related to one of them. Plus they clearly knew Anakin when he was younger, before he left with Obi-Wan.
Also, in the script and it was filmed, Red Leader says he met Anakin when he, red leader, was just a boy. And Anakin was by then a famous pilot and red leader is said to be in his 40's in ANH. So 30 years ago, Anakin was already a great and famous pilot.
Vader: Not much here, Obi-Wan calls him young Jedi and the script/novelization calls him "boy".
But in ANH, Vader and Anakin were different people so them being of different ages is not odd.

When Lucas decided to merge the characters in the second draft of ESB, he had to choose, which age to go with?
The older "Anakin" age or the younger "Vader" age.
In RotJ, both given that he used an older actor to play unmasked Anakin and older versions of the scripts had Anakin and Obi-Wan come back in the flesh at the end and Anakin was called "old man". And the script for the unmasking scene says that beneath the mask IS an elderly man. Not an elderly looking man.
Then I think that Lucas went with the older "Anakin" age.
That changed when he made the PT.

How similar are Luke and Anakin?
Some similarities are there, rash, a bit impatient, eager for adventure, a strong desire to help sure.
But Anakin left to become a Jedi much younger than Luke. Luke lost his aunt and uncle but he was older then.
Anakin left his mother and that bothered him for ten years and then she was killed in a very horrible way.
Anakin, to me, was more arrogant than Luke, more full of himself, more interested in getting praise.
Luke, to me, felt a bit more humble, mostly later on. He could be overconfident as well, no doubt.
Anakin suffers a more terrible loss, his mother, and that changes him.
Both are told something shocking, Anakin that Palaptine is actually a Sith and Luke that Vader is his father.
But then those happen are different. Luke happens much earlier and shapes much of the third film.
To Anakin, he gets angry that his friend and mentor lied to him but he gets over that quickly.
Luke also was lied to, by people he thinks are his mentors and he does call them out over it.

The turn or near turn is very different. Anakin did way more dark stuff before that. And he had a some reason to side with Palpatine, something he wanted.
Luke was given no such reason by Palpatine and was instead told to murder his father and take his place as a slave.
Luke wants nothing from Palpatine, except maybe to kill him.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

If a teenager/young adult can't be considered a "boy," then obviously when Lucas had Ben refer to Vader as a "boy" in the script for A New Hope, he did in fact intend for him to be a small child. That's the only possible explanation, according to you.

I mean, the funny thing is I wasn't even making that argument. You just did, though.

e: Incidentally, though, here's the script for A New Hope again:

Luke bounces into a small room behind the office where Deak and Windy, two tough boys about the same age as Luke, are playing a computer pool-like game with Biggs, a burly, handsome boy a few years older than the rest. His flashy city attire is a sharp contrast to the loose-fitting tunics of the farm boys. A robot repairs some equipment in the background.

And here's the script for The Empire Strikes Back:

Luke's head spins in the direction the creature faces. But there is no
one there. The boy is bewildered, but it gradually dawns on him that
the little creature is Yoda, the Jedi Master, and that he is speaking
with Ben.

[...]

Yoda turns his piercing gaze on Luke, as though the Jedi Master's huge
eyes could somehow determine how much the boy had learned. After a
long moment, the little Jedi turns toward where he alone sees Ben.

[...]

BEN
That boy is our last hope.

I'm pretty sure you're the only person who adheres to such a restrictive usage of the word "boy."

 

@The_Phantom_Calamari The only one of those bolded lines that are canon is Obi-Wan's line (and we know he did'nt literally mean Luke was a boy because Luke was in his twenties at that point); The rest were not put in the films, and thus don't matter. I'm not really sure what your arguing here, though, because we KNOW Anakin was never a boy when he fell - the character as the PT showed him was in his twenties and pre-PT Shaw's age/the claim that Anakin conspired with the Emperor and murdered all the Jedi makes it unlikely he was a child two decades prior to ANH - in fact we KNOW he wasn't, because we have pre-PT visual depictions of him before his fall.


That supposed to be Padme he's with, BTW, so the implication is that the child is one of the twins, which would mean it was circa 19 BBY, so that makes it clear that even BEFORE the PT he was never a boy when he fell (he actually looks closer to thirty then twenty in that picture, at least to me)

There's also the below from the old Marvel comics (released before ESB retconned Anakin and Vader as being the same person - the comic itself was much later retconned to explain that the Vader in the story was Anakin and the Anakin in the story was Haaglad Ventor carrying Anakin's saber).

That's supposed to be Anakin on the left with the mohawk, and IMO he looks like he's in his twenties, with the dialogue clearly referencing that this is him during the Clone Wars (keep in mind that before the PT the clone wars were implied to have taken place a bit further in the past then they were ultimately shown and were implied to have been more then one conflict*); you'll also not that all three are referred to as Jedi Knights and Obi-Wan is already an old man, which lines up with these two below images of him from what is supposed to be around that same period.



So as you can see Anakin clearly wasn't a child when he fell to the Dark Side and the visual depictions of Obi-Wan (and Anakin around the time he fell) showed that the lore originally envisioned them as being older then they were ultimately depicted as by the PT and subsequent works, hence why fans like me held the beliefs we did back in the "old days". "Boy" in the sense that it's used to refer to Anakin in the few canon instances that it is used (such as with Dooku) is clearly meant either mockingly/dismissively or just in the sense that it's an old person referring to a much younger person (and since it's never, to my knowledge, used to refer to him canonically prior to the release of the PT, it's also not really relevant to my point about my original impressions either way)

*IIRC Mara at one point mentions that Thrawn could "unleash "another round" of Clone Wars"

That's what I've been saying, yes.

But I'm not just going by what the movies inferred (which *can* be read in a way that implies they were older) but also what little the EU showed us prior to the release of the PT.

 

I don't understand what you're even trying to say at this point. My point was that Lucas always intended for Vader to a boy Luke's age when he fell, because that's what he wrote in the script, even though the line was shortened in the movie. You then claimed that Ben couldn't have meant Vader was Luke's age because Luke isn't a boy. I then posted multiple examples of Luke and his similar aged peers being referred as boys in the script, both in narration and by characters. You then claim this is invalid because Luke isn't a boy, because you say so. Okay, whatever dude, but Lucas obviously thinks so, and that's we're discussing.

You just told me that lines written by Lucas don't count because they're not "canon." Then you go and post a bunch of stuff created by tie-in authors and artists which are definitely not canon. Like, what the heck. Surely you must realize you're blatantly contradicting yourself.

 

I don't really know why your confused; as I've said multiple times I'm talking about the impression the films and the rest of the lore gave me regarding the ages of the characters in the days PRIOR to the release of the PT. Lucas has nothing to do with it; I don't really care what he may or may not have thought behind-the-scenes, because that ultimately did'nt make it into the movies and books/comics.

Luke is between 19/23 years old in the OT, though. He wasn't a child.

Are you just using "boy" as interchanged with "teenager/young man?" Because this whole time I've been assuming that by "Anakin was a boy when he fell" you meant "Anakin was a child when he fell."

Actually I'm claiming it's invalid because your saying that Anakin (not Luke) was a boy when he fell to the Dark Side, when he was clearly never depicted as such; but again I may have just taking you saying "boy" far to literally (at any rate, based on Shaw's age and the age he appears to be at the time of the twin's birth based on the Topps trading card Anakin defiantly did'nt originally seem to be imagined by the lore as being Luke's age as Lucas and the PT ultimately decided on showing him to be)

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought what we were discussing was what our respective personal interpretations of ages of Anakin and Obi-Wan were based on the inferences we had gotten from the available lore, not what Lucas thinks/thought behind-the-scenes; perhaps we're having a misunderstanding?

They're not canon now, but they were at the time - and furthermore (and more importantly) there was a time when they were the ONLY canon images/depictions of the characters that we had of that era.

The lines written by Lucas aren't canon because they were only in the script, not in the films (they *may* have been in the novelizations, though, I freely admit that could be the case and I'm just not remembering because it's been so long); unused lines from a script are non-canonical.

How so?

As I said above, I think we've just been talking about two different things without realizing it; your arguing about what Lucas intended behind-the-scenes, and I'm just recounting the impression the lore gave me at the time; that he was in his late twenties/early thirties when he fell and was fifty-ish when he died. I've been pretty consistent regarding my position, so I'm not sure why you'd feel I'm contradicting myself.

 

Some of his AOTC dialogue is poor/corny/creepy but absolutely love him in revenge of the sith, adds so much more to Vader as a character in the OT where you can understand even pre redemption he’s not inherently evil just an extremely powerful Jedi who has been manipulated into making poor choices over a sustained period of time and presumably realised that as part of the empire but feels he has no way back until he meets his son

Glad it’s HC returning for Kenobi, particularly if there’s anything out of the mask/flash backs shoe.

 

I don't think the difference really matters. Neither of those place Anakin as about 9 years older than Obi-Wan, which, according to Google, Sebastian Shaw was 9 years older than Alec Guinness. If we go with the idea that Obi-Wan was Alec Guinness' age 18-20 years before the OT, he'd be in his 40's, and Anakin in his 50's.

Why does what the EU may suggest or say matter that much, if it wasn't what Lucas wanted to do, wasn't stated in the movies and isn't canonized by the OT or the PT?

 

I don't know why you would think that's what I meant, as I've specifically said multiple times in prior posts that Anakin was meant to be Luke's age when he fell. You argued with me about that. You argued with me that the word "boy" couldn't mean someone who was Luke's age in the OT, because that was central to my argument, which, again, is that Anakin was meant to be Luke's age when he fell. I simply can't see any way you possibly could have been confused about what I meant, given that you've just spend the past page and a half or so specifically arguing against the actual point I was making.

No, you were specifically talking about the impression given by the movies. You only brought up the lore in your very last post. Your argument was that an inference can be made from the movies that Anakin was at least in his thirties when he turned, because of Shaw's age. I then pointed out that Ben says Vader was "a young Jedi" when he turned, and that Lucas's intention was for Vader to have been a "boy," just as Luke is, because Vader's journey was always intended to be an inverted parallel of Luke's. I then pointed out the reasons that Shaw's age is probably not an accurate reflection of Lucas's intentions regarding the character's actual chronological age, but merely an inconsistency brought about a decision late in production to include a rejuvenated Anakin at the end of the film.

Essentially, what I've shown is that Lucas always intended for Vader to have been about Luke's age when he turned. That is why, unsurprisingly, he portrayed Anakin in the prequels as being around Luke's age when he turned. I'm not quite sure why Lucas should have been obligated to have Anakin's age in the PT conform to that of an actor who was nine years older than Alec Guinness, rather than staying true to the story he intended, which is that Vader fell as a young man after making the wrong choice in his pivotal coming-of-age moment where Luke later made the right one. That seems rather backwards to me, from a creative standpoint.

 

The parallel and inverse journey's of father and son is something that is well gone over. This is a good thread:

https://boards.theforce.net/threads...y-run-totally-inverse-to-each-other.50041534/

Sure but what was there? I don't know that "scant" would be the term. Was there enough to even say there was that much? That is not the same as anything Lucas might have said that got published. The term contradicted doesn't apply at all unless it was Lucas "contradicting" himself. How that even applies is questionable.

Wasn't it fairly well known at the time that Lucas looked at the EU as separate from his Star Wars? As someone who didn't bother with it and pre-TPM was only concerned with material that was actually connected to Lucas I paid scant attention to anything that wasn't.

In terms of "boy" both Vader and Obi-Wan use the term in TESB for an early 20's Luke. I don't see how that is rude, dismissive et al by Obi-Wan and for Vader that doesn't really work because he's obsessed with finding Luke and seeing if he can use him to overthrow the Emperor. At the very best he's trying to be "dismissive" of him to Sidious as a ploy.

That's the convergence between the Anakin as Jedi Knight and Darth Vader the young Jedi pupil. Lucas' solution was to create the even higher rank. Anakin still looks to Obi-Wan and is still learning from him to get to the next level.

I'd say that anything that Lucas wrote at any time matters because we know that be it what we actually know and are aware of in written script or any notes or thoughts he had that we know nothing about that it's all something that played a part. That is all more important used or unused than anything not from Lucas. If it's not from Lucas then it's pretty much totally irrelevant to the real story.