Saga Is Captain Antilles really in Episode IV?

Someone get Lucas on the phone and find out what the hell he was thinking not casting someone who looks identical to the original actor minus 20 years.

 

Which is kind of the point I'm making - that, given the constraints, Rohan Nichol is close enough in looks that it's plausible that Lucas actually did intend him to be "The guy Vader chokes in ANH, but younger".

And that the "There's no chance Lucas intended them to be the same character" hypothesis is stretching things a bit.

 

Talking of fitting in, I'm surprised he fits into that jumpsuit seeing as it looks as if he is wearing Vader's codpiece beneath it.

 

The argument is the character of Captain Antilles had no original actor to begin with.

 

I don't understand the point of this post, given that both those pairs of people clearly do look alike, and George Lucas obviously had nothing to do with this production.


e:

[/QUOTE]

As @Qui-Riv-Brid noted, the soldiers in A New Hope are not wearing Rebel soldier uniforms. They are wearing Alderaanian Royal Guard uniforms:

It doesn't make any sense for these people to be dressed in Rebel uniforms. Leia and all her men are undercover Rebels posing as Alderaanian diplomatic personnel. Thus, we see Alderaanian guards wearing an earlier versoin of this uniform in The Clone Wars:



If Lucas had wanted to connect the two characters, he would have had Captain Antilles wearing a similar uniform in Episode III. Just as he did with Mon Mothma:




And Owen and Beru:




Among many other characters.

The whole point of Episode III is to bridge the trilogies by creating visual connections. It doesn't make sense, in this one case, that he decided to cast an actor who bore no resemblance to the other character and is dressed nothing like him. Unless you consider the fact that it makes little sense for the captain of a diplomatic starship to be dressed in the same uniform as an armed Royal Guard force.

 

I meaaaaannn…To me it's just fine to say it's not the same character. In ROTS we see Captain Antilles, and in ANH it's simply a Rebel officer. To me it's entirely plausible that the two separate scenes on the two separate ships in two separate films (separated by almost 20 years no less) could simply be two different people.

 

There's literally no affirmative evidence George Lucas ever intended for them to be the same character. So it's pretty laughable to say I'm the one stretching things.

Rohan Nichol looks nothing like Peter Geddis. I'm not even talking about in comparison to the other actors chosen to play OT characters. These are just not physically or facially comparable people. It's weird that we're actually arguing about this. Do I need to make diagrams?

 

That seems entirely implausible to me based on ROTS to the OT:

Mon Mothma and Mon Mothma:


Tarkin and Tarkin:


Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan:


Antilles and Antilles??:

Well if that was the case then in comparison he made absolutely sure it was the very, very least of a chance. Like the Dumb and Dumber level of "So you're telling me there's a chance?"

If anything it seems far more likely that at some point when he mentioned he was going to have Mothma, Tarkin and Captain Antilles in ROTS that someone somewhere along the way, in casting or wherever, pulled out photo references presuming the officer in ANH was Antilles. That Lucas went out of his way to completely disconnect the two in stark contrast to the others is the conclusive point I would say.

Man they must get really beat up and down in that upcoming Obi-Wan series!

 

Honestly to me, it seemed like the look of the casting (and wardrobe no less) was intentionally very different for the sake of separating the two. Perhaps that wasn't the intention-but, if one looks decidedly and unyieldingly different from the other, why would it be so hard to accept that they are different people?

IMO Mon Mothma, Obi-Wan etc. are not the same cos close attention is paid to make those characters look the same as their recasts. Sure it's not exact, but in real life they CAN'T be-it was the best the filmmakers could do. With regard to Antilles in ROTS and the Rebel in ANH, there is very little time spent on them, and they are (almost blatantly) very different in appearance. Personally, I feel the reason Captain Antilles was put in ROTS was more to show what happens to R2 and 3PO, rather than to create some kind of continuity between two blink-and-you'll-miss-it stand ins in the two separate films-a continuity that frankly, doesn't need to be made.

 

On the Episode III DVD webisode "Becoming Obi-Wan", concept artist Iain McCaig notes how similar Ewan McGregor looks to Alec McGuinness. He explains that one thing that defines how similar one person looks to another is this triangle you can draw in the center of their face:



See how it's nearly identical? Well, I took the time to undertake some similar comparisons between PT and OT actors portraying the same characters (yes, I was serious about doing diagrams).

First, let's compare Genevieve O'Reilly to Caroline Blakiston:



As you can check for yourself, I've tried to be as fair and consistent as humanly possible, centering the top two points of the triangle as close to the pupils as I could and the bottom point of the triangle right below the top lip (thus whether or not the mouth is open or closed should not significantly affect the shape of the triangle).



Here I compare the two triangles directly. I've given both triangles the same width so that they're approximately the same size, which should suit our purpose because we're mainly concerned with proportions (which I've maintained during the size adjustment, of course). In this case I've also flipped one of the triangles horizontally to account for the fact that both actresses are slightly turning their heads in different directions. As you can see, it's a pretty close correspondence!

Now let's apply the same procedure to Joel Edgerton and Phil Brown:





Again, as you see, it's remarkably close!

Okay, now Bonnie Piesse and Shelagh Fraser:





What do you know, another close match!

But wait, you say. Maybe most human faces are this close when you compare them this way. This doesn't prove anything. Well, then let's just move on to the actors in question, Rohan Nichol and Peter Geddis:



Unfortunately, as you can see, we never really get a good head-on angle of Peter Geddis in Episode IV, who is consistently not only turning his head to one side but also upwards. So for a more fair comparison I found an image of him from another production (and yes, that is for sure him). I used this head-on image of Peter Geddis for the triangle comparison with Rohan Nichol.

So, our hypothesis is that most people's faces, when compared using this method, will result in correspondences like the ones we've already seen. Let's test it:



Whoa, that's way off compared to the others. And yet I followed the same method and took great care to be exactly as accurate and fair as I was for the others (you can see for yourself). Even ignoring all the other facial features not captured in this comparison which set them apart even more, Rohan Nichol and Peter Geddis are objectively and significantly more dissimilar than these others.

And, as a bonus, I decided to try this next one just for fun, not really expecting anything, but....





I was shocked at this. Honestly, it's probably a total coincidence, but there it is. Hayden Christensen looks more like Sebastian Shaw than Rohan Nichol looks like Peter Geddis. Objectively.

(And yes everyone, I know this was a slightly insane thing to do to prove a point, but it was actually a fun exercise.)

 

[QUOTE="The_Phantom_Calamari, post: 57347069, member: 1372715"
(And yes everyone, I know this was a slightly insane thing to do to prove a point, but it was actually a fun exercise.)[/QUOTE]

Very much so but a welcome one. I wouldn't try something like this myself but I was looking for the Obi-Wan shot to reference that triangle idea.

I'm not sure how exactly that works but the overall point is that regardless of the triangle one can see how when casting the same character with different actors Lucas made a point of trying to get the complete effect of their faces to have some similarity along with the other visual cues.

 

Well, I think it works because the proportions of the average human face are already fairly similar, which you can see if you compare almost any two random face triangles. For example, here's Hayden Christensen compared with Bonnie Piesse:



And here's Joel Edgerton compared with Caroline Blakiston:



It's already pretty close. So when you compare the face triangles of two people who were intentionally cast because of their resemblance to each other, what would otherwise be a rough correspondence becomes an extreme correspondence. What is significant is the fact that I could do this for every PT/OT actor pair and come up with a significantly closer correspondence than the average every time except once--that once of course being Rohan Nichol and Peter Geddis. In the case of Rohan Nichol and Peter Geddis, the divergence seems if anything to be even greater than it would be for any two randomly selected people:



This isn't that surprising to me because they both in their own ways have rather distinctive features, but not in the same way.

e: Because I couldn't help myself:





I really am surprised this works so well. I'm not sure what I learned exactly but I feel like I learned something.

 

Having just watched ANH last night I have to say that, as soon as I saw Peter Geddis I thought to myself, "wait, isn't that supposed to be the same guy from ROTS? They look nothing alike!"

 

It's the same character. There aren't 50 Captain Antilles' running around the Rebellion. This isn't Spaceballs where you have Major A**hole, and the entire flight crew are A**holes, and related. This is nothing more than a case of Lucas not paying attention or caring enough to make sure a background character with 10 seconds of screen time matched up to who he previously cast to play the same role. This is like saying because Mark Ruffalo looks nothing like Edward Norton, there must be two different Hulks running around the MCU.

And as far as the triangle match for claiming people look alike, that is a flawed attempt to make a point. Any person, sans physical deformity, with a short or round face will closely match another with a short round face. And someone with a long or narrow face will closely match someone else with the same features. Yet they can look completely different but have same the same facial spacing and basic features.

 

The character we see in ANH is never referred to as Captain Antilles.

 

Well it is now thanks to the current Lucasfilm who made it that way when they was no legitimate reason to do so.

None at all.

Actually it's quite the opposite. Lucas paid complete attention to his own movies. It's the makers of Rogue One not paying attention to Lucas' that is the problem.

Let's look at it in casting/visual order:

Mon Motha from ROTJ to ROTS to R1:



They used Lucas' imagery and even his ROTS casting for R1 (and now Andor).

Tarkin from ANH to ROTS to R1:



They used the imagery and recreated Lucas' casting for R1 going as far as the CGI recreation.

Yet even if that had been abandoned for whatever reason the actual person they cast for on the set would have been a terrific recast visually (plus he did the voice):



Captain Antilles from ROTS to R1:



They didn't use either Lucas' casting or even the imagery of Captain Antilles.

What they did do was use the imagery of the unnamed and uncredited character that Darth Vader threw around and they decided to call him Captain Antilles over what George Lucas did.

In the script the character is named Rebel Officer not Captain Antilles yet in that same script Threepio says "Our last master was Captain Antilles, but with what we've been through, this little R2 unit has become a bit eccentric."

If Lucas had intended for that character to be Captain Antilles he would have done so. He could have done so for the SE's.



Lucas is the man who made a point of inserting the actor who played The Emperor/Darth Sidious into TESB. He made a point of showing us and crediting the previously mentioned but unseen character of Captain Antilles into ROTS. The only legitimate case to be made is that Lucasfilm were the ones not paying attention or caring enough to make sure a background character with 10 seconds of screen time in Rogue One matched up to who Lucas previously cast to play the same role. It's all the more egregious because the other Australian actor he cast for ROTS is in R1!

All they had to do was list the character they had in their movie as Rebel Officer and not have Organa refer to him as Captain Antilles (because he isn't). Even then that is a total blink and miss it shot done out of focus.

 

An unwillingness to contradict EU ideas that had been imported into the newcanon, may qualify as a "legitimate reason".

Such as the new novelization of ANH, The Princess, The Scoundrel, And The Farmboy released not too long after the Disney buyout - which followed the EU line of "that character is Captain Antilles".

Disney seems to like recycling tie-in books, such as Complete Vehicles, the various Visual Encyclopaedias, the Junior Novelizations of the OT, and so on. Not contradicting the EU line, reduces the amount of changes they need to make to them.

 

Yes, and the crucial point is that Rohan Nichol and Peter Geddis have neither similar facial spacing or similar basic features. They are very noticeably divergent in both aspects compared to other actors playing the same characters, as well as compared to any two random actors whom you choose to compare to each other. This was the point of the exercise which I think I explained rather clearly. They are quite different-looking people, even beyond the average.

This last point shouldn't need to be argued at all, as it's apparent from simply looking at the two actors with your eyes. However, it was contested, and thus--diagrams.

 

I have to say that it has always bothered me that the Captain Antilles in ROTS looked so different from the Captain Antilles in ANH, so the idea that it was on purpose because Lucas always considered Captain Antilles and that officer to be 2 different people is quite interesting to me.

 

I never particularly thought of the character in ANH as Captain Antilles. At best it was questionable but plausible enough but when Lucas gave us the actual Antilles in ROTS then the ANH character was clearly out as far as Lucas was concerned which should have been the end of the matter.

When Rogue One came out and they made a point of misidentifying the wrong character as Antilles then I figured they were just going to say this was a different Antilles but then they said that it was supposed to be the same person which was pure nonsense but as it turned out Rogue One did a number of things that don't connect to ANH so this was just another one.

 

But the thing is we're not talking about differing fan interpretations here, this was LFL's official take that they published for decades. Now, that doesn't mean it was what Lucas himself intended but I've never personally asked him about it so why would I just assume that it was a mistake/miscommunication? It never even occurred to me that was a legitimate possibility until I read the evidence put forth in this thread, hence the rest of my statement that you left out. I mean, that seems to have been the whole point behind this thread's creation, to bring attention to a possibility that the average fan is unlikely to have considered because it's not very obvious. I agree that it seems the most likely explanation based on the case presented but I would hardly describe it as "clear".

 

I never really saw that as anything but separate from Lucas and his movies. That is the base upon which everything else rests.

If Lucas himself isn't bothered by what they do that is fine to accept as support material if he wasn't going to do anything with it himself. Once he does though then his stance supersedes anything else and they adjust accordingly. That's why I was surprised their stance was that their Captain Antilles was also supposed to be the actual one seen in ROTS rather than working around it. Lucas could hardly be more clear that the character in ANH was not Captain Antilles. I suspect that if Denis Lawson had taken the part in ROTS then then would have done just that and probably made him Wedge's father.

In that case then it's a minor point because the total screen time of the 2 characters is seconds in each movie. Besides that only Lucas' actual Captain Antilles is both named and credited (if one would look at the credits). The other "Captain Antilles" isn't referred to as such nor is there any credit for that character at all.

The only reason to even think he is Captain Antilles based on the movies is because of the reference in Rogue One which itself is easy to miss since it's done deep in the background of a scene with in blur and shadow (besides it being in the credits).

 

He could have been a lot more clear, that's where I disagree. In all likelihood he didn't bother because it's a minor character and it doesn't really matter, but given that we don't anything about that man other than he is an officer and we don't know anything about Antilles other than he is a captain, there's nothing precluding them from being the same person. The name "Panda Boba" or whatever else for most of the minor characters is never established in the movies either, but when the toy department or whomever else came out with them there was no reason to question their accuracy. Why would the average fan react any differently when told that guy's name was Captain Antilles? The was no reason to question it at all prior to the scene in ROTS, which is what this thread is all about. As you can see from some of the other posts, "the company gave the name to the wrong guy and Lucas just continued on his original interpretation of them as different people without making any effort to clarify that's what was happening" is not so obvious of a conclusion that everyone selected it over "We were told they were the same guy and they just look different because it's different actors playing him 20 in-universe years apart".

 

It would appear that it was the radio play, back in 1981, that first established "choked guy" as Captain Antilles, with bonus scenes - which is why EU sources after that took the same approach - because they were specifically encouraged to draw on that radio play.

According to Wookieepedia, this was the source that introduced the name "Ponda Baba"

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galaxy_Guide_1:_A_New_Hope

some time after the radio play introduced the name "Sawkee" for him:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ponda_Baba/Legends

Subsequently, "Sawkee" was reintroduced as an alias for him, and this continued all the way into the newcanon.

Whether or not content from the Radio Drama is "G-Canon" or "C-Canon" is a highly debatable thing:

https://boards.theforce.net/threads/is-there-an-actual-canon-timeline.50038992/

but one thing's for sure - the radio dramas tended to be used by later works.

 

Well yeah, I'm not sure most people realize how disengaged Lucas was from most of the tie-in content that his company put out.