Vader's age in ANH is 62 ....from 1979-1993/94

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I have not been around for a while so I apologise if this has been discussed recentley?


As a collector of vintage material and interviews etc after I was able to shift through all the contradictions, enough evidence supports that Vader was actually meant to be around 62 years of age in ANH,
After 1978/79 - With the 3-4 year time line from ESB being 3 years after ANH and ROTJ a further 6-12 months down the line, that puts Vader's age at 66 at the time of death instead of some twenty years younger.

The original intention was that Vader killed Father Skywalker and as Obi's appentice he was some 13 years younger. Instead of the prequal's putting Obi at 57, he was intended to be 75. I think we all agree AG looked alot older then his 57 years. This is also the reason that Seb Shaw played Vader, even though at 77 years old it wouldn't matter as much due to all the cosmetics.

So what happened? After Lucas not being able to give a good enough reason for Anakin's turn he went alot further back in the prequel's then he had originally intended. He wanted the seperation issue from his Mother to be a main factor. The fact that Jedi's are also trained young back then would of also meant the original age Lucas wanted was too old to be trained as a Jedi.

Originally before 1978/79 Vader's age was actually around 40 in ANH as a seperate character (not Anakin), which ties his age closer to how it is now.

Timeline 1 (1977)

Star Wars
Vader- Approx: 40
Obi - Approx: 75
Anakin - Approx: 70-75


Timeline 2 (1980)

Star Wars
Vader - Approx 62
Obi - Approx 75

Timeline 3 (1999)

Star Wars:
Vader: 41
Obi - 57

Thoughts?

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standard years different to ours?

 

I, for one, am freaking glad Lucas revised the timeline. Vader being older never made much practical sense to me on the rare occasions I thought about it; the pre-prequel reasons (presumed ones, anyway) of anger and revenge for his fall make sense to trap a younger person, not someone in his forties who would presumably have half a brain by then!

Plus, it raises the whole sticky issue of as to why anybody would be having kids with DARTH VADER, the most feared guy in the galaxy. Sure, you could've cast Luke & Leia's mom to be this byzantine crone who's having kids in some attempt to have power, but then why on earth would she be hiding from Vader, as Ben said in ROTJ?

Having him younger for his fall just plain makes more sense, if you ask me, unless you want Vader to be another Dooku, which he obviously isn't.

 

Don't talk too loud, 'cause in just 12 YEARS some wee sprog will be calling you a past your sell-by date old codger with half a brain!

 

Hey, just saying Vader being older only makes sense if you take away his being Luke's father.

 

Not at all. It makes perfect sense for Anakin to be a man who has spent the early years of his adult life devoted to his Jedi duties. What so many people on these boards seem to miss is that the better and nobler a Jedi Anakin is before the fall, the more shocking and tragic his fall becomes.

Also, Harrison Ford was 41 when they shot Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Watch that movie again and then try to say 40 is too old.

 

No, the older he is, the more ridiculous the concept of him falling at all becomes. Dooku fell because he was a sociopathic scumbag who viewed the Jedi as a means to an end that he'd grown beyond; that sort of characterization wouldn't work at all if you're going to even bother taking ROTJ's premise that Vader still had good in him seriously.

Vader's potential redemption lies heavily on him making stupid mistakes that he later regrets and tries to ignore in turning at all-if he honestly felt right about what he was doing, he'd have never considered turning back.


EDIT: I suppose they could have tried to make Vader's turn solely because of politics in the prequels, but there's really no evidence in the OT that that was his main gripe with the Republic and the Jedi beyond a single mention of bringing order to the galaxy in his attempt to turn Luke in TESB. It's certainly not present in any moment that Ben talks about Vader's fall; it'd just glare with what we know about Vader from the originals. He's not a political idealist; he wants to control the galaxy, but it's not because he's particularly invested in a "better" form of government.

And for me, a man in his forties or fifties falling because he's angry and jealous is just utterly ridiculous. You're supposed to be grown out of that by then.

And there's still the issue of why anyone in her right mind would be interested in having kids with Darth Vader.

 

No, what's ridiculous is the notion that middle-aged men aren't every bit as capable of going nuts as younger men.

Besides, even in the PT we got Anakin didn't turn because he was angry and jealous. He turned because he was desperate to have the power to save his loved ones.

A forty-year-old who is willing to sacrifice everything to save his family is every bit as believable, if not moreso, than a twenty-something.

 

I see we're just gonna have to disagree on this.


Anyway, random thought I had last week and it seems like it'd sort of fit here:

A major part of ROTJ's premise about Vader' self-sacrificial turning on the Emperor is that he can't protect himself from Palpatine's lightning. Would anyone find it alot more meaningful if he [i[]could[/i] protect himself, but deliberately chose not to?

IE, if he hadn't lost his limbs at Mustafar, but had been crippled in a way sortof like what Dooku did to Obi-Wan and then caught fire to necessitate the suit?

 

Older Anakin would have been better for me. Starting E1 with an older Anakin would've allowed more Clone Wars and jedi hunting, not to mention, an older Anakin making the choice to betray the Jedi would have been far more tragic and poignant than what was made.

 

This may sound off topic, but read further and you?ll see it has a bearing on the subject of older men and how capable they are. Well, did you know that the film Top Gun is very unrealistic, not just in the technical aspects of the movie but also in the pilots? AGES. I?ve seen pics of real life Naval, Marine and Air Force pilots and most are either in their 30?s and 40?s! Very rarely have I seen pics of military pilots who?re as young as the ones we saw in that movie. Ahh, Hollywood, sometimes you can?t beat it for bring full of ****.

 

There's no evidence that it wasn't his main gripe with the Republic/Jedi. Going by the OT alone we don't really know why he turned, only that "he was seduced by the dark side of the Force". Seduced perhaps by the prospect of gaining power? Power which could be used to bring order to a galaxy ravaged by Clone Wars & afflicted with corrupt politicians?

Which is why Anakin should have fallen because he had good, albeit misguided, intentions at heart - instead of the purely selfish reasons we got in the PT.

Agreed. I don't see how any sane woman could be attracted to a man who always blames his teacher for his own weaknesses & murders defenceless woman & children. However, this has nothing to do with his age.

 

You really should get out MORE!

 

Yes, I'm well aware that there are people out there who fall for sickos, a**holes, etc. My point is that I don't know why anyone would fall for people like that.

 

What's the point of knowing why? Crap, Eva Braun fell for frigging Hitler when everyone else around the man thought he was a total nut. Even Stalin got married and had a couple kids-sure, he sent them off to die in WW2, but the point still stands-people with way worse mental problems and behavior than Anakin ever did still get married and have kids and stuff with presumably sane people.


People are just weird, is what it boils down to. Padme probably liked the attention and was obviously personally lonely given that the last time she dated anyone was over a decade beforehand, and she's refusing to make moral judgements on situations she's never been in. That's not a necessarily bad position-plus it's not like Anakin was gloating about murdering Tuskens. He had an emotional breakdown in front of her over what he'd done and expressed a desire to do better; I don't see what's hateable about that.

 

And good luck finding people who consider Braun a sympathetic or likable human being. I don't feel bad about the fact that she died along with her husband in that bunker. She propped up an evil man for her own personal satisfaction.

The audience SHOULD feel bad for Padme when she dies. But her willful stupidity when it comes to all matters Anakin makes it extremely difficult to do so. Add the part where she loses the will to live right after bringing two children into the world, and Padme officially sucks.

 

Well, it sucks that you have difficulty feeling bad for stupid people, but I don't see how that's a failing of the film.


Also-I'm of the opinion that making Padme less than stellar was wholly deliberate-if Luke is supposed to be what Anakin might've been, I don't see why Leia shouldn't or couldn't be a better version of her mom.

 

Henry VIII, who was up there with Hitler for being a right ****, had 6 wives and LOADS of mistresses. Face it, women are notorious for going for the sick scum in society, as a result they breed more sick scum! Where do you think the saying, "Nice guys finish last," comes from? And why do you think the world is so full of creeps?

 

Depending on the stuff you source, Luke was born in 16 BBY (the original novel), 18 BBY (some of the stuff from the 90s), or 19 BBY (the post-prequel stuff).