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

Well obviously, seeing as how they kept the same footage of Luke from when he recognizes the other guy

 

Is it any worse than...

"Noooooooo!"

 

You raise a good point, that "no" really is pretty cringeworthy, you can tell he wanted to link it in with Vader's "no" at the end of ROTS, but it just doesn't work. The silence is much more effective.

 

That's like asking if drowning in acid is worse than being burned at the stake. Both are horrible, and does it really matter which is worse?

 

Not really, it just seemed like GL made the ending even worse after he already made it worse. I think you actually get used to HC eventually.

 

I was dismayed when I heard that Vader "Nooo" at the end of the Return of the Jedi revised edition. What was George thinking? I think he put a scream into one of them also in the scene where Luke falls down the shaft on Cloud City, then removed it again thankfully.

 

I actually like the change.

 

The Vader noooooooooo is too goofy and out of place i know Lucas really likes it when people scream noooooooooooo in all his movies maybe it would have been better if the emperor screamed nooooo instead of Vader.

 

That would indeed be one of the most implausible aging processes in movie history (especially when we are talking about a span of just 23 years between RotS and RotJ!)

I also can't think of another example where two of the most different actors ever played the same character in a movie series...

However, the right solution wouldn't be replacing Shaw but rather finding someone who looks like a younger version of him for Episode I-III. The prequels should match the original movies because they came first! - not the other way around.

IMHO they focused too much on making PT Anakin very similar to Luke in both appearance and attitude.
But that's the wrong way! Luke was also a young, inexperienced man in the OT but I've always imagined his father to be a bit different from him and older when he fought together with Obi-Wan in the Clone Wars.

Yes, of course Anakin had a lot of anger him (Yoda to Luke in TESB: "Much anger in him, like his father.") - otherwise he probably wouldn't have turned to the dark side, but Hayden expressed it differently than a Shaw-Anakin would've done it.

 

I mostly agree with keeping Shaw in there. It makes no sense to have a young Anakin with an old Obi-Wan and Yoda. The Shaw version makes more sense age wise.

If they were going to change it at all some well done CGI to make Shaw look a little more like Hayden would have worked. But CGI wasn't that good with the SE came out.

 

I dislike the "nooo" as well, but I think that one is only mildly bad compared to other edits. If you ask me replacing Shaw with Hayden, and replacing the Emperor hologram in ESB, those two are the worst.

 

@Alpha-Red
I see a lot of people saying that the Ian Mcdiarmid hologram works better but I disagree with that notion, I think the original hologram works better.


You hear about the emperor in ANH, then you see him in TESB and he’s got this weird looking face, yet it’s slightly concealed in the shadows of his cloak and his voice sounds relatively stern and commanding yet nothing out of the ordinary.


Fast forward to ROTJ, he’s got the messed up testicle forehead and his voice sounds really creepy and evil (for lack of a better term). So when you’re watching the movies you can’t help but wonder what messed up his face even more and why does he sound really weird now? Answer, dark side degradation. It shows how badly the dark side can physically affect someone, making it all the more urgent that Luke must not fall or he could end up like Palpatine.

It also makes Vader more of a tragic character as you realise that he, being a darksider, is experiencing that same degradation, and his body is slowly decaying just like Palpatine. The only difference being that Palpatine enjoys indulging in the dark side and being evil, Vader doesn’t. Which we know by the line “it is too late for me son” meaning that Vader knows he’s done wrong and he doesn’t stay on this side out of enjoyment, but because he believes that he is already too far gone.

 

When it first appeared in 2004 I hated it even though I liked the PT I had grown up with Sebastian Shaw and this was one of the changes that made me want the OOT on DVD but after the 2006 release I reliased I would have stick with the SE if wanted to watch Star Wars in high quality. Even today I prefer Sebastian Shaw which is nothing personal against Hayden as I enjoyed him the prequels it just that for the SE i like all the visual enhancements GL has done but just prefer the original perfomances such as Shaw as they were from 77 - 83.

 

What I also liked about Shaw was the fact that he didn't really have "an evil face" (unlike Hayden or Ian McDiarmid as The Emperor - please don't understand me wrong here... LOL).

One could say that he looked a bit too friendly or fatherly for Anakin, but especially this only demonstrates us that EVERYONE can go down the wrong path or commit evil deeds. His scarred face during the unmasking scene in RotJ looks quite shocking, anyway...

 

I would have preffered the retention of Sebastian Shaw, and I'm generally against all the later tinkerings with the original films, except when it comes to minor refinements like improving the look of the shadows cast by the hover cars. (I prefer the replacement Emperor in ESB, too).

However, part of me thinks they should have used David Prowse as the unmasked Vader, perhaps with James Earl Jones still doing the voice but being a bit less deep. Always seems a bit odd when Vader starts talking with a clipped English accent as soon as the helmet comes off. Ideally they would also have trained Haden Christiensen to speak with a more Jonesian cadence in the lead up to his Vaderisation, as that abrupt shift is also jarring.

 

The James Earl Jones voice of Darth Vader is just an artificial voice because Anakin's vocal cords have been severely damaged, so it makes perfect sense that unmasked Anakin would have a totally different voice.

 

If his vocal cords were that badly damaged he could not speak at all when the helmet is removed. So that can't be the case. It would make sense that the helmet would modify the voice somewhat, but not to totally change the accent and cadence. Anyway the bit of the helmet covering the throat remains in place when the top section is removed, so either way that explanation doesn't work.

 

I prefer the replacement hologram Emperor. The original one looks like he has mouths for eyes and it always annoyed me, and I do like Ian Mcdairmid's voice. He's the definitive Emperor to my mind. However I like the point about dark side degradation, even though I don't think there's enough of a time gap between the two OT appearences for him to change noticeably in the interval. Still, It seems suitable that years as a Sith would take a worstening physical toll. For that reason I didn't like the bit in RotS where Palpatine becomes a deformed scrotum-head all at once.

 

I think the 1980 Emperor looks more mysterious.
As much as I like Ian McDiarmid, but his appearance in TESB was quite unnecessary.

 

I prefer the Emperor from Empire. Never took to McDiarmid's Emperor, unsubtle and variable performance. corny as hell. He does have some good lines and moments - not enough to save the character - disappointing.

Old man Anakin was a good fit with old Ben and ancient Yoda.

 

Oh really? Then what would YOU have done? Get Sebastian Shaw and put some "young" make-up on him? Oh yeah, that would have been VERY convincing, especially when having him play a 9-year old kid.

To be honest, I actually think Hayden did a pretty good job in keeping his voice a bit like Jones'. You do know that the Vader in the suit doesn't really speak with his natural voice but had some built-in electronic voice simulator or whatever they call it?

And WHO exactly is that? They used some ape's face superimposed over some woman's face with lots of makeup. May have worked for a few seconds of hologram but how would they have pulled it off with a real actor who appears in person and has a much larger role in ROTJ?
As for Luke not recognizing that young Force ghost, I mean, how stupid could he possibly be? What other dead Jedi would appear to Luke if not his father? It's really a no-brainer. I'm perfectly fine with using Hayden as a Force ghost. Oh by the way, I grew up with the OT and SS as well, yet I'm fine with Lucas creating more continuity with the PT.

 

The short hologram scene (with the chimpanzee eyes) worked fine. I don’t agree with Ian McDiarmid’s interpretation. Perhaps the Galactic Emperor was best left to the imagination.

How stupid could it possibly be to replace Sebastian Shaw with another actor? What other dead Jedi would appear to Luke if not his father - and the audience has already seen his face when unmasked. No need to replace him with Hayden Christensen. It’s really a no-brainer.

 

There is a HUGE amount of middle ground between those two things.

 

I used to think this too but this is what Sebastian Shaw looked like when he was younger:




Not the spitting image of Christensen, certainly, but they're also not of a radically different physical type. I'd say it disposes of the argument that he can't pass for an aged Christensen while wearing heavy make-up and prosthetics. Arguably it's a harder sell when he's make-up free, but I don't think that's the main reason Lucas changed it in the first place. He's given the reason--it's because Anakin went back to who he was before he became Darth Vader.

 

Well it's both at the same time. That's what makes it so great.

The PT story comes first while the OT story was made first. The PT literally wouldn't be what it was if the first half of the story was told first. For one it would have ended with Obi-Wan fighting his student Vader who had betrayed him and murdered his friend Anakin Skywalker.

That's the above point though. That version of the story was abandoned with TESB. It only references the first movie "Star Wars" before it became Episode IV ANH. The original Anakin did not become Vader, was not Obi-Wan's pupil who turned to the Dark side but instead was his friend that was his contemporary and effectively his younger brother as they went off to become Jedi Knights to fight in the very long lasting Clone Wars together.

The Anakin seen at the end of ROTJ was essentially that Father Skywalker. It was more important for that production to present the lost father icon. When the story of the PT ended up being done then the lost father aspect had to partially recede for the overall story of the inverse journey of father and son. The father had to be reflected in the son by having the son reflected in the father. The older Anakin simply didn't fit anymore for a multitude of reasons of story and production.

Once the change was made in TESB then the PT story had to make a hard move towards Anakin now being far more like the young Vader who was Obi-Wan's pupil, was greedy, wanted power and was seduced to the Dark side by the Emperor. All things that an older, fully trained and accomplished Jedi Knight Anakin would not have done. It was a better story all around to do so because all the original Anakin actually was in the end was another Obi-Wan Kenobi. That seems to be one of the reasons why Lucas made the change because at first he simply had Luke talk to the Force Ghost of his father in the sequel. This was redundant because he already had Obi-Wan. Then add to that the elevation of Vader he wanted. So on the one hand he had a villain with no real backstory other than being "bad" and a hero that was just "good".

As Lucas has generally decided to go with the story that Anakin becoming Vader was always the plan the exact story of how he combined the two has never been told. All we know is that his original sequel story had the two as different characters but when he was forced to write the script himself is when he made the change.