You would think his chest controls would make that flat line sound so we'd all know for sure.
Star Wars saga. Prequels and Sequels.
- Thread starter _Lee_
- Start date
That would make for a funny fan re-edit of the scene where you hear it dubbed in like a cheezy day time soap opera. I would love to see something like that. 
Or just hear it every time someone dies. Which would be like a supercut of flatlining characters left and right. Every time you see a character die or a dead character, you just hear it.
Or just hear it every time someone dies. Which would be like a supercut of flatlining characters left and right. Every time you see a character die or a dead character, you just hear it.
robn1
Master Member
Star Wars Holiday Special > Sequels, and I'm not even kidding. New scenes with the cast, the Darth Vader outtakes, several FX clips and the Boba Fett cartoon. As much as everything else about it sucked the Holiday Special at least gave us these things at a time before home video was a thing, when the only way to see Star Wars was in a theater. The sequels gave us... umm, I got nothin'.
On glowing and identity after death... Even lego star wars mocks them for replacing the original vader, David Prowse, with the new vader, Hayden Christensen, in the ewok village 3 ghost scene. "You didn't look like that five minutes ago."
With my pedantic hat on... Sebastian Shaw was replaced by Hayden.
sztriki
Sr Member
It's because the scenes where emotions, character developments and plot progressions are supposed to happen in a cinematic and creative way are just 2 blokes walking and talking in a green room with cartoon environment shot flatly and boringly. The rest of the movie tries to make up for it with dazzling over the top cgi special effects and action scenes where the aforementioned characters and plot points ring hollow, so you have nothing but empty cgi.
In other words, "a special effect without a story" almost...
The older I get the SW I know and love gets smaller and more specific. ‘77 SW and TESB.. that’s it. For me it pretty much ends there. Everything else is something we’ve seen before. From costuming, set pieces, story lines.. even ROTJ is a tough watch for me.
But to be clear ‘77 SW and EMPIRE I can watch on a loop for the rest of my life and be a happily camper. Hell for me would stuck watching on loop anything Star Wars related that followed.
But I do hold out hope. Example the new Indy 5 film. Very high expectations for that one I do have. James Mangold is a brilliant story teller. All he makes is entertaining films. Eventually Disney will get SW right.
But to be clear ‘77 SW and EMPIRE I can watch on a loop for the rest of my life and be a happily camper. Hell for me would stuck watching on loop anything Star Wars related that followed.
But I do hold out hope. Example the new Indy 5 film. Very high expectations for that one I do have. James Mangold is a brilliant story teller. All he makes is entertaining films. Eventually Disney will get SW right.
Just now saw this. So many years and I had thought he had a chance to show his face but no, they ripped that last scene from him as well. Am I missing some insider story about why he never got to take the helmet off? I truly thought it was him til your post and I looked it up........ Sorry, I must have been sleepwalking. I just read the back story on the feud and the eventual split.
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STAR WARS was George Lucas' baby. He dreamed it up, and had an actual story to tell and artistic ideas to express. He may have rewritten and changed things along the way, but, as an artist, he had the right to do so. Although I object to the suppression of the original theatrical cuts, and would prefer a BLADE RUNNER-style, comprehensive release of all versions, I don't hold his rights as an artist against him.
The prequels have their flaws, but they were still made by the series' creator, and with honesty and good intentions, which goes a long way.
In a bitterly ironic twist, the Disney era is guilty of so many of the sins that Lucas was unjustly excoriated for: Awful writing, tacky and endless merchandising, etc. And, of course, "ruining" our childhoods. The prequels did not destroy STAR WARS, and in fact brought in a new generation of eager, young fans. The Disney films DID destroy STAR WARS, and what we're seeing now is the body still twitching.
The Disney era of factory-farm, nostalgia-milking "content" which has bled the franchise dry has given us a yardstick to compare the Lucas era to. Despite his awful treatment by the mainstream media and a minority of disgruntled fanboys, Lucas never attacked his fanbase. He never called them "ists" or "isms" or "toxic" or "manbabies". He never jammed his films full of identity politics or subversive, destructive, Marxist ideology. He never tore down his own beloved characters just to troll the audience, then continued to key-jangle/exploit them in pathetic attempts to win back an alienated fanbase.
In other words, I'll never watch Disney's vapid, moralless, soulless, visionless, counterfeit "sequels" ever again, nor give The Mouse another dime. They are not canon. They are apocryphal. The bigger picture is what's important, now--the culture war (because STAR WARS was a big part of our culture, and now it lies in ruins), and the war for good storytelling and honesty in entertainment. And not being told by evil megacorporations what and how to think.
On the flipside, I will happily rewatch the prequels, and, yes, even the HOLIDAY SPECIAL, because they actually had respect for the audience and the material, and made honest attempts to tell their stories. And that actually means something, especially now.
The prequels have their flaws, but they were still made by the series' creator, and with honesty and good intentions, which goes a long way.
In a bitterly ironic twist, the Disney era is guilty of so many of the sins that Lucas was unjustly excoriated for: Awful writing, tacky and endless merchandising, etc. And, of course, "ruining" our childhoods. The prequels did not destroy STAR WARS, and in fact brought in a new generation of eager, young fans. The Disney films DID destroy STAR WARS, and what we're seeing now is the body still twitching.
The Disney era of factory-farm, nostalgia-milking "content" which has bled the franchise dry has given us a yardstick to compare the Lucas era to. Despite his awful treatment by the mainstream media and a minority of disgruntled fanboys, Lucas never attacked his fanbase. He never called them "ists" or "isms" or "toxic" or "manbabies". He never jammed his films full of identity politics or subversive, destructive, Marxist ideology. He never tore down his own beloved characters just to troll the audience, then continued to key-jangle/exploit them in pathetic attempts to win back an alienated fanbase.
In other words, I'll never watch Disney's vapid, moralless, soulless, visionless, counterfeit "sequels" ever again, nor give The Mouse another dime. They are not canon. They are apocryphal. The bigger picture is what's important, now--the culture war (because STAR WARS was a big part of our culture, and now it lies in ruins), and the war for good storytelling and honesty in entertainment. And not being told by evil megacorporations what and how to think.
On the flipside, I will happily rewatch the prequels, and, yes, even the HOLIDAY SPECIAL, because they actually had respect for the audience and the material, and made honest attempts to tell their stories. And that actually means something, especially now.
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greenmachines, the best reconstruction I was able to put together (hard to sift through George's contradictory "always intended" comments) is... In early drafts, the helmet and mask were to cross space to board the princess' ship. George did intend to overdub him for the voice filter of the mask. Somewhere in the process, George liked how imposing and anonymous he looked in the mask and decided to have him keep it on throughout. This was a late development. In the version of the story Marvel Comics and Alan Dean Foster got to turn into their adaptations, it was presumed the breath mask was for the boarding action and flying his fighter. Though it wasn't pointed out, they presumed Vader would have his helmet off for all the scenes on the Death Star, including the conference room scene. Hence him levitating a coffee mug to himself.
There seems also to have been a question (possibly in George's mind, possibly in others') of how well Dave would do with delivering the lines. His natural accent was pretty thick, and I don't know whether they tried him with others (see: A Clockwork Orange and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). I know it was a decision made either very late in preproduction or at Elstree once they started filming on the Death Star set.
And then George made Vader Anakin, instead of them being separate characters, and Dave was too young (as Vader was supposed to have been one of Obi-Wan's students, where Obi-Wan and Anakin was closer to being of an age), so for the reveal they wanted an actor who they felt looked and sounded right.
And this doesn't take into consideration all the times it was one of the fight choreographers in the suit, and not Dave at all...
But these are still one of my favorite Old School Cools that might have been:
There seems also to have been a question (possibly in George's mind, possibly in others') of how well Dave would do with delivering the lines. His natural accent was pretty thick, and I don't know whether they tried him with others (see: A Clockwork Orange and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). I know it was a decision made either very late in preproduction or at Elstree once they started filming on the Death Star set.
And then George made Vader Anakin, instead of them being separate characters, and Dave was too young (as Vader was supposed to have been one of Obi-Wan's students, where Obi-Wan and Anakin was closer to being of an age), so for the reveal they wanted an actor who they felt looked and sounded right.
And this doesn't take into consideration all the times it was one of the fight choreographers in the suit, and not Dave at all...
But these are still one of my favorite Old School Cools that might have been:
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I've read that about the mask origin too.
I'm glad that Lucas & collaborators understood the need for a mask in space at all. It's amazing how long that mistake persisted in popular science fiction & illustrations.
I've read that Lucas was imagining Vader with a supernatural element in the early drafts too. Like either the force gave him actual powers, or maybe it was just part of his act (like Batman appearing & disappearing without warning). I wondered if Disney would pick up that idea for a new Sith Lord when they took over.
It was in the milieu of the time (variety shows were still big on TV), the surrounding story (important event Chewie needs to be home with his family for, Empire finds out about it and tries to use it to capture its most-wanted criminals) is solid... Even the production values were good for television of the time. Personally, I like that we saw General Bast survived the Death Star (probably took Tarkin's shuttle after the latter demurred). Like a lot of things from late-'70s TV (and a lot of movies of the time, too), the production standards just don't stand up, and some questionable choices, in hindsight, were made.
If you've watched Light & Magic on Disney+ (and if you haven't, do), you know how close we came to another '70s sci-fi schlockfest. As good as Colin Cantwell was as a conceptual designer, and as much as his study models brought McQuarrie's drawing to 3D life, if they hadn't all been utterly re-done by Joe Johnston, and the model shop guys hadn't done their due-diligence that we still, more than forty years later, are straining to replicate... Yeah, Star Wars might've been forgotten by now. A niche cult film only serious nerds know about.
I would love to see the Holiday Special re-done, but as it is I can cringe through it and enjoy it. I lived through late-'70s TV, though. Someone who didn't would have a harder time of it, I think.
What I never understood, is why did Vader submit to Luke when Vader's mechanical right arm/saber was severed? Vader did not have his saber of course, but there is no reason that he should have yielded, just losing his mechanical hand. He didn't suddenly lose all of his strength or Force abilities.
I took it that Luke was wailing on him so hard he lost his balance and or couldn't move fast enough to get out of the way of Luke's saber. He does duck right before he falls which I imagine would be a tough maneuver in that suit. His mobility alone is hindered in that thing.
Laspector
Master Member
I was born in 1965, so yeah, I lived through all of it. The Holiday special was crap then, it is crap now, and it will always be crap.
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