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Your reaction to the big revelation: Darth Vader is....

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James Earl Jones.  and David Prowse.  and Bob Anderson.  and Ralph McQuarrie created the concept.  and Brian Muir sculpted the helmet.  and Bermans Nathans and John Mollo completed the costume.  and Sebastian Shaw.

 

Just occurred to me that this is probably where my fascination with how the film were made started.  Not exactly sure when it happened so it wasn't a eureka moment, more of a, hey there's a real world story behind this fantasy/sci-fi/space/opera/movie/film/whatchamacallit and maybe that's more interesting then the film/story.  Probably occurred after RotJ, with the story wrapped up for the time being the only SW fix was non-story information.  Maybe also around the time of the VHS cereal release of the Making of started my descent into cut scene fascination.  Might just be a growing up thing.

Anyone else?

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Ahhh maybe i'll turn this thread into a 'Destroying the Magic' thread.  Just read this from a semi-recent issue of Cinefex.  (Issue 121 pg.66 article on Phil Tippett)

After the cultural phenomenon that was Star Wars, there was intense interest by the mainstream media of the making of The Empire Strikes Back.  No less a news luminary than Walter Cronkite toured ILM to document the behind the scenes visual effect effort for broadcast on an episode of his television series, The Twentieth Century.  Tippett and Ken Ralston succumbed to the mischievous impulses and their natures when they were asked to do a sample tauntaun setup for Cronkite and his film crew.  "We set up a tauntaun shot," Ralston recalled, "except, just for fun, we set it up in a completely fake way with a bunch of surface gauges and rulers stuck on them - all kinds of crazy things.  During the demonstration, we adjusted things and acted very serious, as if we were animating this character using all this 'high-tech' stuff.  It was a complete joke; and when I look back on it, it may not have been a smart move to do that with Walter Cronkite - but it was fun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCtOSczAYsk&feature=player_embedded

Skip to ~2:30

"You're ruining my fantasies" -Walter Cronkite

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Behind the scenes stuff of any substance was notoriously hard to come by the first couple years. Even the Making of Star Wars tv special dodged interviewing the men behind the masks.

Seeing Prowse unmasked in a tabloid magazine article was something of a victory for me as kid, what with my peers thinking Threepio was some sort of audio animatronic figure. ;)

IIRC, Ray Harryhausen never allowed photos to be taken while he was actually animating, so it doesn't surprise me the ILM guys would fake it for Cronkite.

Uncle Walter would later pay a visit to the game grid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2IOvFPgi2s

 

Where were you in '77?

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The Stuntmen like Bob were something i was interested in how they did the swordfighting for the movies.

They decided to go with a different style for the prequels.  And go with Nick something or other instead of Bob Anderson.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Nick Gillard.  At least do your homework - or try and have a modicum of respect.

The fights in the originals were all one style and look pretty arthritic now.  Easily explained away, with Vader being half machine, Obi-wan being an old codger and Luke being a callow youth...but Anderson's approach would not have worked for Jedi who were supposedly in their prime.

That's some bad hat, Harry
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Sure it would. Back when the originals came out light-sabres were supposed to heavy, a lot like Excalibur, very heavy weapons. That approach could've easily worked today instead of the stupid prancing, spinning and jumping about. Of course the fights would be a little faster.

Take the fight scene in the Bond film 'Die another Day', sure the movie's crap but this scene is pretty good. And the characters get tired and out of breath, which we didn't see at all in the fights in the prequels. Whereas in the light-sabre fight in Empire strikes back, we see luke and vader get tired and stressed out. And the characters in that scene actually look like they are trying to hit each other, instead of their swords.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpTUAOYrSII&feature=player_detailpage#t=76s

But then the main thing would be to have something going on between the characters, but that's the job of the screenwriter.

<span style=“font-weight: bold;”>The Most Handsomest Guy on OT.com</span>

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"Stupid prancing, spinning and jumping about" - priceless.  I wish we could alter time so that all the spinning, jumping and prancing occured in the OT while the fighting in the PT was all one style, just so I could hear certain fans complaining that the PT fighting was boring.

That's some bad hat, Harry
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PT fights were boring, there was nothing to invest in the characters because there was nothing going on between them.

<span style=“font-weight: bold;”>The Most Handsomest Guy on OT.com</span>

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Whatever you say...

That's some bad hat, Harry
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Easterhay said:

 

The fights in the originals were all one style and look pretty arthritic now.  Easily explained away, with Vader being half machine, Obi-wan being an old codger and Luke being a callow youth...but Anderson's approach would not have worked for Jedi who were supposedly in their prime.

 Apparently, YOU dont know what you're talking about.  SW'77 fight is like it is simply because Lucas envisioned the lightsaber to be like heaving swords somewhat like the movie Excalibur (As Luke explained in a SW Insider in 2004 referring to that movie).  That is why it is slower, and Vader is using both hands.

Then in ESB, Kershner nixed the 'Excalibur' style and wanted to make it faster, so he changed it so the Lightsaber would be much lighter and free up movement, hence Vader is fighting Luke with one hand.

So if you are going to come here and just troll like you have for the past day or so, gets your facts straight ;)

Nobody likes a troll with the wrong facts ;)

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Why am I a troll, then?  Oh, I see, because I don't agree with you.  The scales slip from my eyes as easily as rain falls from a Scottish sky.

Mm, you can't be so strong in your convictions if you get all het up every time someone presents you with a different opinion.  I'd take some therapy if I were you.  Otherwise you're gonna have a heart attack by the time you're twenty, and then we'd all be robbed of your intellectual remarks.

See, you're getting all up yourself over something I didn't actually say.  I'm not positing the orginal reason for the slow-paced fight scenes, merely highlighting how it can easily be explained away now, in the greater context.

So, read, re-read, and then reconsider before hitting the old send button.  You're just coming across as a petulant arse.

That's some bad hat, Harry
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Easterhay,

Please stop with your naive BS that you are giving an opinion.  You have been all over these forums in the past 2 days with your condenscending remarks, just to get a rise out of us.

No one minds other opinions on this board, as I am not lockstep with alot of the fans here.  I have many different opinions about the OOT, SE, and PT then many here, but in the end I believe the OOT should be on EVERY BluRay/DVD release.

Getting back to the point we were originally arguing, you said, 'The fights in the originals were all the same style...." 

And I will say again, YOU ARE WRONG!  ANH was TOTALLY different then ESB and ROTJ simply because Lucas/Kershner chose to make the lightsabers less heavy when ESB was being filmed.  So ANH looks alot slower because it is more on par with Conan the Barbarian, where ESB and Jedi are much faster and more on par with the PT.

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I still think ESB and ROTJ had that heaviness--you can see them swinging these things with strength and when they clash, you can almost see them bounce apart from the density of the things. But ANH has a very different style, it's almost like a fencing match in the combat style seen in samurai, where the opponents slowly advance on each other and use only quick, efficient thrusts.