I also think that scene (the Luke and Vader bridge scene) works better with the original score. Though I do like a lot of the other additions.
I think Vader’s conflict is incredibly important for his character.
Yay! I’m honestly even more hyped for your edits now. Do you have an estimate for when ROTJ will be done?
I honestly think since you’re already using the 2011 Blu-Ray transfers that you should use xxtelecine 7xx’s edits as the bases for these edits instead. They redo and improve all of the laser and lightsaber effects so they are consistent with the rest of the saga (no more wonky Luke lightsaber jumpcuts, and the blaster bolts actually have their white cores), and in ANH it adds the lights on Vader’s chest plate that were missing and the edits the Death Star plans so they’re the ones from AOTC. They’re basically just the 2011 Blu-Rays but with improved visual effects.
And since you’re color correcting them, it’ll be perfect. It is still your choice though obviously.
Also regarding the Shuttle Tydirium scene that is out of focus in the 2011 Blu-Ray that I brought up earlier, you could also use the Despecialized edition which also fixed that issue, and it looks more like the 2011 Blu-Ray then the 2020 one.
Yay so that means the extended Death Star duel will be next!
Vader is such a superior swordsman, he is playing with Luke. He was holding back the whole time until Luke lands a lucky blow and then Vader ends it by chopping off Luke’s hand.
I know that.
It’s almost as if ROTJ is an incompetently made piece of farcical
Yeah, you know, the scenes on Dagobah, the suspense with Shuttle Tydirium, Luke and Vader’s confrontation on the bridge, Vader’s redemption, Vader’s death and funeral… all incompetently made garbage… it’s not like those are beautifully made and some of the best scenes in all of Star Wars.
Zkin nailed it. I always got angry vibes from Vader, but he’s not stupid enough to get himself killed by beating at the controls of his ship. He uses his anger as fuel, but he doesn’t let it control him.
Also, in response to the claim that Anakin is loses it about every obstacle, there’s the ray shield scene in which he advocates for patience, and also pretty much everything else he does on the Invisible Hand except for the end of the duel with Dooku. I do agree that they went too far with his portrayal in AOTC though. But there’s also the fact that in the PT he’s simply younger and less mature. I think that was a good choice too on behalf of Lucas, to have him turn to the dark side when he was younger, because people are more impulsive during those years.
But I just gave a bunch of examples of how he shows his anger. It’s been well-established that Vader chokes people when he’s angry. It’s like saying he isn’t angry when he chokes Padme and kills Dooku. It’s a cold-blooded thing he does out of anger. And being angry doesn’t always mean losing your composure.
How is this (slamming his lightsaber furiously) calm?
https://youtu.be/GueBXRYVhe0
Also you don’t get anymore blatant then “Much anger in him… like his father.” Who is established to be Darth Vader in that film itself.
- “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” (Extremely calm and witty response to a very professional provocation from Motti. One of the best examples.)
- “I told you she would never consciously betray the rebellion.” (Even Tarkin gets upset by this point but Vader remains calm.)
- He remains surprisingly calm even after one of his wingman rams his TIE fighter at the end of ANH. Probably the most irritating moment for him in ANH and yet he does not loose his temper in the slightest.
- “You have failed me for the last time Admiral.” (This line is said in a very clam and cold manner. No sign of loosing his temper, even though Ozzel screwed up big time. The tonal stress on “last” is just a natural speech pattern since the word “last” should be stressed.)
- “Apology accepted, Captain Needa.” (Extremely calm and witty line, even though Needa screwed up big time. One of the best examples.)
- “Perhaps you are being treated unfairly?” (Calm and witty response to Lando irritating him.)
- “You are beaten. It is useless to resist.” (Even though Luke cuts his arm, he is completely clam just moments later.)
- He does not kill Piett at the end of ESB and just calmly looks around the space and walks away. His body gestures are evidently super clam in this scene, which is even a bit surprising.
- Pretty much the whole ROTJ is one big example (especially scenes with Luke).
It’s like how Anakin was clearly angry when he was holding his mother’s corpse.
4. No, he’s angry, it’s easily discernible from his tone. The way he says “He is as clumsy as he is stupid.” also betrays that.
Also, you can’t forget “Asteroids do not concern me Admiral, I want that ship! Not excuses!” and “NO Captain, THEY’RE ALIVE.” He sounds angry, irritated, almost desperate.
5. Again, you can make a witty comment while angry.
6. He has no reason to be angry at Lando yet. And I don’t know about you but I picked up some irritated vibes from the way he said that. And there’s no way you can tell me he’s completely calm when saying “I am altering the deal! Pray I don’t alter it any further.”
7. That was before Luke hit him. He has no reason to be angry at him yet. He knows he can’t because he will murder him if he does. And after Luke hits him he gets very angry at him. He sounds pretty angry when he says “Don’t make me destroy you.” He even said pretty much the same thing to Obi-Wan on Mustafar “Don’t make me kill you.”
The scene on Mustafar parallels the scene with Luke in ESB in multiple other ways too, like how he proposes to Padme to rule the galaxy with him.
EDIT: actually, Vader is pretty angry when he says that. He was literally swinging his lightsaber furiously, even slamming two walls, seconds earlier.
8. He doesn’t because he’s too busy being sad and hurt that Luke left him. That’s the beginning of his transition to the light.
9. The Vader in ROTJ is different. He is conflicted with the light side. The director even made a conscious choice to delete the scene in which he chokes a guy as a way to show he is transitioning to the light. When Luke refused to join him that had a huge impact on him, as also seen at the end of ESB. The new 2020 comics make it clear that he is not his usual self in that film.
You also flat out ignore how I said that Yoda and Obi-Wan outright says he’s an angry man consumed by emotions.
The person above me is correct, he is more calm, but he’s not completely calm.
You make a good point, I did use the words wrong. I interpreted “cold” in the sense of opposite of angry or emotional (because I looked up synonyms of the word and it came up with things like “dispassionate” and “unemotional”). And regarding the word calculating, I was considering clarifying about how Vader and Anakin are both very good military strategists, but I thought I had gone on long enough. I’ll edit my post to remove the misuse of the words.
I also am aware that Vader was absolutely winning against Luke the whole time, but he was still holding back (which means that he had full control the whole time). If he actually was fighting at full strength the whole time he would’ve killed him. But he was absolutely winning nontheless. That’s something I love about the scene and the duel.
EDIT (2024): Going back to this thread years later, I made some really dumb arguments that stem from a lack of understanding of nuance of certain terms, even if I made the occasional decent point. I was also rather patronizing in the way that I argued many of my points.
Darth Vader in the OT is a mostly very cold character with a calm, collected demeanor. He uses his boiling rage as a blunt weapon, wielding it in a calculating manner, as he does in his duels with Luke. He’s clearly mad when he, for example, kills one of his officers, or barrages Luke with powerful lightsaber strikes, but never loses control. It’s directed rage, not blind, unhinged rage.
While I did understand that he’s a tactful character who uses his rage in a balanced way, I never meant to imply he has unhinged temper tantrums, but I exaggerated the degree to which Vader is an emotional character.
I misinterpreted some’s arguments as saying he has no emotion at all, which is just not true, but I went too far in my rebuttal, as well as projecting emotions in some scenes where there weren’t any. For example, Vader is clearly didn’t lose his cool when he chokes Motti. He is completely calm.
Just wanted to clarify how my views have changed.
Kinda similar to my Yoda thread in the Beyond the OT forum, I’d like to share my viewpoint on something I kinda see OT purists maintain: this idea that Vader in the original trilogy is calm, and that his portrayal in new Star Wars media (Revenge of the Sith, the new Vader comics, Rogue One, etc.) as a very emotional man, full of rage and hatred, gets the character wrong. I think this is dead wrong, and I’m going to prove it, by using (mostly) strictly the OT itself too.
In short, Vader has always been portrayed as very emotional, mainly angry, all the way back to A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. Let’s take a look at Vader’s actions in A New Hope.
In his literal first speaking scene, he angrily interrogates a rebel soldier while choking him and then furiously yells at the storm troopers to search the ship in a very harsh, not calm or collected at all manner.
Then in his second speaking scene, he once again yells, this time at Princess Leia, pointing at her and telling her that she’s a liar and a traitor.
This is his establishing scene in the OT and he is not calm, he is angry and yelling. I seriously don’t understand how OT purists came up with this idea that Vader being angry is out of character, when in legit his first two speaking scenes in all of Star Wars, he is enraged and emotional.
But it doesn’t stop there.
In his very next scene, he gets angry at an Imperial officer to the point where he’s about to choke him to death because he’s talking smack about him and the Force.
We see him literally kill a guy over a mistake in the second scene he’s in, because he’s angry at him. You can hear the way he says “last time Admiral”, he’s clearly irritated.
Rational, calm people don’t murder someone over a mistake. This is him giving into his rage, his hate. He’s sick of him messing up so he gets angry and kills him. That isn’t being cold. Cold means unemotional, like a dead corpse. Anger is an emotion. Dead corpses don’t get angry.
And this isn’t a one time occurrence. He does it again, too. And while it’s implied Ozzel was a fool who made many mistakes, Needa made ONE.
He also gets a little irritated with Lando constantly questioning him, and the way he watches Han get tortured up close seems to give me the vibes that he relishes in it, which could be because he knows he had a part in destroying the Death Star, and for all of the trouble he’s been giving him throughout the film.
He isn’t calm or collected during the duel with Luke, at least not the entire thing. In the last part of the duel he legit loses his shit and swings at him mercilessly. He appeared collected before because he goal isn’t to kill Luke. He’s purposefully collecting himself because he knows if he goes overboard he’s going to kill his son in a millisecond, and even then he was still dominating the fight and wearing him down. But Luke pisses him off, and the second he losses it, Luke losses his hand.
In the original version of ESB, he’s clearly angry over having lost Luke when he barks “Bring my Shuttle”.
Additionally, other characters refer to him as consumed by hate and rage: Yoda.
Yoda: “Anger, fear, aggression, the dark side of the Force are they… once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will! As it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.”
Luke: “Vader.”
I don’t know about you, but what I got from Yoda here is that Vader was consumed by ANGER, FEAR, and AGGRESSION.
Also another thing: Obi-Wan refers to Vader as “twisted and evil” in Return of the Jedi, and yet some people think that Anakin in Revenge of the Sith should be completely sane and calm and that when he becomes an enraged, unhinged crazy person in the climax, like what Obi-Wan and Yoda said in ESB, they got his character wrong.
Another thing is that Vader has to be emotional in order to be a Sith Lord and be a dark side user, at least one as effective as him. The dark side feeds on the emotions brought up by Yoda earlier. If he doesn’t have any of those emotions, he’s not going to be a good Sith or dark side user.
Obi-Wan says in ESB: “Don’t give into to hate. That leads to the dark side,” and they constantly talk about how that was how Vader fell. The Emperor and Vader constantly try to convince Luke to give into his emotions. And this is technically using a prequel quote as evidence, but Anakin literally says in Revenge of the Sith: “The Sith RELY on their PASSION for their strength.” What’s one of the synonyms for “cold” on Google? “Dispassionate”. Sounds like the opposite of a Sith to me. And he doesn’t just say they use passion, he says they RELY on it.
And you can’t say “vAdEr wAsN’t a sItH lOrD iN tHe oT, ThAt wAs A rEtCoN bY tHe PrEQuEls” because there are multiple sources that Vader was and has always been a Sith from the very beginning of Star Wars’ conception, even from the very first drafts of ANH.
The original draft of ANH that mentions “the lords of the Sith” and that Vader is a Sith Lord sent by the Emperor. Also, “most ferocious” is used to describe Vader. Doesn’t sound calm to me. So explain to me, then, how it’s out of character for Vader to viciously slaughter Jedi and Rebel soldiers like a badass (like in Rogue One), when it’s his implied backstory both in previous drafts and in the final version of ANH (“…helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights”)? What version of Vader do you want, one that just commands his underlings to do all of the work for him? You just think it’s out of character for him because it isn’t directly shown in the OT and therefore it’s weird to you to see Vader doing that kind of stuff. But I love it, because now the threat of Vader isn’t just talk, we get to see his ruthlessness.
Then you also got the lost cut of A New Hope in which Vader is directly called “a Sith Lord” in the dialogue.
And while we’re at it, I should also mention that the OT also establishes Vader as a person who cares about his family above all else. Watch this scene. Listen to the way Vader’s talking. He’s not talking to him like an angry Sith Lord. He’s talking to him like a father. He’s talking to him like an emotional man who doesn’t want his family to leave him again.
The crawl to ESB says Vader is “obsessed” with finding Luke. Obsessed is a pretty strong word if you ask me. That requires a lot of PASSION, which is the opposite of cold. The Emperor and Vader’s first conversation in ROTJ is about how he’s still obsessed with his son. The entire bridge scene with Luke and Vader later in that film is also more proof that his son means a lot to him. He opens up to him, something you really can’t say about any Imperial officer, Sidious, or even Obi-Wan. He tries to mask it and pretend he doesn’t care (“If that is your destiny”) but that’s just a façade. He actually considers turning to the light (“It is too late for me, son”).
Also some lines from that scene also prove Vader has anger issues and is a very emotional man.
Vader: “That name no longer has any meaning for me!” (not really the line itself, but how he delivers it; it’s clearly something that set him off)
Luke: “I feel the conflict within you let go of your hate!”
And eventually, he does. His son is what turns him back to the light. He turns against the Emperor and everything he stood for for more then two decades because he loves his son, and family means so much to him.
So when he asked the Emperor if his wife was safe and alright and then got mad when he was told he murdered her, that wasn’t “out of character” either.
I’d say with all of this in mind, Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One (I mean, you literally have him choke a guy and then say a dark joke, just like he did with Needa), and the new Vader comics got Vader pretty spot on. He was always a Sith that gave into and was consumed by his fear, hatred, passion, and anger and became twisted and evil, unleashing his fury upon his enemies. He was always a (for a lack of a better word) clingy person, attached to his family to the point where they’re like an obsession to him. There is nothing to suggest he’s this calm person who joined the Sith because he actually thought they were morally correct. Vader has always been an emotional man, never a completely logical one. Besides, he has every reason to be angry considering how messed up, painful, and tragic his life is.
If you want to see what a calm, collected villain looks like, that would be Count Dooku.
Now this isn’t to say that Vader can never be cold. He was pretty cold to Lando and Han Solo in ESB. But that’s because he had no reason to get angry at Lando or Han. To him, Lando’s just some a dude who owns a mining colony that he’s never met before in his life, and Han to him is just some pilot, a tool to use to get to his son. But Vader does get angry in the OT. All the time. Even in those situations, it did seem that he kinda got a little irritated with Lando constantly questioning him, and the way he watches Han get tortured up close seems to give me the vibes that he relishes in it, which could be because he knows he had a part in destroying the Death Star, and for all of the trouble he’s been giving him.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I apologize if I ever sounded aggressive when explaining my viewpoint.
I’m a little late but I’m actually really looking forward to your prequel trilogy. Very interested in seeing what you’re planning on doing with this and Revenge of the Sith.
Oh I know, but I still think that would make for an interesting scene.
Probably superimposed text.
An alternative path I have just considered taking for the first half of ROTJ, is instead of taking place a year after ESB, it initially takes place very soon after, like maybe a month. Because if you think about it, why does it take them a year to rescue Han Solo?
So the Han’s rescue portion of the film would take place immediately after ESB, and then Luke returns to Dagobah, after which there’s a time gap of a year (or maybe it could be expanded to like 2 or 3 years to give Luke more time to train with Yoda and the second Death Star more time to be built). Vader’s arrival on the Death Star would be moved to after Han’s rescue and so on (because IMO it wouldn’t make sense for Vader to arrive on the Death Star and for it to take over a year for the Emperor to show up, nor would it make any sense for Vader and the Emperor to just hang out on the Death Star for over a year). The opening scene could be something like Vader visiting Padme’s grave, like in the latest comic series (since he is on an investigation to find who raised Luke), thus setting up his conflict with the light side. Not sure it’s feasible with what I have but I think that would be interesting.
The only problem I see with this approach is there has never been a time gap in the middle of a Star Wars movie, so I wonder if doing something like this would feel out of place or un-Star Warsy.
How is the first one a bad edit? That honestly sounds pretty poetic. Not really worth the effort but it isn’t bad by any means.
The second one though I understand.
Awesome!
And yes I agree. It’s like trying to preserve the twist that they’re on Earth in the new Planet of the Apes trilogy. It may have been shocking back then, but it’s just not going to do it anymore in this day and age.
What’s wrong with the mono mix?
I get what you’re saying but I don’t see how said footage would be able to be used in any other context then the context of The Mandalorian.
How does the Force being used as a superpower in this instance boil down the entirety of the Force to being a superpower? That would be like saying Yoda using the Force to lift up Luke’s X-Wing in ESB boils it down to superpowers because he uses it as an example of what the Force is capable of if he believes in himself. It’s showing one way it can be used.
It’s not the “wrong place” for such an opinion, Rodney. You are free to have and share any opinion you want here. I mean, I everyone would hate for this to be a gatekeeping, hivemind forum where everybody must conform, right?
Right?
I disagree.
On what basis? Dooku is inferior to Yoda in terms of Force power, so he switches to something on a lower level because he’s better at that (because Force powers require more training and skill). That’s what’s shown in the movie.
Or it’s because of what I explained above? Because Dooku knew he had no chance against Yoda in terms of the Force so he changed the fight but was too arrogant to admit it, a very Sith trait and a general trait of Dooku’s character (always portraying himself as super confident)? Or do you just want to ignore that to fit your narrative?
How is completely erasing him from the frame easier then recoloring him? I don’t see that to be honest.
It isn’t antithetical at all. Yoda is better at the Force then at lightsaber combat, Dooku is just too arrogant to admit that. Yoda is literally just dodging everything Dooku tries to attack him with. Yoda was dominating the fight. So he tries to change the fight to something he thinks he’ll have a better chance at beating him with, but he’s wrong there too.
It’s not saying lightsaber combat is better then the Force.
For Revenge of the Sith, I’m waiting for Octorox’s extended edition with better upscaled deleted scenes. Part of the reason it’s been taking awhile is because I’ve had some debates and back-and-forths about changing certain things, and because it’s my second favorite Star Wars movie I put myself under a lot of pressure to make it perfect. I’ve even started to consider whether I even actually want to include the deleted scenes for pacing reasons. I might even make two versions.
I’ve heard the Obi-Wan show is going to have a scene taking place during Operation Knightfall which will show a Jedi defending younglings from the newly knighted Vader. It sounds really awesome and like it’d be perfect for Revenge of the Sith’s Order 66 sequence. Not going to wait all the way till then to release my edit, but more likely then not there will be a future version of my edit that includes it.
I know I’m going to be doing V2’s for my Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones edits. There are errors I want to fix and some different things I want to do. Plus there’s an issue in which the highest it will let you select for Phantom Menace is 720p when it should be 1080p. So V2 for that one will be first.
For the original trilogy, I’m waiting on Adywan. His edits are just so fantastic that I want to use his as the bases for mine. Empire Strikes Back is going to be first of the original trilogy to be released because my edits are minor and Adywan’s version is going to be out the soonest. I was going to use bryantmh’s 1080p upscale but since Adywan is doing his own upscale I’m just going to wait for that.
I’ve considered using telecine’s awesome edit for A New Hope in which he redid all of the lasers and lightsabers, added Vader’s chest lights, and used the AOTC Death Star plans from the original ANH:R as the base until ANH:R HD is released, though another part of me is thinking that it may just be worth it to wait for Revisited, because it’s just going to be soooooo good from what I’ve seen. Same case for Return of the Jedi (as telecine has made an edit of it too with improved lasers and lightsabers) though more likely so as it’s probably going to take way longer for Adywan to finish ROTJ:R then ANH:R HD. We’ll see how long the wait is for Adywan’s stuff.
If we get a scene with suited Vader vs. Jedi from the Kenobi show it would be perfect for an idea I have for an alternate ANH opening (the other version would just start with Vader slaughtering the Rebels from Rogue One). Either that or I could see if I can use footage from Star Wars Theory’s upcoming part 2 of his fan-film (with Mace Windu either completely omitted or his lightsaber blade recolored). Basically the idea is that it would begin with Vader dueling multiple Jedi that have teamed up to distract him from the Battle of Scarif. He shows off his strength by defeating them and then shows up to the Battle of Scarif where we see him slaughter Rebels before the Yoda scene with Qui-Gon and then the beginning of the actual movie. My reasoning for this is because I felt like it would smoothen the transition between ROTS and ANH, be perfect visual exposition for Vader’s character, starting off the movie with Vader makes sense from a saga “Tragedy of Darth Vader” point of view, it shows off Vader’s power which makes him much more terrifying throughout the entire trilogy (imagine how much more terrifying it would’ve been seeing Luke attempt to face Vader for the first time in ESB if we had previously seen Vader wipe out multiple Jedi on his own), and showing the bigger universe and how these events impact the grand scheme of things. But that won’t be until the far future when it’s feasible to assemble. Depending on what happens with both of those projects the version that just begins with the Rogue One scene and then the Dagobah scene will likely be released first.
School has been kicking my ass and a lot of my focus has been on my dinosaur documentary project so that’s what’s been going on. I haven’t even worked on my Godzilla edits at all since I last posted those color corrected pictures on that thread. But thankfully Christmas break is coming up so I’ll have more time (let’s just hope work doesn’t decide to kick my ass instead).
I’m glad to see you’re interested in my version of the saga, that always encourages me.
Definitely an improvement
