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If you were close to my little piece of First Avenue around 9pm, you may well have heard me screaming and whooping it up. I'd just finished watching Return of the Jedi [2] when I saw the man that makes the ending of that movie so right : Sebastian Shaw [3], the actor who played the older Anakin Skywalker [4] in the 1983 original movie.
Nothing in pop culture has shocked me out of my wits so much like the ending of the 2004 digitally remastered version of this movie. Honestly, I was shaken by how confusing it was to see Christian Hayden's Anakin insted of Sebastian Shaw's. It was the arrogance of George Lucas that really upset me the most. How could he? How could George Lucas take this movie and mess with the ending? I mean, this is one of those seminal movies that changed the whole cultural narrative around son/father myths!
Then I noticed as I was researching for this post that Lucas didn't direct this movie. Richard Marquand [5] directed the movie.
Was this some kind of macho trip? It's as if Lucas had to piss all over his movies to make them his again.
Which takes me to another thing that pisses me off about the whole Star Wars saga. Lucas has said he never intended to make a trilogy after Return of the Jedi. Actually, the new tree movies almost might not have happened [6]:
Lucas said he only decided to do the back-story trilogy — which "Sith," due next May, will cap — because he realized he had already written it in order to tell the story in the first "Star Wars" films. "The original 'Star Wars' was only three films, and that was what it was meant to be," he said. "After a lot of pondering and thought, I went back to do the back story, but that pretty much tells the story. Episode six is the end. There isn't any more to it."
And it wasn't until today that it hit me why I've been so disappointed with the Star Wars movies after Revenge of the Sith : We will never get to see Carrie Fisher's Pricess Leia become a Jedi mistress.
That to me is the biggest failure with Lucas. He just couldn't identify with Leia enough to make her a completely developed and nuanced action-shero.
PS:
Yah. I know I'm a nerd so move along, nothing to see here.
PS(2):
Interesting psycho-demographical detail: My kids, who are 9 and 6 years-old were confounded by the Shaw appearance. They were expecting the younger Anakin.
Now, given how old the old Anakin looks, I have to say that casting Hayden for the third installment, instead of an older guy --let's say, another Danish-American actor [7]-- would have made far greater sense in terms of chronology. Might have that Aragorn part spoiled the casting for Lucas? Who knows ... unless, of course, Lucas' "falling in love with" Hayden's performance has a whole different meaning.
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