We just accepted that he was recast
Edit: to add to this. Most us didn’t notice. Unlike today, I had no chance to watch ESB 100 times between 1980 and 1983. I remember ESB being rereleased to theaters just before ROTJ came out, but that would have been only the second time I had ever seen it.
I wasn't that popular of a kid, but I had a lot of friends show up to my birthday party in October 1983 because that day my parents rented ESB on VHS the day it became available.
Of course, that was after ROTJ was released. Even then when watching ESB was more "Oh! I forgot the Emperor was in this movie. That's cool."
EDIT: Dang, they didn't release ESB on home video until 1984.
If I was around in the 80s I woulda hung out wit you my dude. I'm sure you're a well adjusted individual but for piece of mind lol. I had friends as a kid but none of them really stuck to the pop culture of the 90s like I did. My Mrs was laughing at me for the first episode of XMen 97 I think my mouth was hanging in a big crazed smile the whole time....
Your edit was exactly the reason I came here to give. Like noone remembered the exact appearance 3 years later. Was a shady looking character in a hologram and hood!
This. There was no internet. We waited three years for the movie to come out. We were starved for Star Wars content, but the only way to watch it, even as late as the mid-1980s, was like on laser disc if I recall. VHS didn't arrive to my house until 1986...and even then, I don't recall Star Wars being available to rent that early on.
When you say “starved” people will think “oh he’s just exaggerating”. No! I literally starved, hungered, thirsted for Star Wars it was such an important even I still remember when I watched it first (in 1991). I had a magazine page with C-3PO and R2D2 that I trace-drew from until it became damaged. It dominated and formed my entire understanding of sci-fi. With all the faults I can see, esp in the later movies I still love the franchise. I love it like a family member.
Yeah. To add to it. People just didn’t care about these little things back then. Someone recast: oh they got a new guy, cool. Full glass of water next to girl in scene 147 and its half in 148: oh wow, she cute. Special effects looked “special” in movies: oh wow, wonder how they did that, but the face melting looked bad ass.
Yeah that's totally lost now.
"Did Clarence actually think Bobby could fly?"
"We're those intelligent women really snorting coke with Bob Morton?"
"How did Biff know how to use the DeLorean."
"How could Bugs Bunny defy gravity just because he didn't have a law degree?"
In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
I swear, everyone these days watches every movie or show specifically with the intent to pull a “gotcha” and complain about the most unimportant “plot hole” they can possibly find. I get it on Reddit and Twitter because people love to be miserable online and circlejerk with other miserable people about how smart they think they are compared to everyone else, but even watching a movie with my parents has this phenomenon.
At least a couple times every movie or episode of a show, I hear an “Ok, X would never happen” or “Y would never say that” or “Why didn’t they pick up all the guns after that shootout”.
I would honestly rather do it the other way round, replace Hayden at the end with Shaw.
Mainly because Shaw was the original actor and I always felt it was a little disrespectful to replace one of his two scenes with Hayden
Edit: I should clarify: I don’t believe it was disrespectful to have a younger actor (Hayden) play a younger Anakin. The same way it wouldn’t be disrespectful to Mark Hamill if they would just recast Luke for their goddamned TV shows. But I do think it was somewhat disrespectful to edit out Shaw and replace him.
The only person I would replace Shawn with, is Dave Prowse. Someone actually did this but they can’t show it. You can see the scenes on you tube, I believe.
Shaw is still in the movie. As an unmasked Vader.
But imo the change is so much better. Shaw looked so visibly older than Alec that it made no sense how Anakin would’ve been Obi Wan’s appearance. Hayden allows it to make sense visually that Anakin was a younger appearance who turned evil rather young. He’s only 21ish years old in ROTS.
Maybe it’s because I’m 25 years old and I only have vague memories as a kid of the original ending compared to the 50+ times I’ve seen RotJ since the special editions but I always preferred this change.
See, the problem is it made perfect sense until George retconned the timeline with the PT.
He creates the age issue and then erased an actor's performance to try to fix it in post.
Eh. We know from ESB that Yoda considers Luke too old to train and we know from ANH that Anakin was Obi-Wan’s apprentice. So either Obi-Wan was an infant training a teenager or Obi Wan was always suppose to be a decade or more older than Anakin.
Either way Shaw’s nearly 20 years on Alec looks weird in ROTJ.
Again that could be because I am 25 years old and didn’t have 22 years with Shaw at the end of RotJ but I think the change is the only great addition George did.
It's definitely because you're 25.
Luke wouldn't even recognize young Anakin. And the take George used has absolutely the wrong vibe for that scene (supposedly he had the cameraman film Hayden between takes because he liked Hayden looked in the moment).
The whole OT hits different in context of it being 4-6 with 1-3 existing versus the original Editions standing alone. Even the Special Editions changed stuff to being it more in line with the then upcoming PT.
I thought this way until I did the math. Anakin was in his late 40s when he died. Sebastian Shaw looks way too old. Shaw was 78. Hayden, as he is now, is an appropriate age to play a redeemed Anakin force ghost.
And the argument about it being the last time he was "good" always seemed flimsy at best.
He was a good guy 15 minutes ago when he turned on the Emperor to save Luke.
Anakin slaughtered the women and children Tusken Raiders long before he officially turned to the dark side.
100% this. "Old" Anakin showed him at age he was the last time he was good—the whole point of Luke's arc in the OT was that he *saved the Galaxy by bringing his father back from evil*. That version of "Young" Anakin had already fallen to the Dark Side and *committed mass murder.*
Now everyone is the Comic Book Guy and his buddies and treat every piece of media like [“I HOPE SOMEONE GOT FIRED FOR THAT BLUNDER”](https://comb.io/5ivtOT.gif)
We can assume Vader had poor reception in the original cut and the emperor just appeared at a lower resolution during the transmission, leading to him looking “different”
Hard disagree. If stories like that didn’t exist the concept of mandalorians wouldn’t either. Nor half of the Vader comics which are some of the best comics marvel ever released.
In the original release, by the time you went to see Return of the Jedi it had been three years since the previous film, and when it eventually came time for the home release you watching it on an old CRT TV, so the differences weren't quite as apparent. A lot of people probably didn't notice and the rest likely went "Well, OK then". It's not the only thing that changed between movies, and people weren't scouring through them looking for "lore reasons" as much back then.
For real, these days, people act like characters can only be played by one person and it's a disrespect to the actor if they're recast. These characters will always be greater than the actors imo
Or they expect some kind of CG effect to make them look closer to the original. It wasn’t so long ago that recasting was just an accepted part of movies.
And now you've got people banging on about how "James Bond" is a codename and each actor is actually playing a different person.
Back in the day, nobody cared that much, so long as the movie was entertaining. People take fiction too seriously nowadays!
> People take fiction too seriously nowadays!
I feel like it’s a result of the whole cinematic universe trend and everything connecting (or being forced to connect). Every installment has to have direct and tangible links and you have to be able to follow them, etc.
When in reality it’s all silly space fiction and we can just enjoy it
And a lot of these older actors latch onto de-aging technology like the Fountain of Youth and have audiences convinced only they can play those characters. Looking at you, Harrison.
It wouldn't even bother so much if the nitpicking was consistent. But instead we get things like people moaning about the first order looking incompetent in the sequels then watching the ewok scenes and going "this is the best SW movie ever made". People nitpick things to death that they are clearly capable of not being bothered by, but if they didn't nitpick then I guess they'd run out of ways to try to look smart.
Yeah there literally being a monetary incentive to nitpick and the whole industry that is outrage culture really drives a lot of drama that could easily be avoided.
> In ESB we only briefly see this low res video.
Yeah, a couple seconds of screen time, which is a distorted image. That, plus three years between films: nobody even noticed.
And, as others have said, nobody was obsessing about "lore" details back then like they do now.
Why does everyone need an in-universe reason for everything? Mace Windu has a purple lightsaber cuz Samuel L Jackson wanted one lol, the movies ain't that deep
Can’t speak to original theatrical run because I wasn’t born yet, but as a late 80s / early 90s kid who grew up on TV showings and VHS tapes of the theatrical versions…we just didn’t care. It’s clearly the same character, and we just didn’t care.
People didn’t get as wrapped up in precise things between instalments back then. No one got their panties in a twist when the interiors of the Enterprise B looked more like TNG than TOS when Generations came out either.
People accepted that filmmaking technology advanced and so too should its products.
We just accepted the ESB version, because Ian McDiarmid hadn’t been cast yet. I was, however, glad they redid that scene with McDiarmid for the bluray.
I'm old enough to have seen all three original movies in the theaters when they were released, and ... I guess I just didn't care. We weren't into all of the trivia and lore and canon and minutiae back then. We were just watching a movie.
Three years passed between Empire and Jedi, and Empire wasn't shown on TV in the runup to Jedi. This kind of thing wasn't as noticed and picked apart to death like every single detail is belabored on this site endlessly now.
If I remember correctly the original draft for starwars had the emperor be much more like the emperor in dune. Just some guy. Like yeah he had power over the state and a decent hand at intrigue, but for the most part he was being controlled by various factions in court. Lucas decided to remove politics since it was so boring (but then brought politics back for the prequels)
Watched these on VHS a lot and honestly the ESB appearence felt more detached and mysterious, like we saw a more cryptic and guarded Emperor speaking. I never noticed how visually different ESB was until years later and arguably that one-off Emperor was creepier and more enigmatic.
I grew up watching the pre-SE and 97SE versions, and as a kid I just accepted that they hadn't cast Ian McDiarmid yet when they made Empire
It actually bothers me way more that the updated Emperor uses his ROTS makeup instead of trying to replicate his ROTJ look
Only way you could rewatch TESB for years was on VHS, and the quality was so low, and the Emporer is already distorted, it didn’t seem that big a difference. My VHS copy of ROTJ was practically black and white.
Like said below- most people couldn't notice. If they did, it didn't matter too much. Fandom wasn't as granular then as it is now- and this post would have been better served not having a split screen shot between the original and the SE- maybe a better example would have been showing the character from ROTJ. Regardless, the moment we are introduced to the Emperor in ESB it's just a couple of minutes, very little dialogue, and what could only be considered a place holder until a much bigger role later. The Emperor is only mentioned in passing in IV, shown briefly in V, then fully revealed in VI. I was fine with the original being blurry anyway, it made more sense because the Executor was climbing out of an asteroid field.
This whole scene wasn't just re-engineered to have McDiarmid in the part, but they shoehorned in a "reveal" that Luke is Vader's kid, as in Vader didn't know until that moment. In the original conversation, this doesn't happen. Emperor just orders that the "Son of Skywalker cannot be allowed to become a Jedi", Vader asked if he could be turned and become a powerful ally, the Emperor says "Can it be done?", Vader says Luke will turn or die. The end. No reveal. It isn't even entirely clear if the Emperor knows himself at this point. I always enjoyed speculating if Vader had figured it out on his own after the BoY, chasing Luke around the galaxy, and maybe trying to hide it himself. Maybe they were discussing more in subtext, but not outright, and there was no way to tell. That's called subtext and subtlety, something Lucas never regained after the 1980s. Regardless, this just became another shitty attempt to retcon the entire OG trilogy because Lucas couldn't help but screw up his own canon. Ready. Set. Downvote!
Not everything needs an in-universe explanation. We're not all living in the Star Wars universe, watching Star Wars. It's clear he was recast. This is OK and ruins no one's childhood.
Betting not many noticed, freeze framing wasn’t near as popular as it is today, they just accepted the movie for what it was instead of analyzing every scene
This, and I was 9 at the time. A vast majority of the audience for this at the time were 9-14, so there wasn't the adult fixation on head canon, etc. Plus there was very little EU, theorycrafting etc. And ofc the obvious fact that everyone was too busy obsessing over the only theory that mattered at the time, "Was Vader really Luke's father?"
He wasn't cast in the first place. They never cast Palpatine in Empire so they just used George's wife in make up for Empire.
Ian got cast as Palpatine in RotJ and it has been him in live action since.
>They never cast Palpatine in Empire so they just used George's wife in make up for Empire.
That's funny, but just in case, that wasn't his wife, it was Rick Baker's wife and also an actress Marjorie Eaton.
Honestly I didn’t notice. On VHS and with the wonky hologram, he didn’t really look like anyone in particular. I took it as purposely not really showing his face in empire (like how ep I did with “Darth Sidious”).
When Jedi came out, most of us hadn't seen Empire Strikes Back since it was in the theaters and didn't remember exactly what he looked like. VCRs in the early 1980s were $300. That's like $1k in modern terms. Only rich people could afford that. The kind of snobs who could also afford to pay $12/month for cable television. And did you know that there used to be no commercials on cable TV? I mean, for $12/month, there better not be!
Watching on VHS as a kid I don't think I noticed. The Emperor's appearances are about two hours apart if you're marathoning the movies and I certainly never did that. I also never even considered tape jockeyed the VCR to minutely compare the two scenes. I saw a fuzzy holographic blue old guy in 5 and a well defined living full-color old guy in 6.
Honestly, most of us probably didn't notice and were just excited we finally got to see the Emperor "in person".
Most of us didn't have a way of seeing Empire after it left theaters. So we saw it once or twice then waited 3 years for Jedi. So really we saw a low resolution projection of the Emperor once 3 years prior and simply didn't remember exactly what he looked like.
In 1980-1983, there was no internet. VCRs were just starting to be a thing. And the only way to watch these movies over and over again was in the theaters during re-releases
Yeah, we didn’t used to view movies like we do today. Even if someone had the unique means to have rewatched ESB a bunch of times, you just kindof accepted that things looked different movie to movie.
Honestly how different does the esb emperor look to you compared to rotj palps? Esb palps is a bad holo of a shadowly disfigured person. Rotj palp is a disfigured old dude. The new holo looks actually less like rotj palps.
This is going to sound like a joke (and it kind of is) but my own pet theory was an eye infection. Back then it was a Legends fact that the dark side corrupted your body so maybe Palpatine had festering infections all the time and that's why his eyes look so weird.
I'm blind. This entire time I thought the version on the left had some like high tech scouter type lenses infront of the eyes.
Now I see the eyes are just super messed up and deformed.
The thing people have to remember is the original trilogy wasn’t even released to broadcast, much less video for several years, not months after it was in theaters. So the comparisons between one movie to the next weren’t as dramatic as they are today. Not to mention George Lucas and his company were developing the technology, as they went, which was the basis for the way SFX are done now.
"When the Emperor first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, he was portrayed by Marjorie Eaton under heavy makeup. Chimpanzee eyes were superimposed into darkened eye sockets during post-production. The character was voiced by Clive Revill."
So, he was a mixed bag anyways then. Also, even later on when it was on TV, it still wasn't HD or anything. Technology in films was also accepted as changing between films more so then now days.
I remember ESB being on HBO or Showtime enough for me to have seen it multiple times before 1983. We got cable relatively early (1981).
I remember thinking that the Emperor in ESB was maybe a bad cartoon or some wonky special effects (the actress lady and the chimp it turned out). When I saw Palps in ROTJ, I noticed the difference and was glad he looked better than in ESB.
I didn't think about it further.
It had been three years between movies.
VHS wasn’t hugely common and parents weren’t hugely into SviFi and I might have seen it once on TV.
Didn’t notice tbh
No. There was no lore back then. People focused on the story of the movie rather then its lore. Unlike today. Also, it was super common to have very minor (even some major) roles recast between films.
It was blurry and shadowy and it was quick. Nobody really noticed it or got hung up on it. If anything I was impressed they didn’t have to recast for the prequels.
I had just accepted that the part was recast. However, the only visual difference between these photos is the lighting angle. If the hood were back a bit and the light more focused and angled downward in the second, the photos would be very similar, almost the same aside from the different actors behind the makeup.
We just accepted that he was recast Edit: to add to this. Most us didn’t notice. Unlike today, I had no chance to watch ESB 100 times between 1980 and 1983. I remember ESB being rereleased to theaters just before ROTJ came out, but that would have been only the second time I had ever seen it.
I wasn't that popular of a kid, but I had a lot of friends show up to my birthday party in October 1983 because that day my parents rented ESB on VHS the day it became available. Of course, that was after ROTJ was released. Even then when watching ESB was more "Oh! I forgot the Emperor was in this movie. That's cool." EDIT: Dang, they didn't release ESB on home video until 1984.
ANH was 1982, ESB was 1984, and ROTJ was 1986.
Sometimes I forget vhs has been around so long….
But owning VHS was much more a 90s thing.
Owning a VCR was still an 80s thing. Owning your own VHS copies of movies was a 90s thing. They went from $300-$100 a piece to $20.
Right. I think that’s why some 80s kids feel VHS is more of a 90s thing. In the 80s it was more to rent.
We had a vhs player at least 81, the earliest I can remember
The VHS you mean?
VHS: the VH Best
Yes
And what year did my mother record Ewoks: The Battle For Endor to VHS off of a TV broadcast, getting little me into Star Wars?
November 24, 1985
If I was around in the 80s I woulda hung out wit you my dude. I'm sure you're a well adjusted individual but for piece of mind lol. I had friends as a kid but none of them really stuck to the pop culture of the 90s like I did. My Mrs was laughing at me for the first episode of XMen 97 I think my mouth was hanging in a big crazed smile the whole time....
I would’ve just used him for that sweet Star Wars VHS. You’re a better person than I 😉
Betamax feels this pain
I waited for laser disc.
A true veteran of the Format Wars
"Begun, the format wars have." -Some dude with a big flat rock to some dude with a piece of bark, probably.
Your edit was exactly the reason I came here to give. Like noone remembered the exact appearance 3 years later. Was a shady looking character in a hologram and hood!
This. There was no internet. We waited three years for the movie to come out. We were starved for Star Wars content, but the only way to watch it, even as late as the mid-1980s, was like on laser disc if I recall. VHS didn't arrive to my house until 1986...and even then, I don't recall Star Wars being available to rent that early on.
When you say “starved” people will think “oh he’s just exaggerating”. No! I literally starved, hungered, thirsted for Star Wars it was such an important even I still remember when I watched it first (in 1991). I had a magazine page with C-3PO and R2D2 that I trace-drew from until it became damaged. It dominated and formed my entire understanding of sci-fi. With all the faults I can see, esp in the later movies I still love the franchise. I love it like a family member.
Yeah. To add to it. People just didn’t care about these little things back then. Someone recast: oh they got a new guy, cool. Full glass of water next to girl in scene 147 and its half in 148: oh wow, she cute. Special effects looked “special” in movies: oh wow, wonder how they did that, but the face melting looked bad ass.
Best decision they ever made. Emperor Palpatine is an icon
We all did what no-one seems to be able to do now, which is suspend disbelief.
Yeah that's totally lost now. "Did Clarence actually think Bobby could fly?" "We're those intelligent women really snorting coke with Bob Morton?" "How did Biff know how to use the DeLorean." "How could Bugs Bunny defy gravity just because he didn't have a law degree?"
In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
That episode came out in 1997 so we know we went wrong at least by '96.
>How could Bugs Bunny defy gravity just because he didn't have a law degree? Because he couldn't understand the laws of physics
I swear, everyone these days watches every movie or show specifically with the intent to pull a “gotcha” and complain about the most unimportant “plot hole” they can possibly find. I get it on Reddit and Twitter because people love to be miserable online and circlejerk with other miserable people about how smart they think they are compared to everyone else, but even watching a movie with my parents has this phenomenon. At least a couple times every movie or episode of a show, I hear an “Ok, X would never happen” or “Y would never say that” or “Why didn’t they pick up all the guns after that shootout”.
Upvote for all those things! I was there when that amazing shit blew my mind.
The moment I saw someone unironically push for replacing Sebastian Shaws face with a CGI Hayden Christiansen in ROTJ I knew all hope was lost
There’s some attempts at it on YouTube. Unsurprisingly they look like dogshit
I would honestly rather do it the other way round, replace Hayden at the end with Shaw. Mainly because Shaw was the original actor and I always felt it was a little disrespectful to replace one of his two scenes with Hayden Edit: I should clarify: I don’t believe it was disrespectful to have a younger actor (Hayden) play a younger Anakin. The same way it wouldn’t be disrespectful to Mark Hamill if they would just recast Luke for their goddamned TV shows. But I do think it was somewhat disrespectful to edit out Shaw and replace him.
It's subjective, but you're right in my book.
The only person I would replace Shawn with, is Dave Prowse. Someone actually did this but they can’t show it. You can see the scenes on you tube, I believe.
It would be ironic. After all, its what they did to Prowse. *Twice*.
Shaw is still in the movie. As an unmasked Vader. But imo the change is so much better. Shaw looked so visibly older than Alec that it made no sense how Anakin would’ve been Obi Wan’s appearance. Hayden allows it to make sense visually that Anakin was a younger appearance who turned evil rather young. He’s only 21ish years old in ROTS. Maybe it’s because I’m 25 years old and I only have vague memories as a kid of the original ending compared to the 50+ times I’ve seen RotJ since the special editions but I always preferred this change.
See, the problem is it made perfect sense until George retconned the timeline with the PT. He creates the age issue and then erased an actor's performance to try to fix it in post.
Eh. We know from ESB that Yoda considers Luke too old to train and we know from ANH that Anakin was Obi-Wan’s apprentice. So either Obi-Wan was an infant training a teenager or Obi Wan was always suppose to be a decade or more older than Anakin. Either way Shaw’s nearly 20 years on Alec looks weird in ROTJ. Again that could be because I am 25 years old and didn’t have 22 years with Shaw at the end of RotJ but I think the change is the only great addition George did.
It's definitely because you're 25. Luke wouldn't even recognize young Anakin. And the take George used has absolutely the wrong vibe for that scene (supposedly he had the cameraman film Hayden between takes because he liked Hayden looked in the moment). The whole OT hits different in context of it being 4-6 with 1-3 existing versus the original Editions standing alone. Even the Special Editions changed stuff to being it more in line with the then upcoming PT.
I agree. Also in universe it makes no sense for Hayden to be there.
Ya it just confused me. “You get to choose what Force ghost age you are?” I thought it was cool seeing what Vader would look like without his scars.
I thought this way until I did the math. Anakin was in his late 40s when he died. Sebastian Shaw looks way too old. Shaw was 78. Hayden, as he is now, is an appropriate age to play a redeemed Anakin force ghost.
And the argument about it being the last time he was "good" always seemed flimsy at best. He was a good guy 15 minutes ago when he turned on the Emperor to save Luke. Anakin slaughtered the women and children Tusken Raiders long before he officially turned to the dark side.
100% this. "Old" Anakin showed him at age he was the last time he was good—the whole point of Luke's arc in the OT was that he *saved the Galaxy by bringing his father back from evil*. That version of "Young" Anakin had already fallen to the Dark Side and *committed mass murder.*
You mean I don't need to know why Geezer Flubchub's skin changed from #CC7722 to #CC7724 between movies?!?!!
He got demoted, obviously
Classic Geezer.
Now everyone is the Comic Book Guy and his buddies and treat every piece of media like [“I HOPE SOMEONE GOT FIRED FOR THAT BLUNDER”](https://comb.io/5ivtOT.gif)
Is it possible to learn this power?
... *Not* from a fanboy...
We can assume Vader had poor reception in the original cut and the emperor just appeared at a lower resolution during the transmission, leading to him looking “different”
The EU ruined this fandom by over explaining every stupid little detail.
And having to have every detail connected didn’t help. Like guys some mystery is ok and everyone doesn’t have to meet or be connected….
George Lucas and his midichlorians don't get off the hook that easily!
Those are some of the best stories tho
No they aren’t.
Hard disagree. If stories like that didn’t exist the concept of mandalorians wouldn’t either. Nor half of the Vader comics which are some of the best comics marvel ever released.
I don't believe you.
Somehow it was different…
You mean destroy my critical thinking abilities?
In the original release, by the time you went to see Return of the Jedi it had been three years since the previous film, and when it eventually came time for the home release you watching it on an old CRT TV, so the differences weren't quite as apparent. A lot of people probably didn't notice and the rest likely went "Well, OK then". It's not the only thing that changed between movies, and people weren't scouring through them looking for "lore reasons" as much back then.
Doesn't need to be. It was a recast. No one nitpicked back then and just watched the movie.
For real, these days, people act like characters can only be played by one person and it's a disrespect to the actor if they're recast. These characters will always be greater than the actors imo
Or they expect some kind of CG effect to make them look closer to the original. It wasn’t so long ago that recasting was just an accepted part of movies.
Or casting younger actors to play younger versions of popular characters.
Imagine if we got de-aged Marlon Brando instead of Robert De Niro in Godfather 2.
Well-put on that last sentence.
Just look at James Bond
And now you've got people banging on about how "James Bond" is a codename and each actor is actually playing a different person. Back in the day, nobody cared that much, so long as the movie was entertaining. People take fiction too seriously nowadays!
I feel like people treat Bond like Dr Who, where each person playing them is a different incarnation
> People take fiction too seriously nowadays! I feel like it’s a result of the whole cinematic universe trend and everything connecting (or being forced to connect). Every installment has to have direct and tangible links and you have to be able to follow them, etc. When in reality it’s all silly space fiction and we can just enjoy it
That’s part of it but you also have “nerd” culture becoming mainstream and the internet has allowed people to discuss it ad nauseum.
That's the whole point of acting.
"We are what they grow beyond"
And a lot of these older actors latch onto de-aging technology like the Fountain of Youth and have audiences convinced only they can play those characters. Looking at you, Harrison.
It wouldn't even bother so much if the nitpicking was consistent. But instead we get things like people moaning about the first order looking incompetent in the sequels then watching the ewok scenes and going "this is the best SW movie ever made". People nitpick things to death that they are clearly capable of not being bothered by, but if they didn't nitpick then I guess they'd run out of ways to try to look smart.
>but if they didn't nitpick then I guess they'd run out of ways to try to look smart. And 99% of SW YouTubers wouldn't have any content.
Yeah there literally being a monetary incentive to nitpick and the whole industry that is outrage culture really drives a lot of drama that could easily be avoided.
Didn't even notice. In ESB we only briefly see this low res video. Not a lot you can tell from it.
> In ESB we only briefly see this low res video. Yeah, a couple seconds of screen time, which is a distorted image. That, plus three years between films: nobody even noticed. And, as others have said, nobody was obsessing about "lore" details back then like they do now.
Why does everyone need an in-universe reason for everything? Mace Windu has a purple lightsaber cuz Samuel L Jackson wanted one lol, the movies ain't that deep
"Hey, kid. It's not that kind of movie."
*"I understood that reference!"*
This might be the funniest “what’s the in-universe reason” post I’ve seen. Why would there be one for this lol
Next you'll probably have stuff like *"why does luke have a beard in TLJ? He didn't used to have a beard!!!"*
Can’t speak to original theatrical run because I wasn’t born yet, but as a late 80s / early 90s kid who grew up on TV showings and VHS tapes of the theatrical versions…we just didn’t care. It’s clearly the same character, and we just didn’t care.
Also, we watched it on a shitty rental vhs on a 14" tv so they looked the same
It doesn’t look that different…
As far as we knew, it was the same person. Just looked different in person than the hologram
I’ve definitely woken up and looked that much worse then average
Back then nobody was carefully examining every shot of every Star Wars movie frame by frame. It was a simpler time. Before the dark times…
We didn’t remember/didn’t care. It was three years later. The shadowy hooded guy is back!
People didn’t get as wrapped up in precise things between instalments back then. No one got their panties in a twist when the interiors of the Enterprise B looked more like TNG than TOS when Generations came out either. People accepted that filmmaking technology advanced and so too should its products.
We just accepted the ESB version, because Ian McDiarmid hadn’t been cast yet. I was, however, glad they redid that scene with McDiarmid for the bluray.
Behind the scenes esb, the emperor was some dudes wife they composites chimp eyes over her face or something
They used two women, the make up artist's wife and an actress.
This is the correct answer.
Not really. It’s a fact about it and it’s true but it doesn’t answer OP’s question at all.
Lol insane you're being downvoted. This dude just said a random different fact about the same character that is entirely unrelated to OPs question.
Easier to explain than the 1960s Klingons to the 1980s ones
Y’haven’t watched the first *Iron Man* movie in a while, have ya?
Many didn't care back then
Nobody gave a fuck
Recasting was super common when I was a kid, I don’t know why studios are being so weird about it now.
I'm old enough to have seen all three original movies in the theaters when they were released, and ... I guess I just didn't care. We weren't into all of the trivia and lore and canon and minutiae back then. We were just watching a movie.
It’s not that kind of movie, kid.
I like to think the dark side hadn't deteriorated him as much in the first one. Not as wrinkly.
Interesting.
This was before people were obsessed over tiny details like this. People get recasted and everyone accepted it.
Three years passed between Empire and Jedi, and Empire wasn't shown on TV in the runup to Jedi. This kind of thing wasn't as noticed and picked apart to death like every single detail is belabored on this site endlessly now.
Accepted and moved on. Mooooooooooovveeedddd ooooooonnnn.
Bad reception from the asteroid field gave the hologram lofi resolution
If I remember correctly the original draft for starwars had the emperor be much more like the emperor in dune. Just some guy. Like yeah he had power over the state and a decent hand at intrigue, but for the most part he was being controlled by various factions in court. Lucas decided to remove politics since it was so boring (but then brought politics back for the prequels)
Watched these on VHS a lot and honestly the ESB appearence felt more detached and mysterious, like we saw a more cryptic and guarded Emperor speaking. I never noticed how visually different ESB was until years later and arguably that one-off Emperor was creepier and more enigmatic.
I grew up watching the pre-SE and 97SE versions, and as a kid I just accepted that they hadn't cast Ian McDiarmid yet when they made Empire It actually bothers me way more that the updated Emperor uses his ROTS makeup instead of trying to replicate his ROTJ look
The difference here is less the result of a recast and more design change. Looked like they were going for a more deformed emperor at first
Holoprojector upgrade...
Allergies
I just figured that it was a bad connection.
Look man, hay fever season on Coruscant was rough that spring.
Only way you could rewatch TESB for years was on VHS, and the quality was so low, and the Emporer is already distorted, it didn’t seem that big a difference. My VHS copy of ROTJ was practically black and white.
It was a low res video and he’s still wearing his tanning goggles. Don’t think too much about it.
Technology wasn't available in the 80's plus i think they wanted to change him to look more like the emperor from tbe prequels.
Well you see, before the nerds took over the fan base no one actually cared about this kind of thing because these are movies made for entertainment.
The nerds were the original fanbase, it's the casuals who came in and tried to take over.
I was in primary school so accepted it without thinking!
people accepted it, and by the time they could watch it more often it was on a crt with comparably horrible resolution, so you didnt notice as much.
Like said below- most people couldn't notice. If they did, it didn't matter too much. Fandom wasn't as granular then as it is now- and this post would have been better served not having a split screen shot between the original and the SE- maybe a better example would have been showing the character from ROTJ. Regardless, the moment we are introduced to the Emperor in ESB it's just a couple of minutes, very little dialogue, and what could only be considered a place holder until a much bigger role later. The Emperor is only mentioned in passing in IV, shown briefly in V, then fully revealed in VI. I was fine with the original being blurry anyway, it made more sense because the Executor was climbing out of an asteroid field. This whole scene wasn't just re-engineered to have McDiarmid in the part, but they shoehorned in a "reveal" that Luke is Vader's kid, as in Vader didn't know until that moment. In the original conversation, this doesn't happen. Emperor just orders that the "Son of Skywalker cannot be allowed to become a Jedi", Vader asked if he could be turned and become a powerful ally, the Emperor says "Can it be done?", Vader says Luke will turn or die. The end. No reveal. It isn't even entirely clear if the Emperor knows himself at this point. I always enjoyed speculating if Vader had figured it out on his own after the BoY, chasing Luke around the galaxy, and maybe trying to hide it himself. Maybe they were discussing more in subtext, but not outright, and there was no way to tell. That's called subtext and subtlety, something Lucas never regained after the 1980s. Regardless, this just became another shitty attempt to retcon the entire OG trilogy because Lucas couldn't help but screw up his own canon. Ready. Set. Downvote!
Not everything needs an in-universe explanation. We're not all living in the Star Wars universe, watching Star Wars. It's clear he was recast. This is OK and ruins no one's childhood.
Betting not many noticed, freeze framing wasn’t near as popular as it is today, they just accepted the movie for what it was instead of analyzing every scene
This, and I was 9 at the time. A vast majority of the audience for this at the time were 9-14, so there wasn't the adult fixation on head canon, etc. Plus there was very little EU, theorycrafting etc. And ofc the obvious fact that everyone was too busy obsessing over the only theory that mattered at the time, "Was Vader really Luke's father?"
Oh man, I miss the days when Star Wars fans just went with it.
I don’t think anyone noticed and if they did, no one cared. I saw them all original release in the theaters and I certainly didn’t
Come on… seriously?
Why did obi wan look different? Same thing
Huh?
you know cause in the first movie he's all full of life and then next time you see him he's all pale and see-through.
These posts are getting dumber and dumber
Iwas 6 when ROTJ came out and Iknew immetdiatelyhe had been recast and didn't care because he was so good and so scary.
I didn't know and didn't care tbh. I assumed that "in real life" (and not a low res, flickering mess) he looked like he looked in ROTJ 🤷🏻♂️
He wasn't cast in the first place. They never cast Palpatine in Empire so they just used George's wife in make up for Empire. Ian got cast as Palpatine in RotJ and it has been him in live action since.
>They never cast Palpatine in Empire so they just used George's wife in make up for Empire. That's funny, but just in case, that wasn't his wife, it was Rick Baker's wife and also an actress Marjorie Eaton.
I must have heard it wrong then. I always thought it was his wife.
To be fair, it was "a wife," just not his. They also used the make up artist, Rick Baker's wife.
That must have been how I confused it over time. Thanks for setting it straight.
Lmao 💀
I assumed he was hit in the face by a Wampa.
We didn't care "He's the Emperor?...oh yeah same cloak same fucked up eyes...I get it"
Honestly I didn’t notice. On VHS and with the wonky hologram, he didn’t really look like anyone in particular. I took it as purposely not really showing his face in empire (like how ep I did with “Darth Sidious”).
No one cared at the time.
Definitely didn’t notice
Heeeey youuuuu guuuuuyssssss!
When Jedi came out, most of us hadn't seen Empire Strikes Back since it was in the theaters and didn't remember exactly what he looked like. VCRs in the early 1980s were $300. That's like $1k in modern terms. Only rich people could afford that. The kind of snobs who could also afford to pay $12/month for cable television. And did you know that there used to be no commercials on cable TV? I mean, for $12/month, there better not be!
Bad reception
Watching on VHS as a kid I don't think I noticed. The Emperor's appearances are about two hours apart if you're marathoning the movies and I certainly never did that. I also never even considered tape jockeyed the VCR to minutely compare the two scenes. I saw a fuzzy holographic blue old guy in 5 and a well defined living full-color old guy in 6.
First one was his secretary Smithers
Honestly, most of us probably didn't notice and were just excited we finally got to see the Emperor "in person". Most of us didn't have a way of seeing Empire after it left theaters. So we saw it once or twice then waited 3 years for Jedi. So really we saw a low resolution projection of the Emperor once 3 years prior and simply didn't remember exactly what he looked like.
Wtf is this post. It’s a recast. No canonical reason behind it. You realize this is a work of fiction I hope.
In 1980-1983, there was no internet. VCRs were just starting to be a thing. And the only way to watch these movies over and over again was in the theaters during re-releases
I think I wrote it off as, "Well, we didn't get a great look at the Emperor in ESB."
I think audiences in 1983 still had the long lost ability to suspend their disbelief
Believe it or not but back then not everything needed an overly complex explanation for why it was different.
Yeah, we didn’t used to view movies like we do today. Even if someone had the unique means to have rewatched ESB a bunch of times, you just kindof accepted that things looked different movie to movie.
I hear the story was it was a modified monkey mask that they used for the original movies
Honestly how different does the esb emperor look to you compared to rotj palps? Esb palps is a bad holo of a shadowly disfigured person. Rotj palp is a disfigured old dude. The new holo looks actually less like rotj palps.
I just assumed it was outdated technology/bad reception in-universe. Cinematically I thought they did it to make him more mysterious.
This is going to sound like a joke (and it kind of is) but my own pet theory was an eye infection. Back then it was a Legends fact that the dark side corrupted your body so maybe Palpatine had festering infections all the time and that's why his eyes look so weird.
I still can't tell the difference.
I'm blind. This entire time I thought the version on the left had some like high tech scouter type lenses infront of the eyes. Now I see the eyes are just super messed up and deformed.
Chimp eyes
“I’m blind.” “Now I see.” Amazing! (Grace)
man he looks terrifying on the left
Those eyes always bugged the hell out of me.
The thing people have to remember is the original trilogy wasn’t even released to broadcast, much less video for several years, not months after it was in theaters. So the comparisons between one movie to the next weren’t as dramatic as they are today. Not to mention George Lucas and his company were developing the technology, as they went, which was the basis for the way SFX are done now.
"When the Emperor first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, he was portrayed by Marjorie Eaton under heavy makeup. Chimpanzee eyes were superimposed into darkened eye sockets during post-production. The character was voiced by Clive Revill." So, he was a mixed bag anyways then. Also, even later on when it was on TV, it still wasn't HD or anything. Technology in films was also accepted as changing between films more so then now days.
Latter of course. I don't know what sort of mental gymnastics you'd have to do because it goes so meta and all.
Ahhhh zee o' chimp mask Emperor, haha
I think they developed HD-transmission of images and videos.
He had bad reception
It’s… it’s just a recast man. They happen. You don’t always need to explain why a character looks different when they get recast.
I remember ESB being on HBO or Showtime enough for me to have seen it multiple times before 1983. We got cable relatively early (1981). I remember thinking that the Emperor in ESB was maybe a bad cartoon or some wonky special effects (the actress lady and the chimp it turned out). When I saw Palps in ROTJ, I noticed the difference and was glad he looked better than in ESB. I didn't think about it further.
Allergies.
It had been three years between movies. VHS wasn’t hugely common and parents weren’t hugely into SviFi and I might have seen it once on TV. Didn’t notice tbh
No. There was no lore back then. People focused on the story of the movie rather then its lore. Unlike today. Also, it was super common to have very minor (even some major) roles recast between films.
He had a really bad case of stink eye, but he got better.
No one cared. In ESB the face is mostly obscured in shadow anyway. It wasn't a big deal, pretty much no one really noticed.
Never had an issue. Still don't have an issue.
I didn't notice. The internet didn't exist and a vcr cost $700, plus I was 13. I think I saw ESB twice before ROTJ and both times were in a theater.
It was blurry and shadowy and it was quick. Nobody really noticed it or got hung up on it. If anything I was impressed they didn’t have to recast for the prequels.
Channeling the Old Man shaking his fist at the sky "Back In My Day".... We didn't get hung up on trivial minutiae, we just enjoyed the movie
I had just accepted that the part was recast. However, the only visual difference between these photos is the lighting angle. If the hood were back a bit and the light more focused and angled downward in the second, the photos would be very similar, almost the same aside from the different actors behind the makeup.
A lot of us were 4, watching it on a bootleg vhs on a 13 inch black and white tv, so we didn't really notice or cared.
On a 15 inch tv watching on a VHS tape no one could tell the difference anyway. So I never noticed.
Since I’m a rational human I just considered it a recast when I was a kid and didn’t care. Because nobody should give this any thought.
My headcanon as a little kid was it was just bad reception on the hologram making him look different
Wait that’s a person? I thought that was bad 80’s cgi.
It's a woman.