The legendary James Earl Jones, still the original voice of Darth Vader, did not believe even for a moment the great revelation about the end of the Empire Strikes Back. And he explains his point of view.
Il twist final ofEmpire Strikes Back (1980), l’Episode V of the saga of Star Warsdisturbed the spectators of the time: Darth Vaderfacing Luke Skywalkerhe revealed to be his father. Something really unexpected and in some ways even absurd, bearing in mind the atmosphere of the saga at that time and the absence of prequel which were made twenty years later. It’s not fresh news, we admit it, but it had escaped our radars at the time: even James Earl Joneshistorical voice of Darth Vader, had a hard time believing it.
(Photo by James Earl Jones via Wikimedia Commons)
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James Earl Jones on Luke’s father Darth Vader: ‘I thought he was lying’
Born in 1931, James Earl Jonesnomination all’Oscar as best actor in To climb lower (1970), has been there for 46 years official voice of Darth Vaderwhich he played to the last Obi-Wan Kenobithe series his Disney+ seen last year. If you put yourself in the shoes of the public in the late seventies, the Star Wars story it was pretty basic, a”good versus bad” introduced by Star Wars in 1977, with the first huge twist in theEmpire Strikes Back of the 1980. Mark Hamill has already expressed in the past his astonishment at that revelation, the idea that Vader was Luke’s father, but James was no different. The Hollywood Reporter and Heat Vision caught his reaction a few years ago.
I remember for The Empire, when George consulted me, he said, “We don’t know what we got right on A new hopeso let’s try to redo everything we did.” I naturally wanted to make Darth Vader more interesting, more subtle, more psychologically oriented. And he was like, “No, no. You have to keep his voice aseptic about him, because basically we’ll find out that it’s not human“. He answered me like this. (…)
When I first saw that dialogue with “Luke, I’m your father“, I said to myself: “He is lying. How are they going to play this lie later?”