Vader Timeline?

Space travel causes people to age rapidly. This is why Ben and Vader look years older than they should in the timeline.. Also, they smoke a lot....

\that and Lucas really didn't have a thought out plan for I, II, and III - so the ages are off...

That's no longer a "problem".

I'm not a Lucas apologist or anything, but to be fair, there is no real discrepancy.

Let's assume Luke is 25 years old at the end of Jedi (Hamill was actually almost 30 when it was filmed).

So, we need to see if about 25 years have passed for Obi-wan and Vader.

Let's assume Vader was 20-25 (his actual age may actually be spelled out, I don't recall, but he is almost certainly under 25).

So, if 25 years have passed by Jedi, Vader should be 40-45. Davis Prowse (who played Vader was in his mid-upper 40s when Jedi was filmed... lower-mid 40s when Star Wars was filmed)... he was about 48 when Jedi was actually released in the theatre), so that is not very far off.

Assuming Ob-wan was in his mid-thirties at the end of Ep. 3 (he has to be around 10 years or more older than Anakin), then in Star Wars he should have been roughly 60 (35+35). Alec Guinness was about 63 when Star Wars was released, so he was just over 60 when filming Star Wars.

I don't really see any major age discrepancies based on this. Not that I think Lucas had everything worked out... I'm just saying that this is probably not a good place to try and find errors as the ages do generally match up.

The discrepancy is not so much with David Prowse, but Sebastian Shaw who plays Anakin when he is unmasked and as the ghost at the end of the movie. I looked up Shaw's age on the IMDB and to say that he was about 60 was a compliment. He was born in 1905 which would have made him 78 at the time of Jedi's release. He also would have been 9 years older than Alec Guiness.

I never even thought about this until this particular post. Ages and even genders are pretty flexible in film and tv. You have 20 year olds playing high schoolers and women playing Peter Pan and/or supplying voices for pre-adolescent male cartoon characters like Bart Simpson and Bobby Hill. Not only that, but in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Sean Connery played Indy's father although Sean Connery is only 12 years older than Harrison Ford.

Ouch, my mistake.

I forgot Prowse wasn't the actor that played unmasked Vader.

Yeah, Shaw would have been in his mid-upper 70s while filming Jedi.

I suppose you could say that Vader was so screwed up from all of his injuries and basically being on life-support for half his life that he didn't age well.

I agree that an actor's actual age not mattering so much as how old they appear to be in the movie.

I'd have to go back and watch Jedi to see how old Shaw looks.

*edited for grammar*

Officially, Luke and Leia were both 18 during ANH; 22-and-a-half or thereabouts during Return of the Jedi.

Vader was 23 (going on 24 in a few weeks) when he turned...let's say 24. Which makes him 42 years young in ANH, and 46 in Jedi. Kenobi was 57 when he died aboard the Death Star. Palpatine was around 80 or 85 in Episode VI (have to check the official figures).

Originally, Lucas had Obi-Wan and Anakin born 60 and 55 years before ANH, respectively. This, of course, got tossed right out the Windu when he abruptly revised his prequel-era timeline around 1994-95, with him suddenly wanting to mine his newfound fascination with young, towheaded Force-prodigy moppets. Damn you, Jett.

At least Smits got to watch you die right in front of him.

Its cause they all lived on Tatooine...all that dust...too suns...no water.

Look at Aunt Beru, she went from really hot to leather faced old lady.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Everything in the Star Wars movies makes perfect sense. Do you hear my words? Perfect sense...all of it. No plot holes, no discrepencies, no logic problems. It's all perfect.

Are you an angel?

Minor note of contention, but if you're referring to Bobby from "Bobby's World", I believe the "gizmo" sounding youngsters voice was supplied by condom over the head crazy-man Howie Mandell.

I think I am going to go back and edit every SW post I've made and add that tagline. It's makes me feel like everything is right with the world.

Do you nitpicky yahoos sit there watching Back to the Future III and yell at the screen, "Michael J. Fox is like 45!!! Why is he playing an 18-year-old kid?!? aaaaarrrrrhhhggggg!!!11!" Nah, you sit there, shut up, and swallow the flick.

...and remember, Aragorn is 80 years old.

Besides, the pre-AOTC Hasbro version of Aunt Beru is the most stylin' 70's middle-aged "Mom" character out there. Well, actually she's the ONLY one.

Her face, rather monkey-ish in appearance, is a dead ringer for the rather monkey-ish face of Shelagh Fraser, and she has the nice shaggy bowlcut, too.

I suppose if you want to get down to it, Anakin as a ghost isn't even Sebastian Shaw anymore since Lucas replaced him with Hayden Christensen. So it's a Lucas mistake that has since been corrected although many have bitched and moaned about it.

It's hard to say if Lucas had intended them to be close to the same age. There is some evidence in the dialogue that indicates he might not have. First, in Episode IV Obi-Wan says that Darth Vader was a "young Jedi" who was a pupil of his. It could be argued that Obi-Wan being Vader's mentor, being the more experienced Jedi would have been older. But it could also be argued that Obi-Wan's greater experience does not necessarily mean that he was older than Vader. When Obi-Wan calls him a young Jedi did he mean younger than he is right now? Or did he mean younger than Obi-Wan was at the time when they had their teacher/student relationship?

Later when Obi-Wan confronts Vader, Vader taunts Obi-Wan with, "Your powers are weak old man." This could be interpreted two ways. Vader is the younger of the two Jedi and is calling attention to the fact that the years have really caught up with Obi-Wan. Or it could be an inter-deragatory comment: one member of a group using an epithet towards another member of the same group that would apply to him also.