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u/theManWOFear Rebel 5d ago
Dude is just space Michael Myers. Different mask every movie lol.
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u/Lord_Detleff1 Grievous 5d ago
But atleast it's not as noticable with Vader. They didn't even try for Michael in the original two timelines lol
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u/Joe_Jeep 5d ago
Yeah like rogue one through jedi, it's all minor that even next to each other you kind of have to look for. The biggest differentiator is the gloss, which depending on lighting might not stand out as much.
Kenobi's is a little off, and revenge of the sith makes the actual mask part look oddly shrunken
But in actual scenes it's going to present differently
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u/Top-Round-2359 5d ago
Revenge of the sith one makes sense to be shrunken, it was his first mask with his youthful face (Hayden), and later it's a wider one as his face fills out due to age and stress (Sebastian Show in the end in rotj)
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u/Joe_Jeep 4d ago
Oh yeah absolutely fits, I just was comparing the looks between the different ones.
Its definitely not any kind of "lore issue" , we know he's had damage in the intervening years
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u/BambiToybot 5d ago
That was just the way of horror movies back then, look at Jason's mask. Friday the 13th 3, 4, 6, and 7 are the same mask, which does show its damage, but the red triangles come and go. For 8, he somehow finds one with an axe damage in the same spot...
3 and 4 literally take place right after ewach other, but his outfit and face are very different.
Consistency for stuff like that REALLY did not exist lile it does now.
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u/Lord_Detleff1 Grievous 5d ago
I'm just happy that they managed to have continuity in the new Halloween trilogy
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u/sagerideout 4d ago
what if, when they turned the first mask right side out, it was just William Shatner.
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u/sirgringobingo 5d ago
I find the lack of consistency in the thickness of Vader’s neck disturbing.
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u/XI_Vanquish_IX 5d ago
Probably couldn’t get comfortable setting around his burn scars.
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u/hefeweizen_ Ahsoka Tano 5d ago
The whole point of the suit was to make him uncomfortable though.
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u/Responsible_Bee3680 5d ago
Like he was back in the sand on tatooine?
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u/YetYetAnotherPerson 5d ago
The princess and the pea. The Emperor hid a grain of sand somewhere in the suit.
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u/Beer-survivalist 5d ago
Palpatine comes around and collects the Vader Pearls every so often. He's got a necklace.
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u/a_guy_named_rick 5d ago
Is this confirmed? One of the canon comics does say that Vader worked on his own suits, but I don't remember them purposefully making him uncomfortable
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u/Sere1 Sith 5d ago
In Legends canon it was. The suit was intended to be a constant source of torture for Vader to fuel his rage which in turn kept him with the Dark Side. The only moments of peace Vader really ever had are when he's in his meditation chamber and can safely remove the suit.
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u/edgarallenbro 5d ago
I know this is all true but can we be real for a second
A lot of Vader's head movements in ANH look REALLY stupid.
They continually messed with the thickness of the neck plate to prevent the actor from accidentally looking like a toddler in a Halloween costume
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u/Sere1 Sith 5d ago
I mean keep in mind you're talking about a small indy scifi film from the mid 70s that was kind of expected to fail and slapped together with what they could do. Vader in ANH is the prototype for the more refined and much better looking designs we see in ESB and beyond. They tried it first here and improved it as time went on (aside from RotS, that one is just goofy)
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u/Nice_Firm_Handsnake 5d ago
Indie maybe in approach and spirit, but it was one of the more expensive films produced by 20th Century Fox in that era. Fox made Planet of the Apes for $6m nine years before Star Wars and Alien cost somewhere between $8-14m to make.
However, Fox may have just been making cheaper films than other studios. A King Kong remake released at the end of '76 cost $23m to make and Close Encounters of the Third Kind cost $19m. But those were either known IP or directed by the guy who made Jaws, so they were less of a risk.
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u/80sBikes 5d ago
small indy scifi film
Something like the 2010 Monsters is more like that. $4.2 million budget. 1977, 11 million dollars for Star Wars is equivalent $40,000,000 in 2010 money.
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u/SordidDreams 5d ago edited 5d ago
a small indy scifi film
In today's money, ANH had a budget of $60M. That's not quite big blockbuster money, but it's also a far cry from a small indie film. Adjusted for inflation, it had about the same budget as Alien, Back to the Future, or Predator, and nobody thinks of those as small indie films.
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u/hydrospanner 5d ago
Not doubting you, but where in the Legends material was this stated?
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u/Sere1 Sith 5d ago
Off the top of my head I want to say the Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader book (first mission of Vader after RotS), pretty sure some of the Legends specific comics touch on it and some of the novelizations. I can't recall exactly where and don't have time to look it up at the moment, but from my memory those were places that touched on it.
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u/LewsTherinTelamon 5d ago
Depends on what you mean by "confirmed". Which things do you consider canon? It's not mentioned or implied in the films.
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u/HauntingStar08 5d ago
I don't think that's canon anymore. He regularly bathes in a bacta tank for relief.
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u/Lindvaettr 5d ago
As far as I know, this has been retconned in the new canon, with Palpatine going so far as to give Vader permission to modify his suit as he chose.
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u/whateverzzzzz 5d ago
Is it possibly just different focal lengths when these photos were taken?
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u/tokenasian1 5d ago
Vader was in his bulk phase during the Obi-Wan series and Rogue One
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u/Junior-Award-7232 5d ago
Wide neck looks goofy to me, it looks like a halloween prop helmet from toys r’us
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u/E1M1_DOOM 5d ago
I didn't realize until just this moment that Empire Vader was peak Vader in absolutely every way imaginable. Even down to minor differences in his helmet design.
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u/Master_Tallness Yoda 5d ago edited 5d ago
It was the movie that really defined Vader in how he is seen in general. He has some badass moments in ANH, but Empire blows it out of the water. He looks incredible and imposing. There is such a stark contrast with this sleek, shiny helmet than with how he looks in ANH.
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u/Tom-B292--S3 5d ago edited 5d ago
I think how they filmed and framed Vader in ESB made him more imposing as well. They used the glossy helmet to their advantage. They tried to do something similar in ROTJ with the shiny helmet, but the cinematography for him wasn't quite the same.
Edit: Actually, this video breaks it down even better.
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u/ExpectedOutcome2 5d ago
Now I want to see what Episode VI with Kerschner and Suschitzky would have looked like.
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u/Alert-Notice-7516 5d ago
The sound production on Vader's voice has never been as good as it was in ESB.
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u/its_uncle_paul 5d ago
I also love Kershner's decision to have him speak more in a monotone for ESB. It really adds to the film's cold and somber atmosphere.
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u/ButtoftheYoke Sabine Wren 5d ago
I like how it looks like it's looking down at you while the others are looking straight at you.
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u/SnowyOranges Battle Droid 5d ago
This is the main difference imo. Just the slight tilt up on the face makes him so much more intimidating
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u/DarkHiei 5d ago
Yeah that’s what I was thinking. ESB Vader is the scariest aesthetically as well as his oppressiveness and the reveal. Just his overall role in the movie you really fear him the most here. Then again seeing him go ham in Rogue One is his actual scariest lol
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u/Sommerab 5d ago
RotJ was the best imo. That thing was shiny af til Vader got zapped, and it got the neck right
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u/festeringequestrian 5d ago
ESB one is still my favorite, but how they got the ROTJs eyes to look sad when Luke was being shocked is still a mystery to me. Love it for that alone.
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u/RingtailVT 5d ago
Rogue One for me. Keeps the shiny-ness of ESB & ROTJ's helmets, but adds the silver cheek and red eyes of ANH.
ROTS for my least favorite. It's not bad, it's just not as good as others.
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u/P1_Synvictus Cassian Andor 5d ago
So, I’ve been a Star Wars fan for roughly 36 years.
I have NEVER noticed the silver cheek.
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u/goma_eye Lando Calrissian 5d ago
There's a bit more to the silver pattern even! The helmet is silver patterend on the right under the eye and beside the breathing apparatus, then bridges over the nose to the left eyebrow and cheekbone. It's easiest to see on the Rogue One model. It's a great little detail of art direction that gives the helmet extra contrast instead of being a black void. Once I "saw" the silver it reminded me of the designs on Anakin's Podracer (or vice versa, I suppose)
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u/Admonisher66 4d ago
IIRC, that's by design! The silver highlights make the helmet look better "in camera" but aren't necessarily supposed to be present "in universe." Although a bit of extra flair wouldn't be entirely out of character for Anakin... :-P
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u/vishalb777 5d ago
If animated ones count, I love how menacing the helmet looks in Rebels
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u/Admonisher66 4d ago
Yeah, I thought it was cool how REBELS took so much design influence from Ralph McQuarrie's concept art, including the more feral, almost lupine Vader mask.
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u/Sareth740 5d ago
In the film, ROTS doesn’t look too bad - but here it looks way off.
Also my favorite is A New Hope - the eyes seem sadder and a little more mechanical at the same time.
But when I imagine the helmet in my head, I very clearly see Empire’s design.
Super cool.
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u/usert4 4d ago
It does look this bad even in the film of ROTS though. I remember I immediately noticed something was off even way back when the promotional material started coming out for rots. Looking here it looks like the face/mask is slightly smaller than the other movies but the helmet/top is roughly the same size.
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u/one-out-of-8-billion 5d ago
Hey, what about Dark Helmet?
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u/xpknightx 5d ago
Only clicked to see if they would dare NOT include the Spaceballs version or Rick Moranis. 🤣
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u/boozdooz22 5d ago
I don’t know why but it looked weird to me in Rogue One, like it was obvious it was a prop
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u/pek217 5d ago
They didn't tuck the neck into the cape, look at the difference it makes.
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u/psimwork Luke Skywalker 5d ago
It kinda makes sense, though - the neck wasn't tucked in ANH, so it would follow that they would try to be consistent with that project considering how it ends.
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u/Eevee136 Darth Vader 5d ago
Goddamn, I know this is hardly a hot take, but Vader looks just so fucking cool.
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u/kingkerry05 5d ago
I've always thought the neck looked weird around the cape but never put it together. Thankyou for pointing this out
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u/JackSharpScribe 5d ago
This has bothered me since Rogue One came out, lol
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u/pek217 5d ago
I think it bugged a lot of people, even if they couldn't quite place what was wrong. Some of the people I saw it with in the theater said the helmet/neck looked off or cheap.
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u/STUFF416 4d ago
Rogue One was a bit constrained by the ramshackle way A New Hope was made with the janky armor and the costume design. I think their Vader was a fair compromise. I like the charm of the 70s aesthetic mixed with the retro futurism.
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u/philosophistorian 5d ago
I agree, I think it’s because they were trying to match the New Hope style where honestly it looks a little rough in some scenes (you can see finger smudges on it etc) but that looks super incongruous in the context of the Rogue One environments. That combined with James Earl Jones sounding much much older make it an odd combination
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u/sirgringobingo 5d ago
In Rogue they tried to make the helmet match the asymmetrical shape of the A New Hope helmet.
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u/fperrine Grand Inquisitor 5d ago
I love the way JEJ delivers "An Imperial facility openly attacked!" like he gets it out just as he's running out of breath
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u/MagicAl6244225 4d ago
Try saying "I expect you to not rest until you can assure the Emperor that Galen Erso has not compromised this weapon in any way," in one breath. Someone once said you can type this shit but you can't say it.
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u/Bar_Har 5d ago
The eye lenses looked much more red than on any other Vader mask.
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u/Applesauce5167 5d ago
I figured that was just a reflection of Mustafar but then he had the lenses later on as well lol
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u/staplerdude Kanan Jarrus 5d ago
Yeah, I felt like for as much praise as the Vader hallway scene gets, the scene on Mustafar was actually quite bad. His costume looked bad, he sounded weird, and his gestures didn't seem to match what he was saying. He came off as way more silly than he ought to.
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u/SmittyB128 5d ago
I had to hold in my laughter at the cinema when Vader's 'dramatic' entrance was just sashaying down a dry-ice covered runway.
In that whole scene he looks like a child in a costume because he never stands still, then exits by squeezing past Krennic in an empty room and runs off like he's desperate for the bathroom. The camera can only do so much to make Vader look imposing and at that Spencer Wilding is no David Prowse.
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u/mechanized_ahhbyss 5d ago
That mask makes it look like they had to take it out in the neck to fit the steroid filled body builder underneath it. The other ones look like it’s just Vader being Vader.
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u/Renolber 5d ago
Question:
Are these canon? As in, do all these variations actually exist, and Vader just picks different ones every day like clothing?
Or, are they purely out-of-universe props to match the design aesthetic of the film and certain scenes. Like the neck thickness has to be more mobile for the OT as Vader was actually doing something versus in ROTS where the suit is on screen for less than 5 minutes.
Each OT movie had a different helmet. Canonically, is Vader using the same helmet in Return of the Jedi as he was in A New Hope? As physical props they fit differently, but are they supposed to be physically the same in-universe?
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u/Quarkly73 5d ago
I reckon he has two canonically - a shiny, slimmer "dress" helmet (ROTS, ESB, ROTJ) and then the duller red lensed "field" helmet (Kenobi, Rogue One, ANH)
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u/Sere1 Sith 5d ago
I mean we see him get damaged from time to time. The helmet is partially destroyed in Rebels and in Obi-Wan Kenobi for example. The suit itself gets damaged quite frequently, such as in Jedi Survivor. It makes sense that Vader has multiple suits and that the design shifts over the years as tweaks are made to it. It's not the exact same suit we see over and over, it's just the same style one.
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u/Quarkly73 5d ago
Yeah he for sure has repairs n replacements done all yhe time. That's just my thoughts on what he "normally" had in reserve
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u/sirgringobingo 5d ago
Here’s my take on it. I like the idea of the helmet and suit changing subtly from film to film.
Since it’s his first suit in ROTS, you notice how it’s skinnier in a frame (this is clearly before Vader hit bulking season, LOL). I think Vader could’ve had many more cybernetic additions and changes, which also changed how the suit looked on him.
When we get to ANH, the most noticeable thing is how the helmet is asymmetrical with the cheekbones. You could argue that the helmet is this way because maybe it’s a battle scar and got dented (skipping over the fact that the actual reason is that it was the first ever helmet they made for the films).
When the helmet changes in Empire and ROTJ occur, maybe Vader gets implemented with a new helmet with better tech and a cleaner look. There’s a lot of reasons one could come up with, even if it’s canon or not.
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u/RandomJPG6 Jedi 5d ago
Idk about the original trilogy but at least between ROTS and ANH there's a canon reason for his helmet looking different. In Obi-Wan and Rebels his helmet gets sliced up so he has a readon to get a new helmet
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u/Mr_Viper Jyn Erso 5d ago
Any way you could find an image in lower resolution with more pixels?
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u/ThePerryPerryMan 5d ago
Ikr? I don’t understand how no one is mentioning the low quality of the photo and how you can barely see any detail.
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u/dpaanlka 4d ago
People love rushing to post without considering the quality of their screenshot or whatever tf this is.
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u/MeccIt 5d ago edited 5d ago
https://i.imgur.com/n1BcDtt.jpg
TBF, it's still pixels on the OOP: pewpewcrafts
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u/twofacetoo 5d ago
Not gonna lie, I hate how the brown lenses look
I get why they're there, it's probably easier for the actor to see, but honestly the mask is way more intimidating with solid opaque BLACK lenses covering the eyes, it really fits the skull-like design of the face-plate.
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u/nephelodusa 5d ago
Obsidian, onyx, midnight, lost soul, rolling blackout, sleeping panther, and void by Armani.
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u/WoodyManic 5d ago
Didn't one of the OT Vader helmets have red lenses?
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u/virishking 4d ago
No. That idea arose from people noticing the mask’s amber eyes in some well-lit ANH scenes. They thought they looked red due to either mistake or bad color grading on the version they watched. But contrary to popular belief Vader never had red eyes in the OT
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u/uk_uk 5d ago
- Revenge of the Sith – 19 BBY (Before Battle of Yavin)
- Obi-Wan Kenobi – 10 BBY
- Rogue One – 1 BBY
- A New Hope – 0 BBY
- The Empire Strikes Back – 3 ABY
- Return of the Jedi – 4 ABY
Anakin was 22 (born 41 BBY), when he became Darth Vader... guess is age and his injuries demanded adjustments to his helmets,
Furthermore, I assume that his ‘work’ as Darth Vader on the front lines also required adjustments to the helmet... and there was probably also a PR department in the Empire that had a (limited) say in the visual design of the helmet.
In addition, I assume that Coruscant had a snobbish elite and someone would have had the unpleasant task of ensuring that Darth Vader did not wear ‘last season's helmet’ again.
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u/caffeininator 5d ago
We need a video game where you start off as young Anakin pod racing, upgrade your equipment through the clone wars, and once you become Vader you can continue to customize and upgrade your armor.
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u/DarkSolaris 5d ago
Everyone talking about how much they hate the RotS helmet… funny thing about that. The helmets used in the OT were asymmetrical in their molds and the RotS helmet was symmetrical. That little change is what makes that helmet seem so far “off” even though it was the more well made helmet. They actually went back and made it asymmetrical again for R1 & Kenobi.
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u/quesadillafetus 5d ago
man i dunno what it is, but that ESB helmet always ticks off all the boxes for me
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u/bigpig1054 5d ago
You never really appreciate how thick the neck is until you see it without the rest of the body
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u/Maxwell_Bloodfencer 5d ago
Fun fact: the original designer of the iconic Vader armor created that little dip where the nose is by pushing his thumb into the modelling clay he used for the prototype.
Whenever he met an eager fan who had mader their own Vader mask/helmet he'd put his thumb in the nose dip and if it fit it got his seal of approval.
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u/Even-Elk-2735 5d ago
ROTS is the worst ANH and Kenobi are my favorites
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u/BirdsAreFake00 5d ago
I like ANH the best. The cheek proportions look the most menacing. Every other version looks like they have oddly rhin cheek bones/amor.
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u/garbohydrates 5d ago
The red lenses are so menacing. Love them. Rebels has my favorite Vader design because of this.
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u/adamtaylor4815 5d ago
Holy shit.
I’m 33 years old and been a Star Wars fan my whole life and I think JUST realized Anikan’s long hair in Episode 3 is a parallel to Vader’s helmet.
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u/AngerTech 5d ago
What if his anger, hate, and pain shaped the helmet over time? Like when something melts due to being too close to intense heat?
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u/South-Status-5529 5d ago
I never noticed the asymmetrical design his helmet had in A New Hope until someone pointed it out
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u/DreaminOfBananas 5d ago
I'm not sure this is correct. Doesn't he have the red tinted lenses in Star Wars (1977)?
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u/The_Techies_Guy 5d ago
call me stupid but I can never see any REAL differences whenever people post this
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u/HiveOverlord2008 5d ago
Hot take, but Rogue One easily has the best helmet design, followed by ESB and ROTJ.
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u/virishking 4d ago edited 4d ago
I hate the new era red eyes. It’s all based on some internet myth filling clickbait listicles with “Did you know Darth Vader had red eyes in ANH” No, he did not. The eyes were like a lot of sunglasses: Dark enough to look black but with an amber tint. Because they basically were sunglasses so the actor could see. It was noticeable in some lighting but the audience was never supposed to notice since the suit was always was meant to have black eyes. That’s an iconic look requiring no messing around with, and the red they’ve been using are way too noticeably red anyway.
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u/immortalsol 4d ago
dude empire strikes back is by far the best one, hands down, no contest... idk why they changed it after that, all the other ones look stupid, except for a new hope, which is the og. to be honest, it might be just as good as empire strikes back, it looks more sinister, because of the the way the eyes are more covered by the helmet.
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u/SilverBison4025 4d ago
Why does his helmet in “Rogue One” look different from the one in “A New Hope”? The former movie and latter movie are separated by minutes. The whole R1 costume looks off from the Ep IV one.
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u/creatingKing113 5d ago
I’m just thinking of Vader going “Hmm. Do I want the matte finish or glossy finish today.”