SunnyHello
Nice effects though.
Kien Navarro
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Curt
Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.
Asteri-Atypical
... and I mean that in regards to the documentary, in addition to what the documentary was about.I liked the concept. However it turned out to be the biggest tease I've seen in a documentary. Central to the premise is that Prowse SHOULD have played the dying Vader in Return of the Jedi. That for this, and other reasons, he was wronged. We saw the director building up to the prospect of shooting the scene, spoke that he would, that Prowse was willing (even though permission was not given from TPTB)...AND THEN WE DID NOT GET TO SEE IT.Not even stills. Not even a Prose in full makeup sans mask -- only indirect vignettes.It's poor filmmaking to elude to the inclusion of a moment which kept us watching for over an hour, imply we will get to enjoy it, then fail to deliver.If you don't have permission, fine, Let us know that up front so we don't get our hopes up.The interviews were worthwhile, but most of the good of this documentary was undone with that unfortunate stunt.
doctor13
Actor David Prowse played the body of Darth Vader in the original STAR WARS trilogy and was shocked when he learned that another actor's face was to be used during the famous unmasking scene in RETURN OF THE JEDI. Documentary director Marcos Cabata decides to rectify this mistake by re-filming his own version of the scene and surprising Prowse by having him play Anakin Skywalker. This is his intention, which he states at the film's beginning, then pretty much forgets about it until thirty minutes from the end. Between those two moments, we get an hour of Prowse's career history and him complaining about how George Lucas did him wrong. This documentary fails for several reasons: 1. The underlying theme/story here should have been the recreation of the unmasking scene with Prowse, but Cabata doesn't even tell Prowse about the offer until near the end of the film, and Prowse's reaction is anti- climactic, to say the least; 2. Cabata seems to be promoting himself as much he is telling the story of Prowse, and it's noticeable and irritating; 3. Once Lucasfilm realized that Cabata was making them out to be the villains of the piece, they refused to have anything to do with the documentary, and didn't give their permission for Cabata to re-shoot the scene with Prowse, so, with this being the film's main drive, once the reshot scene is shown before an audience, WE DON'T GET TO SEE IT. Cabot doesn't even show the audience's reaction to it!! Absolutely ridiculous and a major fail on his part, making me question the intention of the documentary in the first place.And finally, the main reason for Prowse's getting snubbed by Lucas, the doc ascertains, is because before EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was released, he revealed to a newspaper that Darth Vader was Luke's father. Prowse denies that he talked to any reporter or spilled any such information, and Lucas blocked him from future Star Wars events because of it. The film says that this is the only way the secret could have been spilled. However, I never read that article and I knew going in to the film on opening day, that Vader was Luke's father. How? Because the novelization of the movie was released BEFORE the film opened! Yet the documentary makes no mention of this as another way to exonerate Prowse. Only for the hardest of Star Wars fans.
rys86
There's some intriguing info and interviews in here if you don't know much about David Prowse.However... The filmmaker inserts himself as a main character, which is kind of annoying, especially since he obtained some GREAT interviews from a variety of people close to the Star Wars franchise...including Prowse himself. Those interviews could've carried it just fine had that been the agenda. Another small inconvenience (on the Netflix version anyway), there were no built-in subtitles for the two brief scenes that are completely in Spanish.If you can get past those minor annoyances, it is otherwise decent.
Modern Monsters
Arguing that Darth Vador is the evilest villain of movie history and a universal figure, this wet dream of nerdy guerrilla aims at giving character actor David Prowse the place in the Star Wars pantheon that George Lucas, Hollywood's evilest villain, has denied him by replacing him with another actor when the time finally came, at the end of Return of the Jedi, to drop the mask off and die. The concept is to set the record straight by re-shooting the scene in question, this time with Mr. Prowse. The director of the piece is obviously very proud of his idea, so proud that he promptly becomes insufferably self-satisfied, but one can acquire a wealth of useless knowledge before pressing the stop button, which one is ashamed to confess he did.The first shocker comes with the fact that George Lucas was supposed to direct Apocalypse Now, but he dropped out to make Star Wars, which is a great loss if you imagine Apocalypse Now's final 30 minutes with Ewoks. The horror. the horror.A tall and muscular man, Mr Prowse was a personal trainer at Harrod's in 69, where he was scouted and cast to play the Frankenstein creature. Hé then played the Green Cross Man, a British superhero teaching children to cross at zebra lines. "Walk straight across!", he enthuses in a somewhat gayish voice at the end of a vintage TV ad.Through trials and tribulations, he got the role of Darth Vador, with one caveat: his West County accent sounded funny for a galactic villain. One has to side with George Lucas on this one: an universal villain from the future could only sound American, so Edouard James Olmos dubbed Mr Prowse, whose voice, he remarks with legitimate amusement, has become deeper with age and is now pretty close to Olmos'.Firmly establishing himself between a sycophant and a conspiracy monger, the director then gets to the heart of the matter: the father issue. No one knew about Darth Vador being Luke Skywalker's father during shooting, the soundbite having been added in post-production (no doubt one of the foundations of the legend according to which quite about anything can be fixed in post-prod). But wait! Mr Prowse had foreseen this development and mentioned it casually during an interview! He got ostracised by Lucas Films in retribution. Did one mentioned that George Lucas was evil incarnate?A scene at a Star Wars convention – event to which Mr Prowse is never invited – shows a crowd of whatever-they-are-called (Warsies?) wearing short pants, Superman t-shirts over beer bellies and heavy spectacles, questioning the bleebedeeblup midget about Darth Vador.So was Mr Prowse the man who talked too much? Interviews of two producers prove inconclusive. The nice guy says it was not right to deprive Mr Prowse of his big death scene, because an outside source leaked the father thing to the press. The bad guy says George Lucas has nothing to do with Mr Prowse's banishment, because outside people are in charge of the conventions and stuff. Hmmm.At that point, the ax unsurprisingly falls: Lucas Films does not approve of the re-shoot. The director gets all whiny while managing not to alienate Hollywood's most evil villain completely. At that point, one's thumb hits the Stop button. Not much of a Warsy