Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
Yeah. Prowse was to be paid in a percentage of net profit, but thanks to Hollywood accounting the original trilogy has technically never made a profit to this day.
Ah, another common thing between Star Wars' Original Trilogy and the Lord of the Rings movies.
Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
Well, there were several, and only Prowse fell to that (and then only in Return of the Jedi - he was paid for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back). Though that's still terrible.

James Earl Jones famously did the voice, but there was also a stunt-Vader, Bob Anderson (Anderson was a swordmaster - IIRC he was an Olympic fencer (bonus fact - so is Bruce Dickinson, lead singer of Iron Maiden!) and did a lot of swordfighting choreography in films) played Darth Vader in the swordfight scenes in ESB and RotJ, though I don't believe he was involved in Star Wars. Could be mistaken on that. Sebastian Shaw was then the face of Vader in RotJ when Luke unmasked him, and the Force Ghost of Anakin Skywalker in the pre-special edition version. And this was just the original trilogy.

But yes, Prowse got hosed hard well before that - he was offered either Chewbacca or Darth Vader and chose Vader due to the fact that villains are more memorable. Only later did he find out Vader was masked and his face wouldn't be seen (this was also the case for Chewbacca, but he wasn't informed before he made his choice, so his reasoning may have been different had he known). Then he was unaware that he wouldn't even be the voice of Darth Vader until he saw the premier, which is just ridiculous. He was excited about the unmasking in RotJ, until he discovered that they just went ahead and hired someone else for that.
Oh that is mean. Why did they even have another actor be Vader's face? I never got that.