Darth Sidious did WHAT to Darth Vader's armour?!
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00:00 Make sure your suit is fully pressurised and bolted in,
00:03 because you're probably about to discover there's so much more to this legendary Dark Lord of the Sith
00:08 than a few force chokes and a game-changing one-liner.
00:11 I'm Gareth from WhatCulture Star Wars and here are 10 things you didn't know about Darth Vader.
00:16 Probably.
00:16 Number 10 - That helmet nearly never was.
00:19 While the ensemble as a whole makes for one of the most formidable suits of armour
00:23 ever to be committed to the big screen,
00:25 it's the indomitable Sith's helmet in particular that struck fear into the hearts
00:29 of all those who witnessed him quite literally choke the life out of some rebel scum.
00:33 However, having Vader sport this protective face mask at all times
00:37 wasn't actually the original plan at all.
00:39 George Lucas initially conceived that Vader's face would be entirely covered
00:42 by a less intimidating scarf instead,
00:45 opting to only don the now much-adored helmet when stepping into his space suit to move between
00:50 shuttles.
00:51 Oh, you know, he might die.
00:52 Yet as Vader's reliance on the suit and helmet likely grew in the writing stage,
00:56 and the team behind the flicks realised how much stronger his overall look would be
01:00 if permanently encased in the eye-catching black headpiece,
01:03 the scarf concept was understandably dropped by the time the 1977 Star Wars blasted onto our screens.
01:09 Number 9 - The ins and outs of that suit.
01:11 Far from simply being a cool way to present the galaxy's most feared presence,
01:15 Darth Vader's stylish suit came with it some rather interesting details.
01:19 Despite the suit producing a neurotoxin that helped slightly ease the everlasting pain
01:23 that comes from being very much wired into a machine for the remainder of his days,
01:27 Darth Sidious actually designed the outfit with the idea of keeping the fallen Jedi
01:31 as uncomfortable as possible.
01:33 He's a bit of a dick.
01:34 But it also meant that he would constantly be in a state of anger and frustration,
01:38 and therefore closer to the dark side as a result.
01:41 That still doesn't make him any less of a dick.
01:43 Another handy element Sidious had installed into his apprentice's life support system
01:48 was the suit's vulnerability to force lightning,
01:50 an ability the Emperor was particularly fond of, naturally.
01:53 On top of Vader largely steering clear of using this Sith ability himself,
01:57 due to it once short-circuiting his armour and very nearly killing him in the process
02:01 during the Darth Vader comic series,
02:03 Sidious had been known to threaten his impulsive associate with electrocution
02:07 with the all-important knowledge of his little-known weakness.
02:10 And this very literal chink in his armour would inevitably lead to his
02:13 eventual demise in Return of the Jedi, of course.
02:16 Number 8 - David Prowse and George Lucas did not see eye to eye.
02:20 While Hayden Christensen is set to step back into the iconic suit
02:23 for the upcoming Disney-fuss return of the burned-up badass,
02:27 it was the late David Prowse who first set foot onto a Star Wars set
02:30 as the now-immortalised Force of Darkness.
02:32 However, upon hearing the British bodybuilder deliver some of Vader's
02:36 eventually hugely quotable lines, Lucas soon decided that he needed to swap out
02:40 Prowse's voice for the deep tones of James Earl Jones.
02:44 With Prowse not being aware of this call until way too late in the day,
02:47 the Brit was said to have been rather pissed at Lucas from there on out,
02:50 refusing to learn his lines for the subsequent sequels,
02:53 and even uttering gibberish to his scene partners at times in an act of sheer defiance.
02:58 Prowse and Lucas' feud would continue in the wake of the original trilogy too,
03:01 as the former was eventually banned from all Lucasfilm events
03:05 on the back of claiming he wasn't paid residuals for his work on Return of the Jedi,
03:09 and Lucas claiming his physical Vader had burnt too many bridges.
03:12 Number 7 - Orson Welles nearly voiced him.
03:15 Regardless of David Prowse's understandable frustrations at being vocally passed up on
03:19 in favour of the distinct sound of the legendary James Earl Jones,
03:22 it's hard to imagine a world where the rumbling thespian didn't provide the audible foundations
03:27 for one of the most recognisable figures in cinema history.
03:30 However, that unthinkable alternate reality wasn't actually as far away as you'd imagine,
03:34 as it goes.
03:35 Upon deciding that he needed to swap out Prowse's less-than-intimidating Bristol accent
03:39 for his incoming series, Lucas originally felt that movie titan Orson Welles' voice
03:44 would be the perfect fit for the fearsome focal point of the series.
03:48 Yet it would soon become apparent to the mind behind the galaxy far, far away,
03:51 that the War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane star was a little too well-known for his liking.
03:56 Earl Jones' consistently mesmerising voice work as the embodiment of darkness in the Skywalker saga
04:01 and other spin-offs more than justified Lucas' choice to not commit to an Orson Sith lord
04:06 in the end mind.
04:07 Number 6 - He wasn't always Luke's father.
04:10 While it still ranks as undoubtedly one of the biggest and most effectively
04:13 executed twists the movie industry has ever seen,
04:16 the revelation of Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's daddy wasn't actually set in stone from the off.
04:21 Despite Lucas' claims that he had the entire Skywalker saga planned out from the minute
04:25 he began crafting the first of his galaxy-shifting flicks,
04:29 Lee Brackett's early draft of the script for The Empire Strikes Back
04:32 showed no signs of this jaw-dropping reveal at all.
04:35 In fact, along with Vader not being revealed to be Luke's father,
04:40 the next generation of Skywalker lad did not lose a hand.
04:43 Luke is revealed to have a twin who may not have actually been Leia,
04:46 and actually meets his father Anakin in forced ghost form whilst training on Dagobah,
04:50 and Han Solo doesn't actually get captured.
04:52 It's also worth noting that the all-important reveal itself was kept under lock and key
04:56 whilst filming the fateful sequence too.
04:58 With the cast and crew on set actually hearing "You don't know the truth, Obi-Wan killed your father"
05:04 on the day and only Irving Kirshner, Mark Hamill and Lucas knowing ahead of time
05:08 what would eventually be dubbed in for the finished film.
05:11 5. Boba Fett Revealed That Vader Had A Son
05:14 He may not have ultimately been unveiled as the unexpected sibling of the menacing masked icon
05:18 with a penchant for forced choking, despite rumours of George Lucas at one point mulling over
05:23 making that reality canon, but recent Disney+ TV sensation Boba Fett did still have a significant
05:29 role to play in that previously noted jaw-dropping Episode 5 reveal.
05:33 Despite it initially seeming as though Emperor Palpatine himself was the first to note to Lord
05:37 Vader that Luke was the son of Anakin Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back,
05:41 the 2015 comic book Star Wars 6 Skywalker Strikes Part 6 would shed further light on the actual
05:46 moment the mighty Sith learned of his son's existence. On the back of Fett trying and
05:51 failing to claim a bounty on Luke, on the back of the Rebel pilot successfully destroying the Death
05:56 Star in A New Hope, the Beskar-sporting bounty hunter is only able to deliver a family name to
06:01 the Emperor's right-hand man, Skywalker. In this moment, Vader is transported back to the memory of
06:07 Padme confessing her pregnancy to an unturned Anakin Skywalker, soon realising that his beloved
06:12 must have given birth moments before she eventually perished in Revenge of the Sith. Oh, how tragic.
06:17 Hayden Christensen had to bulk up for his Vader return. You can bet Hayden Christensen fully
06:23 assumed his time in the Vader saddle had well and truly passed. Yet almost 20 years on from his
06:28 fateful "Noooooo!" The underappreciated prequel Vader is set to be reintroduced on the Disney+ stage,
06:34 opposite old friend Ewan McGregor. But this wasn't simply a case of taking the unanticipated call
06:40 and waltzing onto set the next day ready to throw down with Obi-Wan Kenobi. In order to prepare for
06:44 his highly anticipated Skywalker-Vader comeback, Christensen recently told Total Film that he had
06:49 to undergo some intense physical preparation and put on a decent amount of weight and size to fill
06:54 up the suit. And for those wondering whether the incoming lightsaber showdowns will match Christensen
06:59 and McGregor's exhilarating exploits of the prequels, the Anakin actor spotted practicing
07:04 behind the scenes in a recent Vanity Fair article would also note, "We're more in line with the
07:08 prequels than we are with how the fights are in the original trilogy. These characters have aged,
07:12 but not that much yet." This is where the fun begins indeed, eh?
07:16 3. His minimal A New Hope screen time
07:19 From his most recent incoming appearance on our small screens, to his first ever steps
07:23 into this galaxy far, far away now, and to a detail that often goes overlooked when revisiting
07:28 the original trilogy that made fans the world over fall in love with George Lucas' baby in the first
07:33 place. Despite being one of, if not the most memorable part of Lucas' first leap into hyperspace
07:39 - that was A New Hope in 1977 - the force-sensitive cyborg is only actually present in the feature
07:44 for a grand total of 12 measly minutes of the eventual 121-minute runtime. In fact, there's a
07:50 strong argument to be made that Vader isn't even the central antagonist of his debut flick at all,
07:55 with Grand Moff Tarkin taking control of the Death Star throughout, ultimately blasting
08:00 Alderaan to smithereens, and even barking orders at the unsettling Sith Lord that are promptly
08:04 obeyed before our very eyes. Tarkin says "jump", Vader says "hell high". Putting one of the finest
08:10 examples of maximising your minutes in a movie you'll likely ever witness, Vader more than made
08:15 his mark, eh? 2. His Ahsoka story didn't end in the Clone Wars
08:19 While largely ignored in the live-action sphere until the most recent Disney+ adventures,
08:24 the Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels animated TV shows in particular delved into perhaps one of
08:28 the most compelling and complex Padawan-Master relationships this galaxy has ever known.
08:33 With Jedi-in-training Ahsoka Tano largely taking residence under Anakin Skywalker's learning tree
08:38 over the course of said Clone Wars show, her eventual loss of faith in the Jedi would also
08:42 act as a nutso subtle dose of foreshadowing for her master's eventual decision to turn his back
08:47 on the Order too. But far from simply never coming into contact again in the days following
08:52 on from Skywalker's descent into the Dark Side, the aforementioned Rebels series would depict yet
08:57 another exchange between the two, and a more violent one at that. Leaving Vader with a battered
09:02 mask before their battlefield disintegrated around them, it remains to be seen whether this highly
09:06 emotional animated history will be revisited or alluded to further in the coming Obi-Wan
09:11 Kenobi and Ahsoka series. 1. He's a monumental merchandise mover,
09:16 baby. If it hadn't already been made painfully obvious over the course of the prior nine entries,
09:20 Darth Vader sits head and shoulders above the rest of a seriously stacked roster of notable names
09:25 as Star Wars' most popular entity ever. And that's not simply one dude's opinion either.
09:30 The proof is undoubtedly found in the sheer amount of dollar that has most definitely been
09:34 dragged in by the legendary villain. With Vader's visage being slapped on just about everything Star
09:39 Wars-associated that can be purchased by a galaxy-far-far-away-obsessed consumer,
09:44 it's safe to assume that a decent chunk of the $27 billion of profit Lucasfilm had made on merch
09:49 as of 2015 was largely down to his eye-catching mask being front and centre. If you needed any
09:55 more proof of just how popular the red-bladed baddie still unquestionably is, though, the Dark
09:59 Lord of the Sith's iconic helmet used on the set of the original trilogy was sold for a whopping
10:04 $1 million a few years back. And he once again found himself casting a sizeable shadow over the
10:10 rest of the field on the cover of the most recent Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga video game, too.
10:15 The dollar is still strong with this one.
10:17 And that's our list of the many other things folks did not know about Darth Vader.
10:21 Let us know all about them in the comments section right down below,
10:23 and do not forget to like, share and click on that subscribe button while you're at it.
10:27 Also, if you like this kind of thing, then head on over to WhatCulture.com and find some more
10:30 incredible articles just like the one this video you're watching right now is based on.
10:34 I have been Gareth from WhatCulture's Star Wars, thank you as always for clicking on this video
10:38 today. May the Force be with you, and I'm sure I'll see you very, very soon. Or not. Either way,