My Favourite Bad Guy
By Dan Brown It was a turning point in my thinking about pop culture. I was eight years old when Star Wars came out in 1977. My friends and I lived, breathed, played, talked about that movie all the time in the schoolyard. Once, when discussing our favourite characters, one friend – who was two years older – mentioned something that rocked my world. He said his favourite Star Wars character was Darth Vader. I had trouble wrapping my head around his answer. Wait a second, he likes . . . . the villain? Did I hear that right? It had never occurred to boyhood me that you could side with the dark side. It had never entered my mind that you could judge a movie bad guy to be cooler than the good guy. I mean, Luke Skywalker is the hero, right? So what is this talk about Darth Vader being awesome? I mean, he’s out to get Luke and stop the galactic rebellion. Vader is the one who strangles people – with his hands or with the Force. He’s the guy who defeats Ben Kenobi. He tries to shoot Luke down in the Death Star trench. He wears black, for crying out loud! How could you dig somebody like that? So you can see how this would have been a revolutionary idea at the time. One of the reasons for the success of Star Wars in 1977 was how, in the shadow of Watergate and the Vietnam War, it brought back clearly defined heroes and villains. Even a morally grey figure like Han Solo has a change of heart and forsakes his mercenary ways at the end of the film, revealing his inner goodness. In 2025, of course, this is not at all a crazy idea. We long ago gave up expecting our heroes and those who opposed them to be inherently good or evil. One of the biggest Star Wars fan groups is the 501st Legion, who dress up as stormtroopers, the foot soldiers who carry out Vader’s diabolical plans. So my childhood friend is not the only person who’s into the Empire. And I can admit my friend is right: Darth Vader is more interesting than Luke, who turns out to be his son. What my older friend said back then shaped my thinking about villains. So when the second movie in the trilogy came out in 1980, I was astounded at how cool the Imperials walkers were. My friend had expanded my horizons. He had given me permission to think about all the characters and where they were coming from. My black-and-white world was now in full colour. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
A New Voice for Darth Vader?
By Dan Brown James Earl Jones died one year ago this month. A true renaissance man, he is one of the few entertainers to be awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. That puts him in rare company. But to an entire generation, he is known for a single role, and he didn’t even play the whole character – Jones supplied just the vocal cords. If lines like, “No, I am your father,” and “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” and “Search your feelings” mean anything to you, then you know I’m referring to Darth Vader – the bad guy from the original Star Wars trilogy (by original I mean those three films appeared in movie theatres before the other trilogies and spinoffs). Jones wasn’t in the black suit, but his deep, booming baritone arguably did more to create the air of evil and menace that Vader exuded than David Prowse’s bodily presence. Now seems like the right time to discuss Jones’s future as Vader’s mouthpiece. Even though the character died in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, many Vader stories have been told since then and the baddie’s popularity has only grown. I know what you’re thinking: Didn’t Jones sign a deal so his voice could still be used to bring Vader to life, even after the actor had passed? According to sources like Deadline, yes, such a deal was hammered out a couple years before his death. But that doesn’t mean Lucasfilm is contractually obliged to do so. They could re-cast. In fact, there might even be an advantage to doing so. If I was in charge of finding a new sound for the role, my short list of performers would contain names like Ving Rhames (who is already the voice of Arby’s), Dennis Haysbert (who appears in commercials for Allstate Insurance), and Keith David (who has done a ton of voice roles and commercials). Star Wars director George Lucas had originally kicked around the idea of hiring Orson Welles for his space-opera villain, but decided the vocals would sound too familiar – Welles was the person who narrated a Martian invasion of Earth on the radio in 1938, after all. I admit re-casting comes with a substantial risk. Every fan who hears a different actor’s voice coming from the black mask would be comparing it to Jones. Star Wars fans can be tradition-minded folks who don’t like anything that strays too far from the blueprint laid down by Lucas before he sold his empire to Disney. The lure of using an actual person for Vader, on the other hand, is that it would be a reminder that Vader is somewhat human, and was redeemed in the end by his son, Luke Skywalker. What seems more likely is any future Star Wars production team will plunder the library of existing takes from Jones and use some sort of technical trickery. And I get how that would be an appropriate way to go for a character who is, according to Obi-Wan Kenobi, “more machine than man.” There’s something fitting about using technology to portray a cyborg, so AI may in fact be the route they choose. And yes, this is what the producers of the Kenobi series did in 2022, with Jones’s voice failing as he neared the end of his life. One thing we know for sure: Given movies like Rogue One and TV shows like Kenobi, we haven’t heard the last from Darth Vader. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
