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"Star Wars: A New Hope" NPR radio serial 1981

What I find interesting is that Brock Peters' Vader - much angrier and nastier than Jones - actually fits a lot better with the prequel Anakin than the movie Vader does...

Nah, a cool and in control Vader (with that great, Sahara-dry wit) is so much scarier. And let's face it, Anakin would never have existed as an on-screen character if Vader hadn't been so cool that everyone wanted to know more about him. Anakin should be recast to match Vader, not the other way around.
 
Nah, a cool and in control Vader (with that great, Sahara-dry wit) is so much scarier.

Of course, in a radio play, the actors voice is the only means through which to project menace and evil, and Brock Peters succeeds here on every level.

I love the SW radio plays. I recorded them all to audio tape directly off of the radio when they first were aired, then bought them twice-- the first time on audio tape, and the second time on CD.
 
What I find interesting is that Brock Peters' Vader - much angrier and nastier than Jones - actually fits a lot better with the prequel Anakin than the movie Vader does...
Nah, a cool and in control Vader (with that great, Sahara-dry wit) is so much scarier.

Indeed, but the characterisation of Ani is a lot easier to match up to Peters than to Jones. Not saying that Peters is better, just that it's a good and in-story way to view the PT as apocrypha...
 
Re: NPR radio serial

I remember RETURN OF THE JEDI being the weakest of the lot. It was recored several years after the film (in 1996), didn't include as many cast members from the film reprising their roles as the other two, and (though I may be recalling incorrectly on this point) didn't have as many additional scenes as the other two.

the ROTJ radio drama had only a couple of expanded scenes. One was Luke building his lightsabre at ben's home, a quick scene set on coruscant with vader and the emperor, and a great expanded scene right after the falcon and luke's x-wing leave tatooine. This scene is a great one between han and leia. One of the things i like about the ROTJ radio drama more than the actual movie, is that it continued to develope the han/leia romance much better than the actual movie did. And this scene i just mentioned did a great job of doing that.
 
I lucked into a box set of the ANH and TESB radio dramas on CD plus the Dark Empire audio drama's on CD several years ago at a garage sale for dirt cheap. I've only listened to the DE one and I need to get the other two into iTunes for easier listening.
 
What I find interesting is that Brock Peters' Vader - much angrier and nastier than Jones - actually fits a lot better with the prequel Anakin than the movie Vader does...
Nah, a cool and in control Vader (with that great, Sahara-dry wit) is so much scarier.

Indeed, but the characterisation of Ani is a lot easier to match up to Peters than to Jones. Not saying that Peters is better, just that it's a good and in-story way to view the PT as apocrypha...

Nobody has the voice that JEJ has but Brock Peters really did do a great job as the voice of Vader in these radio dramas.

One interesting note...when Vader in the ANH RD tells the Imperial officers to search Tatooine, he seems very angry about it and calls the planet an insignificant dustball. Close to a rant. Thought that fit in well with what we learned in the prequels about him growing up on Tatooine.
 
One interesting note...when Vader in the ANH RD tells the Imperial officers to search Tatooine, he seems very angry about it and calls the planet an insignificant dustball. Close to a rant. Thought that fit in well with what we learned in the prequels about him growing up on Tatooine.

Yeah - that's exactly the thing I'm talking about.
 
Biggs is a much bigger character in the ANH RD. There's also a really good scene between Luke and Han when Luke first finds out Han is staying. Not the scene we see in the movie but another scene before that.
 
i love these dramas, almost more than i do the films they come from. The ROTJ drama did such a superior job of fleshing out the Han/Leia love subplot. I listen to these all the time at work.
 
Radio allows the mind to do the best effects...

Yes!

I worked at a radio station for awhile, and we aired a series that featured old radio shows from the 30's, 40's and 50's. Some of it was not so good, but some of it was amazing! The series called "X Minus One", for example, was a science fiction program. A lot of the episodes were adapted from SF short-stores. there was an incredible version of Heinlein's The Green Hills of Earth, for example.

Also worked at a public radio station while going to school, and we were airing the BBC Radio version of Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Much funnier then the TV or movie versions, IMO.

Television and movies had a tendency to spoon-feed to the audience, while a radio or audio-only production tends to give an audience the space to fill-in details for themselves.
 
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