Having this slick old guy instead of a horrible CGI Peter Cushing rules. I love this zesty old bitch. Star Wars should just be a retirement fund for aging shakespearian actors.
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A listener of the House of R podcast (shoutout @ringerverse.bsky.social) called his absolutely based line deliveries "Partagasms" and I immediately had to calibrate my enthusiasm because I loved it too much.
He continues in the tradition of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in being a well-bred shakespearian stage actor playing a flaming homosexual evil guy you kinda like
Peter Cushing wore his own comfy slippers while playing Grand Moff Tarkin because the big boots he wore the first day didn’t fit his unusually large feet.
I am too frightened to check wikifeet for Peter Cushing
Anton Lesser is one of my favourite actors of all time. So utterly brilliant as Sir Thomas More in Wolf Hall, and as Chief Inspector Bright in the Endeavour Series.
Pycelle should have been a paedophile; that would have made his death as poetic as that one bastard in the Tennessee William play who gets torn apart by street kids.
That’s why Imperial Forces have uniforms based on WWI Imperial German uniforms, unit names from Imperial & nazi German unit names, and a govt structure that copies the Senate & emperors of Rome.
You literally live in a country with a big marble Capitol, founded by slave-owning Anglo Protestants and currently brutalizing the world. You're just an iteration of empire. The US will go, and Empire will go on.
Don't 'Sure Jan' me dork, my grandad was a hero of the Irish War of Independence he literally ambushed and killed Black and Tans.
OF course the aesthetic is general. All later Empires are based on Rome; the Reich was based on the Raj and the Raj was run by men who read Caesar and Tacitus at Eton.
I mean it's just a massive bureaucracy run by paranoia, local submission, violence, and results. No need for light sabers or Sith magic, even the Emperor is just a far-off threat.
The only person who matters is your immediate superior in an endless chain of command. Like the Rebellion, everything you do is a tiny part of something a bit bigger, then a bit bigger...
they are a pastiche of many empires. honestly George Lucas made the story as a parable but at the time of filming, the Empire in question was America and the Rebels were Vietnam. But nobody’s got a better Sneering Imperialist accent better than a brit. They had Cushing rolling his rs and everything
Yes, this actor really has that 70s old school Imperial energy that Peter Cushing and company brought. There have been recent SW attempts to diversify actors playing Imperials but this is one case where older stuffy white Brit guys do it best.
Haha. Amazing. I never considered that. That scene at the start with all the Senior Baddies sitting around the table has one upstart American and he gets to feel his collar and reach for the cough sweets very quickly.
Anton already nailed it as Thomas More (who deserved to die) and as the (very discreetly) Mad Scientist on 'Game of Thrones.' He's an amazing bureaucrat but he can bark like a drill sergeant.
code cylinders. They're physical ID items, allowing access and showing rank to those that know how to read them. The rank plaques (the thingies with the red and blue rectangles) also show rank.
Secure USB sticks that hold “this is my clearance” info. Of course that means if an enemy gets one, they get your access. If your clearance is high enough that can get you executed faster than saying “sorry I fucked up, Lord Vader.”
I believe this becomes a plot point in Star Wars Rebels, the main characters attempt to frame a dude as being an informant to keep the heat off of an *actual* informant, and use his code cylinders as part of the plan.
One of the (many) reasons Andor is great is that it leans into using good British TV character actors with beer bellies & combovers for minor Imperial parts and insanely great stage actors for major imperial parts. It worked brilliantly for the OT, it works brilliantly here.
This is how it should be. He absolutely feels like he could have been a Tarkin contemporary, and he brings that feeling of fascism forward instead of just being the same bad guy used everywhere else in that era.
and for that reason it must never happen. some things are sacred and must exist in imagination. it’s like fortnight making a Darth Jar Jar skin. memes should exist in our hearts and minds, not on the fortnight store for $10.99
Yeah. Like, it was genuinely assumed to be a joke or a fake to catch out leakers back when it was still a rumored thing, and there's a fucking reason why people assumed that lmao.
The Star Wars does that but they were not alone. Freddie Jones as a lauded RSC actor but then on ITV kids in Ghosts of Motley Hall, then in Dune as Mentat Thufir Hawat.
The first trilogy pretty much was a retirement party for Alec Guinness (and Cushing), both who didn't have much screen roles in their later years, it also was sort of a showcase of BBC/ITV television "guest actors" that generally appeared on shows like Avengers (John Steed), Dr Who, Z-Cars etc
While Rogue One’s CGI Tarkin may have been questionable at best, the development behind it is also my favorite fact about the movie.
To obtain Peter Cushing’s likeness, the crew had to use a prosthetic he wore for a scene in the 1984 parody movie Top Secret!
been watching Endeavour lately, and yeah, no, Anton Lesser does such a good job at "overly pretentious villain" and also pulls off "secretly nice" so well that I think he should be in everything, it's just great
I love Smith talking with Tennant about Hurt, there’s a vid out there somewhere. Man had absolutely *no* idea what he was doing, and out-acting them with an eyebrow while the younger two are like, “Squeeee!” So non-toxic.
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Ideological rigidity is a fundamental weakness of fascism. It renders it blind and ultimately brittle.
I am too frightened to check wikifeet for Peter Cushing
"I've always wondered what a Grand Moff is. It sounds like something you'd find in a cloffes clofet."
That’s why Imperial Forces have uniforms based on WWI Imperial German uniforms, unit names from Imperial & nazi German unit names, and a govt structure that copies the Senate & emperors of Rome.
OF course the aesthetic is general. All later Empires are based on Rome; the Reich was based on the Raj and the Raj was run by men who read Caesar and Tacitus at Eton.
Ben Mendelsohn is doing great too, but Australians are both colonists and the colonized and have really good theatre.
Intelligence: actionable
Enthusiasm: calibrated
The Empire apparently adored redundant waste.
That look is identical to the one my Atari computer gave me after I cleaned it off to sell it on eBay.
Imagine “make it so”. The audiences would go bugfuck insane.
Also, Jar Jar doesn’t exist. It’s an evil figment of the popular imagination, like that Sinbad Shazam movie, and we do not talk about Jar Jar.
Heresy.
More Darth Picard. Fight me.
I love this man
To obtain Peter Cushing’s likeness, the crew had to use a prosthetic he wore for a scene in the 1984 parody movie Top Secret!
also here she is as Richard III
Hurt: I thought it was a kids' show, but they sent me a script....
Jacobi: I've wanted to do Doctor Who forever, but I thought I'd missed my chance!
"I'll take equity rates"
*shit, come up with a plot good enough for Jacobi!* Let's bring the Master back *OK, we're good here*
#NotAShowButANeverendingReunion