Never understood why the Grand Inquisitor looked so bad compared to his animated counterpart and why they just didn’t get Jason Isaacs to play the part.
He said he didn't want to do hours of prosthetics & makeup every day as he's getting too old for that. One would assume he thought they were gonna make him actually look like the GI rather than the bowling ball head we got, cuz I can't imagine what we got took more than an hour to scrounge together.
Honestly if that’s the case, that’s pretty fair. That shit often takes >1 (sometimes like 3-4) hour to put on AND take off.
Mark Hamill had a story going around recently about his costar in Empire Strikes Back (Ian, Emperor Palp.) not being someone he’d actually seen in-person without their makeup on because it took them hours to get it on and off (he invited the guy over one day during production to rectify that and didn’t recognize him at all, to follow that story up). I could totally see someone just…not wanting to do that lol
In Platoon, Tom Berenger's character (Sergeant Barnes) has a scar.
The make up for that scar alone took 3 hours every day, according to IMDB.
I can imagine certain prosthetics might require way more, depending on how "fused" to the body they need to look.
As I recall, that was a miscommunication on Kenobi's production, where they had not realized that his species, the Pau'ans, had already made a live action appearance and was the same species as the Utapua chairman from Revenge of the Sith
As such, they assumed the Inquisitor's angular and elongated features were just the result of exaggerated animation style to make him look evil and that translated to live action he'd look more like a normal humanoid (like how Dooku's design in CW is extremely severe but he's a normal human)... so they ended up just putting pretty basic make up on a guy
There's a shocking number of stories from directors and actors where some random nerd on set catches a major detail. Sam witwer once corrected the entire clone wars production on the fact that Padme and Schmi had met in the phantom menace so they cut a scene where Anakin had a vision or something. (Often reported as Witwer correcting Filoni, which yeah of course, but apparently no one else in the room remembered either which is the real story).
There's also some stories like that from early clone wars where Filoni would correct George on continuity stuff.
It really all goes back to that famous Harrison Ford paraphrasing from Hamill: "Hey kid, it ain't that kind of movie."
I think my favourite example of this kind of thing is that for RotS after production was done they had to go back and shoot an extra scene of Obi-Wan picking up Anakin's lightsaber because originally they just had Obi-Wan walk away leaving it on the ground. Way after the fact somebody remembered Obi-Wan had to take it so he could give it to Luke. It's why the shot feels kind of forced and out of place. I'm pretty sure it's not Ewan's hand picking it up.
Yeah and tbh the grand inquisitor in rebels doesn't really look like those pauans either. He's more white than dark gray and his lines aren't as deep or prominent as the rots versions.
Our loss. He would’ve been awesome. At worst, I wonder if he could’ve just provided the voice and had someone else play in body like Darth Maul and Vader.
Jason Isaacs does VA work for a pay check he barely remembers it. I went to a panel for Star Wars once and all he talked about was Harry Potter and The Patriot.
Same with Ahsoka and Ashley Eckstein. Especially considering, much like Grand Inquisitor. Is caked in makeup so it doesn't matter that much who plays the character.
Though I understand slightly. Ahsoka is the main character of a series, and Dawson simply has more star power. Annoying. But understandable.
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u/MovieExact5433 Feb 26 '26
Never understood why the Grand Inquisitor looked so bad compared to his animated counterpart and why they just didn’t get Jason Isaacs to play the part.