“It’s George’s universe. He created these characters. We’re there to help realize his vision,” Hayden Christensen says with a humility that must have served him well these past five years, since being cast in Episode II. He received ample praise for his performance in 2003’s Shattered Glass, and he doesn’t seem haunted by the criticism of Episode II, but the Lucas camp is quick to defend their black prince. “The acting is at another level,” McCallum says. “When you’re watching a Bergman film, you see every moment, every thought. That isn’t the way Star Wars was filmed. [The acting] is about driving the plot.”

Another convenient—and equally valid—assertion is that it was Christensen’s character some hated, not his performance (which would suggest that he embodied the character perfectly). “The character was misunderstood,” says Ian McDiarmid, who plays both Palpatine and Darth Sidious. “He appears petulant. Movie critics were looking for their next big hero, and Hayden’s characterization wasn’t providing that.” During the shooting of II, McCallum recalls Christensen
saying, “I’m going to get fucked.” Today, the actor chooses his words carefully: “If you really
analyze the way the films are made, I think clearly this is a digital film, with a live-action counterpart. I don’t question their process.”

Christensen concedes that Lucas would give notes that notoriously called for “faster, more intense” acting: “He says it as a joke, but then when you poke fun at the joke, he’s like, ‘Well, you know what? I’m sorry, it’s what I want.’ ” The actor isn’t sore about it; in fact, he praises Lucas readily. But at the same time he is at pains to explain how his characterization of Anakin makes sense when you consider the trajectory he’s on, how he patterned his voice on Mark Hamill’s and Darth Vader’s, and how his mission was to embody a character who was so well-known but had always been hidden in a mask. Not an easy task. But now there’s a hint of redemption in the air: “There was a big sigh of relief when I got to see most of Episode III,” he says.

“People will think much better of him,” says Lucas, “because he’s playing the part that everybody wanted him to play.” In other words, for Anakin, there will be less kicking stones and more kicking Jedi butt, including Obi-Wan’s. The final duel between the Jedi will be a 20-minute sequence, one that Christensen prepared three months for, putting on close to 25 pounds of muscle. And although the scene took only four days to shoot, it will hopefully provide the denouement that everyone has waited for, ever since Obi-Wan alluded to the death of Luke’s father in Episode IV.  

“The most fun I had on the two films was getting to do the lightsaber fight with Ewan,” Christensen says. “You feel like you’re ten years old.” The famous lightsabers, actually aluminum poles (the glow is added in postproduction), generate quite a sting. “Ewan and I are both competitive people. And we both want to show our lightsaber skills,” Christensen says. “And no disrespect to Ewan, but I think I took a few more on the hand than he did. It really hurts.”

Lucas says that the scene will not be artificially sped up, and that it covers various topography on the planet of Mustafar. “It was exhausting because you have to be at a fever pitch for every take,” McGregor says of the sequence. “In II, I wasn’t very good [at the fighting]. I didn’t give it my all, really. Whereas in this, I really went for it.”     

As we all know, the battle injures Anakin so badly that, in order to live, he needs to wear Darth Vader’s infamous black outfit. “The very first shot we see of him [as Vader] is after he’s been successfully operated on and he’s tilted up,” McCallum says. “It happened about eight days before we finished shooting, and everybody had heard that this was the day of Darth Vader. So there were almost a thousand people outside the stage. I opened the doors and let everybody that we could get in.”  

Vader’s outfit was re-created to fit Christensen by costume designer Trisha Biggar. The earlier Vader costumes had slight variations, and Christensen’s is more like that in Episode IV, with the neck piece tucked into the shoulders, giving the character a more mechanical motion. The helmet, a polyester resin, benefited the most from the updating. Previously it had been hand-sculpted, making it slightly asymmetrical; now, Biggar could rely on computer 3-D scanning to construct a perfectly symmetrical shape.

As Christensen was wheeled on set in a golf cart, Daniels says that “the love for Hayden came out: I’ve lived with Darth Vader for years, but there was something about Hayden being in the costume. . . . He had a presence. I cared that this nice guy had become this ultimate vision of evil.”       

For Christensen, the moment was “thrilling, very awkward, because it felt like I was walking around in high-heel shoes with 40-pound weights on my shoulders,” he says of the costume, which added four inches to his six-one frame. “I was a little nervous because I didn’t want to fall over and scratch the suit.” But there were greater emotions at play: “Having Lucas look at me and smile ear to ear—it was just one of those surreal moments that will stay with me for a very, very long time,” says the actor, who was moved to the point of tears.