Vaders "dirty" helmet in RotJ

In TESB, Vader enter's his helmet polishing boot and get's it services and wiped while chatting with the Emperor. He didn't have time to do that in ROTJ however because by that point there was a Jedi knight on the loose that Vader was tied up dealing with.

 

Yeah, I always noticed that but it didn't bother me at all.

 

I actually never noticed any of the dirty/shiny differences until years after I first watched the OT. The only time that I ever immediately noticed something was wrong with the Vader costume was in Rogue One. Something about the thickness of the neck was off.

 

I'm not going to tell you what I thought when I first read the thread title.

 

I think his helmet looked pretty scuffed up in ANH, too.

 

For my part, I noticed that scene where Luke is being lightened by Palps : Vader's helmet seems at this moment whitish... or, for a little more imagination, it looks like a very thin layer of frost covered it...

Could (in any form) Vader's helmet reflect what happens deep inside the cyborg ? An emotional person blushes at the slightest annoyance, could Vader's feelings show through the helmet ? perhaps...

 

I think the real question is -

How does Vader get his helmet polished??

Is it some contraption or droid that does his laundry?

Does some poor Imperial intern have to always be standing by for Vader's signal to rush over with a rag, some turpentine and a footstool???

Keeps me up at night.

 

Sorry for derailing this, but... that sentence


....sorry!!!

 

I always noticed that, even as a kid. A lot of those props/costume are rough in real life. If you get a chance to visit the Where Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit some of those items look much better onscreen than in person.

 

Yep his mask was still iconic no matter.

 

Yes, I hate the dirty helmet, too!

It definitely bothers me.

 

This is the only strangeness I've ever noticed post ANH. I never thought it was frost, but it looks like fingerprints or just general "I've been handled" dirtiness. I'll have to look look at it during the conversation on Endor. I never noticed it.

 

Vader’s helm is dirty because he’s so busy tak’in care of his boy he can’t get to polishing it. He even was unable to get a shave unlike his grand son:

 

Of course you're going to see dirt and scratches, because HD tv and media didn't exist in 1983 when ROTJ was first released. All the small and unimportant imperfections ignored back then have been magnified and upscaled with more modern video technology.

If you are too young to remember the 80s, watching ROTJ at home in the 80s involved watching on a smaller SDTV CRT screen at a 4:3 ratio aspect, with prerecorded films played through an RF cable from a VHS video cassette recorder, which had fewer dots/pixels on their screens than a smartphone does now.

 

Yep. Too many people forget how poor the TV screens were prior to HD arriving on the scene back around what, 2009 give or take? As you say, our tv's in the old days had fewer pixels than a smart phone does now, hard as that might be to believe.

 

I noticed the dirt, too, but it never bothered me.

 

Let’s just say it... dirty ol man!

 

The high polish on Vaders helmet in Empire was done on purpose. It was suppose to symbolize his looming presence and height of power (as well as the Empire's). In ROTJ Vader's relationship with the Emperor as his henchmen was more layed out, plot wise and it trickled down to the visuals. This has been done by design