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Comment by OhMeadhbh | Hacker News Reader

I know everyone is talking about how he voiced Vader, but when I think of him, I think of Strangelove and Hunt for Red October. I didn't spend a lot of time in the fleet, but what I did was rather boring and/or annoying; the idea that something exciting would happen in the CIC is probably why I often think of the line "Now, understand, Commander, that torpedo did not self-destruct. You heard it hit the hull. And I was never here."

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Just read on his Wikipedia page that he made it through Ranger school in the Korean War era. That's an accomplishment. Several readers here will know that's not really an easy thing to do. Overcame stuttering as a kid. Went to Ranger school (as an African American in the 50s.) Performed Shakespeare and contemporary plays and worked in film. A true dude. Lifting one in his honor this evening (though I'm old enough that it has to be a non-alcoholic one.)

That's bad ass!

wikipedia says "Jones was commissioned in mid-1953, after the Korean War's end, and reported to Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) to attend the Infantry Officers Basic Course. He attended Ranger School and received his Ranger Tab."

old enough <=> smart enough

For me it's Sneakers "We are the US Government, we don't do that sort of thing"

I forgot he was in Sneakers! Fantastic movie.

Free on YT right now

Love this movie, it really holds up too.

I live right near that plaza in SF where Sydney Poitier yells at Martin "its your Mother" with the Car phone in his hand.

Great movie

I love that movie too. It’s amazing how well it holds up for it being, in many ways, a tech-focused movie - I mean, yeah, the tech is very much dated and completely a product of its time, but it doesn’t look at all ridiculous. Undoubtedly probably helps that it was pre-WWW/popular internet.

I think it helps that the technical concept that drove the main plot was a very real and still-present risk to public key encryption systems.

Whenever the line „they don’t make them like this anymore“ comes up wrt movies, I think of „Sneakers“ and „The Hunt for Red October“.

"... I'll see what I can do."

I can still hear it. Some voices are just available to you, forever.

"We'retheUS GOVERNment. We don't DO that SORT of THING."

What a loss. He is one of a kind.

Here is the clip, at around 2m30s: (the whole clip is good)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74ocbvwam7c

"I want a Winnebago" ... "WHAT?!!"

Sneakers is climbing into cult classic year by year. What a great cast. Wow.

Yes the cast. Aside from James Earl Jones it had the following actors who at one point or another had Academy Award nominees (or won) for acting:

Robert Redford

Sidney Poitier

David Strathairn

River Phoenix

Ben Kingsley

Mary McDonnell

And In addition to those it had Dan Aykroyd and Stephen Toblowsky

I think of Conan, and Coming to America.

I was told by an industry insider (taken at face value), that he almost never turned down a part, which drove his agent nuts. That's why he was in these kind of oddball movies. I suspect that Nicholas Cage is similar.

> I suspect that Nicholas Cage is similar.

Probably, although it’s also well documented that Cage took a lot of roles to pay off his extensive debts after blowing through nine digits of his wealth.

Turns out real estate is what did him. And he refused to file for bankruptcy.

Given his behavior there for a while I was trying to do the math on how you blow through $65 million worth of... well, blow.

Ah, the 'working actor'. Gary Oldman (who also calls himself a working actor) kinda tanked his career for a while by getting typecast as a villain. Playing Sirius Black was basically autobiographical, and kind of got him unstuck.

Gary Oldman is one of the best actors I've had the privilege of seeing.

Consider that Mr. Zorg, Winston Churchill, and George Smiley, are played by the same person, is amazing.

as well as James Gordon, Norman Stansfield and Harry Truman.

We forgot about Dracula.

Jackson Lamb is the Mr. Hyde to Smiley's Dr. Jekyll. It's just fantastic to see Oldman in both roles. Lamb is just a riot.

Rosencrantz and Stansfield made him my favorite actor for the first decade of my adulthood. Zorg is okay. That terrible Lost in Space movie lowered his trajectory for a while. He’s been hitting home runs a lot since.

But if you hear him in interviews he thinks of himself as a working actor. He’s doing the job. But the right people think he can do a good job so he’s getting better roles.

> That terrible Lost in Space movie

I'll never defend "Lost in Space" as a cinematic tour-de-force in the traditional sense but I'll be damned if it isn't one of the most quintessentially-90s films ever made. It has Silicon Graphics logos and bubble-shaped silver electronics everywhere. William Hurt managed to find time to slip away from the "Dark City" set to make an appearance. Pre-Felicity Shagwell/post-Rollergirl Heather Graham fends off advances from Joey Tribbiani while the crazy guy from "Leon: The Professional" makes a bunch of bizarre wisecracking non-sequiturs. A brash Big beat remix of the original TV theme blares over the credits immediately following a fight involving a giant CGI (SGI?) spider.

I disliked it intensely as a kid but enjoy it a lot in retrospect because of my high-resolution nostalgia goggles.

> high-resolution nostalgia goggles.

Mine work in reverse, I guess.

I loved Space: 1999, when it was still being released.

I had occasion to revisit a syndicated episode, awhile back.

I stopped it after ten minutes.

Gary Oldman is currently starring in this show on AppleTV called Slow Horses. Amazing actor.

Excellent show, fourth season just started

He really disappears into whatever character he is playing. Truly one of the exceptional actors of our time. That show in particular highlights this very well.

Michael Caine apparently is similar. I see no other reason why he would have done the (wonderful) movie "Water".

Don't forget Noises Off. Truly delightful farce, and his acting plus the physical comedy of the rest of the cast makes it happen.

There’s his infamous quote about being in Jaws 3:

I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.

He was in Jaws: The Revenge which is the 4th Jaws movie.

Thanks for the correction!

How about Coming to America combined with Star Wars?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXze55Z2GuY

The "Riddle of Steel" scene is just phenomenal.

My wife's cousin worked the case where they forced Nic Cage to give back the dinosaur skull he bought for a quarter mil at an illegal auction to the Mongolian government. He had to take every role ever offered to him because he made some amazingly stupid financial decisions.

Because HN skews younger, I expect there are some out there who haven't seen "The Vader Sessions" from the early YouTube era, in which James Earl Jones dialog from his other films was spliced into Star Wars Vader scenes. I think it's a testament to his range:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6A0rwG39Jzk

I watch this at least once a year, it never gets old

That’s right Sally!

The editing choices still seem really, really good after all these years. The radio scene is hilarious.

Edit: thanks for linking this and bringing back so many good memories.

I'm plenty old enough but somehow have never seen or heard of this. Fantastic.

"I told you to speak your mind Jack, but Jesus!"

I also am one who thinks of The Hunt For Red October. You already listed the best quote in the movie from him, but the above also makes me giggle every time.

Also in that scene when he slightly moves his hand to get Jack to back off from interrogating the admiral about whether he’d ever met Ramius - just terrific non-verbal acting that speaks volumes.

To me he will always be Mufasa. Brilliant performance and perfect casting.

"Everything the light touches is our kingdom."

Still get shivers from that movie to this day. Nostalgia, sure, but it's truly a masterpiece.

R.I.P.

Saw it in theaters as a kid. It was one of the best movie experiences of my life.

Man, what I’d do to have a theatre experience like that again.

I feel like I’ve already seen just about every movie I see these days. I watch them to just tune out occasionally, like a safer version of alcohol. I don’t watch them because it’ll be moving, insightful, exciting, etc. It’s just coarse stimulation.

I really miss movies that left me feeling like I had a significant experience. It happens occasionally, but I feel like it used to be more common. The lion king was amazing. The remake was a kick in the pants.

My aunt used to take me and my sister to the El Capitan theatre to every big Disney tentpole that premiered there in the late 80s and early 90s. I think Lion King is probably still the best movie-going experience I have ever had and ever will have. It was the first one where I was a teenager and that was probably the end of my true childhood and when I started losing interest in stuff like that. I don't think any scene will ever again touch me like James Earl Jones voice booming from the clouds telling Simba to remember who he is. The swell of that Hans Zimmer score still brings tears to my eyes instantly every time I hear it.

For me, it's Sandlot. Relatively small part, but it was impactful for me as a kid.

We finished watching Sandlot yesterday with my kids for the first time. And then to hear this today.

The phrase "you're killing me Smalls" will be in your head forevvveerrr, at least, you should encourage its use by your kids.

Foooooorreeeeeveeeeer...

He was in Field of Dreams too, another baseball flick.

Every startup founders favourite movie.

He was also Police Chief Thad Green in the Mathnet segments of Square One TV. He only appeared a few times, but was unmistakable when he did. He also participated in early test footage for what would become Sesame Street. Film footage of him reciting the alphabet, in trademark James Earl Jones diction, was one of the things they used to research young children's response to educational programming.

I loved Mathnet and Mathman segments. Still remember the episode where they figured out the hill a van drove up because of the tilt of the water in a glass.

I remember that one! Goodness that was a long time ago.

I completely forgot about Mathnet for many years - I'm not sure where I even saw it; My family didn't even have a TV (and I was too young anyway) for it's run. It was a delight when I discovered that my fever dream of a dragnet parody was in fact real. Great show, very funny, and good education.

I will always think of him as King Jaffe Joffer, Ruler of Zamunda.

> My son works?!

This one is my go-to. Also The Sandlot

I believe the appropriate clip to watch is Lisa and Bleeding Gums Murphy - https://youtu.be/PX05DJWNj3k

The first thing that comes up for me when I hear his name (after Star Wars) is Field of Dreams. He made me laugh out loud more than once in that, my favorite baseball movie.

I think of "Field of Dreams" and Patriot Games, and of course vader

"Back! Back to the 60s!"

People will come, Ray!

> The memories will be so thick, they'll have to brush <<gestures>> them away from their faces.

When Jack hands him the photos of Red October: "Jesus that's a big sucker."

"I told you to speak your mind, Jack, but Jesus!"

In Clear and Present Danger (1994), James Earl Jones (as Admiral Greer) dies in the middle of the movie. For some reason, and maybe because I have a hard time telling the difference between art and reality, I was fairly certain, for a long time, that the actor himself had died, and I would be regularly surprised when he would appear in new movies.

He was a fine actor, and a fine man.

Reading Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" on the Simpsons. It was shortened but great...

I always think of Field of Dreams. He was incredible in that role. He holds that movie together.

My memory of James Earl Jones is him in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh5wIQHFwOg

"You took an oath, if you recall, when you first came to work for me. And I don't mean to the National Security Advisor of the United States, I mean to his boss... and I don't mean the President. You gave your word to his boss: you gave your word to the people of the United States. Your word is who you are."

I doubt anyone could pull the gravitas that he brought to the role of Admiral Greer.

As an ex-military man, one would think DRS or HFRO (using standard aggressive HN style acronymiziation, or AHNAN) would be his seminal role.

But, no, his best role (BR) is as GENERAL JAMES SOLOMON in the best video series ever, command and conquer!

Hunt for Red October for me also!

he was excellent in Conan too.

For me it’s Coming to America, the King of Zamunda.

I liked him as Admiral Greer in the Jack Ryan movies (The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, Clear And Present Danger).

"Long Ago and Far Away" for me.

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