I was so disappointed when I found out that lightsabers just had an on switch. I learned about the crystals (and Star Wars in general) through cultural osmosis, and I was like “Oh, so you pass force energy through the crystal, and it becomes the visible blade.” Made perfect sense.
But no. You forget your saber in a spaceport toilet, and a six year old shuts the place down.
I also assumed it was like that
Was it just a switch? I thought I remember that they used the force to raise/lower the “blade” which was part of reason the light saber is a weapon only a force user can weild.
Wait, why do people actually believe that you need to be Force sensitive to activate a lightsaber?
You’re telling me Luke, who would not even begin asking questions about what the Force was for several more scenes, was handed a lightsaber from Ben Kenobi - a device he has never seen in person before, and activated it?
When Han solo cut open the belly of Luke’s tauntaun, was he using the Force to activate his lightsaber? Or was a delirious Luke on the brink of death helping him so that they both didn’t freeze to death?
The on/off switch is the only thing that actually makes any sense.
Other examples include:
General Grievous stealing lightsabers from Jedi he kills, and being able to wield them despite having zero force powers and being a full body cyborg.
Cad Bane stealing… I think Obi Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber, and using it to fight both him and Quinlan Vos off.
Ahsoka Tano’s lightsaber getting stolen by a thief and igniting it in a crowded train to try and fight her off.
Shape shifter (Zam Wessel or someone like her) stealing the librarian’s lightsaber and using it to defend herself from Ahsoka.
Multiple Mandalorians making effective use of the Darksaber without force powers, with John Deathwatch being able to go toe to toe with Jedi.
I was thinking more along the lines of the wielder acting like a battery. No midichlorians, no saber.
The original intent was for lightsabers to be stronger the more you could use the force. There was even going to be a training scene between Luke and Yoda explaining that.
It was kind of shown in the prequels when Qui Gonn Jinn was burning through a blast door in the beginning of Phantom Menace.
My current (possibly wrong) understanding is that jedi keep the planet with the crystals secret, so that not just anyone can go make a saber. On top of that, the Force allows a user to kinda “extend” their perception, which allows for things like reflecting blaster shots, as well as being hyper aware of their personal space during saber duels. So a trained jedi can “see” things like how far a blade is from hitting them, even if they can’t actually see, and that determines how they move.
So it’s more that taking one would be like robbing a special forces soldier, and playing with one would most likely kill or dismember you.
Yeah, that’s more or less how it works.
Fun fact: Boc did purple lightsabers before Mace Windu.
In the expansion the PC also had a purple saber. I forgot what her name was though.
Mara Jade!
What did it conflict with? As far as I can remember, nothing in the movies conflicted with this idea. I know the books were quite expansive and they let author’s play with the lore from time to time. Did they say “RGB only?”
It conflicted with George Lucas.
In his original idea for Lightsabers, the blue ones were the good guys and the red ones were the bad guys.
When Return of the Jedi came out he had to make the decision to give Luke a green lightsaber to make it visible against Tatooine’s sky. So he amended his original idea to also include green for the good guys.
Thos stayed that way, despite so many comics and other materials adding different colours, until Samuel L. Jackson begged him for a purple lightsaber. Essentially, to Lucas, the expanded universe was never canon until he made parts of it canon through movie or animated media.
It feels like authors fighting over sections of lore and finding justification for minor decisions.
The true answer should have been:
Mace: “In my travels I found a cave with Purple Khyber crystals, and they really look awesome.”
I think it’s more that by asking there were more questions that writers wanted to answer, no?
It’s like d&d once you ask for the merchant’s name they suddenly have a whole life behind them
Light Sabers are the core of Star Wars, and they’re some of the stupidist BS imaginable.
You have this device where the blade is made out of “light” so has no weight to it, and that can cut through virtually anything, and you’re swinging it around like a maniac instead of just doing foil-style fencing moves to poke holes in your opponent from a safe range? In a world where there’s no armour and the merest touch of the blade cuts instantly, duels should be over in seconds of intense action like an olympic fencing duel instead of involving lots of big dramatic parries.
Fighters should do virtually everything possible to stay outside the range of their opponent’s blade. Any part of that blade touches you and you lose a limb or have a hole straight through you. There isn’t even a safe part of the sword, like the flat of a real sword’s blade, and there are no handguards or protective hilts, so parrying is even more dangerous.
But, no. Big swings of lightey-uppey things look “cool” so there are these extremely long fight scenes with glowy things hitting other glowy things and actors striking dramatic poses, plus guys with twirly double-sided weapons and other bullshit.
Compare that to the fighting in Dune, where a personal shield can only be penetrated by something moving slowly. There’s a good concept that leads to an interesting style of fighting.
Grievous puts two of his arms back whenever he uses the other two to block.
The whole thing is just idiotic nonsense that looks flashy and has no substance.
But Disney is the epitomy of soulless evil and George Lucas could do no wrong according to the fandom.
Word of advice, just dont bother.
Force users have precognition with it roughly scaling with power and experience which tends to prolong fights on the more powerful end of things since they are basically fucking with each other to try to squeeze out an advantage. Given that the movies generally follow people towards the top of the skill and power spectrum we tend to only see those high end fights in action, on the lower ends or when power imbalance comes into play it basically devolves into what you described, but that mostly only appears in comics and books.
Also there are materials that can resist, block, or even disable lightsabers which I’ll list in no particular order with their affects.
Songsteel: Lightsaber resistant.
Cortosis: As an allow it’s resistant, in a pure form it shorts out lightsabers but is brittle.
Phrik: Lightsaber resistant.
Plasteel: Resistant to short glancing blows or in sufficient thickness.
Mandalorian Iron/Beskar: Highly resistant to lightsabers.
Certain Force abilities: There is a force ability called energy absobtion that can be used to just grab a lightsaber and drain it. Vader used a lesser form of it on cloud city to block Hans blaster bolts. Presumably there are other abilities that can do similar.
Fun fact the Jedi and Sith both once used armor that was lightsaber resistant and some lightsaber fighting styles formed specifically to deal with that. Also Anakin wore armor that was lightsaber resistant, I presume he stole it from somewhere.
Ah, I see you too have been sucked into the hema YouTube rabbit hole. I would take self-described medieval martial arts experts opining on science fantasy with a grain of salt.
Like your reasoning is fine and the fights probably should be more fencing-like, but we also have to consider that Jedi are not normal beings. There’s a lot going on invisibly in those fights, like how they’re channeling the force into all their actions as well as experiencing a kind of prescience. So it begs the question, what does a fight look like with that kind of meta?
I haven’t seen anything about light sabers on HEMA, but I have watched a little bit of it. But, even before that, I thought light saber fights looked stupid after having watched olympic fencing.
So it begs the question, what does a fight look like with that kind of meta?
Whatever the director decides the audience will like best. Yeah, you can handwave away anything if you just use some mysterious force stuff. Maybe you only have ultra-quick reactions if you are in mortal danger, so if you’re beyond the range of the other guy’s light saber you can’t act/react as quickly.
Still, I just prefer it when a sci-fi / fantasy author fully thinks through a weapon, its implications, etc. and something interesting falls out of that analysis, rather than “rule of cool” stuff that then has to be retconned with something ridiculous.
Ah, I see you too have been sucked into the hema YouTube rabbit hole.
There’s a lot going on invisibly in those fights
this is one of the funnier interactions I’ve seen on lemmy. ‘you can’t see it, but there’s a whole bloop blorp whiz patang freeowww goin on that justifies the goofy interaction of plasma beams that should just pass right through each other’
I grew up reading xwing books other fantasy, and sw as fantasy works better. No disrespect, just found the distinctions hilarious.
Just sayin. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
why can’t we get a jedi academy series, where it explains blue green purple sabers, or jedi battle meditation, or all the other cool shit, no we have to ‘somehow palpatine came back and there’s another planet kablooie lazar!’ bah. feh I say. FEH!.
Blame Disney, and JJ Abrams.
doing foil-style fencing moves
Fighters should do virtually everything possible to stay outside the range of their opponent’s blade
So I know what you are saying and you have a point.
But I find it funny as the modern olympic fencing boils down to “I stabbed you a split second before you stabbed me! I win!”
Depends on the particular fencing style. Sabre and Foil have right-of-way and Epee does not. So in Epee, it’s whoever strikes first. In the others, the person who initiates the attack gets the point if they both touch during the attack regardless of who touched first.
It sounds silly, but part of the idea with foil and sabre is that they were initially training for actual self-defense, where it didn’t matter if you stabbed your attacker if you got killed in the process. So the rule was you had to first keep yourself from getting touched before you could try and score a point of your own.
Right. Didn’t realize (or forgot) only epee is like this. I don’t really follow olympic fencing closely.
OP might even not meant olympic fencing originally, that’s just where my mind went and I’ve found it funny.
So the rule was you had to first keep yourself from getting touched before you could try and score a point of your own.
That doesn’t sound like it leads logically to “you get the point if you were the aggressor, even if you also get touched” but sports rules are often many layers of arcane nonsense with too much deference given to the past. (I’d treat it more like a serve fault in tennis. Reckless attack is a do-over, twice in a row is a point for the other person.)
It’s about a fundamental difference between offense and defense.
When you go on the offense, defeating the opponent is the primary goal.
If you’re defending yourself, survival is the primary goal.
Yeah, good point. People make essentially suicidal attacks in modern sport fencing because as long as they touch their opponent first the fact they were run through a tenth of a second later doesn’t matter. But, a lot of fencing is staying at least one blade’s length away from the opponent and probing and poking, so up until that final suicidal attack they’re giving the opponent’s weapon plenty of respect.
Yep. Also, ignoring sports, the more this ws the case the more the weapons developed to be lighter with point of ballance closer to the hilt.
If lightsabre blade doesn’t weigh anything, it’s the ultimate weapon for this sort of style of fencing (bonus points for any contact with the blade being harmful).
Your thinking made perfect sense, it’s just my mind immediately went to the suicidal attacks in sport fencing and I’ve found it funny.
So in defense of all this. I think the in-universe lore is that only Jedi and Sith can use lightsabers in this fashion, because the force prevents them from self injuring with a lightsaber.
So they end up with access to a more dangerous move set offensively than someone with a standard sword in our reality. Which also lends itself to different defensive capabilities and thus you get all this saber-fu shit.
Hell maybe there is an “aura” like component of the force and Jedi vs Sith battles have another layer of complextion. Basically these otherwise useless poses actually have an effect via the force itself.
Enabling the use of double light saber bullshit, and etc
I’m not saying it’s any less bullshit.
because the force prevents them from self injuring with a lightsaber
That’s fine, but they keep putting themselves in the range of their opponents’ light sabers. If they’d made the lore that a Jedi / Sith can exude a force field that allows them to take a hit with a light saber and that only a certain, powerful type of hit can do damage, then maybe they can be justified in getting within the other’s striking range. But, really it’s just that they want these extended slash and parry sequences with these light-up devices so they end up with these silly, unrealistic fights that are badly filmed to show the action and instead just show twirling glowy things.
I just think they’re neat!
Both Sith and Jedi do use the force to sense their opponents moves so they kinda got to get close to slow down reaction time.
If they didn’t get close they would just have to stand 6 feet apart and talk about their issues instead
I’d watch that. Sounds like Andor.
Honestly, that’s why I think the original fight of Obi-Wan vs Vader was so good. They kind of fought like that.
Yeah, it was a lot more probing at long distance. They basically established a style, but it wasn’t flashy enough, so with each new movie it becomes even more bullshit.
The audience also cared for the characters and their motives. That’s what made it good.
I would have expected some kenjutsu/kendo type attacks over purely thrusting though.
The light saber has the ability to be as good or better of a “slashing” weapon as a thrusting, despite the lack of curvature. It’s closer to a long sword than a saber in the way it would be used in the absence of sci-fi handwaving, but with the whole vibe of the Jedi being monkish, that Lucas pretty much ignored eastern blade fighting entirely, and samurai shit in particular is kinda weird. Like, Chinese jian styles are closer to what would work with a blade of the same size and general shape, and is just as cinematic as what got used in the prequels.
But kenjutsu and iaido could make for seriously dramatic force mojo duels rather than expecting us to watch Yoda and Palpatine do acrobatics in complete opposition to their very centered and cerebral behavior in all other aspects.
It isn’t even about realism to me, because it’s just wizards with swords fantasy set in space, not hard sci-fi. But I really would have expected more control, more precision, more internal mastery of their weapons.
The light saber has the ability to be as good or better of a “slashing” weapon as a thrusting
Sure, but that’s unnecessary. To be able to cut / slash you have to get closer than you need to get to just poke, and why risk it? Really, just tape one to the end of a long pole and you have a spear that you can use at even longer range with even less risk to yourself.
Two factors, ignoring the sci-fi part of things.
First, depending on armor levels, a slashing/chopping/cutting attack can be directed at places other than center of mass and be very effective. This gives you reach that you just can’t achieve while expecting to end a fight via thrusting. As a general thing, it’s referred to as defanging the serpent. You attack the parts that either hold your opponent’s weapon, or otherwise allow them to attack.
This means in practice that someone doing standard thrust attacks can be at a major disadvantage unless they are significantly faster than their enemy.
Second, even if you don’t defang the serpent, you can still attack the wrists, ankles, or arms from a better distance. You bleed the fucker out. This favors the kind of mobile, angular footwork you’ll see in some forms of sword fighting. Lunges are necessary to close distance inside of reach. At some point, you limit yourself to a single angle of attack. Depending on your training and physical capabilities, a straight lunge is one of the easiest attacks to avoid and counter.
When it’s done with something that can also slash, it decreases your exposure and allows for some really nasty feints for sure, but you’ve still largely committed to a movement. Committing like that can be good or bad, but if you’re against someone that’s countering you from angles you can’t quickly pivot to, you end up in trouble.
Now, the argument for spears against swords is absolutely a good one. Reach is king in most fights, no matter the weapon or lack thereof. Mass is often queen, though I really dislike gendering ideas like this. It’s just the frame of reference I was given back in the day, so it sticks in my head better.
But, spears are not the best 1 on 1 weapon, at least not the usual spear with a long shaft. The shorter spears like assegi are fucking beast mode, though generally are used with a shield, and thus hard to properly assess for a thrust vs slash kind of comparison. Plus, while I have fucked with spears, including short spears, I don’t have anywhere near the actual sparring time in.
Anyway, point is that the point is at the end of a long stick. That length is a lever. When that spear is side by side with other spears and a shield wall, you’re an idiot to run in with a sword.
But when that spear is alone? It’s trivial to deflect and avoid. And I say trivial with the full meaning. It’s absurdly easy. You run into some guys that train with kingfu type spears that can make it way less easy, but then again, that’s not really the same weapon as you’d have if you taped a light saber to a big stick. They function in a different way than more rigid spears.
Now, let it be known that, despite the user name, I have nowhere near as much time in with swords. I did okay, I’ve trained and sparred, but I was always more of a knife guy. A lot of the same principles apply, but stabby stabby only in knife use is vastly inferior to using the entire weapon as needed. Trying to use something like a Fairbairn Sykes dagger against a bowie is not going to end well unless you’re significantly better than the bowie guy. Different tools for different jobs, you dig?
Now, I agree that the on screen jedi moves are absurdly inefficient. There’s people that have learned the stuff that was designed for the movies, and they get their asses handed to them if they try it sparring. Too many openings, too much wasted energy. None of it works unless you’re using the kind of extra light performance sabers that are built for it. The balance of the weapons aren’t right otherwise. Well, mostly. There’s footage of some of those folks using aggression and mobility to do quite well, but it’s still with unrealistic practice weapons.
But if you had an actual light saber, you’d stay tight, keep things close and do controlled slashes, more akin to what you see in kenjutsu. Mind you, most kenjutsu is two handed, not single, so there’s only limited on screen stuff that makes for 1:1 comparison.
Honestly, Dooku is the most realistic swordsman in the prequels.
Think of the force like Jedis being able to anticipate movements and react ultra fast and it becomes less bullshit. If those fights played in slow-motion for normal humans, it would make sense that they could go on for longer without injury. Then a win happens with sensory overload or distractions - when a fighter misleads the other to believe an attack will be coming from where it won’t actually come, they get a killing blow.
Yeah force users all got like low grade Spidey Sense.
Think of the force like Jedis being able to anticipate movements and react ultra fast and it becomes less bullshit
Not really because eventually you’re still going to take a hit if you’re inside the other guy’s striking range. If you stay outside and lunge in like a fencer you don’t risk that eventual injury / death.
Sorry but that’s simply wrong. I have done two years or sabre fencing in my youth - it’s all about reaction time and correct execution of a parry. If you always knew exactly which angle to parry at, and had the reaction speed to execute this in time, then you could fence for a long time without anyone getting hit. You’d have to outsmart your opponent by slowly leading them into a trap where they have to execute a movement that throws them off-balance, so that you then can execute an attack that they can’t regain their balance to parry.
If you always knew exactly which angle to parry at, and had the reaction speed to execute this in time, then you could fence for a long time without anyone getting hit
Only if all your knowledge and reaction speed was defensive rather than offensive. If you gained an equal amount of offensive reaction speed and knowledge you could adjust strikes as you saw the opponent begin to parry.
The issue is lunges are slower and cover more distance allowing another force sensitive opponent ample time to react
Yeah, but:
steven segal motions
The Force.
Haha, I made a huge comment to say basically this and then that made me laugh so hard reading this.
You guys didn’t even mention the midichlorians!
They’re actually dance fighting.
Let’s get some
gunblaster katas up in hereBut it isn’t even good, stylish dance fighting because Hollywood is so bad at filming action scenes.
The problem is they called them light sabres, so, naturally, they must be wielded maniacally.
Except a saber is basically a cavalry sword, and they’re not cavalry (or even dragoons).
Are you familiar with the reputation of sabreurs being the crazy people among fencers? 😂
That’s a lot of pages to say a motherfucker wanted a purple motherfucking lightsaber.
IIRC it says something about how his saber is motherfucking electric rather than crystalic.
Y’all, this is a perfect example of how religion retconning works.
Christian Afterlife Lore with pergatory.
vs.
Catholic Afterlife Lore without.
Purgatory is actually much newer. It didn’t become dogma in the Catholic Church until 1274. Over 1200 years after Christ.
hence the retcon
Ah I thought you were saying it was the other way around.
no offense but you need to work on your reading comprehesion, I’m not OP.
Shut up removed
deleted by creator
My headcanon is that Mace once got a little carried away during a duel in his younger years, his emotions getting the better of him and this began to “bleed” his then-blue lightsaber. But he began to see the error of his ways and carries this lightsaber as a reminder of the fragile balance between light and dark.
Then of course they had to give other Jedi purple lightsabers and mess this up.
He studied a style that is a bit closer to the dark side so that he can channel the emotions of a dark side user against them. This was why he was able to defeat Palpatine pretty easily while his support were finished quickly and even Yoda was only able to fight him to a draw. Windu was a hard counter for Palpatine.
So your headcanon wasn’t completely off vs what was in the EU.
Isn’t SW all just retcon now anyway?
It’s not like Lucas started with a complete world like Tolkien, just some ideas.
One of my favorites is the Jedi master robes. In the original trilogy, Lucas clearly intended Luke’s black robes to be the “master” garb, but Obi-Wan was already so iconic that future Jedi wound up matching the bland desert outfit that he happened to be wearing.
which also makes less sense, obi wan was hiding on the very desert planet Anakin came from, close to where Luke was, dressed as a jedi master.
Yoda had the right idea.
Damn. Soul crushed, thanks for nothin
I always thought he got black because he was a little bit dark side being Vader’s kid, just simple visual theme thing.
I’m the subset of SW nerd that grew up reading the Expanded Universe novels pre-Phantom Menace. It’s all been cut, scrambled, recanonized, re-decanonized, and outright contradicted so many times it’s lost all meaning.
And then Disney came along, saying they could do better.
They couldn’t.
Yes. Still some cool stories there. Heaps and heaps of trash too though.
Watch In Deep Geek on YouTube. Tolkien’s world was ever changing. That’s what made it so hard for Christopher Tolkien to put together the later books. At one point Sauron was an evil cat.
A real evil cat, dig
Even Tolkien retconned The Hobbit, and the series is better for it imo. Art with living authors doesn’t have to be static.
There’s definitely a limit where it starts to just get ridiculous, though.
Honestly he started with even less than that. People like Lawrence Kasdan, John Dykstra, and many others, don’t get enough credit for their contributions.
Most of it. That said I seem to remember playing star wars dark forces II prior to episode 1 came out and different colored lightsabers were already a thing there. (Unless my memory serves me wrong)
There was only one instance of a repeated lightsaber colour in the OT (Obi-Wan’s and Luke’s original saber were both blue) so for the early years of the EU it was just assumed they could be any colour.
Funny thing is we only see four lightsabers in total in the original trilogy. We have Luke’s first lightsaber that was originally Anakin’s [blue], Luke’s second lightsaber he built after losing the first one fighting Vader [green], Obiwan’s lightsaber [blue], and Vader’s lightsaber [red]. And that’s it. So in some ways it doesn’t surprise me that the amount of lore expanded greatly once the prequels came out.
Speaking of cool stuff Mace Windu had or did, was Vaapad a thing before his character came along?
Is that the name of his Jedi angry-style? There’s similar concepts but I think he pioneered that physical fighting style in particular. It’s how he got his “grey Jedi” chosen-one complex that made him so vindictive to Anakin
Squid-guy is doing something similar with force lightning, but that’s more about squid people having a different spectrum of emotions that lets them use techniques that would be normally associated with the dark side.
Edit: After writing this I just realized this entire IP was just Wuxia genre the whole time. We were lied to.
Thank you for your service, Mr. Jackson.
