The best choreographed lightsabre fight in Star Wars?

[Shadow WarChief]

Something missing from the Dooku fight that I don't think anyone has metnioned is that it wasn't intercut with other scenes of fighting. EVERY other lightsaber duel, OT or PT, has been set to some other action happening at the same time.

TPM: Droid Ship battle, Droid Army Battle, Storming the palace

ANH: Luke and co. trying to escape the DS.

ESB: Leia and co. trying to escape Cloud City.

ROTJ: Land and Space battles of Endor

This is an oft overlooked reason of why I think the AOTC duel fell so flat, there wasn't any concurrent fighting going on to give the duel any immediacy to the audience.

[YT300000]

The OT duels are good on storytelling, but the styles used seem stupid to me. The guys are armed with practically weightless swords and they swing them around like baseball bats . It just doesn't make much sense to me (although I admit I know absolutely nothing about fencing, but still). Also, the ROTJ end duel has The Most Ridiculous Moment Of All Duels: At the end when Vader falls down, he just slumps. Luke doesn't even hit him there, Vader simply dodges one of Luke's sledgehammer blows and falls down without any apparent reason.

He probably hit his head on the catwalk that was very close behind him.

[Stofsk]

I've reached 3rd Kyu Kendo (nothing special, in other words), and I've done a bit Iaido and Aikido. Otherwise, it's all free-form, bashing my friends, and looking at pages on the internet. You've studied european fencing, I gather... saber or epee?

When I was in HS and a bit afterwards I did Fencing as a all-year sport (I had to con the Sports Co-ordinator to pull that off though; technically you weren't allowed to have a single sport all-year, you had to have a summer and a winter; the thing is, fencing is an indoors sport, so it didn't matter which time of the year you did it. In retrospect I probably should have done soccer more often).

Um, yes a bit of a sidetrack... anyway the Fencing club had foils mainly, then when the budget increased by a whole $100 it was used to purchase epees.

Foil was what we used to train with and to give proper technique as well as practice movement and posture and handgrips and so on. Foil bouts are where the annoying 'right of way' idea comes from; Foil bouts are therefore more to do with the 'play' of swordfighting. It's more of a game with foil than anything else. In Foil, only the torso is targeted (major organs, see). If you hit the arm, the leg, hands, feet, mask, it's off-target and thus you don't score a point (even though with a real sword, you may have sliced the arteries in the arm or leg, or poked the guy's eye out or whatever).

It sounds stupid or 'sporty', but Foil does give you an appreciation of targeting your attacks.

Epee is more of a 'no holds barred' style of fencing. Because the ENTIRE body is 'on target'. It's also more psychological. Bouts can be won by psyching out the other guy. Going for the head is especially disconcerting.

Saber is... well, nuts. It's the lightest weapon, it has the same kind of 'right of way' rules that foil has, but in addition you're allowed to swing and cut as an attack, so what ends up happening is a lot of people swinging and clashing the blades. I don't have much experience with sabers to be honest.

I've also studied kenjutsu when I did ninjutsu. I was one of the low ranks, 8th kyu IIRC. I haven't done that for over a year though. Probably more than that. Same goes for fencing.

[Styphon]

Epee is more of a 'no holds barred' style of fencing. Because the ENTIRE body is 'on target'. It's also more psychological. Bouts can be won by psyching out the other guy. Going for the head is especially disconcerting.

funny story about that... the first time I went to one of the meetings of my Fencing Club at my local university, I ended up having to fence barefoot (it's a long story, but I was wearing slip-on sandals, which seemed like and even worse idea in a fencing match)... now, for some reason, this particular university really only did epee fencing, even though almost all their equipment was for foil...

but anyway, since I was barefoot, I ended up going against this one guy who kept feinting at my feet... yeah... I lost that match... badly...

[Karza]

He probably hit his head on the catwalk that was very close behind him.

...making it an Even More Ridiculous Moment in the history of lightsaber duels...

[Robert Walper]

The TPM fight with Maul was without a doubt the best I liked. Anakin's initial attack with two sabers in AOTC was also very nice. ESB was really good, if only for Vader factor alone.

[Uraniun235]

The final duel in ROTJ is my favorite, as I find it simply the most stirring and passionate of them all... although John Williams takes a lot of credit for that.

The guys are armed with practically weightless swords and they swing them around like baseball bats Razz. It just doesn't make much sense to me

I think there was a blurb in one of the OT DVD extras about how Lucas had originally envisioned these the lightsabers having a momentum as if they weighed like 40 pounds or something crazy like that. I could be wrong, and certainly Lucas has since changed his tune to "oh, Vader's a robot/Kenobi is old/Luke is inexperienced, so of course they suck" to explain their lackluster abilities compared to the prequels, but that was one of the original justifications for the way they swung these things around.

[Robert Walper]

The final duel in ROTJ is my favorite, as I find it simply the most stirring and passionate of them all... although John Williams takes a lot of credit for that.

The guys are armed with practically weightless swords and they swing them around like baseball bats Razz. It just doesn't make much sense to me

I think there was a blurb in one of the OT DVD extras about how Lucas had originally envisioned these the lightsabers having a momentum as if they weighed like 40 pounds or something crazy like that. I could be wrong, and certainly Lucas has since changed his tune to "oh, Vader's a robot/Kenobi is old/Luke is inexperienced, so of course they suck" to explain their lackluster abilities compared to the prequels, but that was one of the original justifications for the way they swung these things around.

Actually, that's true. I saw the same thing. Lucas envisioned the sabers as quite heavy, so much so that you needed to use two arms to wield them. He just changed his mind obviously. Creator's prerogative.

[Stofsk]

The final duel in ROTJ is my favorite, as I find it simply the most stirring and passionate of them all... although John Williams takes a lot of credit for that.

The guys are armed with practically weightless swords and they swing them around like baseball bats Razz. It just doesn't make much sense to me

I think there was a blurb in one of the OT DVD extras about how Lucas had originally envisioned these the lightsabers having a momentum as if they weighed like 40 pounds or something crazy like that. I could be wrong, and certainly Lucas has since changed his tune to "oh, Vader's a robot/Kenobi is old/Luke is inexperienced, so of course they suck" to explain their lackluster abilities compared to the prequels, but that was one of the original justifications for the way they swung these things around.

Actually, that's true. I saw the same thing. Lucas envisioned the sabers as quite heavy, so much so that you needed to use two arms to wield them. He just changed his mind obviously. Creator's prerogative.

More precisely, he wanted to emulate the samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa, and that the samurai fought with katanas two-handed necessitated that the lightsabers be wielded two-handed as well. He told the actors who used these weightless props "Just imagine they were heavy, like broadswords" but he wanted to insert eastern influences into the movies.

And Lucas didn't change his tune with adding "Vader is a cyborg, Ben an old man and Luke a punk kid", because those points *are* true, so he merely updated his tune. As I pointed out, the Jedi in TPM and AOTC use lightsabers in the same way as the cyborg cripple, old man with arthritis, and whiny farmboys. The only difference is the PT Jedi are faster, but they still swing their lightsabers as though they were baseball bats/katanas/zweihanders.

[EDIT] The only person who doesn't conform to the 'lightsaber = zweihander" motif is Dooku, who's peculiar 'saber has a hilt very remniscent of western fencing sword hilts. IOW, only Dooku's 'saber is designed from the ground up to be a one-handed sword, and we *STILL* see him wield it two-handed.

[EDIT] The point about cyborgs/old men/kids using lightsabers: he was making that point in a TPM doco and his point was to show Jedi at their prime, it has *nothing* to do with lightsabers and *everything* to do with skill in using them. OF COURSE, Vader is going to be a shadow of who he once was, as Anakin. OF COURSE, Obi-wan is *NOT* going to be faster in ANH as he was in TPM against Maul. OF COURSE, Luke is *NOT* going to be a grandmaster of lightsaber fighting on par with the old Jedi, when he literally had no one to teach him, and *HAD* to subsist on sheer innate talent and improvisation.

[Robert Walper]

Ah ha! found it!
Art of the saber.(Right click save as)

Hey...does anyone know what the theme music is from in the beginning of that video clip? I like it.

[Ace Pace]

For sheer style, the TPM duel cannot be beaten, but the AOTC duel and some of the ROTJ duel have good parts, but mostly, not really exciting to watch.

[Gunhead]

[EDIT] The point about cyborgs/old men/kids using lightsabers: he was making that point in a TPM doco and his point was to show Jedi at their prime, it has *nothing* to do with lightsabers and *everything* to do with skill in using them. OF COURSE, Vader is going to be a shadow of who he once was, as Anakin. OF COURSE, Obi-wan is *NOT* going to be faster in ANH as he was in TPM against Maul. OF COURSE, Luke is *NOT* going to be a grandmaster of lightsaber fighting on par with the old Jedi, when he literally had no one to teach him, and *HAD* to subsist on sheer innate talent and improvisation.

Old age and treachery will beat youth and fast reflexes every time.

-Gunhead

[Dead_Ghost]

[EDIT] The point about cyborgs/old men/kids using lightsabers: he was making that point in a TPM doco and his point was to show Jedi at their prime, it has *nothing* to do with lightsabers and *everything* to do with skill in using them. OF COURSE, Vader is going to be a shadow of who he once was, as Anakin. OF COURSE, Obi-wan is *NOT* going to be faster in ANH as he was in TPM against Maul. OF COURSE, Luke is *NOT* going to be a grandmaster of lightsaber fighting on par with the old Jedi, when he literally had no one to teach him, and *HAD* to subsist on sheer innate talent and improvisation.

Old age and treachery will beat youth and fast reflexes every time.

-Gunhead

You sure?
I wouldn't use "every time", since there are heroes (and villains, though at a far lesser number) that beat such. Look at the comics, you won't be hard pressed to find such things in Marvel and DC, it's been years now since I touched'em but I still remember about the heroes there managing to overpass treachery caused by old men relatively easy.
Of course, if you're talking about real life, then I guess that depends to any one of us and our own experience with such events, mostly in school and work...

[Stofsk]

Old age and treachery will beat youth and fast reflexes every time.

It's not the old age bit, and treachery is the wrong word. What really beats out the young and strong and what wins fights is cunning. And cunning doesn't have an age limit. You develop cunning by being intelligent, pragmatic, and experienced. You can be young and experienced for example; you can be old and ignorant too.

[Gunhead]

Old age and treachery will beat youth and fast reflexes every time.

It's not the old age bit, and treachery is the wrong word. What really beats out the young and strong and what wins fights is cunning. And cunning doesn't have an age limit. You develop cunning by being intelligent, pragmatic, and experienced. You can be young and experienced for example; you can be old and ignorant too.

That's why I said old age AND treachery. Treachery done right requires brains, or it won't work. I'll stick with treachery, 'cos there's no such thing as fair fight. If forced to fight fairly I'll have to resort to cunningness.

-Gunhead

[Cykeisme]

I think Shadow Warchief's observation is interesting.. I'm surprised I didn't notice it myself. The Dooku duel is the only one in the series not interspersed with scenes from another concurrent conflict, and it really does take a lot out of it.

I remember seeing clips of a scene showing several Jedi attacking a droid control center of some sort, but it was just rough shots (green screen background, metal lightsaber props). Perhaps this scrapped scene was the one that would have happened at the same time as the hangar duel?
Those clips might have included Obi-Wan, though (I fail to recall), in which case I'm wrong and they couldn't possibly have ever been intended for that purpose.

[wautd]

maul vs. obi/qui-gon
Best part in that movie

Worst: Dooku vs Anakin
Most of the time you just saw their faces swinging their lightsabres. Yawn