ANH: Fan version of Kenobi vs Vader

[The Infidel]

I know it can be sacrilegious to mess with the holy trilogy, but I kinda like this one.

[Lord Revan]

As I said the first time this was posted, it sacrifices the story for cool visuals. While a product of the limitations of the time the fight in the original film made sense storywise even after faster fights were made.

Obi-wan's goal was never to beat Vader then and there, sure he would have done it but that was not his goal. His goal was to buy time for Luke and co to escape with Leia and the Death Star plans.

Also Vader isn't stupid he knows that underestimating Obi-wan is dangerous, I mean the last time he did that he ended up loosing 3 limbs and being burnt to point where Vader was barely alive and would have died if not for is Force abilities being able to keep him alive long enough for help to arrive. So Vader would not go all out and be vary of tricks especially considering how confident Obi-wan appeared.

Now I'm not against updating the ANH fight but this is the wrong way to do it.

[The Romulan Republic]

Agreed. Its a lot of flash, but not much substance, and it doesn't particularly make sense for the characters at that point in their lives. And while its visually not bad, it also feels out of place stylistically to me- the style is much more like the animated trailers/scenes for the Old Republic MMO than the OT's style.

As an aside, its also deeply ironic to me to see praise for this remake from some of the OT fanboy crowd, after all the years of whinging about how the Special Editions and the Prequels' flashy CGI and fight choreography "ruined" Star Wars.

It also reminds me a lot of the argument over Luke's death in TLJ, actually- how certain people complained that it "ruined" Luke because he wasn't "bad ass" and didn't go out and destroy the entire First Order with a lightsaber (an idea that the film explicitly lampooned, and rightly so). They would have traded a scene in which Luke acts in-character, and in accordance with Jedi ideals, for a simplistic tough guy power fantasy. It missed the point of who Luke was, and what a Jedi is, just as this remake, while visually more spectacular, misses the point of who Kenobi is and what his motives are in that scene- not to strike down their enemy and be the bigger "bad ass", but to use the Force, as Yoda said, for knowledge and defense, never to attack.

[Lord Revan]

The thing is that there's a time and place for fancy visuals and being bad-ass. However one shouldn't loose sight of the core of the character or you'll end up with a character who while being a flashy bad ass has the depth of a rain water puddle and once you get over the flash the character goes from a bad ass to just bad.

A fight like this would more in place at Bespin or DS2 in the Vader versus Luke fights as in those both sides were trying to actually win as their primary goal and wouldn't be holding back 99% of their power to not over extend.

[The Romulan Republic]

The thing is that there's a time and place for fancy visuals and being bad-ass. However one shouldn't loose sight of the core of the character or you'll end up with a character who while being a flashy bad ass has the depth of a rain water puddle and once you get over the flash the character goes from a bad ass to just bad.

A fight like this would more in place at Bespin or DS2 in the Vader versus Luke fights as in those both sides were trying to actually win as their primary goal and wouldn't be holding back 99% of their power to not over extend.

Agreed, with the caveat that those aren't the best examples, particularly DS2. Luke actually wasn't trying to beat Vader in a fight for most of that duel. Other than a couple brief moments where his anger gets the better of him, he's trying to avoid a fight and fighting purely defensively. While Vader was more interested in turning Luke. Both were pulling their punches a bit as a result.

Probably the best "they're both trying to kill each other" fights between high-end Force users in the films are Yoda/Sidious and Vader/Obi-wan from RotS- which were both quite spectacular, and worked in context.

[Lord Revan]

The thing is that there's a time and place for fancy visuals and being bad-ass. However one shouldn't loose sight of the core of the character or you'll end up with a character who while being a flashy bad ass has the depth of a rain water puddle and once you get over the flash the character goes from a bad ass to just bad.

A fight like this would more in place at Bespin or DS2 in the Vader versus Luke fights as in those both sides were trying to actually win as their primary goal and wouldn't be holding back 99% of their power to not over extend.

Agreed, with the caveat that those aren't the best examples, particularly DS2. Luke actually wasn't trying to beat Vader in a fight for most of that duel. Other than a couple brief moments where his anger gets the better of him, he's trying to avoid a fight and fighting purely defensively. While Vader was more interested in turning Luke. Both were pulling their punches a bit as a result.

Probably the best "they're both trying to kill each other" fights between high-end Force users in the films are Yoda/Sidious and Vader/Obi-wan from RotS- which were both quite spectacular, and worked in context.

Yeah they're not good examples but my point was that I'm not against updating OT lightsaber duels but rather that the way they updated this scene didn't work in context and in fact would make the film worse as a result.

[channel73]

I think this is pretty cool. And come on, you know George Lucas would have done something closer to this if he could at the time. Yeah, it's a bit over the top, but if we tone it down a bit in certain areas it could work. I also like that one shot that mimics Ralph McQuarrie's early concept art.

And Kenobi was not explicitly trying to just "delay" Vader so Luke could get away. As far as we know, both Vader and Kenobi were 100% trying to kill each other, at least at first, until the last minute when he saw Luke standing there. There's so reason Kenobi had to sacrifice himself up until that point. I mean, he didn't even plan on fighting Vader in the first place (he assumed they would make it to Alderaan initially, and then was working on getting off the Death Star by shutting down the tractor beam)

That said, yes I'm also an old-school fan that bitched about the Special Editions. But I hate this kind of "binary thinking" where it's either "NEVER touch the originals in ANY way" or "add stupid cartoon monsters bouncing around Jabbas Palace". Surely, there's a happy medium where we can update the visuals, without putting useless distracting shit in the frame. I think the Special Edition for ESB did it mostly correctly (except for Luke screaming, and Vader's weird line about his Star Destroyer).

[FaxModem1]

I think the main issue is that it's very much style over substance. You can have a really good fight, but the cinematography and editing will need to decide what they're wanting to portray here. This version could be summed up as, "Obi Wan is a washed up old loser getting in over his head fighting Vader."

That's not really the message you want his death scene to convey.