1) ANH: Darth Vader vs Obi Wan - I guess it was ok, Obi's 360º was a bit too much (he took like 15 seconds to turn around while Vader yawned). Can't complain much because it was a really low budget and stuff, and that guy was old. They exchange a few insults ("how appropriate, you fight like a cow" and so and so)
2) ESB: Vader vs. Luke - while Luke was mostly the victim here, yet he managed to score a couple hits, I think there was a lot of emotion here, a feeling of danger. Here we see that lightsaber can't cut thru anything like butter: there's definitely feedback when hitting solid matter, specially armor like Vader's suit. Luke gets his hand chopped because he allowed himself to be cornered, and was a novice. Vader constantly teases and talks to Luke.
3) ROTJ: Vader vs. Luke again - this time Luke is a better fighter than before, in the end he cuts Vader's hand in a nearly identical position. He wins because he allows himself to feel angry. The Emperor teases, Luke teases. We see the lightsaber bounce a couple of times against railings, we see that when two sabers are in contact they don't just bounce but you can actually push harder than the other and push his saber away (like Luke did when he was angry). Again, there was a lot of motivation in this scene. It was like the participants actually cared.
4) TPM: Darth Maul vs. Qui Gon and young Obi Wan - extremely flashy battle. Lots of jumps and twirls, blocking backwards, Maul's double-edged saber, etc. Nobody knows why they are fighting: apparently just because one's the bad guy and the others are good guys. The blades barely touch each other before withdrawing - there's no exertion of force at all when they are in contact, just a slight tap.
5) AOTC: I have to talk about some scenes separately:
- Lots of Jedi's vs Lots of Robots: ok, these Jedis were just dancing around everywhere and most of the time Obi Wan was deflecting blasts that weren't even going to hit him, just to show off with his Conan-like swordspins.
- Mace vs. Jango Fett: frankly, I think this part sucked. It was neat watching Jango launch flames at Mace forcing him to jump, and it's ok that Mace had to kill him, but I would have really wanted Jango to give a bit more resistance instead of simply getting beheaded like a lamb to the slaughterhouse.
- Obi Wan vs Count Blackula (er, Dooku): normal battle, yeah it would have been useful to teach that lightning-absorb technique to his students like Anakin and Luke. WTF with Dooku's victory? Was Obi's shirt too dense for the lightsaber to completely penetrate!? Maybe Dooku was trying to knight him.
- Anakin vs. Dooku: should have lasted longer. Battle with two lightsabers, was neat but quite innefectual.
- Yoda vs. Dooku: I must admit that I liked the fight, but only because I was laughing my ass off. The entire theather was laughing. What was more laughable was that after jumping everywhere Matrix-like, Yoda took his cane and started limping again.
- Miss Piggy vs Dooku... okay not really. C'mon, does EVERYONE want to fight Count Dooku in this movie?
Looks like I'm biased, but I actually thought that the Luke vs. Vader battles where much better, there was motivation, they looked like they actually wanted to hit each other instead of just touching sabers against each other, and it didn't seem to me like it was a cripple fighting a farm boy.
OTOH, the prequel fights all are overly flashy, IMO. Mostly they don't seem like they have a reason to fight (other than they have to get the bad guy) and who wins or loses is mostly irrelevant.
So, anyone thinks like me? Who disagrees? Etc...
blasting trees and stuff
I would have liked if they used the Yoda puppet in the prequels.
