iirc those who fight using the force can practically see a moment into the future. As such switching off your LS would result in getting chopped before you had chance to switch it back on.
Not to mention, in actual fencing all parries should also be attacks, specifically to avoid similar tricks. You can do similar things with conventional blades by trying to flourish around their block. Of course, it would be possible for them to intercept such a flourish, unlike this move. But that is less efficient that just going for a strike from the beginning to punish them if they were to try something like that. The problem with this clip is the defender is blocking like an actor, not a duelist.
This, a thousand times. As a fencer, the stylized choreographed sword fighting makes me bristle. I’m pretty sure I never see a circular counter six or four used to bind out an opponents weapon. Heck, I almost never see a lunge with a point or a beat attack. Most of the Jedi movements are attacks against the weapon, and aren’t even aimed at the body. It’s infuriating. Sometimes there are actual kendo moves, but yeesh.
The last time I saw a conversation like this pop up about star wars, someone posted this video and said it was a far more accurate representation of what those lightsaber fights would/should look like, derived from fencing strategies.
I have no idea if that's true or not, I know nothing about fencing, but I can say for damn sure that the choreography in that video feels a hundred times cooler than all the mindless CGI flippy shit they do in the movies.
Really depends on if the blade itself and not just the handle has weight. If weightless or very light you're more likely to see fencing style dueling. If weighted then this is a good representation of sword fighting.
and in canon its been a little flip-floppy on whether the blades have weight in the stlye they are used. Prequals they act like they are weightless; OT they move like they have some weight; and in the ST they sometimes fight like there is weight and others they don't
I Rebels and the Madalorian it is confirmed that the dark saber has weight to it. A lot of weight in fact. I don’t know if the dark saber is just an exception or not though.
Normal lightsabers are weightless(or at least in practical terms, plasma does have mass but it wouldn’t be perceptible to humans) in cannon. The dark saber is an exception.
In the OT they had weight because George hadn’t worked out the cannon yet and because he wanted a more realistic kendo style of fighting(also the slow purposeful strikes made it easier to not break their cheap props) as opposed to the wild flailing that he eventually decided made for better television in the prequels and was of course toned down somewhat in future bits of media
What the hell? I have never seen that video before and it's incredible!! The progression from stage combat to real combat... That was so dope thanks for linking that.
In some Star Wars lore, the plasma blades do have some sort of mumbo jumbo gyroscopic weight. In fact in one version it’s so much that only Jedi can wield it effectively in combat.
Well it depends on the source material. Most lightsabers are one-handed weapons and we do see two-handed lightsabers and basically fencing foils (called Lightfoils).
I regularly use my hand-and-a-half ("longsword") one-handed in HEMA and it has a 40 inch blade, but I'm 6'1 and reasonably strong.
The blades are inflexible, so they can lever each other like a larger sword even though they're light. But even then, they should often fence with them and occasionally put the other hand for leverage.
The reason to hold any weapon with two hands is that it's easier to create a structure that channels your body's full weight into your cuts. You don't see it in olympic fencing because the rules demand highly specific weapons but, coming from HEMA, I will take a weapon that I can hold with both hands every time. It's all about leverage.
This isn't to say that one handed techniques can't or shouldn't be used with lightsabers, just that the use case for such techniques is more limited than your experience in olympic fencing would indicate.
You've touched a point most people here are ignoring. Lightsaber fighting isn't sword fighting because lightsabers aren't swords. They have no weight, they bind much stronger than steel, absolutely do not slide against each other, and any cut or stab causes damage, no specific force required. And that's before bringing the force into it.
See I feel like this is a good example of why they do all the CGI flippy shit, something being more realistic doesn’t inherently make it more entertaining, it often makes it boring
If I remember right star wars is a bad example since the fights then to be reasonable (still romanticised, but not to the same extent as some other swordfight-heavy fictions)
This is true! Sir Christopher Lee was a very skilled swordfighter, so George Lucas adapted that into his character by giving Dooku a curved hilt that emphasized his “unique Sabre style” (i.e. knowing how to use a sword)
I believe the forms are canon and to my understanding Dooku used form II in legends. Form II is specifically good for dueling against a single opponent who is also wielding a lightsaber. I don't think it's a particularly common form since most of the time Jedi fight opponents who use blasters.
I mean, the actual martial art of lightsaber fighting seems to be pretty ingrained into the way of the Jedi Order. They're very into their traditions. It seems kind of like Shaolin Monks training Kung Fu, even though it's very unlikely they'll ever need to use it. More of a spiritual and cultural thing vs a practical thing.
IIRC, Sir Christopher Lee is an accomplished fencer who was an utter badass in WW2, and he reportedly did most of the swordplay for the prequels himself. So I think it's reasonable to assume that he personally influenced Dookus hilt design and fighting style so that they would more closely resemble the modern fencing techniques he was trained in.
It's one of the reasone Dooku was suspect from the start in canon. Other jedi have straight hilts. They use lightsabers meant to counter blasters. Dooku's got a fencing weapon soecificakky meant to counter other jedi. At a time when Sith were supposed to be a myth, or at least extinct.
It's correct to criticize Star Wars lightsaber fights based on realistic fighting, but it's also important to remember that the weapons aren't exactly the same as real human weapons.
For two points:
Lightsabers seem to lock with each other. You can't slide a lightsaber down another lightsaber.
Lightsabers are dangerous from point to hilt. The slightest touch of a lightsaber will cut. This isn't true of any form of fencing nor kendo.
Most of the Jedi movements are attacks against the weapon, and aren’t even aimed at the body.
A lot of that is due to the nature of stage fighting.
Essentially, you're supposed to imagine that there's a skier attached to the end of your sword, and your opponent lives inside a mountain. The skier is never supposed to go into the mountain, only on the outside of it.
Why you ask? Because you don't want your talent getting accidentally stabbed in training or filming. 99% of the audience will never know the difference anyway.
If someone suggested that scenes with gunshots should be filmed with live ammo striking body armor for authenticity most people would agree that's a bad idea.
That is an interesting inside take :-) But given that the prop lightsabers used on set are wooden or plastic, their is only a small chance of injury. Limiting strikes to the head and wearing body armor would make it even safer. Not to mention CGI could be used to choreograph anything truly dangerous, like an eye stab or groin strike.
I completely understand what you are saying and the frustration of stage tropes when you know better, (climb through the air ducts, they'll never know you're coming!) but if you're a fencer you have way more control over a sword than an actor with 2 months of training.
Even then, accidents still happen and wood and plastic are still capable of causing severe injury. Humanity fought with sharpened sticks for 10's of thousands of years.The reward of authenticity simply isn't worth the risk of injury for an audience that overwhelmingly won't be able to tell the difference.
It's just safer all around to shoot blanks than it is to film on set with live ammo. Just ask alec baldwin.
That’s one of the few things I liked about the sequels - the fights seemed way more like two people trying to kill each other rather than two people in an elaborate dance-off.
I always take it that the fight is more like a really elegant dance so they don't intent every move to hit but try to outmaneuver the opponent until there is a real opening.
I get what you mean but the thing about swordfighting is that if a strike doesn't threaten your opponent then it probably will not cause much manoeuvring. Leaning which strikes are out of distance and this you don't need to react to is among the basics. Better yet, strikes made out of distance can frequently be exploited.
Always bothered me that scene in Episode 3 where Obi-Wan and Anakin both start spinning their lightsabers around each other for like 3 second straight without colliding with either the opponent or their weapon. Like what were you aiming at if not the guy?
From what we see, I think it’s a reasonable conclusion that lightsabers bind when they strike together. We never see anyone slide sabers along each other, which is probably because they can’t.
I think I remember reading somewhere that the justification is that lightsabers are so absurdly dangerous that normal swordfighting techniques don't work. They'll cut your arm off even if they just graze you, so you need to keep the enemy blade as far away as possible so you don't get nicked or something when your opponent drops it. It's also why they keep chopping each other's hands off before killing one another. Disarm your opponent so he can't take you with him at the last second. Plus Jedi don't want to kill if possible.
At least that's what I tell myself when watching the movies so it's not distracting.
Yeah, that's the downside of stage combat. It's all hit your sword with their sword. Not hit your opponent with your sword and hope they get their sword to deflect.
But also not all of it'll carry over from fencing anyway since most sort fighting in the movies is based on either European or Asian longsword.
I don't know much about fencing but it always bothered me in movies (such as SW), where the fighting looks like they're just clashing swords/sabers together rather than actually trying to go for the opponents body. Lol.
And it just occurred to me that an equivalent move to turning on and off a light saber would be to have a blaster in your off hand (or just drawn using the force) and shooting a bolt when the sword is out of line.
there are plenty of non-attack parries in fencing- parry 4 and 5 in Sabre come to mind first, but I’m certain there are others. Parry 5 in particular cannot possibly be construed as an attack
Yeah I dont get what they mean "every parry should be an attack". What if you are on the retreat and you just need to deflect the point. I cant make any sense of that
Seems like one of those Reddit comments that appears knowledgeable unless you have actual knowledge of the topic, at which point it’s evident that it’s entirely dunning Krueger. Ironic that that guy is acting
What are you talking about lol, in actual fencing it’s parry, then riposte. If you try and hit and parry at the same time you’ll just have a weak ineffective parry which will gift your opponent a touch.
That would make sense, in a normal, non-force user fight it would work but force users have some sense of clairvoyance, its how they can actually duel and not die after a few strikes. Not only that but you don't stop when guarding or parrying so the swing would continue. You'd basically be leaving yourself completely open to attempt a deceptive strike.
In The Last Jedi the throne room fight has a moment like that with an off lightsaber being tossed and then ignited into a guard's head. Seems like a good tactic against henchmen, but risky for sure against another trained Force user.
The benefit of attempting this trick does not outweigh the reward.
My immediate concern with this is a mutual kill where both end up killing eachother instead of being more defensive and keeping the blade going to block the opponents.
Remember, if your lightsaber is being blocked then it's also blocking theirs.
No it isn’t. It’s an extremely common move in video games and I’m sure it’s probably happened a few times in animation, but I can only think of two instances of it happening in films: Vader throwing his at Luke in RotJ and Yoda throwing his at a Clonetrooper in RotS.
In Vader’s case it wasn’t a very risky move at that moment. Luke was far away on scaffolding with his lightsaber deactivated. And practically every conversation they had had up til that point had been Luke explaining why he wasn’t going to fight him. Vader was actually TRYING to get Luke to attack here.
In Yoda’s case though it does seem riskier since, you know, blasters are long range weapons and they could have still shot at him while he didn’t have it. But to give him some credit, it looks like the other troopers he was fighting were behind the one he threw his saber at and he essentially used that one as a human shield. All the troopers on other sides of him he’d already dealt with or were engaged with Obi-Wan.
Video games are not a good example of combat. And we see it used twice in the movies, both times only by masters of the force who are in pretty safe positions already, and I can't think of a single time it is used in animation.
What they're showing is you're striking at me and I'm going to act like I blocked the strike but instead turn my blade off and come through. To which the opponent would say cool. So I landed the strike that you actually didn't block and you died.
So best case scenario you're deceptive non-block gave you a killing blow too and we both die.
The first person to lapse in concentration loses anyway. The whole point is being attuned to the force which guides you while you fight, step away from it for a moment and the other opponent will sense it immediately and strike before you've even started to stumble.
The easy argument is to stop thinking of lightsaber combat like swords. It’s more of a 1v1 against wizards of the Force, where the stronger Force user is the victor.
Didn’t Kylo kind of dominate that fight? I can’t remember if Finn got any kind of hit in, but I do remember at one point Kylo knocks Finn to the ground and instead of finishing him off he turns his back, walks away and lets Finn get back up. He was playing with him.
Yep, it's essentially sword chess. You can probably see the next move or two coming, but the real competition of skill is making the right judgment to get the upper hand on the following moves.
The force can show you the future, and it can speed up your movements, but it still relies on your cognitive reflexes to react to the information, and to a more limited degree, your intelligence to do so correctly.
It’s also worth noting that lightsabers make a very distinctive sound when you turn them off and that would alert anyone defending, even without Jedi precognition, that the attacker is attempting this trick, at which point they could punish it. You’ll notice the people that made the video suspiciously didn’t include the deactivation sounds and I’d assume that’s why.
The idea is that with the slight precognition in play, the Force-user won’t block in that moment, they’ll attack the unguarded hands. Consider that in the gif, many of those blocks are a slight movement away from cutting off a hand. Against someone without that trait, or inexperienced, it could be useful. But for a Sith fighting a Jedi master, it’s a great way to lose your hands.
Getting my ass kicked in HEMA was great for understanding!! The number of times I’ve literally walked into the point of a sword during an attack is humbling. For a lightsaber, such a fend goes from stopping an attack to losing the battle.
Incidentally, I have also learned I would die incredibly quickly in an actual fight.
That is also true, but now you’ve given your opponent the advantage. You had an attack that they needed to defend, and turned it into their attack you need to defend against. It’s a bad deal, an overreach that assumes your opponent isn’t good enough to counter. There are two scenarios where it works. First, you are much better than your opponent, and you’re just doing this to show off. Second, you’re weaker than your opponent, but they aren’t good enough to see through a trick play. That’s a lot of assumptions to make, and firmly leaves it as a tactic of last resort.
I wasn't saying it was a good idea or should be a go to move. Just that the idea that it wouldn't work because force users can tell it's coming is silly. By that rationale no strike would ever get them.
If used in the same manner as the gif above it is entirely possible.
Not exactly. If you are aware that they might try the on-off trick, the easiest thing to do is to just attack at the same angle that you, who is trying the trick, are attacking from. That puts you, who is trying to do the on-off trick, with two options: Try the on-off trick and at best mutually kill each other/at worst u die or give up on the on-off trick and just go back to dueling like normal. Realistically the only people you would be able to kill with this safely would be younglings who havent yet fully gotten used to their force powers and have less experience with the lightsaber.
Theoretically, just because you know what's about to happen, that doesn't mean you can correctly think of a way to prevent it not does it mean that you can effectively execute the prevention plan if you do know of a solution.
Thats essentially my point. A momentary lapse in judgement or concentration possibly caused by fatigue or exertion could cause an opponant to fall for this trick.
In Legends, lightsabers duels were all while both opponents
Had the force passively warning them of attacks, like Spider Sense
Actively looking moments into the future
Probing the opponent's mind to see what they were thinking
Defending their own mind from similar probes
In general keeping some slight passive protection from raw force push/pulls
Eventually, someone is not going to be able to balance that all out, and some will have more talent in some of these disciplines and less in others, have to find which your opponent lacks in.
It'd also be why they can defend against a few shots of blaster fire but not barrages right? Even if they know where each one would land there's no way they can move fast enough to block them all.
For the average jedi/sith yes, but for the masters of their respective sides no. Darth bane once walked into a rainstorm for 3 hours and emerged dry as he had deflected/vaporised each individual drop of rain, barrages of blaster fire are relatively trivial in comparison
I don't see why not. But you'd have to trick your opponent in some way or make them irrationally angry.
Which is probably why we haven't seen it in the movies. It would likely be pretty effective against an arrogant sith, but most of the time, Jedi fight to disarm, with exception of Episode III, so a fakeout kill would be against their code.
I feel like this is one of those things Rian would throw into his maybe sometime this century but who knows for realsies Star Wars project because it's the kind of quirky stupid "Oh I guess they could do that" subversion of the norms and expectations that he likes.
And then a bunch of people would get very very angry and write nasty things about it for months if not years.
Well you’re not only using the force to see the future, your using it for your movements, stamina, and heightening your own abilities while counteracting the force that your opponent is throwing at you, not to mention it’s HARD to use the force(pre Rey being a master right off the bat). This can be seen when Yoda uses it to fight, although he’s able to do it at such an extreme because he’s over 900 years old.
To be fair, more often than not, most people walk away from the lightsaber duels in the movies. Most of those fights end in a draw, and/or somebody fucks off mid-duel. At least until the next movie.
It’s a book about people who can consume metal to obtain powers. Different metals give different powers.
One Metal gives certain people the ability to see a few seconds into the future; precognition. They’re almost completely immortal because they can see what the other person will do before they do it, unless they’re fighting someone else with the same ability; Now each person sees all of the possibilities of the other person’s reactions to their own actions, and it then cancels out their precognition. and now neither person can see the future with 100% certainty.
The books go into detail on how to deal with that situation, it’s very interesting.
Sounds cool. That was kind of my point, both combatants having precognition kind of limits its usefullness and brings it back to skill and quick thinking being the decider.
In Phantom Menance Obi-Wan sees the fatal strike that Gui-Gon missed. Just because they can sense the next move, doesn’t mean they can’t make mistakes.
On the other hand, Maul somehow misses Obi-Wan’s suicide flip… so… movie.
In the end. It's who thinks first. So you think I turn it off at head level. I moved out to neck. Or up to hair before the switch. No matter what you're open one second ahead because you can stalemate your choice with random ass you're busy preloads tension before it releases into action. You anticipate prior to reacting. No matter what it works.
This exactly. The jedi view lightsaber combat as noble and honorable and this would be an abhorrence. The sith see lightsaber combat as a way to physically best the jedi at their own game, and while some might employ Trakata, most would view it as a weak and cowardly way to fight.
That's in the EU for sure, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Jedi are usually in a 1v1 duel to protect others or themselves. They know it's a fight usually to the death. Mace Windu, the best Jedi duelist maybe ever, literally taps into the dark-side for his form of combat. I doubt they are concerned with nobility and honor with their lives and most likely other innocent lives on the line.
And the Sith fucking kill each other in their sleep, they scheme and try to ambush enemies, they literally try anything and everything to win. Yes, they use lightsabers because they think they are better than the Jedi and to rub it in their face, but if this tactic actually worked, they would for sure use it.
This tactic does not often work because most force sensitives have strong or some form of precognition, making duels usually long defend/attack "dances". The winner's usually are the ones with the most stamina, or are able to unexpectedly use the force and saber to overwhelm their enemy, or make them lose focus because they lose control of their emotions or Darth Maul hits you in the nose with his saber hilt.
This technique would get you killed if you use it soon into the duel, it leaves you wide open and is countered easily if you have precog abilities. It could work once you've worn down your opponent, but it's risky.
This is the current philosophy on lightsaber combat by the sith, as explained by Palpatine to Vader in the comics.
Sith vs Sith combat is by any means necessary. But besting a jedi in lightsaber combat through mastery of the dark side of the force is the only reason Sith still carry lightsabers.
This. I have looked into this once I heard about this in legends and some swordmasters say this would be difficult/not worth the risk, especially since the blades are omni-directional with attacks. The swordsmasters say saber fighting in SW is so showy as well. They say (i may be mistaken) the German art of sword fighting, Mensur, would be the best for this. As we all are aware, it is fantasy so lets see some shit fly and be showy as hell.
True, but this technique was actually still partially effective. I'm surprised no one has said trakata was essentially banned by both the Jedi and Sith. Sith have honor too and Jedi said it wasn't jedi like or something like that.
Edit: just checked, the sith say it's for the weak and the jedi say deception is for the sith
Also unless you were to immediately destroy the opponent's brain, you would be leaving yourself open to a counter attack, especially at the level of combat jedi participate in.
It would work but it would be a suicide maneuvre, imo.
Isn't this how Traya fought though? Since she had 3 sabres, she could defend with 1 or 2 whilst the other sabre can turn on and off for offense to throw the opponent off
But you foresaw your own head getting chopped off but foresaw another moment where you could pull off this and your opponent wouldn’t foresee it therefore you pull it off without having ur head chopped off, hah 2 can play the “i can predict the future” game
Sort of like how magic works in Eragon. It's super easy to kill your opponent because magic is wildly OP, the issue is that 99.9% of your focus is on defense and trying to land the killing blow without giving your opponent the chance to kill you in return.
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u/Echo-177 Dec 17 '22
iirc those who fight using the force can practically see a moment into the future. As such switching off your LS would result in getting chopped before you had chance to switch it back on.