I've been thinking a little bit too much about Star Wars and I've got three minor complaints/observations about lightsabers.
1. The glow from the blade doesn't shine on anything. There are only two exceptions: a) digital characters like Yoda or Grievous reflect a glow from their own sabers, since as CGI renderings they're reacting to a fictitious lighting environment including the glowing saber; b) a couple of tight close-ups of Dooku fighting with Obi Wan or Anakin were done with practical "glow tube" saber props to get a glow on their faces.
2. Ewan MacGregor in particular likes to do this "baton twirl" move with his saber, where you pivot the entire saber in a wide vertical arc around your wrist. He's doing it from the very opening of Phantom Menace all the way through the end of Sith. You know what I'm talking about; the saber goes "WOM...WOM" as he pivots his wrist and the saber spins like a propeller blade. It's not really a fight move; more of a "vamp" in between blows. It looks fantastic. The only problem is that it's completely impossible with a "real" saber because the blade is made of light and doesn't weigh anything. A Star Wars lightsaber prop has a long steel stick that's balanced like a sword; a "real" lightsaber would feel like a flashlight in your hand. I understand that the blade kinetically behaves like a solid object (albeit a really sharp, hot one) but that doesn't mean it weighs anything. Oh well.
3. The discharge from a "blaster" is basically a visual amalgam of a sci-fi "ray gun" and a bullet; Lucas obviously thought ray guns were hokey and wanted something more romantic. So you get the Star Wars blaster which has recoil and makes a lot of noise (the props were made from real handguns) but you get the great animated visuals of the red bolts flying across the screen. It's so well done that it sells the Star Wars concept immediately in the first two minutes of the movie, when all those stormtroopers come in, blasting away. But here's the problem. Han Solo calls them "laser blasts" (another example of a terrestrial word ending up in Star Wars without anyone thinking about the implications, like "I'll see you in hell" -- do they really have a "hell" concept and all the attached religious beliefs? but I digress) but, like "phasers," the beam actually moves slowly enough that you can frame-by-frame and see its progress. Poetic license? No, because if the blaster discharge actually moved at lightspeed there would be no way in hell a Jedi could see it coming and move fast enough to deflect the blast with a lightsaber. Okay, maybe the Jedi is looking at the muzzle of the gun and is so good that he (or she) can anticipate where the blast will go. Or maybe they're using the force, like Luke did with "the blast shield down." But still, if someone's firing a "laser" at you, and your defense tactic is that you're planning on moving your arm fast enough to block it, it doesn't seem like it's physically possible to move that fast. Those "laser blasts" must be slow as hell.
Okay, that's quite enough of that
26 comments:
1. True dat. I can't even think of a joke response. Falls under the same logical problem umbrella of sound effects in a space battle (if you make the umbrella really big).
2. Me, I wouldn't assume that the saber part is weightless, just because fictional technology allows for some slop. The same slop makes debating it kind of pointless -- I'm reacting to the fact that it doesn't feel like a light saber would feel like a flashlight in your hand. Not just baton-twirling, but all the movements are affected by the notion of the blade having weight. Of course, this is mostly down to the reality of on-stage sabers having the steel rod in them, but unlike point #1, I'm choosing to allow narrative license to join with the behind-the-scenes explanation. Maybe Obi-Wan is just really good at twirling flashlights.
3. This one I have an actual answer for, which is that the HUGE part of a Jedi's relationship with the force is precognition, often in very short (but crucial) timeframes. Luke doesn't just see through the blast shield, he anticipates the blasts. Anakin doesn't see Zam's speeder down there, he knows where it's going to be. Assuming blaster shots are merely as fast as conventional bullets, a Jedi might be able to deflect them with his force-backed quickness, but it's knowing where the shots are going to be that imbues them with that casual sass.
Ninja + precog = Jedi.
I would have to agree that there would be some weight to them - When the sabers are clashing or when they're pushing up against one another there has to be some resistence (focused energy). Does resistence = weight or are we talking about magenetic-type resistence. Okay, perhaps that doesn't make any sense.
My biggest beef with the sabers is how or why they would work underwater.
1. Resistance doesn't equal weight. Think colliding dirigibles, colliding balloons, colliding satellites. If you put an unlit lightsaber on the edge of a table, so that the "blade end" was just encroaching the edge of the table, and then turned it on, would it tip and fall off, because now the "heavy" blade is tilting it? (I THINK NOT!!)
2. Anakin saw Zam! He saw her, said to himself, "I can see a really bad actress down there" and then told Obi Wan, "excuse me" and dove out of the car. (Why couldn't he cast someone who could talk? She's got live five lines total!)
3. When does anyone use a saber underwater?
Blaster shots are slower than bullets. You can frame by frame them; they take like three frames or a tenth of a second to cross a small room. I don't feel like doing the math but movies generally give zero frames between muzzle flash and squib going off next to Bruce Willis' head.
Damn I'm having difficulty finding and arranging pictures appropriately. Octo, could you format this better so that Jordan's 3 points are laid out in a more reader-friendly fashion?
Yeah, and make him a martini while you're at it
Who, me? I'll screw around with it, but I feel like you're the one who's put up more "caption-ish" posts.
JPX prefers wine over martinis. How about a nice pink Zinfindel?
Okay
Don't knock my cheap wine!
The point here that seems the most speculative to me is the weight of the sabers. Call it narrative license, science we don't understand, ("call it karma...") whatever, I just don't see any reason for us to conclude they don't weigh anything.
I also think the word "WOM" is so simple and classic that I'm hoping it shows up in future canonical Star Wars fiction. (e.g., in an incidental scene where a Jedi is talking to a Jedi school technician with 2 lines in the whole movie, MACE ORGANA-SOLO: And my saber is making a funny noise. TECHNICIAN: No problem, sir, we'll run a standard Wom-Capicitance Diagnostic.)
Jed, I refer you back to my previous remark. Perform the following experiment:
1) Put an (extinguished) "real" lightsaber on the edge of a table, turned off, with the top end or hilt facing out over the edge of the table.
2) Turn the lightsaber on.
3) If you're right, the lightsaber would suddenly tip over and fall off the table because of the "weight" of the blade.
But, you're probably right. It's just fantasy physics. And, anyway, Einstein proved that light has weight.
See, here we are arguing speculative physics and Jordan fixes it by introducing a practical experiment. Just let me set my lightsaber here...okay, and a quick press of the button...FUCK!! I CUT OFF MY ARM!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK!!
Who the hell is Jed?
Wait a minute, that shot from the first picture never actually took place, wtf? The film needed more of that and less Jar Jar.
More lightsaber remarks:
1) It bothers me that Yoda doesn't have a full-size lightsaber. It would make those sequences better. I thought the whole point was the literal-mindedness: Force powers are Force powers, no matter how old/small/weird you are.
2) On that note: Wouldn't it be interesting to see the Obi-Wan/Vader duel from A New Hope re-done to be more like the duels in the other 5 movies? Lucas could use the same technique he did with (old, slow) Christopher Lee: put Alec Guiness' head onto real and virtual fight doubles. Imagine that! "WHAM! WHAM! *flip flip* "You can't win, Darth...if you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." (flips over backward; WHAM WHAM WHAM! Vader bounces off the ceiling; CRASH of lightsabers etc.)
3) Jed is my friend whom I sent a link to this page.
On behalf of my reactionary friend JPX, it's good to have you on the board, Jed. Don't listen to him.
1) Yoda was afraid a normal-sized lightsaber would make others notice that he's kind of short.
2) Your idea has merit, but I've always loved the comparative stateliness of the final Darth/Ben fight.
Yeah, I see what you mean. Put that way, it's almost like Anakin is being kind to Obi Wan by playing it at his arthritic pace; he doesn't want to just kill him the way Palpatine killed those three Jedi in Sith.
I guess Obi Wan is WAY out of practice, whereas the similarly-old Count Dooku has kept himself in "good shape" as a swordsman. We know Anakin can still fight really well because we watch him duel with Luke a couple times (although those fights are nowhere near as dynamic as the prequel swordfights).
Welcome to Horrorthon, Jed! You'll discover quite a lot of glorious, nerdy things here.
Do you think the lightsabers have safety switches on them?
No but you have to unscrew the bottom and put in three D-cells
that's funny! I got my kid that "build your own lighsaber" kit and damn if it isn't fun. There are like 1000 different combinations and you can use different filters to change the color.
Yeah, it's funny until all your furniture is cut in half and smoldering. Those things should really say "10 and up" on the box.
I remember in the seventies it was just so damn frustrating that there couldn't be a "proper" lightsaber toy. We all knew it was impossible and put up with the plastic tubes and "car-antenna" extendo-lightsabers (much like kids today) but we understood that it was one of the few fantasy objects whose actual shape could not be reproduced in the real world because it was impossible.
I love how the official story is that every single Jedi makes their own saber...just because Lucas couldn't figure out any other way for Luke to have one in Jedi (since he'd dropped his on Bespin). You know they shot a scene of Luke in Ben's house making the green-bladed saber for himself and then cut it (along with the sandstorm sequence).
"You know they shot a scene of Luke in Ben's house making the green-bladed saber for himself and then cut it" Wow, really? I can't believe that even with DVD Lucas hasn't given us deleted scenes! I want to see Luke watching the Blockade Runner chase. I want to see 3PO trick Snowtroopers into breaking into that room full of Wampas. Hopefully the Blue-Ray editions will include all. I mean he must know that he'll be able to re-sell these films to us all over again if he put those scenes out. I actually have the original Han meets Jabba scene cut from ANH. It was on some old "making-of" special back in the 80s.
Yeah, me too! With that Scottish guy.
While I agree with everyone that the ANH Jabba scene is unneccesary and redundant and should be cut, I have to admire their visual cleverness in actually devising a believable way that the immobilized giant prop from Return of the Jedi could walk around on the ground and converse with a person.
I've got photos of the sandstorm sequence from the excellent John Knoll/Abrams book "Star Wars 365 Days." Maybe I'll scan them later if I feel like it
Oh totally scan those shots! I'm really interested. I'll try to do a search online. You are correct, it was the scene with at fat, Scottish guy. I actually have no problem with the Special Editions. I'm a sucker for new SW stuff and I actually really enjoyed the tweaks even when they were unnecessary. Greedo shooting first was a definite mistake, butit's been tweaked even more on the DVD so it's simultaneous (still annoying I know).
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