Saga Meaning of lightsaber colors

I have often thought about what lightsaber colors mean. Here's my conclusions:

Red = anger. Red is used by the Sith, who embody anger. George Lucas has said that he used the color red to symbolize anger and aggresion.

Blue = bravery. Blue is used by the couragous Luke and the self-sacrificing Obi-Wan.

Green = wisdom. Senior Jedi tend to use green and Luke switches from blue to green as he grows wiser and Yoda uses green.

 

In-universe, the colours have no meaning (except the representation of the Jedi's connection to it). While the original colours (red and blue) can represent anger/agressiveness vs peace/tranquility, the others came out of necessity (green) and personal request (purple). I don't doubt that Qui-Gon and Yoda sharing the same colour as Luke's own lightsaber are no accident, but to my knowledge George never gave an explanation for it.

 

I am unfamiliar with this story. Why is this?

 

Luke was supposed to have a blue saber in ROTJ, but it blended in with Tatooine's blue sky too much so they changed it to green.

 

If permitted to incorporate EU/Legends, they do have great meaning.

Red -Aggression, used by the Sith, but some Jedi use variations such as Ruby and Crimson.

Purple -Used by the Sith, but some Jedi do favor it (Mace Windu and Revan).

Blue -The Color of Jedi Guardian, fraternity, to denote dedication to being a Peace Keeper.

Green -The Color of the Jedi Consular, the preferred choice of the scholar, ambassador, and Jedi who favor becoming One with the Force.

Yellow -The Color of the Jedi Sentinel. Sentinels are the police, they seek to bring justice inside and outside the order.

In the end there is no color that is off limits for a Jedi or Sith. It mostly about preference, tradition, and clarity. It is simpler if Sith use only Red, because aside from their black robes (some Jedi wear black) and the presence of the Dark Side, you know for certain they are Sith when their ignite a red lightsaber. It reminds me of how The Hundred Year's War is depicted in film and other media. English are red, and the French of blue so that people do not get confused. This was probably George Lucas' intent, to have Jedi use blue lightsabers and ware lighter color robes such as white and the Sith ware black and use red sabers.

We know that colors do have an effect on the mind and feelings. Red does make people energetic and more aggressive, as well as hungry. Blue and Green are calm colors that instill peace, which is what the Jedi are all about. Yellow is believed to elicit intellectual thought and to boost the faculties of people. So it is possible Lucas took these color studies into account.

Finally, in most legends the hero wares silver, white, or brown. The villain in contrast ware red or black or gray. It helps children and audiences track who is who by mere appearance. This has been abandoned to an extent with the advent of the Anti-Hero however.

 

I think the colours are really about choice and preference outside the Sith using Red. Red has been made to symbolise 'evil' in SW and I don't like that. Colours aren't evil.

 

Correct.



Though in this shot you can see more of the blue due to the canopy, but in other shots on the skiffs, the blue and white glow were severely diminished. Green wound up becoming visible and hence it was used.



In this shot from AOTC, you can see that Obi-wan's blade blends in with the door open behind him. This was also true when Obi-wan is standing in front of the hangar door leading out during the liberation of the pilots. Since Qui-gon was going to be fighting in the desert of Tatooine, he was given a green blade.

 

Probably why Anakin slaughtering the Tuskens was at night, and Geonosis had an orange sky.

 

Well, in the case of Geonosis, there isn't much of an issue with sunlight while in the arena. It has to be against the sky or a particularly bright like like with Obi-wan on Kamino. It would have been an issue on the parade ground where the two factions face off. You do see Obi-wan's blade briefly disappear when he's fighting Dooku in the hangar and he goes underneath the spotlight. But it's a quick shot so it wasn't that big an issue. When Luke uses his saber on Hoth, note that he's under the AT-AT which helps it remain visible. There is a bit of a struggle with the blizzard scene when Han uses it, but the darkening sky helps.

 

In behind-the-scenes terms, the lightsaber colors evolved a LOT during the production of ANH.

In the very first rough draft, everyone has red sabers, even the good guys. This idea actually made it into the Marvel comics adaptation of the final film.

Ralph McQuarrie was apparently the first to introduce the idea of different lightsaber colors. He didn't use the final film's color scheme, though. In McQuarrie's production paintings, Darth Vader has a blue saber, the ultimately unused character of Deak Starkiller (Luke's older brother) has a yellow saber, and the stormtroopers carry white sabers to match their armor.

Originally the lightsabers in ANH were meant to be realized in-camera by using glowing sticks. Pre-production tests were done to see which color looked best. (These are visible in a clip on the Blu-ray.) In these tests, lightsaber colors of red, blue, and white were all tried out. Lucas ultimately opted for the white lightsabers. The new color was perhaps taken from a short story by Edmond Hamilton, who wrote about glowing white "lightswords." (In the rough draft Lucas had just called them "laser swords.")

Note, though, that in all three tests, all the lightsabers on camera still glowed the same color. And indeed, in the original trailer for ANH, Obi-Wan and Vader duel with white blades.

When the in-camera approach to realizing the lightsaber effect failed, ILM turned to rotoscoping to save the day. At this point the idea of using differing saber blade colors to denote good-guy or bad-guy status was introduced. Blue represents the forces of good, red denotes evil. This color scheme probably comes from The Lord of the Rings, where Gandalf the Grey, with his blue-flaming sword Glamdring, battles the Balrog, which has its own red-flaming sword.

But for some reason, the tie-in writers didn't get the memo, as both Splinter of the Mind's Eye and the ESB novelization describe Vader's saber as blue, just like Luke's.

The good/evil lightsaber dichotomy was spoiled somewhat by Luke's new lightsaber in ROTJ. The Making of ROTJ book reveals that it was apparently Lawrence Kasdan who first proposed giving Luke a previously unseen lightsaber color, as a means to immediately explain to the audience that he has constructed a new blade.

Lucas apparently rejected this idea at first, but still had to tell the audience that Luke's saber was in fact new. So there ended up being some hasty shooting of additional scenes in post-production, where Luke gives R2-D2 his just-completed lightsaber. In the end, the issue with the blue glow being obscured by the Yuma sky meant Kasdan got his way after all, and the newly shot pickup footage went back to the cutting room floor.

 

^ Glamdring glowed white. Sting glowed blue.

 

I knew somebody might call me on that one. I actually knew that, but bent the truth a bit for the sake of keeping the analogy simple. I think Glamdring is actually described as glowing blue at one point in The Hobbit, though.

 

This topic has come up before - apart from the behind-the-scenes development, I don't think too much can be read into the inherent connotations of the colours themselves. Yes, you can read certain meanings in this way:

- Red = evil, bad (anger, blood, STOP)
- Blue = good (water, calm, clear sky)
- Green = good (nature, GO)

However, there's reverse associations for each colour:

- Red = good (love, passion, warmth)
- Blue = bad (cold, death, depression)
- Green = bad (envy, disease, mould)

The good and evil connotations only become specific in the films when a distinct association is made with specific characters. Red lightsabers clearly indicate evil because they're wielded by the villains, blue ones indicate good because they're used by the heroes. It could have worked just as well the other way around.

 

isn't there already a topic about this?

 

Blaster bolt colors in the OT are Red for the heroes, Green for the villains, at least when it comes to starships.

 

Can't say I ever noticed that (and is it 100% consistent?), but there you go.

Mind you, the varying colours of fleeting blaster bolts don't make the sort of lasting impact on a viewer that the iconic image of a lightsaber blade does. If there's any sort of consistency to that, I'd chalk it up to coincidence, and perhaps simply trying to keep the colours consistent for the starships, rather than the side they're on.

 

I'd sort of just assumed that

Red - Sith
Blue - Jedi, padawan or knight
Green - Jedi Master

Clone Wars blew that out of the water though.

It's not 100% consistent, some ties in the Battle of Endor fire yellow/orange lasers.



(2:51 in this)

Quite similar to the colour of the A-Wing lasers at 6:26.

 

Not if you've watched RotJ.

 

It was never stated in the OT, but Obi-Wan was generally regarded as a Jedi Master via supplementary material even before the PT came out (plus he's a Master in AOTC and ROTS anyway).

Personally, I wish they'd simply kept it as Red=Sith, Blue=Jedi all the way through (the rainbow of colours in the Geonosis battle simply didn't work), until Luke revealed his new green saber in ROTJ, representing a new era. It would also have lent even more significance to Anakin's loss of his saber in the Duel and adopting a new colour for his next one.

 

Interestingly, in the Harry Potter series (in particular, their duels in Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows pt 2), Lord Voldemort's Avada Kedavra spell is green, while Harry Potter's Expelliarmus spell is red.

 

Just in RotS.

 

I hate to say this, but Lucas' use of colors for lightsabers strikes me as ridiculous and simplistic. And perhaps erroneous.

 

Not sure if there is a meaning of the colors but new colors would be appreciated.

 

Yeah. I for one would really like to see yellow or white sabers like those in the McQuarrie production paintings.

 

What we associate as good or evil in colors is completely due to the artist. Red easily denotes evil because it was used by regimes like the Roman and Third Reich Empires. However, red was also used for the US flag, British Flag (even pre Union Jack, see the Flag of England), and for King Arthur & Sir Galahad. In Indian Culture red is reserved for the high Brahmans and for wedding dresses. In China white means death, while in Europe and the US white means purity and so on and son. It all depends on the context and how the color is used that inevitably defines if it is good or evil.