Saga Meaning of lightsaber colors

If you play Jedi Academy, you can also pick yellow or orange lightsabers. The Force Unleashed also has a variety of colors you can use (even a black lightsaber!).

 

I wish that Yoda and Palpatine had unique lightsaber colors. The lightsabers that they use seem too mundane for them.

 

Windu was just given purple cause he was too cool to be packing what everyone else had.

Colors do have meaning in psychology and astrology:

http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/a/colorpsych.htm

http://thestarryeye.typepad.com/newage/2009/02/is-red-the-color-of-love.html

http://www.whats-your-sign.com/color-meaning.html

 

I know.

 

I sort of use my own interpretations. Despite knowing there are EU explanations, and the obvious use of red for evil, blue/green for good, plus the fact that colour change to green in ROTJ was originally out of neccessity, to me there is some possible reocurring stuff with the use of the colours within the six film canon.

- Luke using a different colour in ROTJ can show he isn't following his father's path any more (he lost Anakin's old saber when Vader revealed he was Luke's father), he is becoming his own Master, and it kind of goes with this that he throws the saber away in defiance of the Emperor at the end of the movie.

- Yoda, Qui-Gon and (ROTJ) Luke all use green, and they are arguably the wisest of the Jedi in the six films (subjectively). Could be a coincidence.

- Anakin and Obi-Wan face each other in the only monochromatic fight in the current saga, which probably signifies their lost brotherhood.

- Obi-Wan kills Maul with Qui-Gon's green saber after regaining himself and coming back from defeat. He becomes a Jedi with this action (his own Master, no longer under Qui-Gon, and is now Qui-Gon's replacement as Anakin's mentor). Anakin kills Dooku with a contrasting blue and red (using Dooku's own saber as a kind of omen) and replaces Dooku.

- This one is definitely a bit out there, but I noticed you never see a green saber injure or kill something living in AOTC. Anakin kills the poison slugs, a lot of Geonosians,and an entire village of Tuskens with blue. Obi-Wan cuts off Zam's hand and kills the Acklay with blue. When Anakin is using green however, he only kills droids. Later he fights Dooku with green and blue, the green is destroyed, and he loses an arm with blue. Perhaps green being destroyed can represent Anakin's lost potential to ever be a true Jedi.

- Also interesting in the AOTC fights, Obi-Wan and Anakin both lose to Dooku with the same saber (Obi-Wan threw it to him), meaning Luke and Anakin are both dismebered fighting with a saber Master Obi-Wan gave to them, and Luke is dismembered in ESB fighting Vader with Anakin's own old saber

- There is a kind of TPM/ROTJ bookend with green vs red fights in both, both movies' fights climax with a Sith falling down a shaft, Obi-Wan/Luke becoming Jedi, and Qui-Gon's/Anakin's cremation.

- This doesn't really match some of my other ideas, but Grievous using blue and green dead Jedi sabers can be seen as a kind of perversion of what the Jedi stand for, a non-force user masquerading as a Jedi/Sith, coupled with Obi-Wan using a blaster to end the fight, perhaps signifying the civilised era is coming to an end.

 

gl says, "good guys blue and green. bad guys red." then he made mace's purple because sam l. asked and it would help show where he was on the battlefield. nick gillard asked for yellow but was denied. you don't see him much anyway. the jedi temple guard is the only canon example of yellow sabers since they were shown in the tcw. curiously it says... The lightsaber pikes wielded by the Temple Guards were initially intended to have green blades, but were changed mid-production to yellow. so maybe dave filoni did it without express permission from gl.




Jedi Temple Guard - Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki

personally i wouldn't mind seeing yellow and orange in the sequel films since it would show the new jedi doing things their own way.

 

Where did Nick ask for yellow? Also, Filoni mentioned on a podcast interview that he gave yellow sabers to the Temple Guards and hoped Lucas didn't notice or asked to change the colour...

 

(that's what i thought about the filoni thing.)

when nick played cin drallig he wanted cin's blade to be yellow. it's in the bts section here..

Cin Drallig - Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki

As Kit Fisto's lightsaber hilt was a personal favorite of Nick Gillard, Cin Drallig's lightsaber hilt bears a resemblance to Fisto's.[source?] Based on behind the scenes materials, the lightsaber blade was originally to be rotoscoped in yellow. However, George Lucas would only allow either blue or green as the color of any regular Jedi's lightsaber blade. With the exception of Samuel L. Jackson's violet lightsaber blade he used as Mace Windu, Lucas would go no further with other colors. With no choice, Nick Gillard chose green instead.

 

That part is requiring a source on the article. Personally, I never found any bts info that corroborates that statement from Wookieepedia.

 

I didn't mind Qui-Gon's green lightsaber because Luke could have made his saber green in honor of Qui-Gon, Qui-Gon was a maverick, and it works visually with Obi-Wan's blue saber and Maul's red saber but I hated the random blue and green on Geonosis. It degrades Luke's saber to a generic Jedi saber, the Geonosis Jedi weren't mavericks, it doesn't work visually at all and I never though of green when I thought of "Jedi Knight".

 

Why? It's supposed to be simplistic. That's why he settled on red versus blue by the start of 1977. But how it is erroneous?

Except Luke, as far as we know, didn't know about Qui-gon. Luke didn't get the full 411 on Obi-wan's life, much less who taught him beyond Yoda.

 

What does that have to do with lightsaber colors? And what matters is what actually happened, not what Luke knew about.

 

Your words.

 

darth-sinister was responding to a comment I made about the Battle of Geonosis degrading Luke's saber. What I said about Qui-Gon was a completely different point.

 

You have great insight! You caught subtle allusions, symbolism, and foreshadowings. Thank you for sharing this, it has enriched my memory of these duels and the significance of Lightsaber colors beyond EU/Legends orthodoxy.

 

Thanks for the encouragement
It's something I've thought about a fair bit, and whether intended or not it says something about the detail of these movies, there is definitely a lot going on in each frame... it counters claims that the movies are lazily or haphazardly made.

 

that's because the colors are generic. green and blue are the same thing. you find your crystal and that's the one you use but any jedi can use any saber that he finds.

The Gathering (episode) - Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki

 

I'll repost something I said in another thread, since it seems equally germane here:

As I noted earlier, the alternate beginning of ROTJ, where Vader reaches out to Luke using the Force, and Luke entrusts his newly completed lightsaber to R2-D2, was shot entirely in pickups in post-production, with stock footage taking up the slack. I believe it was actually added because Lucas wanted to explain immediately to the audience that Luke had built a new lightsaber, without resorting to Lawrence Kasdan's suggestion of an all-new lightsaber blade color.

But ultimately the problem of the blue Yuma sky blending in with Luke's blue blade forced Lucas's hand, and the saber color was changed--rendering that scene entirely unnecessary.

The thing is, the new green color spoils the simple symbolism of "blue blade = good guy, red blade = bad guy" from previous films... which is likely exactly why Kasdan liked the idea and Lucas hated it. The new color leaves Luke's ultimate allegiance open to question, and moves away from the simplistic black-and-white morality of the first film.

 

It means that there was never any special meaning to Luke's saber. His saber was no different from any other Jedi Knight.

 

the whole point of that is not knowing if luke is good or bad at the beginning of rotj.

 

Which is kinda ruined because he's there to rescue Han, which a Sith wouldn't do.

 

But when he reveals his new lightsaber for the first time, we already know his allegiance. Lucas only played the audience with Luke's allegiance on the sequence where he enters inside Jabba's palace (black robes, Force choke, etc).

P.S: Where did you find that Kasdan suggested a new colour? Is that from the Making of RotJ book?

 

I think people are slightly misunderstanding the stuff about Luke's ultimate allegiance. It's quite clear that he's still literally on the same side as everyone else, but the Vaderish aspects of his costume and - at least possibly - the ambiguous color of his lightsaber are meant to plant a seed in the audience's mind that he might wind up falling to the Dark Side.

 

Black is not customary worn by a Jedi, however Anakin Skywalker did ware black and dark brown robes. So its not a rule that a Jedi cannot sport darker clothing. I am quite glad Lucas did not get his way and other colors were introduced. Green is my favorite lightsaber color, so I am thankful the Dune Sea and the planned blue lightsaber were not compatible.

 

Yeah, it's mentioned in the quoted excerpts from the story conferences in The Making of ROTJ. They're discussing how to reveal Luke's new lightsaber and Kasdan suggests a new blade color.