ST Lightsaber Combat in the ST

This duel hurts. A lot.

 

I didn't mind it at all. They're not supposed to be fighting gracefully. Rey's just getting started with her training and she is, of course, pissed that Kylo killed Han. Kylo's in pain from getting shot by Chewie and there's a small part of him (I believe) reeling over in the horror of what he had done to his own father. They both are trying to kill the other, caught up with their own issues.

 

I never thought of it in these exact terms, but the words are spot on, IMO. It was messy and raw and that's what made it so great.

 

I love how Kylo spins his lightsaber before calling Finn "traitor". That is badass.

 

For the first time in any of the movies, the two characters dueling seemed genuinely pissed off at each other. It was pretty good.

 

obi wan was pissed at maul. anakin was pissed off all the time. luke was in esb, etc.

 

Yeah, I think there's real gravitas there. If I had to rank them, I'd still say ESB comes out on top on that front, but I think the duel in TFA is ahead of the one in ROTJ, and those three are at the top of the heap.

 

I believe it's more a case that the choreography of the duel matched the feelings of the characters. Take for example Kenobi going up against Maul, there's a moment where the intensity of the movements demonstrates his renewed intensity and determination to win, right after the shield goes off and he engages, but it gets undermined in seconds when they do their flowery Wu Shu poses, which really have no place in a life and death struggle like this. Kenobi has his game face on, but this movements aren't playing that same game. Then the awful Force push comes into play.

The Mustafar duel unfortunately has this problem as well. All the emotion and drama is relegated to their opening exchange of words before they ignite their sabres and then starts up again when they're surfing on the lava, but in the age that occurs between these two moments none of their emotions have played out in their fighting. Anakin fights Obi Wan much like he would anyone, and Kenobi fights back like he's going up against anyone. There's little sense that these are best friends. Kenobi doesn't appear to be trying to kill Anakin but doesn't appear to be avoiding it either in self-conflict. Anakin's totally wooden, with no anger or frustration creeping up on him. It's very flashy, there's an awful lot of wasted movements and neither are fighting like they mean to given where they are at. Insead, the background shifts to be more exciting and this happens every so often you'd wonder why GL is afraid to let the focus be on the characters for a few seconds.

 

Might want to read the bolded again. Two characters seemed genuinely pissed off. Not just one like in your examples.

 

I love how Kylo Ren uses the cross bar lightsaber blades to stab Finn.

 

redxavier Great analysis. I totally agree.

 

Here's a video of martial artists intercut with the medieval manuscripts that they've learned from. I used to practice all these moves. Fun stuff.

Obviously, some of these moves won't work at all with lightsabers, but most will.

 

If the Prequels are omitted, Lightsaber fighting was suppose to be Spadda de Longa (Long Sword), Spadda de Felio (Side Sword), Epee and Sabre (Rapier). The Prequels introduced Chinese sword fighting (especially floating, Crouching Jedi Hidden Dark Side), and some Kenjitsu of the Samurai (Quoi-Gon Jinn's Ataru style was very Kenjitusesque).

 

Ren was experiencing the peripatetic reversal due to not immediately receiving the promised reward of righteous might for passing his "strongest test" of using his anger at the supposed focus of his resentment and the perceived source of his own weakness.

He is clearly disturbed at the lack of empowerment this was supposed to result in. He is compelled to draw only on the self loathing he must now be feeling. But that is not enough. There is always, from different points of view, some good in someone. Whether it was because they were misled, misguided or ill prepared to assimilate their lives with whatever destiny or promise that their heritage suggests. There is always a side that would wish to undo that mistake, whether they are realistically capable of truly redeeming that mistake or not.

He tries to fortify whatever strength his self hatred gives him with projecting it, initially, on to Finn. But that tactic is flawed, since he detected Finn's inner conflict earlier in the movie, and his indecision at that time, no doubt influenced by his own internal struggle, allowed Finn to ultimately bring this situation about. He's calling himself a traitor as much as he is Finn.

When Finn is belatedly subdued, he is then faced with someone who represents the tangible potential for hope of some kind of redemption. He clearly does not possess the will to destroy Rey at this moment and instead uses whatever strength he has at that moment in apprehending her and then making a crude motion to mentor her. He could not have made a worse move at that time.

Rey's intuitive exploitation of her native strength has helped her survive up till this point. A reminder of the fundamental lesson for those who can have the force not only guide their actions, but also obey their commands, tips the battle decisively in Rey's favour.

Her initial success at getting herself out of a seemingly impossible spot is then reinforced with the even stronger righteous fury that Ren has failed to achieve from completing his "task" with Han.

Ren has nothing left to respond with on an equitable level.

Rey shows him the dark side in a way the Ren clearly could not show her.

 

Tell that Satale Shan..

 

Leading up to the film, I became aware of the film-makers' hostility to the Prequels, and seeing this duel play out on the screen before me, two individuals untrained in lightsabre combat not dying within seconds against an individual trained by Luke Skywalker and the Snoke character, was the most damning dis-respect and rejection of the idea built up in the previous six films, but more so the Prequel Trilogy, that you should undergo some sort of training in something, before you can become even vaguely useful at something, let alone own a trained warrior.

Based on what we saw of Rey's background and opportunities for learning in her beached AT-AT, a ******* 13-year old judo green belt should have been able to take her out, let alone a guy who can stop blaster bolts in mid air.

Oh, but Ren had been injured by a Wookiee bowcaster, that if it hit anyone else, they got thrown across the battlefield!

**** ***. He threw Rey into a tree trunk once. Nothing about his injury should have prevented him doing it again and again until she was out of the picture.

Finn might have had some melee training in his background, probably even the same as that riot control stormtrooper on Takodano(?), but against a trained lightsabre user, he should have been dead too.

So, tech stuff. As mentioned earlier, the prop blades looked different to what we are used to. Eg. not the rotating sticks of ANH, and not whatever was going on in the Prequels.
Lightsabre blades are not supposed to cast off any warmth, yet were sizzling snow. I know a blade melted through a bridge door in The Phantom Menace as well, and have difficulty marrying that up with the no cast-off heat idea, but I didn't write the EU or movie tie-in novelisations.

I did think Finn and Rey's strikes and parries looked logical for rank beginners, but then confusion is added later when you see the small extras clip of the two actors going through their lightsabre paces with spinney moves that would not have been out-of-place for trained jedi.

Interesting to see a lightsabre blade bounce off Kylo's face? Is there a phrik-enriched face cream that no-one has told us about?

 

If you mean the one between Kylo and Rey I think that Rey was too good compared to how how good she is in the force in general. Kylo supposedly has more training so he should have won and someone should have saved Rey. having strong women in movies isn't wrong but since Rey doesn't seem to have a lot of training she was too strong in the force and she shouldn't have been able to win over Kylo that easily.

 

She had NO training!

No training.

None, nada, *Visits an online translator for different ways to say it* ninguna (Espanol), ҳеҷ (Tajik), dim (Welsh), mancunu (Corsican?), nijedan (Serbian), gjin (Western Frisian), no training, **** all.

PS. Lazy Ewok, welcome to the Boards. Just joined today, eh?

 

Kylo had been shot in the stomach, and was bleeding considerably. This isn't a video game where he fights at 100% until he dies. He was probably at less than 50% of his strength.

 

The poor dear Force Tossed her into a tree while injured. Nothing about that injury would have prevented him from Force Throwing her too high for a standard human not to survive the fall, or repeat the 'bash into tree' move. It was his decision to, while injured, try to beat both opponents physically, when it was shown that he had skills that would mean that was unnecessary.

 

Who's to say that force push didn't take a lot out of him? He clearly struggled after that.

 

I tried to rationalise what was going on, and I specifically watched for a downturn in Kylo's physicality due to the bowcaster shot and long trek from the base in pursuit of the pair, and apart from hitting his wound, he showed no discernible ebb of strength, slowing of reflexes, moves and parries as the fight continued.

The movie writing let his character down to force through the agenda of Rey beating him, and Finn standing up to him far longer than he should have been able to.

 

You contradict yourself here. Finn standing up to Kylo for "longer than he should have been able to" is a clear example of Kylo showing a very discernible "ebb of strength, slowing of reflexes, moves and parries." Finn got a hit on Kylo because he was wounded and in a terrible mental state. He was clearly an unequivocally not at 100% during the fight.

Or are you suggesting that an "agenda" was motivating the filmmakers to give Finn that moment?

The enormous firepower of Chewie's bowcaster was obviously built up throughout the course of the film to set up Kylo's wound. If that wound was supposed to be insignificant, why build up to it? Why even make it happen?

You're seriously grasping at straws in order to justify your ill-supported interpretation of Kylo's physical state being 100%. In order to justify your interpretation of a "hidden agenda" behind Rey's annd Finn's performances.

It's pretty transparent.

 

WTF?

Oh, you only know one meaning for the word "agenda".

☺

Bless.