Why were Luke and Vader's lightsabers similar?

Please forgive me if this has been asked or posted before - I tried searching but didn't find anything on it.

In Episode IV, why were Luke and Vader's lightsabers so similar? Obviously I know the reason as far as canon - Luke's saber was originally made by Anakin and when Anakin became Vader he made a similar saber (most distinguishing feature is probably the black rubber T track grips) but with the added black sheath.

BUT in real life 1977 when Star Wars was released at that time no one (including Lucas by all accounts) knew that Vader was originally Anakin. So there was no reason at the time to make Anakin's saber which Kenobi gave to Luke such a similar design to Vader's.

In thinking about this I went back to check ANH to see how the sabers looked. You get a gook look at Luke's when it's given to him, but you don't really see the hilt of Vader's - it just looks all black against the red blade when he fights Kenobi. But in checking the behind the scenes section on the Wookiepedia articles for both sabers, the props used in filming both had the black T track grips and were very similar except the added black parts on Vader's.

I then thought that maybe at the time they didn't plan on sabers all looking different, but Kenobi's saber in ANH was VERY different in design from Luke's and Vader's.

So was this just a coincidence? Just a small detail that happened to fit with the story once the ESB revaluation came out? Or was this a subtle hint that Lucas was dropping at the time and he really did have it planned out?


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Luke's in ROTJ actually resembles Obi Wan's, and that is briefly mentioned in the EU when Luke travels to Tattooine to construct his lightsaber.

To be honest, I never got the line that his lightsaber was alot like Anakin's/Vader's. If it was his lightsaber in ANH/ESB that'd make sense, considering it was Anakin's saber at one point, and DV's lightsaber looks like a darker version of those sabers/ AOTC's chrome saber.

I guess it just is similar in feel, or weight, or even modifications?

 

Yes, it makes sense in SW canon because both were made by Anakin/Vader so when he made his DV saber he basically made it the same way and added a couple black covers. But when SW/ANH was made, Vader wasn't Anakin yet. So there was so reason at that time to give the sabers the same design.

Here's a look at the two sabers so you can see how close they are:

Anakin/Luke's:


and Vader's:








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In the non-film explanation, both sabers are made from the same item, the hilt of a flash on al old school camera. Throw some cut up windshield wipers on for hand grips, and any saber could look similar enough.

 

True, but they specifically didn't make Kenobi's the same way. His saber in ANH looks completely different:



No grips on the side, completely different shape, etc.


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To be fair, wasn't that saber kicked down the chasm on Naboo? We'd need to see his lightsaber design in ROTS to tell.

 

No, this is his second saber. The one he used in ROTS and that Ben gave to Luke. All three of Anakin/Vader's sabers are very similar though.

From Wookiepedia, here's his first saber:



Here's his second (which was also Luke's):



And here's his saber as Vader:




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no that's the one from ROTS. the one in TPM looks completely different.

 

Anakin never had a saber in TPM, he wasn't a Jedi yet. The saber that was kicked down the chasm was Kenobi's. Anakin's first saber (pictured above) was just in AOTC. It was destroyed before he was captured by Jango Fett.


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The original lightsaber prop was made from an old press camera flashbulb. I imagine the same kind was used for both Luke and Vader's props, and Vader's was modified so they wouldn't look identical.

That doesn't explain why Ben's looks completely different though. Maybe a different model of camera was used?

 

Nice find! I knew it was made from a camera part but hadn't seen a pic. Just searched for more and found this:

As you mentioned, interesting that they used this for Luke and Vader's props in ANH but something completely different for Ben's. If one was going to be different you'd think it would be Vader's since he was a Sith.

But this ended up being a convenient, cool detail that worked with canon once it was determined that Vader was once Anakin.


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Obi-wan's ROTS and ANH saber was made from a WWI era rifle grenade, a three cell Graflex flash handle, an Armatage Shanks faucet handle, the switch plate LED of a 1974 era calculator and a balance point from a Derwent jet engine. Anakin's second Jedi saber was made from the flash attachment of a Graflex 3 cell flash unit, a flash tube attachment used on forties-era press cameras, with the ridged grip made by gluing portions of hard plastic 'T' track used for the sliding doors of display cabinets (often mistaken for wiper blades) onto the bare cylinder, and the switch plate fashioned from the LED display of a 1974 calculator (In ESB the switch plate was replaced with part of a circuit board).

Darth Vader's saber in ANH and TESB was made from the flash attachment of a British 3-cell MPP Microflash, a flash tube attachment used on forties-era press cameras, with the ridged grip made by gluing portions of hard plastic 'T' track used for the sliding doors of display cabinets (often mistaken for wiper blades) onto the bare cylinder, and the switch plate fashioned from the LED display of a 1974 calculator. In Return Of The Jedi, however the original prop was misplaced and a similar 'lookalike' was created by modifying a 3-cell Graflex Flash tube like the one used for Luke Skywalkers first lightsaber, it is believed by some to be a stunt saber used in the first two movies as the MPP Microflash was much harder to find than the Graflex or possibly even one of the original Skywalker sabers heavily modified.

Taken from Wookieepedia.

 

Just thought of a possible explanation: Annikin Skywalker may or may not have been an apprentice of Obi-Wan's as of the 1977 story, but he did 'follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade.' And Darth Vader definitely was an apprentice of Obi-Wan's, once upon a time. So maybe the sabers belonging to these two characters are either 'student' designs compared to Obi-Wan's, or are simply a design Obi-Wan liked and taught to the other two characters. ?

 

I don't think there was a backstory as to why Luke's ANH and Vader's ANH lightsabers are similar in appearance in ANH. I don't think we're meant to read to much into it... at least we weren't when ANH came out. Now in relation to the other films that came afterward, the similairities can be explained because they were built by the same character (Anakin/Vader). The props themselves were different in each film of the OT for both Luke and Vader. There are differences between each lightsaber when compared side by side. Anakin's ROTS hilt is also quite different from the one that gets handed off to Luke. Same with Vader's ROTS saber, which is never seen in the actual film. I think Luke's ROTJ saber was designed to resemble Obi-Wan's in tribute to his former teacher, but that's not mentioned in the film of course.

 

I'd go with there being no real reason - a lot of what makes lightsabers what we know and love now was all on shaky ground in 77. For example, Lucas wanted them colourless initially but had to go for a coloured outline when the colourless tests looked a bit rubbish. They were also meant to be extremely impractical to wield, though again this was later canned.

This process was basically ongoing all throughout the OT development. By the time of ROTJ the green bladed saber was only created because the initial test shots of Luke with a blue saber against the Tatooine sky were rubbish. At the time there was only ever meant to be red or blue.

I'd attribute nothing more to the fact that they both have T track grips around the base of the hilt and slanted emitters than perhaps some notion of a perceived style of the weapon itself, as opposed to trying to signify any connection between the character.

To indulge my nitpicky side:

Luke's saber in ANH and ESB was made from a Graflex 3 Cell flash attachment (though there are quite a few differences between the saber in both movies).

Darth Vader's ANH and ESB sabers were made from a Heiland MPP flash attachment (again, a few differences between the two). Vader's ROTJ saber was made from a Graflex 3 Cell flash attachment (same as Luke's ANH and ESB) and painted up to look closer to his ANH and ESB sabers.

Obi Wan's ANH saber was made from a bunch of different components all stuck together, the core of which were a lot of WW2 era British military mechanical equipment (there are bits from engines and radiators, as well as a rifle grenade).

These are the only saber props constructed from bits and bobs as opposed to being specifically machined. Every other saber you seen on screen was a specifically machined from scratch prop.

Luke uses two sabers in ROTJ - the one he uses on the sailbarge and Endor is different to the one he uses in the throne room (not canonically, but in terms of the prop they look vastly different - for quick reference you'll notice that by the time he gets to the throne room his saber has no bronze/copper on, has gained a lever on the side of the control box instead of a switch, and looks a lot more weathered). Both of these were props specifically machined for this film and not constructed from anything else.

The sabers that Obi Wan and Anakin use in ROTS were specifically machined props made to evoke the sabers in ANH, but they were not constructed in the same way as the ANH props and are otherwise different in a lot of ways.

Yoda's saber was modeled on a computer after a particular flash attachment that exists in the real world, though no physical prop was ever produced.

 

It seems you are looking for a more real world explanation then a in-universe answer. I would imagine that, just as you said that because there was no real story connecting Luke to Vader at the time of ANH, that how much the sabers looked alike or different wasn't really that important. So with that said, I would imagine the sabers were just a matter of what parts they had laying around. More than likely the parts that became Luke's and Vader's sabers were in more abundance than the parts that were available to make Obi Wans.

 

Yep. Definitely seems like a coincidence. It's just pretty cool to me because it's a very small detail that ended up working perfectly for the universe itself. Those little small details are important because sometimes they make the retcons not fit...in this case it totally worked.

What got me thinking about this was a pic from the new Star Wars Marvel comic:

Spoiler

Vader faces Luke (this is set after ANH and before ESB) and takes his saber, holds up both his saber and Lukes, about to strike, but pauses because he recognizes Luke's saber as what used to be his (Anakin's). In the pic he's holding both sabers up and you can tell they are exactly the same, minus the added black sheath.

 

anakin built both.

 

I'd say it was coincidence, but you know, that's one hell of a coincidence, and it never occurred to me after I headed down the "GL was making this up along the way, Vader and Luke's father were originally different characters etc" route. Obi-Wan's saber was very different to Luke's/Annikin's and Vader's, which were obviously constructed in much the same way, from the same device. They're not completely identical, though, so I'd go with coincidence, as existing RL objects were simply being modified for props by crew members not privy to particularly deep plot points.

Given that Luke's father and Vader weren't the same characters in the 1977, that's about the best explanation I think anyone could come up with - IIRC, Obi-Wan was often referred to as a Jedi Master here and there in supplementary materials, it might have been the case that the props department figured they'd give him something different to the others.

 

Exactly - it's one of those small details that ends up being a really nice coincidence. I hadn't seen it mentioned before. I agree with you - I don't think Lucas had this planned out at all. By all accounts it was Lawrence Kasdan who came up with the plot twist of Vader being Luke's father and that didn't happen until a later revision of the ESB script. BUT I'm surprised I haven't seen this mentioned before, in one of those threads where people are analyzing the pause that Alec Guinness took in ANH before telling Luke that Vader killed his father. Since their argument is that Alec Guinness knew the truth this coincidental detail would have supported the argument that GL knew all along.

 

Whose erroneous account was that?

I've never seen one account of that anywhere.

I have seen people who are confused and think that Kasdan wrote the script when he didn't. He was brought in after to do rewriting under supervision. He'd work on it it and then Lucas would work on that and so on.

Lucas wrote his first draft with Vader as the father and afterwards Kasdan was brought in to work on that script.

 

My understanding was that Lucas wrote the script without the plot twist, brought in Kasdan much later in the process who made changes, and that one of those late changes was the Vader being Luke's father.

Just checked the Wookiepedia article though (not that it's completely accurate) and see that Kasdan's changes were after Lucas introduced the plot twist. But my original point was just that in Lucas's original script Vader wasn't Luke's father - it was a late script change. So Lucas didn't have that planned at all three years earlier when filming ANH.


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Correct. GL wrote a treatment for ESB, which he gave to Leigh Brackett to write the first draft from. In this draft, Vader was not Luke's father - in fact, the ghost of Luke's father actually appears. It can be read here: http://starwarz.com/starkiller/the-empire-strikes-back-first-draft-by-leigh-brackett-transcript/

GL wasn't happy with the draft (Brackett actually died shortly after finishing it, FYI), so he wrote the second draft himself - and it was with this one that he turned the story on its head by introducing the twist. Lawrence Kasdan came in later and wrote the fourth and fifth drafts after various story conferences - but the Father Vader twist was already in place by then.

 

When I was a kid,I just thought lightsabers were built similar just because that's what the Jedi did. Didn't read much into it.

 

Right. Lucas felt that with Obi-wan dead, he still wanted the father angle. But rather than just the good father, he wanted a bad father.

"I wanted the father to be Darth Vader, but I also wanted a father figure. So I created Ben as the other half. You have one who is the light half and one who is the dark half...the positive and the negative. This sort of gave a twist to the whole story."

--George Lucas, Star Wars-A New Hope: The Annotated Screenplays; 1997.