Yoda's lightsaber skills

Yoda pushes harder in every force lock that we see, controlling the fight the way he wanted to. In the novel he also disarms Sidious of his lightsaber.

 

The novelization clearly states that Yoda lost the fight with Sidious and knew he lost and could not win. His only choice was to flee and hope for another time to take down the Emperor.

The plan to do so was not fully realized until after he and Kenobi regroup with Bail on the Tantive.

 

Yoda's saber skills are annoying. They may be good enough to be as good as Mace's and he may be better than Sidious. What I don't like is the style of fighting. Especially in Attack of the Clones.

 

i could not agree more, especially the AotC fight was very bad.

i've often refered to him as "Yoda-the-hedgehog" in that film because he reminds me very much of Sega's Sonic-the -hedgehog video game.

very undignified and totally unbefitting a jedi master of such high status that fans have invented a new title for him which doesn't actually exist in any movie i've seen "jedi grand master".

his style was much better in RotS, particularly the moment he decapitates 2 clones is very well done, as is the scene infront of the temple with kenobi.

Yoda's saber style doesn't suffer till he's in a 1-1 duel and it's then that it doesn't look good, but like i said it's a lot better in RotS than AotC, it's just not good yet.

 

Well, one-on-one he faces Tyranus' Makashi style, designed for dominating one-on-one lightsabre duelling, and Sidious' Vaapad style, designed to throw the enemy off guard with sudden, disjointed, extremely aggressive maneuvers. It's not surprising that he fights differently against these two very different opponents; a Master of any one style will alway adapt their own style as far as possible to fit what he's facing off against.

 

i have no problem with what you've said though i know nothing of lightsaber styles.

I just want to know why it had to look so bad, and dare i say stupid in AotC?

They had Dooku blocking swings that weren't even close to hitting his saber and had Yoda apparently doing an excellent job of slicing the air around Tyranus to bits.

It just looked terrible.

It's not his skill i don't like it's the execution i guess. Though i think i'd prefer a different style for that duel, i'd probably like it more if i saw it better executed.

 

This is quite an interesting read on the subject...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightsaber_combat

...not sure how canon all that is, but an interesting read all the same IMO.

When you're two feet tall, you're going to have to jump a lot to hit higher targets, such as the average human head/torso. I know what you mean, though, it's easy to see the Sonic-The-Duellist stuff as comical; there were some (not ridiculing, just amused) laughs at that point in the cinema when I saw AOTC.

Beat attacks, where you use a strike to knock the weapon out of the path of an intended following or follow-on strike at your opponent's body, are a staple of fencing. Watching the duel I see a lot of Yoda's swings could well have been intended to be beat attacks; with experience as a fencer you get to know where a strike is heading and to anticipate and deal with them further away from their intended target. The more you can do this, the more you are controlling your opponent's blade.
Tyranus' style - Makashi - as choreographed in the films was deliberately made to resemble the style of a great fencing master, although with more slashing and less stabbing. Only Mace, Sidious and Maul use stabbing as part of their normal sabre styles, since a move as aggressive as a stab is reserved for their Dark Side-tinged styles. Also Christopher Lee has fenced for like 70 years, so he's actually quite handy with a foil himself and this would be a natural style for him to use; the flourishing little salute he gives Yoda is one of my favourite touches in all the lightsabre work in either trilogy.

Opinion, I guess. It's not my favourite style in the movies (Maul/Anakin/Obi being my preferred styles), but it suits the character and physical nature/restrictions of a 2-foot-tall Jedi and doesn't spoil things for me.

 

I thought Yoda was brilliant in the PT - Especially his lightsaber skills. In my opinion, he defeated Dooku - if only he dueled with a bit more aggression, then he would've dispatched him. And you say he "lost" to Palpatine? Are you referring to force powers or lightsaber skills? Force powers, yes he was defeated - lightsaber skills, no he wasn't defeated. Why do you think Palpos was so eager to use the force? He knew he was getting beat, and he became afraid - you could see it in his eyes. So overall, I enjoyed watching Yoda throughout the PT. Not once did he lose a lightsaber duel, and he matched Palpos with force powers.