CT Did Luke bring his lightsaber onto the Death Star..

D'oh! What a brain fart. Revoke my Star Wars fan card forever.

 

No, that's too harsh. Just for the rest of your life.

 

I may be mistaken, but isn't this the bowcaster Chewie is using here, with those side things folded forward? Han had just handed it back to him after the cell block shooting started. It certainly isn't the standard stormtrooper rifle, is it?

 

It's one of these.

 

It's such a good thing we're not obsessive about these things.

 

Oh I see! My mistake. I guess I hadn't paid as much attention to the weapons in ANH as I should have! Or it could be I was influenced more by those early 1977 production stills back then.

 

As a kid back then, I want to say that nobody was confused. In the original release too, Luke's blade was whiter than Ben's, and that fit with the toys where Luke's lightsaber was yellow.

 

I'm not saying most people were confused. But I've run across people who were more than once.

 

I used to think it was clear that Ben's was older and more worn because it was flickering. Turns out this was just a side effect of the older rotoscoping and was "corrected" to a more stable core with subsequent Special Editions. I also believed Luke's lightsaber was in some kind of training mode because it was nearly colorless. This was once again dismissed as an error with subsequent corrections, but it's hardly been consistent as the more detail-oriented fans will know (there was one release that turned the blade teal-colored). Judging by the different ways fans and marketing approached what they saw on screen, I'm not surprised there's been so many misconceptions and fan theories over the years.