Is the Force necessary for lightsaber fighting?

As choreographers creating a lightsaber fight, does anyone work from the assumption the Force is required to use a lightsaber properly?

Kind of what I?m asking is whether or not you think only Jedi knights are able to use the lightsaber effectively in the SW universe, or is it possible for someone who doesn?t use the Force to fight on the same level as a Jedi knight?

 

Wow...that's a really good question.

I would say no, but a force-user would beat out a non-force user in lightsabre combat almost instantly. Non-force vs nonforce would probably be just like a normal swordfight.

~Neszis~

 

Well, remember what Obi-Wan tells Luke...the Force partially controls your actions, but also listens to commands. A Jedi/Sith would be using the force to sense ahead where laser blasts/bolts are coming from and deflect/avoid them. There are techniques, though, to using the force in Saber fights that go beyond just learning moves and knowing when a strike is going to hit, but how to sense, act, and let the force guide in certain combinations.

That's why it was important for Luke to not see the Training ball when Obi-Wan was instructing him; he had to feel and use the force for deflection/defense. I think a well trained jedi/Sith would use the Force to the fullest/max to make sure he/she doesn't get killed/deadened.

-Sam/Me

 

Like chi, or ki, or any other kind of internal energy, I think the force is just a discription for extremely good perception and self awareness - and anyone who doesn't have this kind of sense will be fodder almost instantly.

A lightsaber is a tool - a piece of technology - you don't need the force to turn it on, you won't need the force to use it - but if you don't have some sort of awareness while fighting, you won't get very far.

-Spiff

 

You need the force to get any real use out of a light saber, seeing as it's a uniquely dangerous device.

*points to bump on Jedi_Spiff's head*

Even an expert swordmaster would have difficultly with it?s ?weightlessness?, so unless you?re specifically trained to use a light saber you?re screwed in a real fight. Same as if all you handled in your life were rapiers and suddenly you?re in a katana vs naganita fight you?re dead meat.

Story-wise if you need a copout as to why Stormtrooper-X can?t use Jedi-Y?s saber you can always have it activated only with a ?force trigger?, i.e. an internal mechanism as opposed to a external button.

 

(edit) Damn, Covax beat me by a few seconds but anyway...

Yes, someone without the use of the force could activate a lightsaber and swing it around.

But no, the probably couldn't fight with it. The reason being that it would be more dangerous to them than to their opponent. As anyone with sword fighting experience will tell you the most important factor is balance. A lightsaber would have a very unusual balance since it's blade has no weight. This would result in the saber having a tendency to flip over, back towards its weilder. This means that it would require a great deal of skill to use effectively, something only possible for a Jedi/Sith.

 

Even an expert swordmaster would have difficultly with it?s ?weightlessness?, so unless you?re specifically trained to use a light saber you?re screwed in a real fight

An expert swords master can use a lightsaber prefectly. Its just he wont have the advantage of forsight cause he dont got no force! And the blade itself is no danger to him since a swordsman never touches the blade on his sword either.

A saber does have weight. How else would you be able to twirl and swing it?

you both are wrong.

its already been said somewhere that the blade of a saber has weight pushing towards the tip. try twirling just a handle. you cant right? the blade has got to have weight.

 

yikes, a saber does have weight but only in its hilt

the whole point is that it requires a lot of skill even to "twirl and swing it".

"try twirling just a handle. you cant right? the blade has got to have weight."

Yes, that's the whole point. it takes a great deal of skill to twirl just a hilt. That's why only Jedi can do it. Otherwise everyone would be carrying sabers

And no, the blade has no weight because it is made out of light, that's why its called a LIGHTsaber.

 

OMG! The blade of a saber has weight! You obviously dont know what you are talking. about. read the star wars handbook thingy. A saber blade has weight or force pushing towards the end tip.

It is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to do the perrys and spins seen in every saber fight without weight on the end. Skill or not, PHYSICALLY impossible without weight.

 

like saintheart said in Angles of a Fight thread:

AOTC was meant to have this in Dooku's "Form II/fencing" saber technique versus Obi-Wan's "Form III/kendo", and there are some illustrations of that: Dooku's thrusts rather than slices to put Obi-Wan out of the fight, and his rapier-style saber and salute to Yoda. This difference, though, seems diluted by the identical kenjutsu stances both Anakin and Dooku use in the last stages of the fight.


As you can see, these different forms of swordsmanship would be totally NOT USABLE if a saber blade at no weight.

 

OMG! I seriously doubt YOU know what you're talking about. Since the blade of a LIGHTsaber consists purely of LIGHT it cannot have weight.

"read the star wars handbook thingy"

okay, you're basing your theory on a roleplaying handbook which was probably written by some nerd who was making it up as he went along. We've already seen that the handbooks have no relevance to the actual films, just look at the differences in Boba Fett's backstory. Forget what the nerd says, read your physics book.

"It is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to do the perrys and spins seen in every saber fight without weight on the end. Skill or not, PHYSICALLY impossible without weight."

Firstly, nothing is impossible. Secondly, I urge you to pick up a prop hilt (no blade) and have a few swings. Yes, you could do those moves but it is very difficult to do so, as I have said previously.


Saber blades have no weight, end of story.

 

Forget what the nerd says, read your physics book.


you contradict yourself.

The moves in a fight are physically impossible to pull without weight on the end of your blade.

Yes you can twirl a handle. Yes you can spin a handle. But in order for a swordsman/jedi alike, you must have weight on the end of your weapon to have strength.

Swing your pen. There's no strength in that. Yeah you can pull a few moves here and there, but you cant fight an entire battle without weight on the end of your weapon. its physically impossible.

A sword with a weightless blade will be too uncontrollable.

Its like rolling a weightless bowlingball. Your not getting really far. All the strength and precision lies in the weight.

 

Lightsaber blades DO have mass. Technical ** manuals and roleplaying guides aside. Take a look at the movies. In RotJ, Vader throws his saber at Luke. Objects rotate around their center of mass. The center of mass for a lightsaber was IN THE BLADE. This means that the blade has to have mass. Like it or not, that's canon. Now feel free to use whatever Technical ** manual you'd like.

Also, someone said you can't twirl around just a handle. That's wrong too. I do it all the time. Try watching a drummer play with his drumsticks. They can do all sorts of twirls with them and they weigh next to nothing.

 

Its like rolling a weightless bowlingball. Your not getting really far

Actually, if the bowling ball was weightless, it could achieve true lightspeed. I daresay that's not getting really far.

 

ok, i meant to say a bowling ball the weight of a piece of paper. happy?

Lightsaber blades DO have mass. Technical BS manuals and roleplaying guides aside. Take a look at the movies. In RotJ, Vader throws his saber at Luke. Objects rotate around their center of mass. The center of mass for a lightsaber was IN THE BLADE. This means that the blade has to have mass. Like it or not, that's canon. Now feel free to use whatever Technical BS manual you'd like.

I rest my case! Blades have mass.

Also, look at how dookoo fights. Imagine doing all that with a weightless blade. Impossible.

 

I remember reading somewhere in some book that because of the electro magnetic field around the saber (you know, the one that would kill you in under 30 seconds if it were real)and the fact that sabers recycle into themselves causes sort of a gyroscoping effect, so sabers almost "roll" through the air. Sounds real difficult for the average user

 

your statement makes no sense. You said that a weightless blade has no strength but lightsaber fighting is not about strength. The reason you need strength in a sword fight is to overcome the inertia of the weapons but since sabers are weightless they have no inertia.

And the saber revolving around the blade is an oversight of the filmmakers. Since they acheived that effect by using a hilt with a blade attached the "stunt" blade threw off its centre of balance.

 

Oh my god, I can totally smell the geektosterone wafting from my monitor.

 

ElectromagneticField around the saber?! What sort of stupid crap is this?

Basically, it boils down to this: Most people think a lightsaber is made of light. It's not. Otherwise, there's no way it could have the effects we see in the movies. Lightsabers are created using some unknown branch of physics and have nothing to do with anything we understand now. Anything a book, or technical manual says is correct. These are all written by sci-fi authors who most often have the scientific understanding of a high school student.

So any explanation you've read is wrong. None of them can explain the effects seen in the movies. And since the movies are canon (and the junk authors come up with is not), all of those technical BS manuals are WRONG.

 

Wow... there's a real lack of EU knowledge here...

First of all, it's aluded that the Knowledge of the force has been around before Lightsabers, and that there were actually Jedi ish people that used physical swords...

More to the point, there are a number of characters in EU that use lightsabers that don't have force ability. This is why it was okay for obi-wan to draw his saber in the cantina- yes it was not a usual thing for them to see- but not impossible.

Think if ONLY jedi could use sabers at all, if obi-wan pulled that thing in a bar brawl, it wouldn't take long for word to get around to darth vader that there were jedi around crimping his cool.

I don't imagine that the lightsaber would have any heft, minus the grip/handle, besides the resistance of the air to the blade.

So it's not to say that It would not have a heft, but ir's not going to be anywhere near as hefty as say- a broadsword.

Remember, a lightsaber's blade is only two atoms wide, what you see are particles being energized (or whatever) around the blade.

To the actual post, I would say that it would be a very interesting fight, to see a skilled swordsman who has learned how to fight, versus a young jedi who relies soley on the force.

Go for it, it'd be awesome, it would be esp. cool in a fan film with a real storyline.

 

Look, the reason we're getting conflicting opinions on this topic is because we're looking at it from different perspectives.

While you guys are worrying about what it says in the sourcebooks, I'm talking looking at it from a fight choreographers point of view with regards to practicality and physical realism. If you want to stay true to whatever the canon supposedly says then by all means go ahead. But if you want a more realistic (as much as this is possible) saber fight then treat the blade as weightless for any non-force powered combatants.

 

Even if the blades of lightsabers were technically massless, they are being emitted from the hilt - and as such, a massive amount of energy (lightsabers do have energy, right?) is being projected out of the hilt itself. This would most surely cause a force along the hilt, requiring effort to counterbalance it, that was in addition to the mass of the hilt. This is known as effective mass.

The blades certianly exist, and very likely consist of some state of matter - they are also stable. As such, they will have inertia, and require momentum and energy to move. Massless may be a good approximation for a static saber blade - but who knows what happens when you move it. For example - eddy currents in a sheet of metal can have profound effects on the force required to move the object, yet it's mass doesn't change. (fun experiment if you have a superconducting magnet around).

As a side note: PwNN has more massless saber choreography than any film I'd seen before it, and can be observed in several shots, which very few people have noticed. If anyone here is qualified to say massless blade fighting, twirling, etc. is possible for not force users (and mimes), it's me.

::Looks at Covax ::

Save it for the blooper reel! There are countless people who can pull of the feets I engineered without braining themselves. They'll know what you're talking about soon - and common! That was last August. The bump is long since gone

-Spiff

 

Think if ONLY jedi could use sabers at all, if obi-wan pulled that thing in a bar brawl, it wouldn't take long for word to get around to darth vader that there were jedi around crimping his cool.

We'll find out in Ep III but I've heard that to keep the Jedi down and all memory of them erased, the Emperor banned lightsabers.

I don't imagine that the lightsaber would have any heft, minus the grip/handle, besides the resistance of the air to the blade.

You're right. They're not very hefty. Only about the weight of an aluminum rod.

So it's not to say that It would not have a heft, but ir's not going to be anywhere near as hefty as say- a broadsword.

Very true. Lightsabers are light weapons, but the blades are NOT massless.

And as far as the lack of EU knowledge, Like I already said: Authors have a lack of physics knowledge. Physics is much better at explaining the canon things observed in the films than authors are.

 

I'm talking looking at it from a fight choreographers point of view with regards to practicality and physical realism.

I still dont see how one can call a choreographer using a weightless blade practical or phisically realistic... but hey.. like you said, i guess we're looking at it from two different perspectives.

 

Han handled Luke's lightsaber fairly well. (and if you think about that sentence, it just sounds wrong). We don't know what technology is creating a lightsaber, nor do we know if it's creating a force unto itself.

Whether or not you guys come to an agreement about the mass, volume and force of a lightsaber has if it were real, there are a dozen of us who don't care and are gonna' roto glows over our golf clubs because it makes us look cool and get the chicks.

So there.