PT Obi-wan’s Combat Competence in the Prequels

Obi-Wan is my favorite character from the Prequels. He is well respected by the other Jedi and eventually joins the Jedi Council. However, it would appear, as shown in the movies, his combat skills leave something to be desired. I know a lot of things happen for dramatic effect (holding onto the the edge from a pit), but he seems to be the biggest recipient of this. He does very well against Anakin/Darth Vader, as he is uniquely suited for that duel because he trained Anakin, but his other duels......
- Against Darth Maul: does ok, but then gets knocked into the pit and loses his lightsaber (beginning a pattern). Does win with a cool force move, but not traditional dueling.
- Against Jango Fett: loses his lightsaber and gets knocked off platform; fails his goal of capturing Jango.
- Against Dooku 1: this one kind of ticks me off. He gets put down pretty easily by seemingly minor injuries. I mean, Luke got his hand chopped off and managed to stay up. Obi-Wan doesn’t even try to save himself or Anakin when the tower is falling.
- Against Dooku 2: gets put down pretty easily again.
- Against Grievous 1 & 2: does pretty well, but loses lightsaber and gets knocked off platform again in 2
- Against Anakin: as stated before

Thoughts? Maybe his Jedi skill strengths lean more towards other domains?

 

He is more suited for defense than Jedi like Mace and Anakin who are more aggressive in their styles.

I would give Obi-Wan the edge in the Maul fight overall. Obi-Wan is still very young and manages to defeat a Sith Lord as a Padawan. He lets his blind aggression be his downfall, but uses his strength of analyzing the situation to defeat Maul.

Obi-Wan also uses his wits to defeat and capture Zam in the bar. While Obi-Wan does fail to capture Jango, he puts up a good fight, even using hand to hand which is the first time we've seen that in Star Wars.

He also manages to disarm and slay the Acklay with ease once he gets his lightsaber.

His duels with Dooku show he is
fallable, though he at least held his own in AOTC for a little bit.

ROTS Obi-Wan redeems himself by taking down 2 MagnaGuards on the Invisible Hand and once again using his wit to crush them on Utapau.

Also, Obi-Wan disarms Grievous, a high profile Jedi killer, relatively quickly, but the fight becomes more high risk when he loses his saber. Going hand to hand with a cyborg is gonna be hard, but he does outwit Grievous. And of course, he does the same to Anakin.

So overall, his only "losses" are Jango, and both Dooku duels.

Maul, Zam, Grievous, and Anakin are all taken down using Kenobi's awareness of his environment. Plus the MagnaGuards on Invisible Hand and Utapau.

Not a terrible ratio by any means. His wit is what keeps him alive.

 

He beat two Sith Lords. Chopped one in half, left the other limbless and burning on a lava bank. And that's not even getting into what he did to poor Grievous--after losing his lightsaber.

I wouldn't want to mess with the guy.

 

I think you are being a bit too hard on Obi Wan when it comes to the fight against Jango. You have to remember that there were completely different goals at work here. Jango was interested in getting away, he didn't care how. He could take as many risks as he wanted. Obi Wan, however, needed to capture Jango alive. That means that one can use eveything he has to succeed, while the other has to hold back so that he doesn't risk the life of his opponent, because Jango being dead doesn't accomplish anything.

This is very much unlilke all the lightsaber-fights, in which the death of the opponent may not necessarily have been the ultimate goal, but was still deemed an acceptable or even likely outcome. It's the difference between a life-and-death struggle and an attempt to arrest someone. In the former your opponent definately wants to kill you, in the latter neither participant is looking for the kill, though the opponent will take it if it allows him to reach his goal of escaping.

 

Obi-Wan's secret weapon is his intelligence. In the films he's more often than not outclassed by his opponents in terms of strength and inherent skill, but he consistently defeats his opponents by outwitting them.

This is why he has such a hard time with Dooku. Whereas Maul and Anakin are both young, brash, and undisciplined, Dooku has the wisdom of long years of experience on his side despite his underlying Sith arrogance. Combined with his superior skill, this gives him a nigh-insurmountable advantage over Obi-Wan.

However, Dooku is still vulnerable to being overpowered and outclassed by a more powerful and more skilled opponent, which is why Anakin is ultimately able to defeat him in Episode III. Anakin's specific strengths give him the edge over Dooku, while his specific weaknesses put him at a disadvantage to Obi-Wan. At the same time, even though Obi-Wan's specific strengths give him the edge over Anakin, his specific weaknesses put him at a disadvantage to Dooku. This is how you get what at first glance might seem like contradictory outcomes to various match-up combinations between them.

 

Obi-Wan during the beginning of the Clone Wars was tough. However, by the end of the Clone Wars, he was one of the best swordsbeings in the Order. When comparing him to someone like Plo Koon, a character I love in TCW, Plo pretty much didn't change much during the Clone Wars, but Obi-Wan was in many battles and his skill set advanced. Obi-Wan, according to these guys, could defeat Darth Plagueis, and I agree with them.



Hell, old Ben/Obi-Wan could defeat Lucien Draay. Obi-Wan as an older man is stronger than many realize. I agree with the people who remade his fight with Vader. Even if Vader hadn't been holding back in that duel, Obi-Wan would still have been a challenge, even if he would have been overcome eventually had he not become one with the Force.



The novel Kenobi depicts Obi-Wan with massive Force powers that I am not sure I agree with him having, but it's safe to say that Obi-Wan was a match for most fighters during and after the Clone Wars. In ROTS, he destroyed MangaGuards, some of which are known to kill Jedi. If you read the ROTS novelization, his skills against General Grievous are more impressive insofar as Grievous is portrayed as being just as dangerous as he was during the Clone Wars micro-series. I mean, if Darth Vader didn't have Force powers, Grievous would have a shot at defeating him, and that says something.

 

When wounded and taken out of the game by Dooku in AoTC, remember Obi-Wan had been held captive and probably was exhausted, hungry, and thirsty - not at his best. As for fighting Jango, he was also fighting to capture while Jango was more than willing to kill Obi-Wan.

 

Obi Wan is prob. the only one other than Palpatine who could take out Vader in his prime. And only because of Vader's hubris.

 

You're right about Anakin's hubris. Then again, Anakin managed to keep his hubris in check during his second duel against Dooku. And we saw what happened. If Anakin had kept his emotions in check during his duel against Obi-Wan on Mustafar, I think the latter would have lost.

 

The fact they send Kenobi to deal with Grievous instead of Anakin, shows that how formidable Kenobi is.

Maul was a powerful and a very skilled fighter, who is trained perfectly by Sidious. Comparing Kenobi to Maul when Kenobi was only ready to become a Jedi Knight (not a Jedi Master) at the Naboo events wouldn't be fair. Maul took Qui-Gon down in lightsaber combat, Kenobi's own Jedi Master. Kenobi obviously had no chance against Maul even if he was rage amped after seeing Qui-Gon's death. He won via cheap-shotting his opponent, it was mostly because of Maul's overconfidence and due to underestimating the young Jedi, but Kenobi still showed his skills in that fight. Not a bad showing.

In Episode II, he becomes a Jedi Master and he faces with Jango. Jango Fett killed multiple Jedi Knights, we've seen it even in the movie, it was Coleman Trebor I believe. Jango is very dangerous and Kenobi still held his own and he didn't die.

Against Dooku, just like Maul, Dooku was a powerful Sith lord, and comparing Kenobi to Dooku wouldn't be fair even at that stage, since he only perfected his fighting style during the Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith where he becomes a member of the Jedi Council not only a Jedi Master. Kenobi himself said he couldn't take Dooku alone, and we can't expect from Kenobi to run away after losing Anakin in that fight, he still had to fight, although he held Dooku long enough to wake Anakin up.

The Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith where he becomes a member of the Jedi Council and he becomes far better, he has battle and lightsaber combat experiences from the war and he is determined enough to finish the war. They dueled with Dooku and they forced Dooku retreat together with Anakin. The reason why Dooku defeats Kenobi is because of him being careless about Dooku's Force abilities, he didn't lose a lightsaber duel to Dooku. He lost to Dooku's Force powers. Then he duels with General Grievous and he cuts two of Grievous' arms and uses the Force to overpower the droid. And then he fights with Anakin again, managed to hold his own which is something not even other Jedi Council members could do (except for Windu and Yoda), and then he defeats Anakin by using the territory. Obi-Wan is a very skilled and a formidable duelist.

 

Huh. I must admit that I've never been impressed by Grievous. And frankly, I think Anakin could have easily handled him. I don't think Anakin ever had an emotional connection with Grievous.

Obi-Wan was dealing with a very emotional young man at the time. And if he had that much trouble dealing with an over-emotional Anakin, I can only wonder how he would have dealt with a more controlled Anakin - the same guy who took out Dooku. Yes, Obi-Wan was a formidable duelist. I just never regarded him as the best or among the most formidable.

 

What I like in Jango-Obi Wan duel I s that is shown that the Jedi can be defeated by someone who can never touched lightsaber before. The good guys are not all powerful is something constantly shown in SW in general, at least episodes 1-6 an one of the things I like because it is out of the movie clichés. Everyone can be beaten in certain circumstances. Qui Gon was exceptional swordsman but was beaten, as was Dooku. In the duel of ROTS is Anakin who has all the advantages but is beaten by Obi Wan indeed because Obi Wan secret weapon is use the adversary's weaknesses (as The Phantom Calamari mentioned he is intelligent warrior more than strong one).

 

I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think your examples fit all that well. All of the characters you mention were beaten by extremely powerful Jedi or Sith, in other words: someone of basically equal or higher talent (or wisdom).

 

I'm not sure the talent in saber combat of Obi Wan and Anakin is equal. Anakin is the better swordsman but is beaten. Aakin beats Dooku who twice won agianst Obi Wan but then Anakin is beaten by Obi Wan.
Nor the talent of Maul and Qui Gon is equal. Qui Gon almost broke the blast doors with his his saber not to mention his obvious talent in combat but still he was beaten. Maybe this was his weakest duel but Maul was young and more let;s say eager to win. This is also a factor.

 

I think something to note with Kenobi's run-ins and loses to Dooku is the fact that Dooku was one of the Jedi's best swordsmen. He was padawan under Yoda, and studied Makashi style, something that was rare and focued on lightsaber-on-lightsaber combat. Given that, it's not unreasonable, in my opinion, that Kenobi would be unprepared to square off with that style, when it's so hard to come by, or a swordsman like Dooku. He was literally trained to take out other Jedi or Sith. Not to mention the fact that his saber style was curved, which can have an effect on predicting where a blade may go compared to a straight-hilt style where the tip follows where the hand points. The fact that Kenobi holds his own as long as he does is, to me, a testament to how adaptive he is.

As for Anakin defeating Dooku, I'd say Palpatine probably had something to do with it too, given how close he was watching his to-be apprentice through the whole fight. He even calls Dooku a necessary loss to Grevious when the general reports Dooku's death. It may not have been very clear if Palpatine had an unseen hand in the fight, but I think it's a possibility.

 

I like the way it's established that a Jedi without a lightsaber is at a severe disadvantage compared to their normal level of operation. As fun as it is to watch Mace Windu defeat an army of droids with his bare fists in the Tartakovsky series, you really need that element of vulnerability in order to make the peril faced by the heroes feel real. It's like Superman being exposed to kryptonite, or Spider-Man running out of web-fluid, or Thor losing his hammer. You need that one thing that can happen that will immediately make you go, "Oh man, he's really in trouble now." It's a great device to have at your disposal.

And notice how this is always happening to Obi-Wan. He loses his lightsaber in his duel with Maul. He loses his lightsaber in his fight with Jango. He loses his lightsaber in his fight with Grievous. And it always works to dramatically ramp up the tension. It also serves to highlight Obi-Wan's ability to improvise and scrap his way to victory. That's what makes Obi-Wan's fights some of the best in the series. They're very Indiana Jones-like.

 

Yet he is the one arguing with Anakin over loosing his Lightsaber in Ep II...Funny

 

"Besides your senses are not as attuned my young apprentice."

"And yours are?"

*cheeky smirk* "Possibly."

*loses Lightsaber*

"Not again. Anakin is gonna complain to me."

 

He’s extremely well balanced. He’s neck and neck with Luke in terms of being the franchise’s trademark hero. And I’d say Kenobi edges him. What Ewan did in the prequels was just fantastic, and the stint on Tatooine has long captured the imagination of the fanbase.

 

Actually . . . I can recall a scene from "Attack of the Clones" in which Anakin had kept his cool. During the arena fight on Geonosis, instead of fighting against the Reek, Anakin used the Force to tame the animal and ride it. This was to show that Anakin was capable of rising above his emotions when the occasion demanded it. Like I had previously said . . . Obi-Wan was really lucky during his duel against Anakin on Mustafar and he still had difficulty with defeating his former padawan. If he had that much difficulty with a volatile Anakin, can you imagine the difficulty he would have faced with a calmer Anakin?