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THIS is the most real lightsaber duel ever committed to film. ua-cam.com/video/jeG215-yu-k/v-deo.html It's 100% chambara and it's over in exactly 3 seconds. Watch and you'll see what I mean.
When you where talking about the blade weight I thought it was important to know that George Lucas’ vision of the lightsaber was that they had such power that it wasn’t possible to wield without both hands to keep it controlled. It’s not a realistic explanation in reality or fantasy but none the less it’s important to consider. Not many people remember the behind the scenes of a new hope but if they did I think the prequels and sequel fights would look much different
The best way to think about how a lightsaber fight would actually work is to think of them as 3 ft long laser pointers that can only be blocked by the beam of another laser pointer. If your opponent would block your strike all you need to do is flicker the blade off and back on as it would have made contact and it will be as if their sword wasn't there at all. In other words, it is basically a sword fight where parrying doesn't exist or at least that is the case if the opponent is skilled with their light saber's on and off button. It would be much more like fencing.
@@Skallagrim i watched the vid and Chiun would approve of the training methods yet a golden opportunity was missed at the end with yellow laying on instructors chest he should have cut himself in halves edit Chiun from Remo Williams
Most Jedi fighting styles were said to focus on defense because the Jedi were never supposed to be aggressors, but it’s interesting that defensive styles would be the natural choice anyway. Guess they kind of lucked into realism.
@@erinfinn2273 Actually form 1 was the most popular. It was used more than any other form because it was good at preventing blaster fire from hitting you, and almost always the first one taught to younglings.
@@MarcelJ. Yee, but form one is the one that literally every Jedi and sith knows. Also it's not that it wasn't good enough, your average Padawan can deflect blaster fire with form one, but when you're on the battlefield with 20 dudes during on you at once...
The question really remains though: how do you realistically choreograph a sword fight between opponents with a) body enhancement, b) telekinesis and c) precognition?
This is exactly why I think this isn't a "realistic" lightsaber fight and the Star Wars ones are better because they seem to actually understand the lore behind the fact that only Force users can really wield lightsabers and that with that comes a completely different way of fighting because of exactly those abilities (especially c)
The prequels are the most accurate lightsaber duels, george lucas thought about that and hence all the heightened jumps and stupid amount of clashes that are meant to give breathing room and to do the little sherlock holmes bit where he fights moriarty in his mind
@@MemeLordCthulhu So the smart thing to do is to reduce the ways you can move yourself by jumping in air and adding a spin to make things even less controllable. I guess even Jedis can be cursed with a low IQ.
@@MarcusVance Yeah, but at least with the full-contact ones you can beat your friends up with them. I have a couple of Saberforge ones... one of them cost a month's rent for me, but BOY. I'mma tell you, it was definitely worth it.
0:34 I actually think spinning, jumping attacks from Yoda make sense. I mean, first of all, his reach is so small that if he really couldn't attack from more than a single angle, which would make him laughably easy to kill. He'd be a glorified poking machine and you could block every attack with a thimble. Try sword fighting with the handle of your sword on a leash tied to your chest so that it can only move around half a foot in any direction. You'd have to compensate by moving your entire body to attack from different angles. Now consider how short his legs are and how he would be able to achieve that with any kind of speed. Next, because of square/cube laws, he is going to be able to be FAR more acrobatic than human-sized fighters. He's about the size of a small-to-medium dog, which can often jump straight up many times their own body length. Given the acrobatics human-sized force-wielders are capable of in the Star Wars universe, Yoda being able to effortlessly leap metres at a time is not unfeasible in the slightest. So for Yoda, leaping about makes him a very fast-moving target, the spinning makes his lightsaber location highly unpredictable, and allows him to feint and attack opponents from different angles. Honestly, there's not really another style I could see being effective for him.
Also, the fact that there's specifically different lightsaber fighting styles for different uses. Jedi of the prequel era primarily are trained to deal with blasters, not other lightsaber users (why would you need to when all the Sith are dead?). As such, many of them have learned both Form 1: Shii-cho (The OG jedi lightsaber style, a simple style based on disarming enemies who don't have a lightsaber) and either Form 3: Soresu (The defense form, especially designed to counter blasters) or Form 5: Djem So/Shien (A style that DOES support lightsaber combat, usually via forceful block/deflect into counter). All of these styles use a lot of wider swings, which are worse in lightsaber vs lightsaber combat as presented here. Form 2: Makashi, used by Count Dooku, is the fencing themed style that Corridor's video seems to encourage. Which makes sense, given it's the style created exclusively for fighting someone else with a lightsaber. Yoda's primary style, Ataru, is intended to utilise acrobatics to both attack and defend primarily by using the force. As you said here, he has to use this style to create unconventional openings using his speed and his force strength since his tiny reach doesn't support a more methodical fencing style (though canonically he can use all the forms).
I agree. Yoda's very physically limited, but is extremely strong with telekinetic (for lack of a better word) force powers. He's not a flesh creature swinging a hilt around, his body IS the hilt of his saber, and he swings the whole meat package around with the force. I'd still imagine there are more efficient ways to move through space than what he's doing, but it's the prequels so there's only so much we can expect.
Well the acrobatic movements aren’t the problem it’s that he jumps up to arm level to meet his opponents blade. Rather than use his size to swipe at harder to defend areas he goes to the most comfortable to defend area of the body possible
Another thing to take into account, when it comes to lightsaber combat, is that the blade will never go dull, it won’t chip, nor will it ever break or rust.
@@IsThatAProGenji fair, it probably wouldn’t make too much of a difference. However, it would be interesting to see the swordsmanship born from not having to worry about damaging the blade, or your handle.
the components of the lightsaber could probably require some kind of maintenance. wouldn't be befitting of a jedi if you couldn't extend your lightsaber cause the button got rusty in the rain.
There's also no edge; you can cut with any side of the saber, and without the need to even put any force (hah) into it. One twirl of the wrist can sashimi the other guy if it connects.
What's canon regarding the properties of lightsabers: this has changed over time. Initially, Lucas (who directed the first movie, and his comments regarding this are on record) directed the actors to treat the weapons as if they had immense momentum and were "heavy", apparently attempting the emulate the straight, stoic, deliberate kendo style of the samurai films which served as part of his inspiration from the beginning and to show physically the great "power" of the weapon. We don't know entirely how much of this may be a rewriting of history (Lucas himself is unreliable on these and other aspects) and may actually be a later justification for lack of time to properly train the actors in complex choreography, due to the pressures of the shoot schedule and limited budget. Or if it was simply the full intent all along, perhaps a mix of both. This changes over time somewhat during the second and third movie as the actors, (David Prowse and Mark Hamill) after the success of the first movie had more time for rehearsal and choreography. But regardless the basic idea remained the same, strikes were generally purposeful and made with two hands on the grip in kendo style. Things clearly flipped completely in the years afterward in Lucas's mind as seen in the prequels. He wanted to then depict (quoting Lucas, with slight paraphrasing) "fully trained Jedi in their prime". The results of this change of mind are on film as we've seen; fast, flippy, spinney high speed movements. Since then the concept of the lightsaber as weightless and with effortless cutting ability became solidified as the main canon.
Its strange to think of the sabers as completely light like holding a flashlight. It would not be possible to do the flippy spinny moves with it because there is no weight at the end of the sword. I really like the first idea. It makes it impossible for anyone to even try to wield but the jedi or their equals in their force powers. That really seems appropriate for a fantasy genre superweapon.
Part of it is that the original lightsaber props in Eps 4-6 used pretty flimsy wooden dowels for the blades, and they tended to shatter or snap when swung too hard or fast, or if they hit each other too hard. When they got (I think) aluminum rods for the prequels...they could speed up and hit _hard._ Ewan MacGregor and Ray Park routinely bent their practice sabers while practicing for their duel in Ep1, for example. Which means, side note: There is no digital speeding up of that duel. They really were moving that fast. Sorta like Ewan and Hayden then managed for their duel in Ep3. So...at least some of Lucas' original idea of lightsaber combat probably came from crappy props and he had to justify it for the actors somehow. Then he got better props and could justify faster duels as "Jedi in their prime instead of old men and cyborgs"...not an exact quote there, but close enough...
@@spoopy9689 theres some irony to your comment. You see episode 5 of season 1 of the book of boba fett came out yesterday, 8 days after you posted this and you hit the nail on the head
From what i heard and as seen in the book of boba fett light sabers do have a weight because of the lack of connection between the user and the crystal, and as the user and crystal begin to bond more and more the saber becomes lighter and lighter. From what I've seen, heard and read
In the original star wars it seems the lightsaber was just a piece of technology, impractical in the hands of anyone other than a person with Jedi reflexes.
The hands are actually a principal target in Jedi combat, not just for practical reasons, but also because it ends the fight without killing the opponent. I guess that explains why so many hands get chopped off in the movies.
That and it's a really cheap way to show impressive damage and with the level of technology can "easily" be handwaved away afterwards with a prosthesis ;)
I generally stick to the side of "there is a reason lightsabers in sw are used exclusively by people with precognitive powers, otherwise yes they would die a lot and their fighting styles wouldn't make a lot of sense", but that may not be the case in this iteration and I like what they have done with the idea.
Well they aren’t used exclusively by people with precog, in either canon or the old eu. That’s the trend but there are plenty of exceptions. Personally while it’s a fine explanation it’s good to keep in mind that these are retroactive justifications that weren’t baked into the story from the jump. So it isn’t exactly invalid to make appeals to realism as to why the duels should be different.
@@jachariah4694 but usually people that don't have the force fight differently than a Jedi or Sith would, even with a lightsaber also the hole force gives you precog was already in episode 4 with the hole blindly stoping blaster shots thing, I just think people sometimes take the star wars universe to much as sci-fi and less as SCI fantasy because you really don't have to give a fuck about normal fighting styles when you are 10 times faster and can see stuff before it happens thanks to the force
@@jachariah4694 In fact the original plan was that sabers would be COMMON weapons. Even Stormtroopers were going to have them for boarding actions because blaster fire onboard a ship would be potentially hazardous.
Only mistake was when the teacher got “killed” and his lightsaber fell on top of him fully lit but didn’t actually do anything, for all the attention to detail you would have expected them to catch that.
Yeah it's the single biggest annoying thing in the video. It's like they put that there as a like a black hole of attention to make you not think about the rest of it.
@@Pyranders they talked about it on their podcast. They noticed but it wasn’t worth the effort and money when the story still works with the mistake in.
In my headcanon, their robes are made very slightly resistant to lightsabers (mostly so they don't start burning while waiting for the regeneration machine). It's not enough to stop any deliberate pressure, but enough to temporarily resist the force/heat of the near weightless lightsaber blade for a minute or two. The flesh underneath is still burning, however.
I remember the Jedi Tenel Ka, she lost most of her forearm in a practice session with Jacen Solo. Out of pride she refused a prosthetic arm replacement and focused on training in one armed combat. Oh how I miss the expanded universe lol
If I remember right, a good chunk of that was because she saw it as her own fault because of how her lightsaber was constructed because it wasn't getting it sliced off, her lightsaber exploded. If you want more about the issues, look up the saber rakes and lightfoils from the old EU stuff...basically idiot nobles with knockoff lightsabers that even the Empire just shrugged and groaned about the morons while any Jedi just facepalms
@@empoleonz0 The failure of the sequel trilogy and the controversy of the prequel trilogy seem to state that both are necessary with cool being more important.
On playfulness vs grittiness, one of the things I really appreciated in the first Ip Man movie was how they matched the fights to the tone. The sparring sequence at the beginning, you can tell they are having so much fun. It's a game between masters who love it. Compare that to the fight in the ring, it's the same man, same style, same moves, but the intent, the emotion is completely different.
That move by the student creating space and going for the under cut was a awesome move. I've seen a lot of veteran sword fights get on the inside of a guard as well.
Lightsaber combat actually has a thing where the hands and forearms are actively targeted due to how exposed they are because you quite literally disarm the opponent by severing the hand or arm, removing their ability to hold the lightsaber.
There's a fair amount of conflicting lore on exactly how it feels to swing a light saber. Basically depends on who you ask, and about what scene. Much of the "lore" is retconned excuses as to why the scene plays out the way it does. One thing however the movies do a poor job of illustrating is how a light saber fight between force users is more mystical than it is physical. These are two, or more, people who have a degree of precognition. That's how they can block blaster bolts with a light saber. There's no way to move fast enough to react after the trigger is pulled, what they're actually doing is seeing the shot a split second before it happens and moving to block ahead of the blast. So, imagine fighting someone else with a light saber that also has that ability. That, combined with the saber being equally good at cutting from any angle, and traditional sword fighting techniques aren't going to work. The video Corridor Crew made is a good way of using such weapons with no magic powers being involved. But the acrobatics and flashy techniques used in Star Wars fights are an attempt to create so much confusion about what you're doing and where the blade is going to be that you can slip past the guard of someone who can predict your moves. It also explains how they seemingly drop their guard at bad times, they simply know what their opponent is about to do so they can wind up for a powerful slash in safety. And there's the force powers. You're not just defending or attacking with the light saber, you can throw your opponent around, grab random objects and fling it at them, increase your speed to superhuman levels, jump much higher than is physically possible, and so on. Throwing the saber is a fun twist too. While this was sometimes done with swords it has the obvious drawback of losing your weapon, at least temporarily. Not so with force users as they can simply use the force to control the light saber, guiding it's path and snapping it back into their hand at will. With two sufficiently powerful opponents they could conceivably have a light saber fight with their hands in their pockets. TLDR, in the Star Wars universe at least it's more of a space wizard fight than it is a sword fight.
THANK YOU. Again, another person is apparently a precog compared to these people trying to breakdown a lightsaber fight to be ‘more realistic.’ They aren’t in our reality so this is impossible. Lol
lightsaber blades are supposed to be weightless and really hard to use for anyone other than force users to use, let alone be good at using them. The fact that they’re weightless is supposed to make it dangerous for non force users to use them.
My favorite fight was the obi wan v Anakin fight because even with some fo the spinning techniques and odd ass movements, the combat seems more like they are trying to kill each other instead of trying killing each others blades, especially with the beginning of the fight, and in during the control room part when obi wan trips Anakin, that whole scene. The rest of the fight is flashy as fuck but it’s probably the most realistic fight in the series technique wise.
I like that they included some big attacks. I am a fencing coach, and in sabre the weapon works essentially like a lightsaber (the smallest touch is an insta-kill). Big swing attacks and long telegraphed attacks are actually very effective especially when "peppered" in amongst small quick attacks. For the defender there is an element of "taking too long to think about it" like missing a fly ball, while for the attacker they have a lot of opportunity to very subtly alter the speed and trajectory of the attack which can make a defender miss a parry by a very small margin, which is enough to hit. Anyway, great video, love your channel, love Corridor Crew. Keep it up.
Jill Bearup suggested that given everything we know about lightsabers, the most effective techniques with it would probably most closely resemble smallsword dueling. Which is interesting, but probably not as fun to watch. It seems like this duel strikes a good balance between being realistic and interesting to watch.
Jill is definitely one of the best choreography reviewers, she really knows her stuff. And she's totally right, if lightsabers truly had no weight, smallsword-y technique would be best. (The blades do essentially have weight though, according to the lore)
@@jjthe Rapiers were long bladed cut and thrust swords that were used from about the mid sixteenth through mid/late seventeenth centuries. They started off at fairly normal proportions and became gradually longer and slimmer, but then in the late period of their use people started to shorten them/slim their guards more and more until...
(Had to split the post due to an error on yt's side) the iconic proportions of the Smallsword emerged, some time in the eighteenth century I believe. So in a sense the Smallsword is a Rapier, just with a few extra decades of development and fashion behind them.
"Functional-fiction" should be a thing. Focusing on functionality in fictional settings is often ignored for just plain dumb but "cool" looking designs.
Agreed! Honestly there was a rumor of N'Sync being in the prequels and I was all for it. That was all leaping around and dancing anyways as much as the once teenage fans loved Maul and the great work of John Williams. Might as well get five dudes that know how to do that as a group, might have been unstoppable in that era of lightsabre flailing. And goes to show how much I respected the prequels....
That’s because it’s boring. I’d rather watch twirly cool looking lightsaber fights than fundamental fights rooted in reality. I don’t watch fiction for reality I watch it because it’s not reality.
@@alecthomas7408 I don't see entertainment in twirly fights, they are overdramatic and look like a circuis performance rather than a duel. I get bored with shit like Attack on Titan where characters act like performers on a trapezium because I don't want to watch someone jiggle keys in front of me like I'm some moron with an attention span of a dead hummingbird. If you want to make stunts, then do some stunts but make them have a reason. When I was watching Genocidal Organ one of my favourite moments was a sniper sequence where a guy in a building covered his eyes during a distant explosion so as to not get the dust and debris from the ceiling into his eyes. Little details like this is what gives me an immersion boner and makes me want to see more. I want immersion, not Jiggly - the key dangling clown. So no, I do not see your argument for functionality being boring, it's immersive.
There's 7 main Lightsaber forms that go chronologically as to 1 being first and 7th being newest/last. 1: Shii-cho(wide sweeping blows and submersion in the force) 2: Makashi(Literally fencing and best for 1v1 fighting) 3:Soresu(Pure defence) 4:Ataru(Acrobatics and physical incoporation) 5:Djem-So/Shien(Strength-based and based on trading parries into strikes) 6:Niman(All-around style that's also about dual-wielding/Force incorporation) 7:Juyo/Vaapad(Pure emotion/passion aggression) Also, one of the bits about Lightsabers is that blades have a field on them that disables the ability to just drag the blade down to the hilt/hands(so difficult to do that compared to general weapons)
I understand that in sword fights in films that the whole "jumping and twirling" thing tends to be a bit cheesy, but seeing what they jedi/sith are and what they can do, it seems to fit rather well, turning your back isn't as much of an issue for a wielder of the force due to general pre-cognition that force users tend to have Also, from what I understand - lightsabers are weightless for force users, but since kyber crystals are strong with the force and are actually sentient, when the bond between the force is missing, the crystal actually makes the blade heavy, as it doesn't have the synergy between the wielder and the crystal. Which is why we rarely see non force users wielding sabers without cybernetic enhancement
I didn't grow up with prequels so I'm much more into the OT style combat which has weight and is much more like the stuff in this video. They do some jumping in the original to keep it interesting, but not at the expense of weight. I'm not obsessed with realism, but the prequels are just completely out of place with their execution. And like he says in the video, there's just so much going on it doesn't mean anything and there's no sense of danger.
i dunno about that. It is true, that crystals have bond with force user. And thus Jedi and Sith must create their own lightsabers. But we also have situations, where force users using each other's lightsabers with little to no difference. And non force users not being able to use lightsabers is also doubting. As regular people wont get the chance to have lightsaber and the only one non-force users who can get a hand on lightsabers - probably killed it's owner and thus strong enough to weild it. It does make a logical theory. But, for example, Finn did weilded lightsaber without being connected to the force. Lightsabers are heavy, but not the blades, only the handle. It should weight about 1kg (due to the fact of having battery, magnetic field mechanism, focus lense and etc) which is heavier than medieval sword. But i completely agree on jumpy-twirly thingy. They one with the force, so they dont even need to see. They can fight with their eyes closed. So all these acrobatics are to confuse opponent and hide true strikes withing flashy moves
@@romanpyatibratov4361 I can name multiple non-force using characters that have used a lightsaber. I mean come on, General Grievous used fucking 4 and he wasn't a Force-User.
@@CrowYaeger person i responded to said: "you cant use lightsaber without heavy cybernetic enhancment" implying, that it is very heavy for non-force users. Grievous was cyberneticly enhanced and had enough strength to hold them. But i agree, there are moments, where non-force users holded and used lightsabers
I remember Shad did a video about lightsabers before, where he deduced that, given the properties of the weapon, the most effective style for lightsabers would be fencing.
Fencing... literally means, to fight with a sword. So which kind of "fencing" are you talking about? Saber fencing... Rapier fencing... Japanese fencing (Kendo)... Chinese fencing (Wudang Chuan), (Taijijian), (Shuangao)
@@OOTurok jesus christ its makashi (from star wars) OR in our world (since everybody cant shut up about it ) Raipier Fencing wich is named Makashi in Star Wars (wich also is a japanesse word for murder or kill , so i can stop being told this useless fact i said it here )
@@OOTurok dude, it means second lightsaber form Makashi, which was specifically designed to lightsaber dual. And yes, it's quite similar to rapier fencing
Personally for a long time I've thought lightsaber duels would be a lot more like fencing (with minimal long swipes of the sword, the sword staying mainly pointed at the opponent and most of the movement coming from the wrist) than something like longsword fighting, due to the fact that the saber's blade itself would be weightless as a pure beam of energy. I don't think you'd do these long weighty swings of the sword that they do in the movies, because there's really no point in doing so. The thing is weightless; if you want it to go in a particular direction you can just move it there instantly, you don't have to swing it to give it momentum. Not to mention, momentum in a lightsaber is semi pointless anyway, since it cuts not based on the kinetic force it impacts with, but based on the immense heat it generates. What do you guys think?
Well Lucas' original vision for lightsabers is that they were heavy. In the original trilogy this is why the moves are so purposeful, because the idea is that the blades, despite being plasma, are heavy. I don't recall the exact reason for this, I think it was something to do with the field keeping it in a blade shape. This is also in a lot of expanded universe material, the darksaber in particular is noted as being heavy several times. This was lost somewhat in the newer trilogies, but yeah, originally the lightsabers were not weightless and when they became more weightless later the tradition was to have them fighting with swipes and slashes. Plus it looks better on the big screen of course
@@alertedcoyote7892 Actually, the canon is that they were heavy because of their connection to the weapon. It is kind of like a wand in Harry Potter. You need a strong bond for it to work properly. The heavier it is, the less in tune with the Kyber Crystal within you are.
Hey dude, the first words written on the screen. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away". No one in that universe is from Earth. And if any of it was, it was not in the future. You see, George Lucas made the decision to make a Sci Fi film IN THE PAST instead of the future like most are. Fencing, doesn't exist. Longswords, doesn't exist. Plasma swords that can only be used by those properly trained in the Force, does exist. It is also canon that they have insanely fast reflexes, almost as if they are living is slow motion. The fact that it is in the past and in a galaxy no where near us should be enough to instantly go, "Yeah, fencing techniques wouldn't exist in this universe. It would be even more stupid to actually implement them." But I am going to give more proof that people using lightsabers like people use swords here on earth is insanely stupid, but also laughable. When they fight, it isn't just a fight with a deadlier sword, they are moving very fast, some say that they actually can predict their opponents moves before they even make them. If they are up close and personal with barely any options, it would be very easy to lose that fight. The only way to beat your opponent is to outsmart them or not fight another Force user.
@@projectstart5522 The premise of “this was invented before fencing therefore the principles that underline fencing don’t apply” is completely illogical. If it has similar considerations and mechanics at play then similar principles can apply. The time at which it was done has no effect on this. I also never said they should stand close to each other.
@@coops3600 What I was getting at is that they often make "mistakes" according to professional on earth sword fighters. What they don't understand is that there is a lot more going on there. "He legit just attacked his saber instead of killing him". Well, that is obviously because they can kind of telepathically tell what their next move is going to be. Obviously there is going to be differences in traditional fighting because of this. It is like in chess. You make an illogical move because you know your opponent is focusing somewhere else. You just open up your rook to their bishop but they are focusing on their knight trying to take your queen, of which you take advantage of by playing a little differently than you would an opponent you don't know. So, what I am saying is, all the "he could have killed him there, he left himself wide open" and "this is so stupid because it doesn't fit in with how I see sword fighting even though this story has nothing to do with how I see sword fighting". You know what I mean?
the force excuse only covers so much. If a real style gets X done then a fantasy style with magic (in this case the force) needs to be able to do X with its new rules to be 'realistic' in a relative sense. Star wars could be argued in some points however, its clear they didn't think about these things early on and it does show. To the average person Obi's stance in ep. 3 looks kinda dumb.
Its hollywood. Its because its energetic and entertaining. I do admit theirs a certain point where its a bit over the top. The flashiness progression from EP 1 to eP3 is noticeable
The force would change the styles and rules quite a bit, but the makers of star wars weren't exactly thinking in terms of how it might do that, they just went fully for whatever they thought might look cool zero concern for whether it's practical or if the force might make it practical. If they did you'd expect stuff like participants maybe taking a bit unusual guards with specific intentions like being ready to counter a force push or a force accelerated attack. And in a fight with precog abilities, maybe we'd be seeing stuff like participants trying to block attacks that don't come, doing strange feints, etc. What the force most certainly doesn't justify is the stuff we actually see in star wars movies with all characters doing moves that just completely expose them to hits, like spinning the blade above the head to imitate a helicopter, spinning slowly in place, massively over swinging in strikes (which makes extra little sense considering swords are supposed to be weightless), pulling the swords behind their backs, etc. Moves like that would leave you dead immediately in a real fight. And claiming it's a fight with precogs not only doesn't justify them, it makes them worse as a precog jedi or sith should be even better at sensing opportunities like that before they even happen.
@@SirConto part of the duel isn't just the precog abilities, it's fighting someone who has the same senses and is trying to hide their actions. They are hiding their actions as well as trying to figure out your next move, in this way they can perform a feint in two ways at once. Make your precog say the strike is to your left thigh while your eyes see a strike to your right shoulder, meanwhile the actual strike is to your head from the left.
It's amazing how much your talk about "ideal" lightsaber combat actually showed up in what I remember from our playground plastic lightsaber fights. Always tiny little pokes and jabs, and everyone walks away with several smacked hands.
"Death" is a bit of a blurry concept given sufficiently advanced medical technology. We used to consider a heart stopping to be death, but we have restarted hearts before. Even if someone has started to get brain damage, we may be able to get them breathing again. Perhaps the regeneration machine can even repair some "permanent" brain damage. If someone can still be brought back, are they truly "dead" yet, or are they still just "dying"? It's a bit of an arbitrary distinction.
Exactly👌 "Irreversible brain damage" is only irreversible *by the currently-available methods, it isn't necessarily the limit of what could ever be possible
Death and Life in human terms are tied, too. When death was defined as "stopped heart", life began whenever the embryo's heart started beating. Since the definition moved to loss of brain activity, the new definition for life is when the embryo's central nervous system starts working. By the new definition, we are living much earlier, and we die much later, too.
ever since i first saw "lightsabers" i have longed for this type of insight in choreography. we always used to play duels with toy lightsabers and it very quickly revealed a LOT of this stuff.
George Lucas actually told Mark Hamill to act as though the lightsaber was hard to move because of the nature of an energy blade and actually required using the Force to move it at even normal sword speed. I think this was just a plot device to prevent anyone from just picking up a lightsaber and why they were associated with force users.
I’ve never heard of that second part (requires the force to move) so illl take it with a grain of salt - the version I do know is a combination of the unique properties of sabers and the rarity of their components that prevent people from Willy nilly using them in the verse - people made replicas in Legends but even then they had to be specifically modified in some way to be useable by normal people
I don't think this is true. The explanation as to why only force users could use lightsabers was because they need to use the force to push a button while they are fighting.
Yeah, I think part of what allows for flashier/more open styles of fighting in SW is the fact that the fighters are usually force users and can take advantage of it during the duel. Like Obi-Wan's stance being the saber pulled way back and his free hand pulled on his front doing the finger thing and all.
4:00 So the Mandalorian adds to this, but from my general nerdiness, here's what I know: The light saber is connected to the user's mediclorians (Space points) so the more powerful the user, the easier the weapon is to use. The crystal is also a living thing; when a Sith "bleeds" a crystal to make it red, it is semi-literal. So you also need to attune to the blade. If you don't, it gets heavy and applies forces the user didn't apply. The idea that it has no weight is ridiculous, this is space fantasy, Starwars is not Sci-fi. The blade not only has weight, but its weight changes with momentum and will. Take The Emperor, he handles blades like they are weightless but can apply tons of force regardless. (Go look up the fight between him and Maul) Not only do the sabers attract, but they attract other things as well. If you try to do these short movements, you're just going to struggle to get the blade to the opponent. The blades will lose momentum from being so close. Think a magnet in a copper pipe. Big swings generate force and emphasize the will of the user. Obviously this is space magic, but it does make you wonder, Wouldn't a beskar blade not have these problems and make killing jedi pretty easy? Yes. Why make the DarkSaber? Guess it's got special stuff that helps fighters in combat. For instance, maybe it detects the mediclorians coming from the saber, telling the user of the DarkSaber what moves the Jedi intends, equaling the spidey senses Jedi have.
In respects to dancing, I was told early on in my sword training (going back nearly 30 years now), that the best swordspeople were those who danced. A good swordsperson was good dancer, but a good dancer was an excellent swordsperson. Distance, timing, spacial awareness and fitness.
I can attest to this, I have studied a few masters (DiGrassi and Aggrippa) in my fencing career and had a duel with a trained dancer that was one of the most amazing and fun fights I've ever had. We were just fighting for fun off to the side of a common area. We didn't realize it while fighting, but we were apparently drawing a crowd. By the time we finished and looked around, we were in an enclosed ring of cheering spectators. So much fun, I'll never forget that.
"Best" swordsman is a sociopath, fencing/hema/kendo is just pretend sword fighting. Mike Tyson said it best Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, and until you get punched by Mike Tyson you can only guess what a realistic punch by Tyson would be.
Skall the reason why there are still "heavy" attacks/ telegraphed attacks even though you just need to tap the opponent to kill them, is so that with the force you're generating with that heavy attack would be greater and can throw the enemy's lightsaber aside giving you a chance for a finishing tap. It's almost like parrying but offensively, because essentially you're just trying to push the enemy's saber aside
Adding to this, practically all people using a lightsaber are at or beyond a threshold of force sensitivity that gives them very minor precognition. This usually manifests as unnaturally quick reflexes, which can make a standard lightsaber duel, using common forms, a long battle of stamina. Knowing more techniques Jedi call "forms" can give you the edge by providing more options to overwhelm or open up an opponent's defense, which was what made Mace Windu so dangerous. But without a significant technical advantage, you can leverage a strength advantage by batting aside attacks, as OP stated, or striking hard into blocks to tire or even injure the sword arm of the defender - something you see Darth Vader do. Hell, you could even knock the opponent's saber into their own body to score an injury that way.
@@ctrlaltdebug no that's not what I'm talking about. So okay picture this. You're holding a block right, like let's say an obi wan block. You won't exactly be able to get through it unless you knock the blade aside. And in order to knock the blade aside you need a good amount of force because jedi are also super strong because of the force. So you need that swing as strong as possible
@@GreatCanadianGuy yes exactly my point. Vader's style is literally like using a mace whenever the opponent blocks. He literally "guard breaks" it by bashing it repeatedly lol😂
i'd like skall to utterly rip apart Syrio forel and the "water dancing" stance that he,Arya and that one gladiator use in game of thrones. because it's utter bullshit in how it's seen as "the best sword stance" and technique out there when in a real fight it would be useless. also there is a reason why Obi-wan lasted as long as he did in the story of star wars because his fighting style is form 3 Soresu which is a highly defensive stance that is stated to be near unbreakable if mastered. whereas the likes of others like Anakin or Mace Windu used more offensive stances which left them more open to being wounded and losing limbs.
If I remember correctly, Anakin is basically using confidence and instinctive premonition to outpace opponents. The fights he loses are largely moments of shit judgment throwing off his whole game. Obi-wan starts more balanced as far as offence and defense but his force abilities are more in feeling out the universe around him, so the less aggressive he is the more poised to receive attacks he is.
@@kingkilburn Yeah I wanted to point that out in the specific case of Star Wars, we know that the Force allows its users to foresee the near future, giving them lightning-fast reflexes and anticipation. I guess that would interestingly impact the fighting style and techniques. It even gives a bit of justification to terribly uncautious moves like spinning, because when a Jedi/Sith spins, they know what's gonna happen behind them, so it's not as dangerous as it would be for the rest of us (but still).
Mind games: i like how you bring that up. Thats how i see lightsaber fights in the movies to explain all the flashy hollywood choreography. When you think about a lightsaber duel you gotta remember 2 things, these people have trained with his weapon their majority of thier life, and that all jedi/sith/dark jedi have a some level of precognition. So when you see mistakes in sword fighting i see mind games where it is more of a dance. The duelist fight how they fight because they are trying to create openings or initiate a response from a person who can sorta see into the future, so really youre dueling with the intent of misleading or putting your opponent in a inopportune situation. Its as much a battle of the mind as it is physical.
Yeah this is how I saw Anakin vs Obi Wans fight. When there in that control room before they force push eachother they were just standing there trying to syke eachother out and create an opening. Or rather it was Obi Wan on defense but was one step ahead of anakin and every strike anakin couldve done would've been blocked so he held back and swung around his Saber looking for the opening.
@@Skallagrim I don’t have any experience in HEMA so I wouldn’t be able to notice and recognize the HEMA techniques they used. Anyway nice vid. I was waiting for one of the sword channels to make a video about Corridor’s Duel to the Death. Would you be interested in looking at the fights from Dune? I really love the shield combat in the Dune universe and I think it’d make for a cool video if you analyzed them.
@@Skallagrim the move at 6:56 is a lot like the move at 3:47 in this video ua-cam.com/video/VPrlPuor6v0/v-deo.html (although this one is more of a thrust to the hand)
From my understanding of lightsabers, the blades don't exactly have significant weight, but they do have some properties that complicate movement. Firstly, they have some turbulence due to how they work, basically having the energy go out and come back in (granted, this may not be cannon anymore; not sure how Disney changed that stuff). Secondly, as you mentioned, the can pull towards each other, similar to magnets. It's not going to bounce off, and can affect close passes between blades. It doesn't stop sliding, but it does affect things. Finally, depending on what is cannon or not, lightsabers can also require a force-sensitive to keep the blade focused, though again, probably not cannon anymore thanks to Disney.
Disney axing the Extended Universe really throws up in the air most of the lightsaber explanations and details. Most of what we know about the non grounded stuff is from the EU (as in how lightsabers work and how the Force interacts with the universe), and that's all "whelp, not canon!".
It's all still canon. They talked about this stuff in Rebels wich was the first Disney star wars themed media. The need of a Force sensitive user I belive applies only to proto-sabers as even millenia old lightsabers like the Dark Saber have been seen used by non Force sensitive ppl and work perfectly even before Disney took over.
3:55 The canoninity of the gyroscopic effect is mentioned in Rebels, once when Kanan is teaching Ezra the basics. The Old Republic era also fleshes out the 7 lightsaber forms and at some point also explains that many of the traditional movements in them take the gyroscopic effect into account. Technically this is the true canon, since Lucasfilm named a fair number of Old Republic media as canon in preparation for the debut of the High Republic era, iirc including several sources that mention the forms. It's my understanding that the gyroscopic effects comes from the magnetic field that's used to contain the plasma beam. It essentially wants to stay in the same place in space, and when that resistance is overcome and it begins moving, it doesn't want to change direction. Basically the magnetic forces substitute for mass. That containment field is also what causes the binding effect.
I can attest how dangerous swords can be for an unprotected hand. When I was a kid I made a short sword out of a volkswagen "hippie van" amortization steel sheet. It is a piece of springy steel shaped just like a sword blade. I've been told it serves as a part of amortization of the van. So I sharpened it and attached a plastic handle to it. One day my brother suddenly threw a basketball at me and I tried to block it with the sword, but I held it loosely in my hand. It got knock out of my hand, did a circle in the air just above my hand and sliced at my finger on the way down. The blade wasn't perfect. It couldn't cut very well but it still cut my skin to the bone, about 3-4 cm lengthwise. My finger is perfectly fine now, I just have a scar, but if the angle was different it could have cut my tendon. I don't know how well they heal. My point is, in a fight with a properly sharpened blade, if you get deliberately hit on an unprotected hand or a finger it will do much more damage than a simple cut
As a veteran SCA light weapons fighter I can totally attest to this. We would spend entire practice sessions just working on the hand pick. Nailing the hand is beyond useful.
I could see a few scenarios where a telegraphed, "heavy" attack could make some sense with lightsabres still. If your opponent appears to have a defense with poor structure, or launches a hesitant attack, the extra momentum might let you displace their blade enough to blow through and either score a hit or set yourself up for a followup, similar to a Zornhau from Zornhut. Doubly so since just pushing your opponent's own weapon back against their body would also be plenty effective. Of course, it'd be rather risky, particularly against an attentive, skilled opponent.
@@AlitaGunm99 your energy sword would have very little momentum but theirs would also have very little inertia. At that point it comes down to arm strength which a heavy overhead would definitely be strong enough to overpower another person's elbows/wrists. Like he said though still incredibly risky but if you are going against an utter noob it has a very good chance of working.
That's how Anakin beat Dooku in episode 3, he used the rage in him combined with the power of his prosthetic hand to bash his way through the older Dooku.
If you watch that clip, it's right after he got his defense broken and has his hands up to avoid being cut, so coming back down froma high position was a somewhat reasonable conclusion.
IIRC it was mentioned sometime that the field containing/generated by the lightsaber also generated a repulsive effect that had to be powered through (Which is also how they deflect blaster bolts). Not to mention the rapidly expanding gasses of vaporized material also pushing against the blade
In terms of the weight of a lightsaber i think Matt Easton addressed that in one of his video as well as the magnetic force when two lightsabers collide which almost replicate the bite when 2 sharp edges of a sword meet. A beautiful well done video
The thing I like about Star Wars lightsaber duels is that even though it is unrealistic, it at least kept consistent down at a character level. Characters stick to their combat styles. Well, at least until the sequels.
Lightsaver duels contain a lot of twirling for an in universe reason. Force users can see glimpses into the future and sense what's to come. Twirling the lightsaber would blind this foresight and distract the opponent (because all they would see would be flashes/blurs of light).
I recall in the books that the lightsabers have a "low power" setting, where the touch isn't deadly, but can still cause first and second, even third degree burns if applied for long enough. I'm surprised the ones who made the video missed that little detail. Also, "plasma" again...I remember when it was a "high-energy focused phased particle beam". Oy...
That's basically plasma. High energy particle beams. That's why blasters are plasma instead of laser because it's made using charged Tybanna Gas not light.
Also, I guess the idea within the story is that the very best training occurs when mastering the fear of death or serious injury and pain, which a low-powered blade wouldn't convey. Kind of how say 'knife defense' or many Traditional Martial Arts fall apart in real life situations, after sparring was done in controlled circumstances previously. Might be wrong though!
To play Devil's advocate, apparently in Star Wars the Force is really what guides the Jedi and Sith, and the styles are more of a meditative dance in allowing the Force to flow better through movement familiarity and muscle memory. Though that's just the in lore reason. Though not going to lie, if I had a mystical power guiding my crazy movements, I'd rely on it for shock value, especially against the Mandalorians who would definitely be masters of blade combat since they fought the Jedi for bloody millennias.
I'll ruin it and say lightwhip. Sure you can talk about pikes and rope darts, but I think cracking a lightwhip would be very explosive and clear the field of battle one way or another. Sure you don't get the luxury of mistakes, but historically speaking surviving mistakes is part of what built warriors...
@@howHumam lightpike. Its just one HUGE lightsaber, like 3/4 meter lightsaber. If the blade is weigthless, just swing that shit around and rip people in half lol
Theoretically, with lightsabers, going for a high force (strength not magic) swing would still be a thing. It wouldn't be about damaging the opponent, but instead about trying to push the opponent's weapon to some place you want it. I could see it working, in some circumstances. However, it would be much harder to pull off if you consider that generally both characters would be highly trained, and both would know about it beforehand. If you can do it quickly, which you obviously would, the opponent may not have time to block it with force significant enough to prevent you from controlling their blade position, but if you aren't quick enough the opponent could meet your blade with equal, or greater force, or simply move away from the strike, negating the point of the move. I really like theory crafting about lightsabers. The one thing you can never completely account for, or test with custom sabers, is the magic aspect of a lightsaber fight. According to lore, almost every movement in a lightsaber dual is augmented in some way by the force. I think Lucas went with the flashy duals in the PT because he was just thinking "Jedi use magic to be fast, so everything needs to be as fast as possible", Realistically, you probably would have a hard time seeing, in real time, what was happening. Similar to those sport fencing saber matches (electric tag), where they need the replay cameras because the blades are too fast and tiny to see.
3:55 Die-hard fan here, I'm not sure what's canon either. In Legends there's a lot of contradicting information, and in (Disney-)Canon there's not that much information at all. Sometimes it's the Force that holds the plasma in place, sometimes it's a magnetic field, sometimes it's not made of plasma at all, but "pure energy", whatever that is. I even remember reading that the core is solid once (might have been in the Darth Bane trilogy). Which kinda makes sense, because whenever a lightsaber hits something it can't cut, it behaves like a solid rod, not like plasma. TL;DR: Star Wars itself doesn't know how lightsabers work. That being said, everyone seems to agree that the blade is (nearly) weightless, though I haven't heard of the gyroscopic effect.
The contradictions don't end there: Some sources claim that the length of any lightsaber blade can easily be adjusted, but it never comes up in 99% of fight scenes. According to the Thrawn trilogy, lightsabers have infinite energy, but in other books, they have to be recharged every few years. Usually, lightsabers require the Force to be created, but then there's lightfoils, which are used in duels by the nobility on some random planet and can explicitly be constructed by non-Force wielders. Overall, Star Wars lore is kind of a mess.
Star Wars does know how lightsabers work. Here's dialogue from Star Wars Rebels, written by Dave Filoni, the apprentice of George Lucas: "It's heavier than I thought." "Energy constantly flows through the crystal. You're not fighting with a simple blade so much as you are directing a current of power. Your thoughts, your actions, they become energy, they flow through the crystal as well and become part of the blade." [Later...] "The blade feels lighter!" "You're connecting with it. It's becoming a part of you." So lightsabers start out heavy, but become lighter as the user spiritually connects with the kyber crystal. The episode also says at one point "The blades will be drawn to each other." explaining the binds we see in SW media.
Not quite at least according to Kanaan while training Sabine in the use of the Dark Saber. It is more the flow of energy through the crystal that imparts the 'Weight' in an ignited lightsaber. I have a several pound large pill bottle of lead that is conveniently able to be held like a lightsaber's hilt that I can move it pretty fast (Not as fast as a lighter weight, but still...) and add a weightless blade to it...Super fast blade. So unless Star Wars has wonkier physics than it already has, a heavy hilt and weightless blade isn't as big an issue as one might think.Also if you are going to carry a lightsaber on your belt all the time, you want that hilt as light as it can reasonably be.
9:52 if your brain isn't actually damaged, it takes a while to be actually braindead (electrical signals within the brain can be measured up to 7 minutes after the body's shutdown, e.g. multiple organ failure). Being braindead is a condition from which you cannot recover from. That's where cpr comes in. You do the job the injured body cannot to keep the brain *alive*. If you can patch the body and can start it up again before the brain is harmed (few minutes margin without cpr, much longer with) then this short film is very plausible
I would love to see an analysis of an official lightsaber tournament match where the two combatant use form 2. Of all styles, form 2 is I think the most accurate to fencing and standard swordfighting.
That would make sense, seeing as it is supposed to be the dedicated dueling style. Every other style has adaptations for dealing with multiple assailants and enemies at range, where Form II is totally specialised for 1-on-1 melee duels.
Given form 2 is basically Christoper drawing on his fencing experience? It makes sense really. It’s precisely the same reason he’s a Count, it’s more or less a on nose reference to playing Dracula. Star Wars really loves the rule of cool. XDDD
As far as intensity to damage, many lightsabers have a dial for that (true jedi would have it low to avoid killing). Also, in ESB when Luke nails Vader in the shoulder, it's not beskar (also remember how much effort it took Qui-Gon to cut the door) so regular armour still is a game changer in regards to power.
Vader's shoulder pauldron and the trade federation blast doors are both made of (different) lightsaber-resistant metals. It's not as good as beskar, but I wouldn't call it regular armor. It's likely more akin to the phrik alloy that Magnaguards' staff are made with.
The video itself is both stylized and realistic, it’s fantastical yet still plausible given the advanced technology. This is exactly what I want to see in actual Star Wars
In the now non canon EU they had lightsaber training with "stun gun" type swords, and most memorable, in one instance with a non mechanical sword coated with a poison ivy-like substance that caused paralysis to imitate the effect of a lightsaber wound. The key feature here is these training used weapons with an extended shaft, as opposed to just a handle. That to me suggests the real lightsabers would handle like a sword and not feel as though the "blade" was weightless.
Well with "real" lightsaber combat you'd never, ever use two hands. Reach and speed become the most important factor with power being totally irrelevant. I think real lightsaber combat would look goofy, your arm extended as far as possible and just using wrist movement. Try it with like a fishing pole or something and the rule is all you need to do is touch the other person with it, you'll quickly come to the point where you're almost in a permanent lunging forward stance and the first one to pull their "lightsaber" out of this position is going to get touched.
But you have to take into consideration, that even if the blades themselfes are weightless, they still act like levers and transfer then energy from the impact to the wielder. And a powerful strike against the blade may not result in a wound, but it can send your own blade flying, if your grip is to weak, or if your stance is not good enough to redirect the impact energy. And in Star Wars you often have physically really strong opponents, like f.e. Vader, or General Grievous, who can punch a serious dent in the steel hull of a starfighter. If you want to block a hit that comes with a similar stenght like Grievous punch, then you better hold your lightsaber really tight ;)
As a lightsaber fencer myself, I will tell you that if you leave your arm fully extended at all times using only wrist movements 2 things will happen. 1. Your arm will quickly tire, leaving you in a bad position, and 2. Your arm out there becomes a target. I’ve found the best solution is to keep your arm bent, blade toward your opponent and engage with your whole arm, not just the wrist.
I think it depends on the weight and inertia of the lightsaber. In both this fight and Star Wars, it looks like the lightsabers behave like Kendo sticks in terms of their weight and momentum. They can't move as fast as an empty hand and a full speed strike will come with some inertia, so you therefore have stick fighting except you can't be touched. If the lightsabers were so light they moved as fast as an empty hand... actually I don't know how that would work. It would probably develop a different style as you mentioned. It wouldn't quite be Olympic foil fencing, because lightsaber beams don't bend and being touched 0.1 seconds after you touched the opponent would still be bad. I imagine it would be battling for better leverage and geometry over the opponent whenever you seek contact, but we don't have a way to try it with current technology... We can't make a stick that's so light that it moves as fast as an empty hand but also strong enough that it won't bend or break at all if two humans swing them like baseball bats at each other.
I'm not sure that power would become "totally irrelevant" - when trying to block, push or knock aside your opponent's blade, that extra leverage would still matter. Not to mention that even though the blade is weightless, the hilt isn't and might be heavy. Final note, with all those sparks, it'd seem some energy gets released whenever the swords clash, which might make it hard to keep the sword from getting flung too far to the side whenever it clashes.
Would be interested to see your take on the duel from the "Deceived" trailer for The Old Republic, there's an interesting exchange involving a pommel strike and a pirouette, its pretty short so I'm not sure if you'd get a whole video out of it, but it's frenetic pacing and pretty raw use of force powers makes it one of my favorites despite being cgi.
Awesome video! I loved seeing the breakdown of the minute details! I remember reading how most of the Jedi in the prequel era were trained in a style designed to deflect blaster fire (more of those spinning styles), not 1-on-1 saber fights, since the sith were supposed to be gone. That would explain why Sidious was able to cut down multiple Jedi so quickly. Great content! I'd love to see a future collab with corridor crew on a second lightsaber video!
Lightsabers are guided by your connection to the blade. In simple casual-fan terms, it needs lots of discipline to wield properly, because the lore of lightsabers is that they will feel “heavier” or won’t move well with you if you aren’t “connected” to it. And the “connection” is more of a focused mindset. So if you are a lightsaber newbie, even the blade will feel like it has weight to it. If you have that connection, through the force, you move in harmony with the blade and it no longer fights you, essentially feeling weightless.
The crystal is the heart of the blade. The heart is the crystal of the Jedi. The Jedi is the crystal of the force. The force is the blade of the heart. -Luminara Unduli (Jedi Master)
Also you don’t need to be a force user, like a Jedi or Sith, in order to have a force connection with your lightsaber. All things living and non living are connected to the force. So it becomes more of a respect and discipline for the lightsaber. There have been non force users that can proficiently use lightsabers in lore.
Another thought about lightsabers is that they are massively heavy when in use because insane amounts of energy are involved. Like power tools, they might have weight but turn a circular saw on and swing it around. It's not the same thing as when it's off, and that's something most critics totally miss. Tools in operation are nothing like the sum of their components, it's like judging an ax by it's handle, sure it's useful but nothing like a whole ax...
Thats not why moving a circular saw when its on feels different. Lmfao. Has nothing to do with “power” and everything to do with a rotating mass. Conservation of angular momentum, gyroscopic precession etc are at play. A lightsaber has no large spinning masses so would not have these same effects.
Question/thought provoking statement: could the twirling and spinning of the lightsaber itself effect the fight mentally? It is a source of fairly bright light and that spinning action could be extremely distracting and disorienting whereas a normal bladed weapon doesn't have this effect.
to understand what a lightsaber would feel like in the hand, imagine holding a glass blowers torch while channeling a bunch of high voltage from a stun-gun circuit into the flame (this is actually possible, if the flame in question is electrically conductive, which can be achieved in a butane flame simply by reacting it with a carbon-bearing crystal, creating dicyanoacetylene). because that's all a lightsaber really needs to be; a laminar flow torch of an electrically conductive flame, which then has voltage pumped into it. once the flame is electrified, it can be manipulated magnetically to achieve the traditional lightsaber, using a miniature helicon coupler. that's it. that's how you make one. spread havoc, my children.
I believe the way the lightsabers work is that the force makes the blade feel heavy to the user. That is also shown in the mandalorian, where the blade gets heavier as he continues fighting
the ultimate move with a lightsaber would be to turn the off just before striking the enemy's lightsaber - continue the swing - then turn the it back on after you have passed the enemy's saber
There's a clip from Blade and Sorcery where someone does exactly that. If you can fake a guard and sidestep the attack, or inversely attack and resume, you can just bypass almost all defenses aside from perfect spacing.
@3:47 canonically, Kyber crystals require force attunement to become bound, in a sense, to the user as the extreme amount of both physical(plasma) energy and Force(big F) energy is created that make the blade seem heavy or like it is constantly resisting you. Which is why we rarely/ever see non-force users use a lightsaber, and why the Darkblade wielded by Mandalore is often described as heavy. But for the purposes of this incredibly badass video, weightless works
11:10 "He's being healed, rather than resurrected." I'd call that "resuscitation." It someone's heart stops you could consider them dead, but if you do CPR or an AED soon enough you can get it going again before permanent damage sets in. So this is basically sci-fi high tech CPR. Edit: We even see a jolt of blue energy that's reminiscent of a defibrillator.
I'd say resuscitation counts as a type of healing, myself, but that's more a semantic argument really. But CPR doesn't reattach limbs, so "healing" is still pretty involved either way.
I have no idea how to fight with a sword, but at 6:06 i have a question. If i always keep my sword in front and tight, shouldnt my moves become more predictable?
On the other hand, Matt Easton took a briefer look at it on IGN's channel, and he didn't seem as positive on the duel. Keep in mind that Shad's HEMA experience is fairly minimal, and Matt is probably able to pick up on the finer issues.
@@InSanic13 you didnt watch the shad video then cause all the unrealistic stuff matt Easton pointed out so did shad as well. He still considers it a great fight because of the great choreography they achieved.
@@lampad4549 It's been a while since I've watched Shad's video, so you might be right. I just felt like Matt's evaluation came out more negative, perhaps because he didn't see as many positive aspects.
I think rather than a dance swordfighting is more akin to a Tekken match. During the dance partners cooperate (even when one leads and another one follows), but in a Tekken game the concepts of pressure (frame advantage), pokes, openings, whiffing, etc. are really similar to the real duel. Plus one mistake can lead to a loss (albeit in reality person will just die instead of get launched into he air and "juggled" to death with a "combo", lol).
I'm not sure I agree. Thing is in a lot of more formal dancing there's a definite leader, the person who sets the pace. Being the person who sets the tone in a fight is quite important. It's almost a universal of combat, warfare not just the martial arts. Call it the initiative, the weather gauge, call it whatever you want, being the one who sets and controls the tone of an engagement is a powerful thing. In these dances, distance, touch or not, all of those are important. Not to mention the knowledge of how your body moves, how to move your body, moving from and between positions where you need more strength, more flexibility, agility. Not to mention that ability to control your timing, your pace, very much a feature of a good dancer and a good martial artist. I'm a muso, not a dancer, but ballet, regency era formal dancing to modern ballroom dancing, flamenco..... all of those are highly formal and highly complex. So some comparison to the martial arts could be fair. At leas the heavily formalised, competitive forms out there now.
George Lucas once said that the reason why in the OG Trilogy everyone is holding the lightsaber with both hands is, that the weapon has so much energy that wielding it with one hand is rly difficult
I imagine the energy field could cause quite a lot of sway in the blade as it focuses the plasma thanks to good ole Newtonian physics, so perhaps whenever we see someone one handing a lightsaber that means they’re either ridiculously strong or the blade’s power has been toned down to compensate? Ventures and Dooku are impressive foes, but agility is their forte, not strength, and that reflects in their styles. Compare them to Anakin or Obi-Wan with direct, powerful swings with an equally powerful saber.
You gotta remember that the force gives them that extra boost of energy which is why they are able to jump around and do all this extra shit, and the more in tune with the force they are, like Yoda, they are able to jump around alot more and has more dexterity, and you are correct about the lethality and the easy of instantly harming your opponent(s), which is where the acrobatics come into play, they are able to evade or react way quicker than our universes humans.
I think that's copium, cause people with incredible reflexes fight faster, they don't freeze to kick in their precog machine. That's some anime-ass bullshit where a 3 second sequence takes 4 minutes on screen, cause the MC has to go through his entire life history to predict what the enemy will do next.
@@MedievalSolutions I'm sure you said what you did with perfect clarity to you, but I have no idea what you were trying to convey. I'm sorry. Either way, it's been a long time since this comment, but when it comes to fictional worlds where plot and tension supercede physics and magic becomes a driving dynamic, realism is subjective.
The point you make about keeping the lightsaber in front and making small moves is almost exactly how the original lightsaber fight between Obi-wan and Darth Vader was done. Sometimes they get it right the first time.
@@writer5790 Depends on your perspective. I found the episode 4 duel between Obi-Wan and Vader to be more tense and implied a huge sense of danger, unlike Anakin and Obi-Wan's duel in Episode 3 where they literally ran around a volcano planet swinging their lightsabers around like toys.
The best part about fiction is you can present a simple something ( like “tuning” the plasma into a blade) and boom it’s believable. Ain’t it funny/weird
This was brought together after they had the sword expert on for reactions to sword fights in movies and he was not happy with the lightsaber duels. So this whole concept came from the experts point of view. It's amazing to watch and I would watch whatever world this would exist in.
@@mateoherrera1233 Just how this is open to interpretation to you, it's also open to interpretation to them. Their opinion isn't incorrect, it's just different.
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Master Yoda is the only “dramatic flashy” but to be real he’s only a foot tall. lol
THIS is the most real lightsaber duel ever committed to film. ua-cam.com/video/jeG215-yu-k/v-deo.html
It's 100% chambara and it's over in exactly 3 seconds. Watch and you'll see what I mean.
Question: I'm trying to make an action novel where weapons are involved, commonly are swords, where can I study online other than youtube?
When you where talking about the blade weight I thought it was important to know that George Lucas’ vision of the lightsaber was that they had such power that it wasn’t possible to wield without both hands to keep it controlled. It’s not a realistic explanation in reality or fantasy but none the less it’s important to consider. Not many people remember the behind the scenes of a new hope but if they did I think the prequels and sequel fights would look much different
The best way to think about how a lightsaber fight would actually work is to think of them as 3 ft long laser pointers that can only be blocked by the beam of another laser pointer. If your opponent would block your strike all you need to do is flicker the blade off and back on as it would have made contact and it will be as if their sword wasn't there at all. In other words, it is basically a sword fight where parrying doesn't exist or at least that is the case if the opponent is skilled with their light saber's on and off button. It would be much more like fencing.
It’s an absolute honor to have you breaking down the video we made. Thank you, love your work!
Was scouring the comments to see if y’all were here
@@lolgoteem5372 same lol
Hello there
Wow, glad you liked it! And thank you. That was really great work on the choreography and effects, especially on a limited budget.
@@Skallagrim
i watched the vid
and
Chiun would approve of the training methods
yet
a golden opportunity
was missed
at the end with yellow laying on instructors chest
he
should have cut himself in halves
edit
Chiun from Remo Williams
Most Jedi fighting styles were said to focus on defense because the Jedi were never supposed to be aggressors, but it’s interesting that defensive styles would be the natural choice anyway. Guess they kind of lucked into realism.
AND the most prominent fighting style is one that focuses on severing of the hands/arms. Literal disarming techniques.
@@erinfinn2273
Actually form 1 was the most popular. It was used more than any other form because it was good at preventing blaster fire from hitting you, and almost always the first one taught to younglings.
@@spiffygonzales5899 Eh, wasn't Form 3 especially developed because 1 and 2 weren't good enough against blaster fire?
@@MarcelJ.
Yee, but form one is the one that literally every Jedi and sith knows. Also it's not that it wasn't good enough, your average Padawan can deflect blaster fire with form one, but when you're on the battlefield with 20 dudes during on you at once...
@@spiffygonzales5899 Then Form 1 isn't really good against Blasterfire... it can be used but isn't good enough at it.
The question really remains though: how do you realistically choreograph a sword fight between opponents with a) body enhancement, b) telekinesis and c) precognition?
I guess Diavolo vs Diavolo if you know who that is
This is exactly why I think this isn't a "realistic" lightsaber fight and the Star Wars ones are better because they seem to actually understand the lore behind the fact that only Force users can really wield lightsabers and that with that comes a completely different way of fighting because of exactly those abilities (especially c)
The prequels are the most accurate lightsaber duels, george lucas thought about that and hence all the heightened jumps and stupid amount of clashes that are meant to give breathing room and to do the little sherlock holmes bit where he fights moriarty in his mind
@@MemeLordCthulhu Exactly!
@@MemeLordCthulhu So the smart thing to do is to reduce the ways you can move yourself by jumping in air and adding a spin to make things even less controllable. I guess even Jedis can be cursed with a low IQ.
Corridor's video was great! Unfortunatly, it's given me a taste of realistic lightsaber combat and I want more.
Careful with that itch... those stunt sabers get pricey lol.
@@SnowblindOtter Right? The full contact ones are great, but... that's sword money.
Same here.
@@MarcusVance Yeah, but at least with the full-contact ones you can beat your friends up with them.
I have a couple of Saberforge ones... one of them cost a month's rent for me, but BOY. I'mma tell you, it was definitely worth it.
Just watch the edits over fencing duels.
0:34 I actually think spinning, jumping attacks from Yoda make sense. I mean, first of all, his reach is so small that if he really couldn't attack from more than a single angle, which would make him laughably easy to kill. He'd be a glorified poking machine and you could block every attack with a thimble. Try sword fighting with the handle of your sword on a leash tied to your chest so that it can only move around half a foot in any direction. You'd have to compensate by moving your entire body to attack from different angles. Now consider how short his legs are and how he would be able to achieve that with any kind of speed.
Next, because of square/cube laws, he is going to be able to be FAR more acrobatic than human-sized fighters. He's about the size of a small-to-medium dog, which can often jump straight up many times their own body length. Given the acrobatics human-sized force-wielders are capable of in the Star Wars universe, Yoda being able to effortlessly leap metres at a time is not unfeasible in the slightest.
So for Yoda, leaping about makes him a very fast-moving target, the spinning makes his lightsaber location highly unpredictable, and allows him to feint and attack opponents from different angles. Honestly, there's not really another style I could see being effective for him.
Finally someone makes this point!
Also, the fact that there's specifically different lightsaber fighting styles for different uses. Jedi of the prequel era primarily are trained to deal with blasters, not other lightsaber users (why would you need to when all the Sith are dead?). As such, many of them have learned both Form 1: Shii-cho (The OG jedi lightsaber style, a simple style based on disarming enemies who don't have a lightsaber) and either Form 3: Soresu (The defense form, especially designed to counter blasters) or Form 5: Djem So/Shien (A style that DOES support lightsaber combat, usually via forceful block/deflect into counter).
All of these styles use a lot of wider swings, which are worse in lightsaber vs lightsaber combat as presented here. Form 2: Makashi, used by Count Dooku, is the fencing themed style that Corridor's video seems to encourage. Which makes sense, given it's the style created exclusively for fighting someone else with a lightsaber.
Yoda's primary style, Ataru, is intended to utilise acrobatics to both attack and defend primarily by using the force. As you said here, he has to use this style to create unconventional openings using his speed and his force strength since his tiny reach doesn't support a more methodical fencing style (though canonically he can use all the forms).
I agree. Yoda's very physically limited, but is extremely strong with telekinetic (for lack of a better word) force powers. He's not a flesh creature swinging a hilt around, his body IS the hilt of his saber, and he swings the whole meat package around with the force. I'd still imagine there are more efficient ways to move through space than what he's doing, but it's the prequels so there's only so much we can expect.
Yoda also uses form 4 lightsaber combat which is based on force aided acrobatics
Well the acrobatic movements aren’t the problem it’s that he jumps up to arm level to meet his opponents blade. Rather than use his size to swipe at harder to defend areas he goes to the most comfortable to defend area of the body possible
Another thing to take into account, when it comes to lightsaber combat, is that the blade will never go dull, it won’t chip, nor will it ever break or rust.
That wouldn’t really matter in the middle of a single fight like in the corridor video, but a good point nonetheless.
@@IsThatAProGenji fair, it probably wouldn’t make too much of a difference. However, it would be interesting to see the swordsmanship born from not having to worry about damaging the blade, or your handle.
>without damaging your handle
That's only for cortosis or bescar infused handles.
the components of the lightsaber could probably require some kind of maintenance. wouldn't be befitting of a jedi if you couldn't extend your lightsaber cause the button got rusty in the rain.
There's also no edge; you can cut with any side of the saber, and without the need to even put any force (hah) into it. One twirl of the wrist can sashimi the other guy if it connects.
I always loved Corridor Digital. They always go a bit farther to make things work and seem more realistic while keeping it cool and epic.
And Niko is such a homie. What great guy ❤️
Yeah i see every video from them
I can’t believe how far they’ve come since I started watching them, they’re a full blown company now.
@@camronchlarson3767 Niko’s the only one i don’t find insufferable. i like him a lot. the others are douchey AF.
cmike is the nicest dude
What's canon regarding the properties of lightsabers: this has changed over time. Initially, Lucas (who directed the first movie, and his comments regarding this are on record) directed the actors to treat the weapons as if they had immense momentum and were "heavy", apparently attempting the emulate the straight, stoic, deliberate kendo style of the samurai films which served as part of his inspiration from the beginning and to show physically the great "power" of the weapon. We don't know entirely how much of this may be a rewriting of history (Lucas himself is unreliable on these and other aspects) and may actually be a later justification for lack of time to properly train the actors in complex choreography, due to the pressures of the shoot schedule and limited budget. Or if it was simply the full intent all along, perhaps a mix of both.
This changes over time somewhat during the second and third movie as the actors, (David Prowse and Mark Hamill) after the success of the first movie had more time for rehearsal and choreography. But regardless the basic idea remained the same, strikes were generally purposeful and made with two hands on the grip in kendo style.
Things clearly flipped completely in the years afterward in Lucas's mind as seen in the prequels. He wanted to then depict (quoting Lucas, with slight paraphrasing) "fully trained Jedi in their prime". The results of this change of mind are on film as we've seen; fast, flippy, spinney high speed movements. Since then the concept of the lightsaber as weightless and with effortless cutting ability became solidified as the main canon.
Its strange to think of the sabers as completely light like holding a flashlight. It would not be possible to do the flippy spinny moves with it because there is no weight at the end of the sword. I really like the first idea. It makes it impossible for anyone to even try to wield but the jedi or their equals in their force powers. That really seems appropriate for a fantasy genre superweapon.
It would make sense that a strong Jedi or Sith would be using the Force to help manipulate the saber during a fight.
Part of it is that the original lightsaber props in Eps 4-6 used pretty flimsy wooden dowels for the blades, and they tended to shatter or snap when swung too hard or fast, or if they hit each other too hard. When they got (I think) aluminum rods for the prequels...they could speed up and hit _hard._ Ewan MacGregor and Ray Park routinely bent their practice sabers while practicing for their duel in Ep1, for example. Which means, side note: There is no digital speeding up of that duel. They really were moving that fast. Sorta like Ewan and Hayden then managed for their duel in Ep3.
So...at least some of Lucas' original idea of lightsaber combat probably came from crappy props and he had to justify it for the actors somehow. Then he got better props and could justify faster duels as "Jedi in their prime instead of old men and cyborgs"...not an exact quote there, but close enough...
@@spoopy9689 theres some irony to your comment. You see episode 5 of season 1 of the book of boba fett came out yesterday, 8 days after you posted this and you hit the nail on the head
From what i heard and as seen in the book of boba fett light sabers do have a weight because of the lack of connection between the user and the crystal, and as the user and crystal begin to bond more and more the saber becomes lighter and lighter. From what I've seen, heard and read
This feels like a reinterpretation of lightsabers without the force involved! Really refreshing IMO.
@brug master the force wouldn't be used in a traditional duel. even between jedi, honor is important
In the original star wars it seems the lightsaber was just a piece of technology, impractical in the hands of anyone other than a person with Jedi reflexes.
@brug master yeah I mean, that's why frontlines are full of people with blasters, not lightsabers.
@@robot4268 the force is constantly in flow. even if they didn't use it on each other they would use it on themselves.
@brugmaster3730 fair enough, usually in war all morals kinda just vanish
The hands are actually a principal target in Jedi combat, not just for practical reasons, but also because it ends the fight without killing the opponent.
I guess that explains why so many hands get chopped off in the movies.
Wonder why they don't use beskar-made gauntlets...
@@zanir2387 you can take the beskar from mando's cold dead hands. oh wait.
That and it's a really cheap way to show impressive damage and with the level of technology can "easily" be handwaved away afterwards with a prosthesis ;)
@@Ugly_German_Truths maybe, but i prefer to retain my original hands
@@zanir2387 Metal was rare outside the Mandalore system and they kind of hatred the Jedi for most of their existence.
I generally stick to the side of "there is a reason lightsabers in sw are used exclusively by people with precognitive powers, otherwise yes they would die a lot and their fighting styles wouldn't make a lot of sense", but that may not be the case in this iteration and I like what they have done with the idea.
Well they aren’t used exclusively by people with precog, in either canon or the old eu. That’s the trend but there are plenty of exceptions. Personally while it’s a fine explanation it’s good to keep in mind that these are retroactive justifications that weren’t baked into the story from the jump. So it isn’t exactly invalid to make appeals to realism as to why the duels should be different.
@@jachariah4694 but usually people that don't have the force fight differently than a Jedi or Sith would, even with a lightsaber also the hole force gives you precog was already in episode 4 with the hole blindly stoping blaster shots thing, I just think people sometimes take the star wars universe to much as sci-fi and less as SCI fantasy because you really don't have to give a fuck about normal fighting styles when you are 10 times faster and can see stuff before it happens thanks to the force
@@baleriontheblackdread6679 Perhaps I should have worded my reply differently because I don’t disagree with anything you’ve just said
@@jachariah4694 Ngl, that's pretty wholesome lol. And they say Star Wars fans are toxic!
@@jachariah4694 In fact the original plan was that sabers would be COMMON weapons. Even Stormtroopers were going to have them for boarding actions because blaster fire onboard a ship would be potentially hazardous.
I imagine the force makes quite the difference when you have enhanced reactions, foresight, etc
exactly that’s why this fight isn’t realistic
@@denv55 it's realistic in a world without the force I'd say - REAListic and not canon sort of thing
@@The31st if it’s without the force then yes it’s a realistic way to use a lightsaber
@@denv55 so is star wars, I mean just use the force thingy to press the off button in a light saber.
@@denv55 Grievous was able to kill Jedi with a light saber without the use of the force. So were Mandalorians who wielded the darksaber.
Only mistake was when the teacher got “killed” and his lightsaber fell on top of him fully lit but didn’t actually do anything, for all the attention to detail you would have expected them to catch that.
Yeah it's the single biggest annoying thing in the video. It's like they put that there as a like a black hole of attention to make you not think about the rest of it.
I assume they noticed it, only after they had finished filming.
@@Pyranders they talked about it on their podcast. They noticed but it wasn’t worth the effort and money when the story still works with the mistake in.
Tell them that to make them laugh at themselves xD
In my headcanon, their robes are made very slightly resistant to lightsabers (mostly so they don't start burning while waiting for the regeneration machine). It's not enough to stop any deliberate pressure, but enough to temporarily resist the force/heat of the near weightless lightsaber blade for a minute or two. The flesh underneath is still burning, however.
I remember the Jedi Tenel Ka, she lost most of her forearm in a practice session with Jacen Solo. Out of pride she refused a prosthetic arm replacement and focused on training in one armed combat. Oh how I miss the expanded universe lol
If I remember right, a good chunk of that was because she saw it as her own fault because of how her lightsaber was constructed because it wasn't getting it sliced off, her lightsaber exploded.
If you want more about the issues, look up the saber rakes and lightfoils from the old EU stuff...basically idiot nobles with knockoff lightsabers that even the Empire just shrugged and groaned about the morons while any Jedi just facepalms
Pride leads to the dark side.
Whenever I learn something new about the EU, I become more convinced that SW fans don't want things to be good, they want things to be "cool"
@@empoleonz0 The failure of the sequel trilogy and the controversy of the prequel trilogy seem to state that both are necessary with cool being more important.
@@empoleonz0 Aren't you the sophisticated one.
On playfulness vs grittiness, one of the things I really appreciated in the first Ip Man movie was how they matched the fights to the tone.
The sparring sequence at the beginning, you can tell they are having so much fun. It's a game between masters who love it. Compare that to the fight in the ring, it's the same man, same style, same moves, but the intent, the emotion is completely different.
That move by the student creating space and going for the under cut was a awesome move. I've seen a lot of veteran sword fights get on the inside of a guard as well.
pulled something similar sparring a friend a few years back. It was a satisfying moment.
Lightsaber combat actually has a thing where the hands and forearms are actively targeted due to how exposed they are because you quite literally disarm the opponent by severing the hand or arm, removing their ability to hold the lightsaber.
Except it's difficult to do because the hilt of the saber has an AoE repel.
That is why there is something called Crossguard Lightsaber
corridor crew literally proved that a lightsaber duel can look cool while still being realistic and practical
They were just 2 guys. Now imagine 3, 4, or even just 5. It becomes exponentially harder to choreograph everything.
There's a fair amount of conflicting lore on exactly how it feels to swing a light saber. Basically depends on who you ask, and about what scene. Much of the "lore" is retconned excuses as to why the scene plays out the way it does.
One thing however the movies do a poor job of illustrating is how a light saber fight between force users is more mystical than it is physical. These are two, or more, people who have a degree of precognition. That's how they can block blaster bolts with a light saber. There's no way to move fast enough to react after the trigger is pulled, what they're actually doing is seeing the shot a split second before it happens and moving to block ahead of the blast. So, imagine fighting someone else with a light saber that also has that ability. That, combined with the saber being equally good at cutting from any angle, and traditional sword fighting techniques aren't going to work. The video Corridor Crew made is a good way of using such weapons with no magic powers being involved. But the acrobatics and flashy techniques used in Star Wars fights are an attempt to create so much confusion about what you're doing and where the blade is going to be that you can slip past the guard of someone who can predict your moves. It also explains how they seemingly drop their guard at bad times, they simply know what their opponent is about to do so they can wind up for a powerful slash in safety.
And there's the force powers. You're not just defending or attacking with the light saber, you can throw your opponent around, grab random objects and fling it at them, increase your speed to superhuman levels, jump much higher than is physically possible, and so on. Throwing the saber is a fun twist too. While this was sometimes done with swords it has the obvious drawback of losing your weapon, at least temporarily. Not so with force users as they can simply use the force to control the light saber, guiding it's path and snapping it back into their hand at will. With two sufficiently powerful opponents they could conceivably have a light saber fight with their hands in their pockets.
TLDR, in the Star Wars universe at least it's more of a space wizard fight than it is a sword fight.
I really hate that so many people forget this
That's why you always see physical attacks connect because they're focused on the opponents blade.
THANK YOU. Again, another person is apparently a precog compared to these people trying to breakdown a lightsaber fight to be ‘more realistic.’ They aren’t in our reality so this is impossible. Lol
lightsaber blades are supposed to be weightless and really hard to use for anyone other than force users to use, let alone be good at using them. The fact that they’re weightless is supposed to make it dangerous for non force users to use them.
My favorite fight was the obi wan v Anakin fight because even with some fo the spinning techniques and odd ass movements, the combat seems more like they are trying to kill each other instead of trying killing each others blades, especially with the beginning of the fight, and in during the control room part when obi wan trips Anakin, that whole scene. The rest of the fight is flashy as fuck but it’s probably the most realistic fight in the series technique wise.
So happy someone in the sword community is doing a proper reaction to this!
But is he someone in the lightsaber community?
I like that they included some big attacks. I am a fencing coach, and in sabre the weapon works essentially like a lightsaber (the smallest touch is an insta-kill). Big swing attacks and long telegraphed attacks are actually very effective especially when "peppered" in amongst small quick attacks. For the defender there is an element of "taking too long to think about it" like missing a fly ball, while for the attacker they have a lot of opportunity to very subtly alter the speed and trajectory of the attack which can make a defender miss a parry by a very small margin, which is enough to hit. Anyway, great video, love your channel, love Corridor Crew. Keep it up.
Jill Bearup suggested that given everything we know about lightsabers, the most effective techniques with it would probably most closely resemble smallsword dueling. Which is interesting, but probably not as fun to watch. It seems like this duel strikes a good balance between being realistic and interesting to watch.
Jill is definitely one of the best choreography reviewers, she really knows her stuff. And she's totally right, if lightsabers truly had no weight, smallsword-y technique would be best.
(The blades do essentially have weight though, according to the lore)
@@JainaSoloB312 its not alot tho
Are small swards similar to rapiers? Sorry I'm not super knowledgeable about is stuff 😅
@@jjthe
Rapiers were long bladed cut and thrust swords that were used from about the mid sixteenth through mid/late seventeenth centuries.
They started off at fairly normal proportions and became gradually longer and slimmer, but then in the late period of their use people started to shorten them/slim their guards more and more until...
(Had to split the post due to an error on yt's side)
the iconic proportions of the Smallsword emerged, some time in the eighteenth century I believe.
So in a sense the Smallsword is a Rapier, just with a few extra decades of development and fashion behind them.
Dude the Old Republic cinematics are top tier 110% quality
I'd rather watch a dog take a shit
@@Hellbilly615 Lets leave your mother out of this.
@@Hellbilly615 L
@ᜐᜒᜆ᜔ᜑ᜔ that’s the whole point
@@Hellbilly615 stick in the mud, bud
"Functional-fiction" should be a thing. Focusing on functionality in fictional settings is often ignored for just plain dumb but "cool" looking designs.
the guns of doom eternal do this. its not implausible to think we might have something similar to say the quad barrel minigun in the future
Agreed! Honestly there was a rumor of N'Sync being in the prequels and I was all for it. That was all leaping around and dancing anyways as much as the once teenage fans loved Maul and the great work of John Williams. Might as well get five dudes that know how to do that as a group, might have been unstoppable in that era of lightsabre flailing. And goes to show how much I respected the prequels....
That’s because it’s boring. I’d rather watch twirly cool looking lightsaber fights than fundamental fights rooted in reality. I don’t watch fiction for reality I watch it because it’s not reality.
@@alecthomas7408 I don't see entertainment in twirly fights, they are overdramatic and look like a circuis performance rather than a duel. I get bored with shit like Attack on Titan where characters act like performers on a trapezium because I don't want to watch someone jiggle keys in front of me like I'm some moron with an attention span of a dead hummingbird. If you want to make stunts, then do some stunts but make them have a reason.
When I was watching Genocidal Organ one of my favourite moments was a sniper sequence where a guy in a building covered his eyes during a distant explosion so as to not get the dust and debris from the ceiling into his eyes. Little details like this is what gives me an immersion boner and makes me want to see more.
I want immersion, not Jiggly - the key dangling clown.
So no, I do not see your argument for functionality being boring, it's immersive.
Thats the scfi show expanse for you, I highly recommend it :)
There's 7 main Lightsaber forms that go chronologically as to 1 being first and 7th being newest/last.
1: Shii-cho(wide sweeping blows and submersion in the force)
2: Makashi(Literally fencing and best for 1v1 fighting)
3:Soresu(Pure defence)
4:Ataru(Acrobatics and physical incoporation)
5:Djem-So/Shien(Strength-based and based on trading parries into strikes)
6:Niman(All-around style that's also about dual-wielding/Force incorporation)
7:Juyo/Vaapad(Pure emotion/passion aggression)
Also, one of the bits about Lightsabers is that blades have a field on them that disables the ability to just drag the blade down to the hilt/hands(so difficult to do that compared to general weapons)
The problem with SW is that they went 100% rule of cool, with zero world building, and then have essentially 10-yo approach to fillling it later.
I understand that in sword fights in films that the whole "jumping and twirling" thing tends to be a bit cheesy, but seeing what they jedi/sith are and what they can do, it seems to fit rather well, turning your back isn't as much of an issue for a wielder of the force due to general pre-cognition that force users tend to have
Also, from what I understand - lightsabers are weightless for force users, but since kyber crystals are strong with the force and are actually sentient, when the bond between the force is missing, the crystal actually makes the blade heavy, as it doesn't have the synergy between the wielder and the crystal. Which is why we rarely see non force users wielding sabers without cybernetic enhancement
I didn't grow up with prequels so I'm much more into the OT style combat which has weight and is much more like the stuff in this video. They do some jumping in the original to keep it interesting, but not at the expense of weight. I'm not obsessed with realism, but the prequels are just completely out of place with their execution. And like he says in the video, there's just so much going on it doesn't mean anything and there's no sense of danger.
i dunno about that. It is true, that crystals have bond with force user. And thus Jedi and Sith must create their own lightsabers. But we also have situations, where force users using each other's lightsabers with little to no difference.
And non force users not being able to use lightsabers is also doubting. As regular people wont get the chance to have lightsaber and the only one non-force users who can get a hand on lightsabers - probably killed it's owner and thus strong enough to weild it. It does make a logical theory. But, for example, Finn did weilded lightsaber without being connected to the force. Lightsabers are heavy, but not the blades, only the handle. It should weight about 1kg (due to the fact of having battery, magnetic field mechanism, focus lense and etc) which is heavier than medieval sword.
But i completely agree on jumpy-twirly thingy. They one with the force, so they dont even need to see. They can fight with their eyes closed. So all these acrobatics are to confuse opponent and hide true strikes withing flashy moves
@@romanpyatibratov4361 I can name multiple non-force using characters that have used a lightsaber. I mean come on, General Grievous used fucking 4 and he wasn't a Force-User.
@@CrowYaeger person i responded to said: "you cant use lightsaber without heavy cybernetic enhancment" implying, that it is very heavy for non-force users. Grievous was cyberneticly enhanced and had enough strength to hold them.
But i agree, there are moments, where non-force users holded and used lightsabers
This would make sense as well with Din Djarin not being able to use the darksaber very well. He can use it, but not very effectively.
I remember Shad did a video about lightsabers before, where he deduced that, given the properties of the weapon, the most effective style for lightsabers would be fencing.
Fencing... literally means, to fight with a sword.
So which kind of "fencing" are you talking about?
Saber fencing... Rapier fencing... Japanese fencing (Kendo)... Chinese fencing (Wudang Chuan), (Taijijian), (Shuangao)
@@OOTurok jesus christ its makashi (from star wars) OR in our world (since everybody cant shut up about it )
Raipier Fencing wich is named Makashi in Star Wars (wich also is a japanesse word for murder or kill , so i can stop being told this useless fact i said it here )
I immediately thought you were talking about shädman.
And kek
@@Draculas-knight
Makashi... means, murderer, or assassin.
It is not a style of fencing.
@@OOTurok dude, it means second lightsaber form Makashi, which was specifically designed to lightsaber dual. And yes, it's quite similar to rapier fencing
As Anakin would say: Now this is content!
This is where the likes begins!
ABU NABU WABI LIKEY VIDEO...
*HU-HU-HU!!!*
Personally for a long time I've thought lightsaber duels would be a lot more like fencing (with minimal long swipes of the sword, the sword staying mainly pointed at the opponent and most of the movement coming from the wrist) than something like longsword fighting, due to the fact that the saber's blade itself would be weightless as a pure beam of energy. I don't think you'd do these long weighty swings of the sword that they do in the movies, because there's really no point in doing so. The thing is weightless; if you want it to go in a particular direction you can just move it there instantly, you don't have to swing it to give it momentum. Not to mention, momentum in a lightsaber is semi pointless anyway, since it cuts not based on the kinetic force it impacts with, but based on the immense heat it generates. What do you guys think?
Well Lucas' original vision for lightsabers is that they were heavy. In the original trilogy this is why the moves are so purposeful, because the idea is that the blades, despite being plasma, are heavy. I don't recall the exact reason for this, I think it was something to do with the field keeping it in a blade shape. This is also in a lot of expanded universe material, the darksaber in particular is noted as being heavy several times. This was lost somewhat in the newer trilogies, but yeah, originally the lightsabers were not weightless and when they became more weightless later the tradition was to have them fighting with swipes and slashes.
Plus it looks better on the big screen of course
@@alertedcoyote7892 Actually, the canon is that they were heavy because of their connection to the weapon. It is kind of like a wand in Harry Potter. You need a strong bond for it to work properly. The heavier it is, the less in tune with the Kyber Crystal within you are.
Hey dude, the first words written on the screen. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away". No one in that universe is from Earth. And if any of it was, it was not in the future. You see, George Lucas made the decision to make a Sci Fi film IN THE PAST instead of the future like most are. Fencing, doesn't exist. Longswords, doesn't exist. Plasma swords that can only be used by those properly trained in the Force, does exist. It is also canon that they have insanely fast reflexes, almost as if they are living is slow motion. The fact that it is in the past and in a galaxy no where near us should be enough to instantly go, "Yeah, fencing techniques wouldn't exist in this universe. It would be even more stupid to actually implement them." But I am going to give more proof that people using lightsabers like people use swords here on earth is insanely stupid, but also laughable. When they fight, it isn't just a fight with a deadlier sword, they are moving very fast, some say that they actually can predict their opponents moves before they even make them. If they are up close and personal with barely any options, it would be very easy to lose that fight. The only way to beat your opponent is to outsmart them or not fight another Force user.
@@projectstart5522 The premise of “this was invented before fencing therefore the principles that underline fencing don’t apply” is completely illogical. If it has similar considerations and mechanics at play then similar principles can apply. The time at which it was done has no effect on this. I also never said they should stand close to each other.
@@coops3600 What I was getting at is that they often make "mistakes" according to professional on earth sword fighters. What they don't understand is that there is a lot more going on there. "He legit just attacked his saber instead of killing him". Well, that is obviously because they can kind of telepathically tell what their next move is going to be. Obviously there is going to be differences in traditional fighting because of this. It is like in chess. You make an illogical move because you know your opponent is focusing somewhere else. You just open up your rook to their bishop but they are focusing on their knight trying to take your queen, of which you take advantage of by playing a little differently than you would an opponent you don't know. So, what I am saying is, all the "he could have killed him there, he left himself wide open" and "this is so stupid because it doesn't fit in with how I see sword fighting even though this story has nothing to do with how I see sword fighting". You know what I mean?
The whole point of lightsaber duels is that they aren’t standard sword fights. They have the force to deal with which changes the style and rules.
remember though that while he uses the word "lightsaber" as a catchall, he's referring to sci-fi energy swords in general
the force excuse only covers so much. If a real style gets X done then a fantasy style with magic (in this case the force) needs to be able to do X with its new rules to be 'realistic' in a relative sense.
Star wars could be argued in some points however, its clear they didn't think about these things early on and it does show. To the average person Obi's stance in ep. 3 looks kinda dumb.
Its hollywood. Its because its energetic and entertaining. I do admit theirs a certain point where its a bit over the top.
The flashiness progression from EP 1 to eP3 is noticeable
The force would change the styles and rules quite a bit, but the makers of star wars weren't exactly thinking in terms of how it might do that, they just went fully for whatever they thought might look cool zero concern for whether it's practical or if the force might make it practical.
If they did you'd expect stuff like participants maybe taking a bit unusual guards with specific intentions like being ready to counter a force push or a force accelerated attack.
And in a fight with precog abilities, maybe we'd be seeing stuff like participants trying to block attacks that don't come, doing strange feints, etc.
What the force most certainly doesn't justify is the stuff we actually see in star wars movies with all characters doing moves that just completely expose them to hits, like spinning the blade above the head to imitate a helicopter, spinning slowly in place, massively over swinging in strikes (which makes extra little sense considering swords are supposed to be weightless), pulling the swords behind their backs, etc.
Moves like that would leave you dead immediately in a real fight. And claiming it's a fight with precogs not only doesn't justify them, it makes them worse as a precog jedi or sith should be even better at sensing opportunities like that before they even happen.
@@SirConto part of the duel isn't just the precog abilities, it's fighting someone who has the same senses and is trying to hide their actions. They are hiding their actions as well as trying to figure out your next move, in this way they can perform a feint in two ways at once. Make your precog say the strike is to your left thigh while your eyes see a strike to your right shoulder, meanwhile the actual strike is to your head from the left.
Yes. You are reacting to this. I love that channel
It's amazing how much your talk about "ideal" lightsaber combat actually showed up in what I remember from our playground plastic lightsaber fights.
Always tiny little pokes and jabs, and everyone walks away with several smacked hands.
"Death" is a bit of a blurry concept given sufficiently advanced medical technology. We used to consider a heart stopping to be death, but we have restarted hearts before. Even if someone has started to get brain damage, we may be able to get them breathing again. Perhaps the regeneration machine can even repair some "permanent" brain damage.
If someone can still be brought back, are they truly "dead" yet, or are they still just "dying"? It's a bit of an arbitrary distinction.
Exactly👌
"Irreversible brain damage" is only irreversible *by the currently-available methods, it isn't necessarily the limit of what could ever be possible
As Miracle Max says, mostly dead is slightly alive.
Death and Life in human terms are tied, too.
When death was defined as "stopped heart", life began whenever the embryo's heart started beating.
Since the definition moved to loss of brain activity, the new definition for life is when the embryo's central nervous system starts working.
By the new definition, we are living much earlier, and we die much later, too.
@@MrZaranthan Ohoho! Look who knows so much!😉
@@NothingXemnas Thus, being pro life is justified
Finally a reaction to this video is what I've been waiting for!!
ever since i first saw "lightsabers" i have longed for this type of insight in choreography. we always used to play duels with toy lightsabers and it very quickly revealed a LOT of this stuff.
a toy lightsaber is nothing like a real one.
@@thanoseid2883 a real lightsaber is a toy with special effects.
@@thanoseid2883 ah yes, show me your _real_ lightsaber
@@LineOfThy don’t be disgusting.
@@thanoseid2883 Am I?
George Lucas actually told Mark Hamill to act as though the lightsaber was hard to move because of the nature of an energy blade and actually required using the Force to move it at even normal sword speed. I think this was just a plot device to prevent anyone from just picking up a lightsaber and why they were associated with force users.
Which disney decided to get rid of among other things.
@@ProfessorArt1 it wasn't just Disney, look at how fast they're swung in the prequels.
I’ve never heard of that second part (requires the force to move) so illl take it with a grain of salt - the version I do know is a combination of the unique properties of sabers and the rarity of their components that prevent people from Willy nilly using them in the verse - people made replicas in Legends but even then they had to be specifically modified in some way to be useable by normal people
I don't think this is true. The explanation as to why only force users could use lightsabers was because they need to use the force to push a button while they are fighting.
@@WelshSwordsman it’s in a Mark Hamill interview. I’ll see if I can find it on UA-cam and I’ll drop the link
I’m curious seeing a realistic lightsaber duel that incorporates Force abilities. Is it possible?
Yeah, this is what Sword nerds forget about. This is the main reason why applying realism is silly.
Yeah, I think part of what allows for flashier/more open styles of fighting in SW is the fact that the fighters are usually force users and can take advantage of it during the duel. Like Obi-Wan's stance being the saber pulled way back and his free hand pulled on his front doing the finger thing and all.
@@bannedmann4469 Well it’s not entirely silly. Having the fight grounded in some realism helps make it appealing and somewhat believable.
@@gedeonnunes5626 Imagine how much better it would be having the best of both worlds. Realistic sword fighting and the Force.
I've seen some really smart ideas for using the Force in a lightsaber duel. i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/d8/8a/e9d88a1295fc945ce833398f31517bec.jpg
4:00 So the Mandalorian adds to this, but from my general nerdiness, here's what I know: The light saber is connected to the user's mediclorians (Space points) so the more powerful the user, the easier the weapon is to use. The crystal is also a living thing; when a Sith "bleeds" a crystal to make it red, it is semi-literal. So you also need to attune to the blade. If you don't, it gets heavy and applies forces the user didn't apply. The idea that it has no weight is ridiculous, this is space fantasy, Starwars is not Sci-fi. The blade not only has weight, but its weight changes with momentum and will. Take The Emperor, he handles blades like they are weightless but can apply tons of force regardless. (Go look up the fight between him and Maul) Not only do the sabers attract, but they attract other things as well. If you try to do these short movements, you're just going to struggle to get the blade to the opponent. The blades will lose momentum from being so close. Think a magnet in a copper pipe. Big swings generate force and emphasize the will of the user.
Obviously this is space magic, but it does make you wonder, Wouldn't a beskar blade not have these problems and make killing jedi pretty easy? Yes.
Why make the DarkSaber? Guess it's got special stuff that helps fighters in combat. For instance, maybe it detects the mediclorians coming from the saber, telling the user of the DarkSaber what moves the Jedi intends, equaling the spidey senses Jedi have.
In respects to dancing, I was told early on in my sword training (going back nearly 30 years now), that the best swordspeople were those who danced. A good swordsperson was good dancer, but a good dancer was an excellent swordsperson. Distance, timing, spacial awareness and fitness.
I can attest to this, I have studied a few masters (DiGrassi and Aggrippa) in my fencing career and had a duel with a trained dancer that was one of the most amazing and fun fights I've ever had. We were just fighting for fun off to the side of a common area. We didn't realize it while fighting, but we were apparently drawing a crowd. By the time we finished and looked around, we were in an enclosed ring of cheering spectators. So much fun, I'll never forget that.
But most importantly, balance.
"Best" swordsman is a sociopath, fencing/hema/kendo is just pretend sword fighting. Mike Tyson said it best Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, and until you get punched by Mike Tyson you can only guess what a realistic punch by Tyson would be.
Skall the reason why there are still "heavy" attacks/ telegraphed attacks even though you just need to tap the opponent to kill them, is so that with the force you're generating with that heavy attack would be greater and can throw the enemy's lightsaber aside giving you a chance for a finishing tap. It's almost like parrying but offensively, because essentially you're just trying to push the enemy's saber aside
But the blade is weightless right? It's not necessary to do a full swing to bring the handle up to speed.
Adding to this, practically all people using a lightsaber are at or beyond a threshold of force sensitivity that gives them very minor precognition. This usually manifests as unnaturally quick reflexes, which can make a standard lightsaber duel, using common forms, a long battle of stamina. Knowing more techniques Jedi call "forms" can give you the edge by providing more options to overwhelm or open up an opponent's defense, which was what made Mace Windu so dangerous. But without a significant technical advantage, you can leverage a strength advantage by batting aside attacks, as OP stated, or striking hard into blocks to tire or even injure the sword arm of the defender - something you see Darth Vader do. Hell, you could even knock the opponent's saber into their own body to score an injury that way.
@@GreatCanadianGuy The last one is especially nasty.
@@ctrlaltdebug no that's not what I'm talking about. So okay picture this. You're holding a block right, like let's say an obi wan block. You won't exactly be able to get through it unless you knock the blade aside. And in order to knock the blade aside you need a good amount of force because jedi are also super strong because of the force. So you need that swing as strong as possible
@@GreatCanadianGuy yes exactly my point. Vader's style is literally like using a mace whenever the opponent blocks. He literally "guard breaks" it by bashing it repeatedly lol😂
Hell yeah Corridor Digital Crew! Awesome video getting some good recognition, very cool to see :)
i'd like skall to utterly rip apart Syrio forel and the "water dancing" stance that he,Arya and that one gladiator use in game of thrones. because it's utter bullshit in how it's seen as "the best sword stance" and technique out there when in a real fight it would be useless.
also there is a reason why Obi-wan lasted as long as he did in the story of star wars because his fighting style is form 3 Soresu which is a highly defensive stance that is stated to be near unbreakable if mastered. whereas the likes of others like Anakin or Mace Windu used more offensive stances which left them more open to being wounded and losing limbs.
If I remember correctly, Anakin is basically using confidence and instinctive premonition to outpace opponents. The fights he loses are largely moments of shit judgment throwing off his whole game. Obi-wan starts more balanced as far as offence and defense but his force abilities are more in feeling out the universe around him, so the less aggressive he is the more poised to receive attacks he is.
This sort of stuff is the greatness of star wars that only kind of makes it to screen.
@@kingkilburn Yeah I wanted to point that out in the specific case of Star Wars, we know that the Force allows its users to foresee the near future, giving them lightning-fast reflexes and anticipation. I guess that would interestingly impact the fighting style and techniques. It even gives a bit of justification to terribly uncautious moves like spinning, because when a Jedi/Sith spins, they know what's gonna happen behind them, so it's not as dangerous as it would be for the rest of us (but still).
Let us not forget, though, that Count Dooku defeated Obi-Wan 100% of the time with his mastery of Form 2.
"nothing personnell, kid"
Mind games: i like how you bring that up. Thats how i see lightsaber fights in the movies to explain all the flashy hollywood choreography. When you think about a lightsaber duel you gotta remember 2 things, these people have trained with his weapon their majority of thier life, and that all jedi/sith/dark jedi have a some level of precognition. So when you see mistakes in sword fighting i see mind games where it is more of a dance. The duelist fight how they fight because they are trying to create openings or initiate a response from a person who can sorta see into the future, so really youre dueling with the intent of misleading or putting your opponent in a inopportune situation. Its as much a battle of the mind as it is physical.
Yeah this is how I saw Anakin vs Obi Wans fight.
When there in that control room before they force push eachother they were just standing there trying to syke eachother out and create an opening.
Or rather it was Obi Wan on defense but was one step ahead of anakin and every strike anakin couldve done would've been blocked so he held back and swung around his Saber looking for the opening.
1:57 "don't have to worry about follow through and proper structure"
Right, because that is certainly the reason why lightsaber forms were invented.
I loved how they depicted lightsaber combat closer to its kenjutsu roots!
It just shows how a realistic fight scene can be exciting and tense!
The first Star Wars movie took influence from kendo and lightsabers are properly based on Shinai, so looking like kenjutsu really is just fitting.
It looks more like HEMA techniques to me, although there is of course some degree of overlap.
@@Skallagrim I don’t have any experience in HEMA so I wouldn’t be able to notice and recognize the HEMA techniques they used.
Anyway nice vid. I was waiting for one of the sword channels to make a video about Corridor’s Duel to the Death.
Would you be interested in looking at the fights from Dune? I really love the shield combat in the Dune universe and I think it’d make for a cool video if you analyzed them.
@@Skallagrim the move at 6:56 is a lot like the move at
3:47 in this video ua-cam.com/video/VPrlPuor6v0/v-deo.html (although this one is more of a thrust to the hand)
@@outsideiskrrtinsideihurt699 Yes, although with a steel sword that would be a false edge cut with this hand position (i.e. double-edged blade).
From my understanding of lightsabers, the blades don't exactly have significant weight, but they do have some properties that complicate movement. Firstly, they have some turbulence due to how they work, basically having the energy go out and come back in (granted, this may not be cannon anymore; not sure how Disney changed that stuff). Secondly, as you mentioned, the can pull towards each other, similar to magnets. It's not going to bounce off, and can affect close passes between blades. It doesn't stop sliding, but it does affect things. Finally, depending on what is cannon or not, lightsabers can also require a force-sensitive to keep the blade focused, though again, probably not cannon anymore thanks to Disney.
how could disney change that stuff when they werent there from the get go?
F Disney Star Wars
Disney axing the Extended Universe really throws up in the air most of the lightsaber explanations and details. Most of what we know about the non grounded stuff is from the EU (as in how lightsabers work and how the Force interacts with the universe), and that's all "whelp, not canon!".
It's all still canon. They talked about this stuff in Rebels wich was the first Disney star wars themed media. The need of a Force sensitive user I belive applies only to proto-sabers as even millenia old lightsabers like the Dark Saber have been seen used by non Force sensitive ppl and work perfectly even before Disney took over.
@@lampad4549 they are the new owners of it. They can simply say "this isn't cannon anymore " and thats basically it.
The flipping twirling and fancy stuff makes it cool and entertaining.
3:55 The canoninity of the gyroscopic effect is mentioned in Rebels, once when Kanan is teaching Ezra the basics. The Old Republic era also fleshes out the 7 lightsaber forms and at some point also explains that many of the traditional movements in them take the gyroscopic effect into account. Technically this is the true canon, since Lucasfilm named a fair number of Old Republic media as canon in preparation for the debut of the High Republic era, iirc including several sources that mention the forms.
It's my understanding that the gyroscopic effects comes from the magnetic field that's used to contain the plasma beam. It essentially wants to stay in the same place in space, and when that resistance is overcome and it begins moving, it doesn't want to change direction. Basically the magnetic forces substitute for mass. That containment field is also what causes the binding effect.
And when Kanaan is teaching Sabine how to use the Dark Saber
Came for swordfight left learning about difference between healing and resurrection... cool
I totally agree! I've been thinking about that video since I saw it. Excellent job to all involved
I can attest how dangerous swords can be for an unprotected hand. When I was a kid I made a short sword out of a volkswagen "hippie van" amortization steel sheet. It is a piece of springy steel shaped just like a sword blade. I've been told it serves as a part of amortization of the van. So I sharpened it and attached a plastic handle to it. One day my brother suddenly threw a basketball at me and I tried to block it with the sword, but I held it loosely in my hand. It got knock out of my hand, did a circle in the air just above my hand and sliced at my finger on the way down. The blade wasn't perfect. It couldn't cut very well but it still cut my skin to the bone, about 3-4 cm lengthwise. My finger is perfectly fine now, I just have a scar, but if the angle was different it could have cut my tendon. I don't know how well they heal.
My point is, in a fight with a properly sharpened blade, if you get deliberately hit on an unprotected hand or a finger it will do much more damage than a simple cut
Even knifes properly sharpened can do those cuts, imagine a sword with weight behind it...
Yeah. That’s why guards and gauntlets are important
As a veteran SCA light weapons fighter I can totally attest to this. We would spend entire practice sessions just working on the hand pick. Nailing the hand is beyond useful.
why make this story up. You broke physics multiple times.
@@Dead_Goat how so?
I could see a few scenarios where a telegraphed, "heavy" attack could make some sense with lightsabres still. If your opponent appears to have a defense with poor structure, or launches a hesitant attack, the extra momentum might let you displace their blade enough to blow through and either score a hit or set yourself up for a followup, similar to a Zornhau from Zornhut. Doubly so since just pushing your opponent's own weapon back against their body would also be plenty effective. Of course, it'd be rather risky, particularly against an attentive, skilled opponent.
I wouldn't expect a lot of momentum, but an intentional telegraph could be useful in prompting a certain response from the opponent.
@@AlitaGunm99 your energy sword would have very little momentum but theirs would also have very little inertia. At that point it comes down to arm strength which a heavy overhead would definitely be strong enough to overpower another person's elbows/wrists. Like he said though still incredibly risky but if you are going against an utter noob it has a very good chance of working.
That's how Anakin beat Dooku in episode 3, he used the rage in him combined with the power of his prosthetic hand to bash his way through the older Dooku.
If you watch that clip, it's right after he got his defense broken and has his hands up to avoid being cut, so coming back down froma high position was a somewhat reasonable conclusion.
IIRC it was mentioned sometime that the field containing/generated by the lightsaber also generated a repulsive effect that had to be powered through (Which is also how they deflect blaster bolts). Not to mention the rapidly expanding gasses of vaporized material also pushing against the blade
Saw that scene earlier and loved it, now this is just the right dose of nerdiness that I needed right now, thanks!
In terms of the weight of a lightsaber i think Matt Easton addressed that in one of his video as well as the magnetic force when two lightsabers collide which almost replicate the bite when 2 sharp edges of a sword meet. A beautiful well done video
Yes, Matt does great work and more or less understands the properties of a lightsaber. I second this recommendation💜
The thing I like about Star Wars lightsaber duels is that even though it is unrealistic, it at least kept consistent down at a character level. Characters stick to their combat styles. Well, at least until the sequels.
Lightsaver duels contain a lot of twirling for an in universe reason. Force users can see glimpses into the future and sense what's to come. Twirling the lightsaber would blind this foresight and distract the opponent (because all they would see would be flashes/blurs of light).
The Force doesn't exist
Hence why I said "in universe" as in the star wars universe.
That's some premium grade A nonsense you've stated there.
I recall in the books that the lightsabers have a "low power" setting, where the touch isn't deadly, but can still cause first and second, even third degree burns if applied for long enough. I'm surprised the ones who made the video missed that little detail.
Also, "plasma" again...I remember when it was a "high-energy focused phased particle beam". Oy...
That's basically plasma. High energy particle beams. That's why blasters are plasma instead of laser because it's made using charged Tybanna Gas not light.
Haha HERE HERE! 👏🏻
Their video is not set in Star Wars universe
Also, I guess the idea within the story is that the very best training occurs when mastering the fear of death or serious injury and pain, which a low-powered blade wouldn't convey.
Kind of how say 'knife defense' or many Traditional Martial Arts fall apart in real life situations, after sparring was done in controlled circumstances previously. Might be wrong though!
@@iBloodxHunter the main distinction of plasma is in the separation of charge, though, not the high energy part.
To play Devil's advocate, apparently in Star Wars the Force is really what guides the Jedi and Sith, and the styles are more of a meditative dance in allowing the Force to flow better through movement familiarity and muscle memory.
Though that's just the in lore reason.
Though not going to lie, if I had a mystical power guiding my crazy movements, I'd rely on it for shock value, especially against the Mandalorians who would definitely be masters of blade combat since they fought the Jedi for bloody millennias.
I don't know why we don't see these realistic sword fights more. They are so intense.
I would recommend checking out Episode 7 "The Elder" from Star Wars: Visons. The fight in that is quite grounded and enjoyable.
I’m actually more curious on the effectiveness of the lightsaber tech on different weapon types
I'll ruin it and say lightwhip. Sure you can talk about pikes and rope darts, but I think cracking a lightwhip would be very explosive and clear the field of battle one way or another. Sure you don't get the luxury of mistakes, but historically speaking surviving mistakes is part of what built warriors...
@@howHumam never thought of it that way, thanks for the insight
@@howHumam lightpike. Its just one HUGE lightsaber, like 3/4 meter lightsaber. If the blade is weigthless, just swing that shit around and rip people in half lol
Possibly something with more range than a sword, some sort of weapon that launches or blasts forth plasma
@@iron54eagle a laser bayonet rifle
Absolutely loving the StarCraft T-Shirt! great video by the way!
Theoretically, with lightsabers, going for a high force (strength not magic) swing would still be a thing. It wouldn't be about damaging the opponent, but instead about trying to push the opponent's weapon to some place you want it. I could see it working, in some circumstances. However, it would be much harder to pull off if you consider that generally both characters would be highly trained, and both would know about it beforehand. If you can do it quickly, which you obviously would, the opponent may not have time to block it with force significant enough to prevent you from controlling their blade position, but if you aren't quick enough the opponent could meet your blade with equal, or greater force, or simply move away from the strike, negating the point of the move.
I really like theory crafting about lightsabers. The one thing you can never completely account for, or test with custom sabers, is the magic aspect of a lightsaber fight. According to lore, almost every movement in a lightsaber dual is augmented in some way by the force. I think Lucas went with the flashy duals in the PT because he was just thinking "Jedi use magic to be fast, so everything needs to be as fast as possible", Realistically, you probably would have a hard time seeing, in real time, what was happening. Similar to those sport fencing saber matches (electric tag), where they need the replay cameras because the blades are too fast and tiny to see.
3:55 Die-hard fan here, I'm not sure what's canon either. In Legends there's a lot of contradicting information, and in (Disney-)Canon there's not that much information at all. Sometimes it's the Force that holds the plasma in place, sometimes it's a magnetic field, sometimes it's not made of plasma at all, but "pure energy", whatever that is. I even remember reading that the core is solid once (might have been in the Darth Bane trilogy). Which kinda makes sense, because whenever a lightsaber hits something it can't cut, it behaves like a solid rod, not like plasma.
TL;DR: Star Wars itself doesn't know how lightsabers work.
That being said, everyone seems to agree that the blade is (nearly) weightless, though I haven't heard of the gyroscopic effect.
Aye Canon is all over the place with lightsaber "physics" even before Disney acquired. Let alone the whole thing with khybar crystals now.
The contradictions don't end there: Some sources claim that the length of any lightsaber blade can easily be adjusted, but it never comes up in 99% of fight scenes.
According to the Thrawn trilogy, lightsabers have infinite energy, but in other books, they have to be recharged every few years.
Usually, lightsabers require the Force to be created, but then there's lightfoils, which are used in duels by the nobility on some random planet and can explicitly be constructed by non-Force wielders.
Overall, Star Wars lore is kind of a mess.
@@Klaaism Kyber crystals in Canon are actually relatively well defined, most of the contradictions are just differences between Canon and Legends.
Metallic hydrogen exists. Maybe the plasma is so compressed at the core that it behaves like a solid.
Star Wars does know how lightsabers work. Here's dialogue from Star Wars Rebels, written by Dave Filoni, the apprentice of George Lucas:
"It's heavier than I thought."
"Energy constantly flows through the crystal. You're not fighting with a simple blade so much as you are directing a current of power. Your thoughts, your actions, they become energy, they flow through the crystal as well and become part of the blade."
[Later...]
"The blade feels lighter!"
"You're connecting with it. It's becoming a part of you."
So lightsabers start out heavy, but become lighter as the user spiritually connects with the kyber crystal. The episode also says at one point "The blades will be drawn to each other." explaining the binds we see in SW media.
I love how their are tons of sparks as well, just everything about this makes it feel realistic.
Canon is that the hilt is unexpectedly heavy (commented a couple times in clone wars), so it is slow to move and not that fast to tilt either.
Not quite at least according to Kanaan while training Sabine in the use of the Dark Saber. It is more the flow of energy through the crystal that imparts the 'Weight' in an ignited lightsaber. I have a several pound large pill bottle of lead that is conveniently able to be held like a lightsaber's hilt that I can move it pretty fast (Not as fast as a lighter weight, but still...) and add a weightless blade to it...Super fast blade. So unless Star Wars has wonkier physics than it already has, a heavy hilt and weightless blade isn't as big an issue as one might think.Also if you are going to carry a lightsaber on your belt all the time, you want that hilt as light as it can reasonably be.
To be fair, I like both the realistic and unrealistic fighting styles so I’m just happy. In any case, I enjoy this analysis
9:52 if your brain isn't actually damaged, it takes a while to be actually braindead (electrical signals within the brain can be measured up to 7 minutes after the body's shutdown, e.g. multiple organ failure). Being braindead is a condition from which you cannot recover from. That's where cpr comes in. You do the job the injured body cannot to keep the brain *alive*. If you can patch the body and can start it up again before the brain is harmed (few minutes margin without cpr, much longer with) then this short film is very plausible
I would love to see an analysis of an official lightsaber tournament match where the two combatant use form 2. Of all styles, form 2 is I think the most accurate to fencing and standard swordfighting.
That would make sense, seeing as it is supposed to be the dedicated dueling style. Every other style has adaptations for dealing with multiple assailants and enemies at range, where Form II is totally specialised for 1-on-1 melee duels.
Given form 2 is basically Christoper drawing on his fencing experience? It makes sense really. It’s precisely the same reason he’s a Count, it’s more or less a on nose reference to playing Dracula. Star Wars really loves the rule of cool. XDDD
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 how has that connection never occurred to me before now?
As far as intensity to damage, many lightsabers have a dial for that (true jedi would have it low to avoid killing). Also, in ESB when Luke nails Vader in the shoulder, it's not beskar (also remember how much effort it took Qui-Gon to cut the door) so regular armour still is a game changer in regards to power.
Vader's shoulder pauldron and the trade federation blast doors are both made of (different) lightsaber-resistant metals. It's not as good as beskar, but I wouldn't call it regular armor. It's likely more akin to the phrik alloy that Magnaguards' staff are made with.
The video itself is both stylized and realistic, it’s fantastical yet still plausible given the advanced technology. This is exactly what I want to see in actual Star Wars
En star wars estan lo poderes de la fuerza, lo que potencia las habilidades fisicas de los usuarios.
In the now non canon EU they had lightsaber training with "stun gun" type swords, and most memorable, in one instance with a non mechanical sword coated with a poison ivy-like substance that caused paralysis to imitate the effect of a lightsaber wound. The key feature here is these training used weapons with an extended shaft, as opposed to just a handle. That to me suggests the real lightsabers would handle like a sword and not feel as though the "blade" was weightless.
yeah, i loved that short. was great work!
Well with "real" lightsaber combat you'd never, ever use two hands. Reach and speed become the most important factor with power being totally irrelevant. I think real lightsaber combat would look goofy, your arm extended as far as possible and just using wrist movement. Try it with like a fishing pole or something and the rule is all you need to do is touch the other person with it, you'll quickly come to the point where you're almost in a permanent lunging forward stance and the first one to pull their "lightsaber" out of this position is going to get touched.
So, fencing, taken to its logical extreme.
But you have to take into consideration, that even if the blades themselfes are weightless, they still act like levers and transfer then energy from the impact to the wielder. And a powerful strike against the blade may not result in a wound, but it can send your own blade flying, if your grip is to weak, or if your stance is not good enough to redirect the impact energy. And in Star Wars you often have physically really strong opponents, like f.e. Vader, or General Grievous, who can punch a serious dent in the steel hull of a starfighter.
If you want to block a hit that comes with a similar stenght like Grievous punch, then you better hold your lightsaber really tight ;)
As a lightsaber fencer myself, I will tell you that if you leave your arm fully extended at all times using only wrist movements 2 things will happen. 1. Your arm will quickly tire, leaving you in a bad position, and 2. Your arm out there becomes a target. I’ve found the best solution is to keep your arm bent, blade toward your opponent and engage with your whole arm, not just the wrist.
I think it depends on the weight and inertia of the lightsaber. In both this fight and Star Wars, it looks like the lightsabers behave like Kendo sticks in terms of their weight and momentum. They can't move as fast as an empty hand and a full speed strike will come with some inertia, so you therefore have stick fighting except you can't be touched.
If the lightsabers were so light they moved as fast as an empty hand... actually I don't know how that would work. It would probably develop a different style as you mentioned. It wouldn't quite be Olympic foil fencing, because lightsaber beams don't bend and being touched 0.1 seconds after you touched the opponent would still be bad. I imagine it would be battling for better leverage and geometry over the opponent whenever you seek contact, but we don't have a way to try it with current technology... We can't make a stick that's so light that it moves as fast as an empty hand but also strong enough that it won't bend or break at all if two humans swing them like baseball bats at each other.
I'm not sure that power would become "totally irrelevant" - when trying to block, push or knock aside your opponent's blade, that extra leverage would still matter. Not to mention that even though the blade is weightless, the hilt isn't and might be heavy.
Final note, with all those sparks, it'd seem some energy gets released whenever the swords clash, which might make it hard to keep the sword from getting flung too far to the side whenever it clashes.
Would be interested to see your take on the duel from the "Deceived" trailer for The Old Republic, there's an interesting exchange involving a pommel strike and a pirouette, its pretty short so I'm not sure if you'd get a whole video out of it, but it's frenetic pacing and pretty raw use of force powers makes it one of my favorites despite being cgi.
TOR has some good trailers.
Awesome video! I loved seeing the breakdown of the minute details! I remember reading how most of the Jedi in the prequel era were trained in a style designed to deflect blaster fire (more of those spinning styles), not 1-on-1 saber fights, since the sith were supposed to be gone. That would explain why Sidious was able to cut down multiple Jedi so quickly. Great content! I'd love to see a future collab with corridor crew on a second lightsaber video!
Lightsabers are guided by your connection to the blade. In simple casual-fan terms, it needs lots of discipline to wield properly, because the lore of lightsabers is that they will feel “heavier” or won’t move well with you if you aren’t “connected” to it. And the “connection” is more of a focused mindset. So if you are a lightsaber newbie, even the blade will feel like it has weight to it. If you have that connection, through the force, you move in harmony with the blade and it no longer fights you, essentially feeling weightless.
The crystal is the heart of the blade. The heart is the crystal of the Jedi. The Jedi is the crystal of the force. The force is the blade of the heart.
-Luminara Unduli (Jedi Master)
Also you don’t need to be a force user, like a Jedi or Sith, in order to have a force connection with your lightsaber. All things living and non living are connected to the force. So it becomes more of a respect and discipline for the lightsaber. There have been non force users that can proficiently use lightsabers in lore.
Another thought about lightsabers is that they are massively heavy when in use because insane amounts of energy are involved. Like power tools, they might have weight but turn a circular saw on and swing it around. It's not the same thing as when it's off, and that's something most critics totally miss. Tools in operation are nothing like the sum of their components, it's like judging an ax by it's handle, sure it's useful but nothing like a whole ax...
Thats not why moving a circular saw when its on feels different. Lmfao. Has nothing to do with “power” and everything to do with a rotating mass. Conservation of angular momentum, gyroscopic precession etc are at play. A lightsaber has no large spinning masses so would not have these same effects.
Great video and also I love the starcraft shirt you're wearing!
Question/thought provoking statement: could the twirling and spinning of the lightsaber itself effect the fight mentally? It is a source of fairly bright light and that spinning action could be extremely distracting and disorienting whereas a normal bladed weapon doesn't have this effect.
It might work, if you are fighting someone who inst that well trained or is just bad at hiting their blasters
to understand what a lightsaber would feel like in the hand, imagine holding a glass blowers torch while channeling a bunch of high voltage from a stun-gun circuit into the flame (this is actually possible, if the flame in question is electrically conductive, which can be achieved in a butane flame simply by reacting it with a carbon-bearing crystal, creating dicyanoacetylene). because that's all a lightsaber really needs to be; a laminar flow torch of an electrically conductive flame, which then has voltage pumped into it. once the flame is electrified, it can be manipulated magnetically to achieve the traditional lightsaber, using a miniature helicon coupler. that's it. that's how you make one. spread havoc, my children.
Two of my absolute favorite channels. Yay :)
I believe the way the lightsabers work is that the force makes the blade feel heavy to the user. That is also shown in the mandalorian, where the blade gets heavier as he continues fighting
it’s not that heavy but the energy loop that makes up the blade acts like an 50lbs gyro and it’s not that EZ to move an gyro around
the ultimate move with a lightsaber would be to turn the off just before striking the enemy's lightsaber - continue the swing - then turn the it back on after you have passed the enemy's saber
There's a clip from Blade and Sorcery where someone does exactly that.
If you can fake a guard and sidestep the attack, or inversely attack and resume, you can just bypass almost all defenses aside from perfect spacing.
That's really cool but it gets real predictable when your opponent can "feel" the future and you intentions.
It's the 8th form Trakata
^^This!!^^
I just watched their video and went to search if you did a review of the fight (UA-cam notifications...), and I couldn't be more happy
@3:47 canonically, Kyber crystals require force attunement to become bound, in a sense, to the user as the extreme amount of both physical(plasma) energy and Force(big F) energy is created that make the blade seem heavy or like it is constantly resisting you. Which is why we rarely/ever see non-force users use a lightsaber, and why the Darkblade wielded by Mandalore is often described as heavy.
But for the purposes of this incredibly badass video, weightless works
11:10 "He's being healed, rather than resurrected."
I'd call that "resuscitation." It someone's heart stops you could consider them dead, but if you do CPR or an AED soon enough you can get it going again before permanent damage sets in. So this is basically sci-fi high tech CPR.
Edit: We even see a jolt of blue energy that's reminiscent of a defibrillator.
I'd say resuscitation counts as a type of healing, myself, but that's more a semantic argument really. But CPR doesn't reattach limbs, so "healing" is still pretty involved either way.
I have no idea how to fight with a sword, but at 6:06 i have a question. If i always keep my sword in front and tight, shouldnt my moves become more predictable?
I recommend reacting to Shad's analysis of Episode 3 Anakin and Obiwan duel. It's much better and realistic than people give it credit for.
On the other hand, Matt Easton took a briefer look at it on IGN's channel, and he didn't seem as positive on the duel. Keep in mind that Shad's HEMA experience is fairly minimal, and Matt is probably able to pick up on the finer issues.
@@InSanic13 you didnt watch the shad video then cause all the unrealistic stuff matt Easton pointed out so did shad as well. He still considers it a great fight because of the great choreography they achieved.
@@lampad4549 It's been a while since I've watched Shad's video, so you might be right. I just felt like Matt's evaluation came out more negative, perhaps because he didn't see as many positive aspects.
I think rather than a dance swordfighting is more akin to a Tekken match.
During the dance partners cooperate (even when one leads and another one follows), but in a Tekken game the concepts of pressure (frame advantage), pokes, openings, whiffing, etc. are really similar to the real duel. Plus one mistake can lead to a loss (albeit in reality person will just die instead of get launched into he air and "juggled" to death with a "combo", lol).
I'm not sure I agree. Thing is in a lot of more formal dancing there's a definite leader, the person who sets the pace. Being the person who sets the tone in a fight is quite important. It's almost a universal of combat, warfare not just the martial arts.
Call it the initiative, the weather gauge, call it whatever you want, being the one who sets and controls the tone of an engagement is a powerful thing.
In these dances, distance, touch or not, all of those are important. Not to mention the knowledge of how your body moves, how to move your body, moving from and between positions where you need more strength, more flexibility, agility. Not to mention that ability to control your timing, your pace, very much a feature of a good dancer and a good martial artist.
I'm a muso, not a dancer, but ballet, regency era formal dancing to modern ballroom dancing, flamenco..... all of those are highly formal and highly complex. So some comparison to the martial arts could be fair. At leas the heavily formalised, competitive forms out there now.
If JDCR actually was from the future your comparison would be accurate lol.
I don't know why it took me so long to get into your content. Great stuff
George Lucas once said that the reason why in the OG Trilogy everyone is holding the lightsaber with both hands is, that the weapon has so much energy that wielding it with one hand is rly difficult
I imagine the energy field could cause quite a lot of sway in the blade as it focuses the plasma thanks to good ole Newtonian physics, so perhaps whenever we see someone one handing a lightsaber that means they’re either ridiculously strong or the blade’s power has been toned down to compensate?
Ventures and Dooku are impressive foes, but agility is their forte, not strength, and that reflects in their styles. Compare them to Anakin or Obi-Wan with direct, powerful swings with an equally powerful saber.
You gotta remember that the force gives them that extra boost of energy which is why they are able to jump around and do all this extra shit, and the more in tune with the force they are, like Yoda, they are able to jump around alot more and has more dexterity, and you are correct about the lethality and the easy of instantly harming your opponent(s), which is where the acrobatics come into play, they are able to evade or react way quicker than our universes humans.
Amazing video as always, but that Protoss shirt kept catching my eye, I love it.
It's also difficult to say what is "realistic" in a battle when the two combatants have a certain level of esp and pre cognition reflexes.
I think that's copium, cause people with incredible reflexes fight faster, they don't freeze to kick in their precog machine. That's some anime-ass bullshit where a 3 second sequence takes 4 minutes on screen, cause the MC has to go through his entire life history to predict what the enemy will do next.
@@MedievalSolutions I'm sure you said what you did with perfect clarity to you, but I have no idea what you were trying to convey. I'm sorry. Either way, it's been a long time since this comment, but when it comes to fictional worlds where plot and tension supercede physics and magic becomes a driving dynamic, realism is subjective.
@@MedievalSolutions if you've read star wars you would know that the Jedi precog is nothing like that.
This is a lightsaber duel, not a force user duel
@@LineOfThy 😉
The point you make about keeping the lightsaber in front and making small moves is almost exactly how the original lightsaber fight between Obi-wan and Darth Vader was done. Sometimes they get it right the first time.
But it's also the most boring shit to watch
@@writer5790 Depends on your perspective. I found the episode 4 duel between Obi-Wan and Vader to be more tense and implied a huge sense of danger, unlike Anakin and Obi-Wan's duel in Episode 3 where they literally ran around a volcano planet swinging their lightsabers around like toys.
It's awesome to see some of my favorite channels making content on some of my other favorite channeks
The best part about fiction is you can present a simple something ( like “tuning” the plasma into a blade) and boom it’s believable.
Ain’t it funny/weird
This was brought together after they had the sword expert on for reactions to sword fights in movies and he was not happy with the lightsaber duels. So this whole concept came from the experts point of view. It's amazing to watch and I would watch whatever world this would exist in.
Experts who don’t wield lightsabers. Because there isn’t a weapon that’s built and functions like a lightsaber.
@@mateoherrera1233 Just how this is open to interpretation to you, it's also open to interpretation to them. Their opinion isn't incorrect, it's just different.