Star Wars lightsaber combat has lost its Phantom Menace mojo

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace Is Return to the cinema on May 3 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. This essay was inspired by its republication.

In the quarter century since the release of the Star Wars prequel trilogy The Phantom Menace and his siblings were praised, resented, relitigated, rehabilitated, loved and lamented. At the risk of playing into a cliché, they permanently changed what Star Wars meant to viewers and creators in terms of story, world building, mood and graphics.

The Phantom Menace introduced many new ideas to the franchise – a long, often embarrassing list that includes Midi-Chlorians, Jar-Jar Binks and more alien species with unpleasant accents. But one of the best ideas that came to Star Wars is about to disappear.

When did the Jedi lose their sick flips?

“George has never been in a fight in his life.”

George Lucas is known for his affection for Air combat in the cinema of the Second World War, no close combat. Although the swordplay of the original Star Wars trilogy is iconic, it hardly lacks finesse. The lightsaber duels are kinetic stand-ins for the emotional and philosophical arguments between characters, not set pieces per se. The prequel trilogy’s move toward highly balletic, choreographed lightsaber battles was not primarily Lucas’s doing; Their design fell squarely on the creative shoulders of stunt performer and coordinator Nick Gillard.

“George has never been in a fight in his life,” Gillard said said Vulture in 2017. “So he didn’t actually bother to write [a lightsaber duel]. It would say something like, ‘There’s a fierce lightsaber fight – seven minutes,’ and you could fill in the blank there.”

Gillard already had two decades of industry experience when he took office The Phantom Menace‘s lightsaber fight. He had worked with Lucasfilm productions for almost as long, starting in the 1981s Hunter of the lost treasure. But the way he filled “the void” for the Jedi was entirely inspired by the film action he saw on the screen around him in the late ’90s. With Lucas’s blessing and full creative freedom, Gillard created a bespoke Jedi martial art that was fast, agile and acrobatic, highlighting the Order’s preternatural reflexes and Force-assisted aerial skills.

The fight scenes that followed – especially the climactic duels of The Phantom Menace And Revenge of the Sith – were among the only aspects of the prequel trilogy to escape ridicule. It wasn’t just the choreography. These duels were extremely mobile and interactive and led through rooms and changing environments. They showed sabers casually cutting through walls and stabbing through electronic panels, sending sparks flying and fuel hoses whipping around. They preferred curves that cut diagonally across the camera’s view, the better to turn sabers into streaks of light rather than simple lines. The prequels shifted Star Wars’ position on the subgenre map to the frontier of martial arts action, in an era where wire-fu standards like The Matrix, Crouching tiger, hidden dragon, Kill Billand I dare say, Charlie’s Angels firmly attracted the attention of the multiplex visitors.

But Gillard’s influence has waned as Star Wars transitioned back into live-action and the franchise moved away from showing the Jedi Knights in their prime. The saber duels of the modern Star Wars TV shows can’t hold a candle to those of the prequel trilogy.

An elegant flip for a more civilized age

Out of The Force Awakens The forward-looking live-action Star Wars film largely turned the camera away from Temple-trained, top-tier Jedi Knights. Rey is a self-taught quarterstaff fighter and Kylo Ren killed all of his classmates. The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba FettAnd Andor Either there are no Jedi or they are carefully kept in the background, which largely accounts for the unique status of Din Djarin’s Darksaber – so saber-on-saber clashes are rare.

Even though the Jedi have returned to the spotlight in the Disney Plus series, with a few exceptions the sword duels have been slow, staged and even… perfunctory. I worried I had exaggerated the difference in my head until I started pulling up videos of the prequels while writing this article. When you look at this and the most recent fights side by side, the difference in speed is immediately noticeable.

It certainly makes sense that the harshness of a lightsaber fight should be lessened somewhat if the practitioners were not handed a saber at the same time as they tied their shoes. But even in scenes where canonical Jedi Knights do their best – Ahsoka’s duel with Baylan Skoll, Obi-Wan and Anakin’s flashback sparring – it is a toned down shadow of as it once was.

Maybe I’m tough. Gillard has set a high standard that is difficult to achieve. And maybe you really like the modern saber duels – after all, it’s a subjective assessment. But I have another question based on 100% objective criteria: Where are the damn cracks?

Why do all the Jedi now have their feet stuck to the ground?

The Jedi’s “power leap” – I continue to refer to them as “sick leaps”, thank you very much – is not Gillard’s invention. It goes back to the original Lucas trilogy, where we see Luke practicing mid-air flips with Yoda. He later uses his power-powered jumping ability to jump out of the carbonite chamber The Empire Strikes Backand to escape the Sarlacc Pit Return of the Jedi.

But the Star Wars prequel trilogy elevated that power to an art form. Sick flips were no longer just used to get out of a jam – Gillard wove them through the Jedi martial arts like breathing. The very first thing that happens in the legendary story of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon dark threat Fight with Darth Maul is this Obi-Wan does a sick flip over Maul so the Sith Lord is flanked. And the very last thing while Obi-Wan avenges his fallen master? That’s right, he does a great flip out of a pit, sailing over Maul’s head and splitting him in half.

How works attack of the Clone warriors Grant Yoda mastery of the philosophy of the Force in his saber style? Why, by giving him exponentially more sick flips than any other Jedi? The decisive battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan on Mustafar Revenge of the Sith starts with a sick flip, as Anakin throws himself across a platform towards his master. It also ends with one as Obi-Wan replaces Anakin all three of his remaining natural limbs. This is what the whole infamous “I have the upper hand” conversation is all about! Obi-Wan says, “Don’t do a sick somersault from down there! It won’t work for me because I invented that.”

The sick flip remains the clearest hallmark of Jedi martial arts – any franchise could introduce fast, deadly, mobile swordplay. But the Force-backed flip is tailored to Star Wars. The Clone Wars And Rebels The series, with their animated environments, kept the flip in the fallow live-action Star Wars era between the prequels and ubiquitous The Force Awakens. And yet the flip is nowhere to be seen in the live-action shows, not even in the duels between Obi-Wan and Anakin, Anakin and Ahsoka, and Ahsoka and Baylan Skoll.

I’m not suggesting that planning and staging great martial arts scenes is easy, let alone staging fights that rely on the main cast rather than experienced stunt people. Quite the opposite! They require a lot of preparatory work and place high demands on the actors. This is probably a significant reason for the difference between the choreography of the prequel trilogy and the various Disney Plus series. The time demands of episodic television are fundamentally different from those of film production, and we live in a time characterized by Hollywood’s desire to do more things faster rather than taking the time to do things well.

But I miss the inventiveness and fluidity of the prequels’ combat. Watch out AhsokaI was impressed by how striking Hayden Christensen’s moves different from those of his co-stars. He lowers his center of gravity, glides through his stance with predatory grace and, when the opportunity arises, uses a good old, blindingly fast saber turn. It’s clear that Gillard taught him the basics of theatrical swordplay during production attack of the Clone warriors And Revenge of the Sith are still there.

Perhaps Star Wars will never again achieve the ideal combination of resources, talent and contemporary action flavor that allows it to border on wire-fu and martial arts cinema. I may never realize my dream of seeing Jedi fly through the air and dive on their opponents again. On the other hand… there is The Acolyte.

The upcoming Disney Plus series has the obvious mission of depicting a time when the Jedi Order’s ancient past was truly at its peak, rather than on the brink of extinction. The trailers for the show focused mostly on martial arts, even a brief look at wire-fu. And most intriguingly, the biggest name in the cast The Matrixis Carrie-Anne Moss, a veteran who is absolutely no stranger to sick flips. This is Star Wars: We Can Always Hope.