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Lightsaber fights


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51 minutes ago, Odine said:

My thoughts allign pretty closely to Tank Driver's. 

I like the OT duels more than the PT cause the PT duels suck and are like watching the Nutcracker or something. The OT duels seem the most closely to resemble real world fencing/kendo. The Obi/Vader dual particularly where there is more time staring each other down than striking seems quite realistic. But the ST wins hands down for a balance of cinematic action, realism and emotional feel. It's more kinetic too cause the effects are much better. 

Fuck ranking duels though I don't have time for that. But I think it'd be the same as Tanks list but I'd swap the position of ESB/ROTJ duels. ROTJ gives me goose bumps when luke screams Noooooo! And just rails on Vader smashing him into the ground. Fuck that's a great scene. Who hasn't wanted to do that to their absentee father at least once in their life?

 

Oh rub it in!.....I don't have absentee father.   Words can hurt, you know.  

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1 hour ago, Tank said:

Well I suppose this devolution is better than the usual slow drift into trouncing the EU.

Thanks for the invitation!

I think the duel between Anakin and Asajj Ventress on Yavin IV in Tartakovsky's Clone Wars was one of the best ever seen, right up there with Luke and Vader. It shows lots of emotion and Anakin's struggle with the dark side, but also shows him regretting his actions, suggesting he still holds allegiance to the light despite it all. Great illustration of the conflict within him.

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2 minutes ago, Zerimar Nyliram said:

Thanks for the invitation!

I think the duel between Anakin and Asajj Ventress on Yavin IV in Tartakovsky's Clone Wars was one of the best ever seen, right up there with Luke and Vader. It shows lots of emotion and Anakin's struggle with the dark side, but also shows him regretting his actions, suggesting he still holds allegiance to the light despite it all. Great illustration of the conflict within him.

Ugh.  You're asking me now to recommend the Luke versus 50 emperors fight as best EVAR. 

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54 minutes ago, Zerimar Nyliram said:

Thanks for the invitation!

I think the duel between Anakin and Asajj Ventress on Yavin IV in Tartakovsky's Clone Wars was one of the best ever seen, right up there with Luke and Vader. It shows lots of emotion and Anakin's struggle with the dark side, but also shows him regretting his actions, suggesting he still holds allegiance to the light despite it all. Great illustration of the conflict within him.

I'll actually co-sign this. I won't lie, there's a apart of me that hopes Ventress shows up in the Ahsoka show.

Anakin's "cave" experience in this series was also one of the coolest things ever.

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I have the most normie babybrain opinion of all time on this point because I'm pretty much always thrilled to see one lightsaber (or more!) fight another lightsaber(s). Love to see the blue light and the green light and the purple light clash against the red light. Or any combination of lights and shapes in conflict. I love the sounds, too. Vhrrrr! Flurrrrrrm!

 

I don't know how many lightsaber fights there are in the entire corpus of the GFFA but let's say for the sake of argument it's 2098. It's a two thousand and ninety-eight way tie for me on which ones are the best. Can't wait for the two thousand ninety-ninth lightsaber fight!

 

BUT

 

I think my two favourite bits of lightsaber business from the OT is Han cutting into that wampa and R2 potato-cannoning Luke's saber from Jabba's sail barge.

 

If I had to had to had to choose then I'd say the worst fights are probably Qui-Gon versus Maul on Tatooine and Finn versus "Traitor!" on ... ??? ... Planet ... Planet Where The Oompa Loompa Had Her Temple/Bar? Both for the same reason, they sap momentum from the film's climactic saber duels and don't really serve much purpose on their own. What is the point of them? I don't know. Maybe I'd like them more if they were longer? Does that make sense? Maybe not.

 

Either way, those are closer to the bottom of the list than the top for me. But the gap between the #1 of all time i.e. Luke briefly igniting his father's lightsaber in Obi-Wan's little hutch on the southwestern edge of the Dune Sea in Star Wars (1977) and #2098 of all time i.e. Khod Fishfangar's accidental dropping of his lit lightsaber into a nearby koi pond as dramatized in the text-only portion of Star Wars ✩Annual✩ (2014) is not very large. Lightsabers! Love to see 'em. Love to hear 'em! Yes please!

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5 hours ago, Jedigoat said:

You're just mad no one is taking your cue and making their own lists.  

Speaking of.......

Jay And Silent Bob Strikes Back's 'saber fight is my #1.    How 'bout that, I devolved the thread yet also stayed on topic!  Now you don't know what to think. 

What?  No love for Spaceballs?

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ESB top for me like others here, just epic.   Could watch that all day long.

ROTJ next as it's so packed with emotion and all the while in the background we have the cackling Emperor enjoying the show.  Awesome.

TPM - sure it's flashy, but this was a big moment when watching in the cinema.  Very enjoyable and the title Duel of the Fates was so appropriate when you think how Anakin would have turned out with Qui-Gon training him.

ANH - yes, you read that right.  For me, it's not about the flashiness of it, but the tension in the fight.   Lots of verbal - you can just feel Vader wanting to open up and really go to town on Kenobi, but he his wary of the old man's tricks after their last encounter (assuming no retcon in the new tv series....).  Ultimate sacrifice to allow the New Hope to escape.  Magic.

ROTS - and round 1 of that fight above goes here.   It was a day long awaited and it delivered, but as others have said, the lava surfing is rubbish, and god bless him but Hayden just doesn't deliver some of those lines that well.   Can't wait to see him in the series though.   

TFA - Rey / Finn vs Kylo.    Entertaining stuff.  It is questionable how quickly someone can become proficient with a lightsaber against a powerful adversary though (sure Finn will have been trained as a stormtrooper and Rey has learnt to handle herself growing up alone).  But ignoring that, great fun and Kylo being severely injured from Chewie's bowcaster makes it seem just about acceptable that he can be bested.

TLJ - nice battle of verbal's again here with Kylo & Luke.    Nice twist as well.  

TROS - I enjoyed this battle that starts in the Throne room and ends in the waves.  It just can't compete with the ones above.

AOTC - sorry, but nothing about this film can drag it off of last place in a list.

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I know it isn't that exciting and I don't watch the Clone Wars so I have only seen a brief clip, but I liked the Clone Wars Obi-Wan/ Maul duel.  The dual itself was realistic (over in seconds) and a great emotional connection.  Have you ever watched fencing in the olympics?  Duels last a few seconds and that is the best competing against the best.  But that leads me to how historical battles in general are presented in movies as a huge pet peeve of mine. 

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Yeah but some shit is just so unrealistic it breaks my suspension of disbelief. Illogical manoeuvres in cinematic depictions of melee combat pisses me off, cause I don't believe certain characters would do certain things because they are supposed to have a fundamental knowledge in combat/tactics. This applies to flips, spins, letting guards down, exposing a flank etc..

It's not about historical accuracy or even adhering to convention. It's about believeability and shit being stupid or not.

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2 hours ago, Odine said:

Yeah but some shit is just so unrealistic it breaks my suspension of disbelief. Illogical manoeuvres in cinematic depictions of melee combat pisses me off, cause I don't believe certain characters would do certain things because they are supposed to have a fundamental knowledge in combat/tactics. This applies to flips, spins, letting guards down, exposing a flank etc..

It's not about historical accuracy or even adhering to convention. It's about believeability and shit being stupid or not.

Agreed for the most part.  Less is more, which I think is the reason I like the OT saber fights most.  But, Jedi SHOULD be able to do semi-unrealistic or superhuman maneuvers.  To me, Jedi are literally fighter/magic users (if you want to put it in D&D terms), so there should be some "magic" to them.  The PT always seemed to draw some inspiration from the 1970s kung fu movies, and especially AOTC and ROTS, borrowed from Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon.  But the execution was problematic at times (Especially Yoda duels). 

 

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