Well, this is a bump to solidify my own point but I appreciated both this video series as well as the comments (bonus feature that the Mandalorian vs. Moff Gideon features in the same video). This is a sword instructor from London commenting on realism of various fictional fights. Obviously "realism" will be taken only so well in a fantasy series like Star Wars. However, he is articulating well the posturing and language of the duel within this scene. But, I also appreciate the weapons language. Starts at 2:14
As a general rule of thumb; when it comes to movie swordfights (and stage swordfights, for that matter) realism is secondary to storytelling. So instead of asking "how realistic is this, or that fight?" What you should really be asking is "what story does this tell?". That even applies on a broad scale, as people often like to point out how much more jumpy-flippy-spinny the fights are in the PT. So what story does that particular style tell? It tells the story of a Order that hasn't had to train it's Knights to fight for their lives in sword to sword duelling in a thousand years. It's all been practice sparring for points at the temple, and deflecting a flurry of blaster bolts from droids, merc, raiders and the like in the field. That second part is important because all of those flourishing moves are not designed to fight another sword wielder, it's designed to defend against , and aid in the deflection of blaster bolts. How about on a micro-scale? Well let's take a look at the ANH fight: Often criticised for how low-key and unimpressive of the whole trilogy, but there's a reason for that. Gone are the wide flourishing moves because these opponents are now veterans of sabre on sabre combat. Then why does it last so long, where most "realistic" fights are over in mere seconds, and the last fight they had was nuts? Easy: because Obi-Wan is SOOO much more attuned to the force then he's ever been. He could probably cut Vader down then and there if he chose to, but that's not his goal: his goal is to draw focus on himself, so the twins have a chance to escape. He's not fighting to win, he's fighting to draw. Giving up possible killing blows that might expose himself to a parry or counter-strike, for defensive ones that guarantee his safety and prolong the fight. It's why I didn't like that fan made "revision" of the fight to make it look more in like with the PT style, since it misses the whole point of the fight and is telling the wrong story in the name of looking cool. Well then what about the Luke & Vader fights? Again, in both instances, Vader is not trying to kill Luke, he's trying to capture and goad him, respectively. Indeed in ESB, he's practically toying with him at first, just getting a feel for his skill level. He could have cut him in half at any point. Indeed, it's only when Luke gets in a "lucky" strike and actually lands a blow on his shoulder, that Vader looses his patience and ends it by removing Luke's hand, almost instantly. It's the same when Kanan and Ezra went up against him on Lothal; he's not interested in killing them, he's trying to drive them back to the rebel fleet on a shuttle he's already hidden a tracker on. He could have killed ALL of them right then and there if he chose to.
That's an opinion I don't agree with. There are plenty of non-dumb ways to do it. Use your imagination.
As a general rule I do agree. However, and the more I learn about sword fighting the more this stands out to me, if there is not a sense of danger to the story then the lack of realism stands out even more. Your examples are interesting. ANH feels dangerous between Obi-Wan and Vader, while The TPM doesn't feel quite as dangerous and the story largely feels thin. But, I do agree with the broader point of story over realism. Which is why Twin Suns is one of my favorite duels in Star Wars because the story is well done, and the choreography adds to it, not taking away form it.
It's also probably worth remembering that Star Wars is at it's core a swashbuckling adventure fantasy, so overly "realistic" swordfights would just be incongruous to the tone and setting. You wouldn't expect the same level of fidelity on display in say, 'The Duellists' as you would in the likes of 'The Mark Of Zorro'. It'd be weird, out of place and not in keeping with the spirit of the thing. And on that spectrum, Star Wars is firmly over in the Zorro camp. Either way, it still all comes down to story. The 'Twin Suns' fight leans very hard into the Kurosawa influence to tell a very short and to the point story (no pun intended) done almost entirely with the shifting of stances before the actual fight. But the story still comes first. Just to be clear though, Kurosawa swordfights are hardly "realistic" either. While movies like Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo etc. certainly had a much grittier, more grounded (at at times brutally honest) tone than was usual for Japanese period dramas of the time, there's still an element of pulp there as they're largely bloodless, almost comically pantomimed by modern standards, and typically as ever more focused on story and the feeling of fidelity than actual authenticity. It's often overlooked much of the fight aesthetic and framing in those movies draws heavily on "wild west" movies (understandable given how reciprocal that interaction turned out to be in retrospect.) Indeed the basis for the 'Twin Suns' fight, the famous Kyuzo duel from 'Seven Samurai' is shot and framed just as one would a western showdown (so it should be no wonder how seamlessly it got re-interpreted by John Ford.) As for TPM; that fight is intentionally not supposed to feel personally dangerous because it's designed and framed to be operatic. The story being told here isn't about an old master and his apprentice doing battle with an evil warrior. It's much bigger than that. It's about the fate and future of the galaxy hinging on this one confrontation; it's a literal duel of fates (the title of that pieces of music and it's prominence in the film is no coincidence.) Who gets to raise and train the Chosen One? Qui-Gon, or Obi-Wan? The father Anakin never had, or the older brother who's barely a man himself? The lack of a sense of danger personal is part of that sense of inevitable tragedy (I mean what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending!? ) And really it kind of has to operate that way because going into that movie, everyone knew where the story of Anakin was going. We knew Anakin and Obi-Wan are still around 30 years later, we knew Qui-Gon wasn't, and that Anakin ultimately fell to evil. It would have been foolish to try and play that off any other way.
I agree. I do agree on this point as well. For me the realism come as a part of connecting with the story and the believability within the world. It creates a relatability for me. Well, as operatic as it is it unfortunately fails for me as a story. So, I fall back to trying to find things to engage with.
It's an understandable and very common attitude that I suspect mostly stems from one of the fundamental flaws of the entire PT; the story being told is largely incompatible with both the medium and genre it's being told in. If it were made today, it would be done as a three to five season prestige show, not as a trilogy of adventure movies. That of course would have been financially and technically impossible in 1998. I almost feel sorry for Lucas since it was ultimately an impossible task. People wanted "more Star Wars", which in most minds was high adventure, swashbuckling fun. But the backstory for that world he'd created was more 'War and Peace' meets 'Divine Comedy' and the 'Iliad' by way of 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. It was about large sweeping concepts, great sea changes of a civilization, the corrupting nature of war and unbridled commerce, the rise of militarism and fascism that often results, and the kinds of people that use these things to gain personal power at the cost of the freedoms and lives of countless people...but also you got to sell a metric shitload of toys off the back of the whole thing or you won't be able to fund the next one... Personally, I find the higher concepts at play are the only way I can really engage with the material, since the surface level stuff is so compromised by the weight of opposing creative demands.
Im no swordfighting expert, but the anakin vs Obi-Wan duel in ROTS seemed over the top. At one point they were literally standing in front of one another while twirling their sabers side to side. The whole point of the fight was for one to kill the other, not stand within arms reach and show off.
Two key points here: 1) Obi-Wan taught Anakin everything he knows about sabre combat. 2) Obi-Wan doesn't actually WANT to kill Anakin. Indeed that's the whole point of the "I have the high ground!" bit. He knows he's essentially gotten Anakin into a checkmate scenario and tries to warn him off, where the pragmatic move would have been to let Anakin attack and then take his head off. Even after Anakin charges in anyway and the fight is done, he still can't even bring himself to finish him off and so just walks away. That's largely why it's such a drawn out stalemate; Obi-Wan is fighting defensively trying to wear Anakin down. I don't know if he has some vague plan about taking him alive, but at this point it's not so much a rational thing as an emotional one. Kenobi knows what he has to do...but he just can't do it.
Well, as Reverend notes, Obi-wan did not want to kill Anakin and actively avoided doing so even when given the opportunity and it would have been more merciful to do so.
And it's this, in many ways misguided, act of conflicted love from Obi-Wan that echoes with Anakin's own choice from RotJ. A pair of deliberate choices made that, ultimately, combined to save the galaxy from the Empire. One in sorrow, the other in hope. Which, by the by, is almost the only way the ending of RoS makes any damn sense. With Ben's act of love to save Rey. It's still got all kinds of problems (Reylo just wasn't a good idea from any standpoint), but at least it rhymes.
Well let's just be clear on one point: Obi-Wan didn't walk away from the lava pit thinking he'd let Anakin live. In his mind, the mopey bastard was clearly done for, he just couldn't bring himself to even do a mercy killing, so he walked away. It wasn't an act of compassion, it was an act of despair. I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of the things we see in the upcoming show is his "oh fuck he's still alive!?" reaction to Vader.
And where did I say otherwise? Obi-wan couldn't bring himself to finish things. Yes, he hoped Vader was done. But it was his obligation to be certain. And he couldn't do it. He loved Anakin too much. I agree about his mindset. But it's still a choice made because of love for another person. Obi-wan feels despair because of the love he bore Anakin, whom Vader has destroyed. If you can't see that, I don't know what to say to you. And, in inadvertently letting Vader live, he opened a door for Luke decades later.
Having to look for a “way” annoys me. I don't see how Obi-Wan fleeing an early encounter reflects badly on Vader. At all. It's not like Obi-Wan is some Force sensitive kid with no training who ran into the Sith Lord unprepared for what to expect, and incapable of finding his way out of there. He will run circles around the four Jedi who have “escaped” Vader mentioned in this thread, so he can get away proper without the scare quotes, and without Vader looking less capable or dumber. Just don't make it dumb. That's it. At the same time, no matter how strong and powerful Vader is, we know he is not completely without conflict within him – the saga is The Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker, after all – and so he will be so around Obi-Wan. There are reasons I'd rather that does not happen openly (he did not manifest such inner conflict near Ahsoka, or his ANH encounter with Kenobi), but should it happen, it will merely foreshadow the facet of his character that takes over at the end of ROTJ. More than that, actually – in ROTJ he merely kills Palpatine to save his son, possibly in anger, yet that leads to his sudden and inexplicable turn to the light side of the Force, which is even more startling than how he learned to preserve his physical form in the Force. He has a single line that foreshadows that, and only by superimposing the end of Episode III onto his emotion as he stands expressionless across of Luke, and juxtaposing it with the way he stood expressionless across Ahsoka's grave, that feels complete. There's no way that that part of him survived without it being half-kindled here and there, so it could further his character. We don't say Vader is incapable because Palpatine still has him as his puppet, or has Tarkin orders him around in ANH. We don't say he's incapable because he's Henchman No. 1 of an empire that promotes the one thing he hates the most – slavery. He wouldn't feel less capable because he display uncertainty about his goals at an encounter that reminds him of his past.
I still don't think Obi-wan and Vader will actually fight in person. It will be a vision, and illusion or something. That way they can have their battle without actually having it.