Lightsaber

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the song, see Lightsaber (song).

Lightsaber
Darksaber
)

A lightsaber is a

prequel and sequel
trilogies.

In the Star Wars

Pre Vizsla, Maul, Bo-Katan Kryze, Moff Gideon, and Din Djarin
).

As presented in the films, a lightsaber's energy blade can cut, burn, and melt through most substances with little resistance.

Expanded Universe
as well as later episodic films. An active lightsaber gives off a distinctive hum, which rises in pitch and volume as the blade is moved rapidly through the air. Bringing the blade into contact with another lightsaber's blade produces a loud crackle.

The lightsaber has become one of the most widely recognized elements of the Star Wars franchise. In 2008, a survey of approximately 2,000 film fans found it to be the most popular weapon in film history.[5][6]

Prop construction

Covered with millions of tiny glass beads, [Scotchlite] has the property of reflecting light directly back to its source. It's the same material used for reflective road signs [and lightsaber props].

—Special Effects: An Introduction to Movie Magic[7]

For the original

film prop hilts were constructed by John Stears from old Graflex press camera flash battery packs and other pieces of hardware. The full-sized sword props were designed to appear ignited onscreen, by later creating an "in-camera" glowing effect in post-production. The blade is a three-sided rod which was coated with a Scotchlite retroreflector array, the same sort used for highway signs.[7]
A lamp was positioned to the side of the taking camera and reflected towards the subject through 45-degree angled glass so that the sword would appear to glow from the camera's point of view.

Set decorator Roger Christian found the handles for the Graflex Flash Gun in a photography shop in Great Marlborough Street, in London's West End.[8] He then added cabinet T-track to the handles, securely attaching them with cyanoacrylate glue. Adding a few "greebles" (surface details), Christian managed to hand-make the first prototype of a lightsaber prop for Luke before production began. George Lucas decided he wanted to add a clip to the handle, so that Luke could hang it on his belt. Once Lucas felt the handle was up to his standards, it went to John Stears to create the wooden dowel rod with front-projection paint so that the animators would have a glow of light to enhance later on in post production. Due to lack of preparation time, Christian's prototype and a second spare were used for the shooting in Tunisia, where filming on Star Wars began.[9] It was discovered, however, that the glowing effect was greatly dependent on the rod's orientation to the camera, and during the Obi-Wan Kenobi/Darth Vader duel, they could clearly be seen as rods. Because of this, the glow would be added in post-production through rotoscoping, which also allowed for diffusion to be employed to enhance the glow.

While original trilogy hilts were typically constructed using found parts, during the prequel and sequel trilogies a different process was sometimes used. Hilts were first machined out of metal materials. Then casts would be made using the metal hilts to create resin copies that were used on screen.[10] The resin was often molded over a metal rod that a dueling blade could be attached to for fight sequences.

Visual effects

Korean

rotoscope, an animation which was superimposed onto the footage of the physical lightsaber blade prop. Shin explained to the people from Lucasfilm that since a lightsaber is made of light, the sword should look "a little shaky" like a fluorescent tube. He suggested inserting one frame that was much lighter than the others while printing the film on an optical printer, making the light seem to vibrate. Shin also recommended adding a degausser sound on top of the other sounds for the weapon since the sound would be reminiscent of a magnetic field. The whole process took one week, surprising his company. Lucasfilm showed Shin the finished product, having followed his suggestions to use an X-Acto knife to give the lightsaber a very sharp look, and to have sound accompany the weapon's movements.[11]

Sound

The lightsaber sound effect was developed by sound designer Ben Burtt as a combination of the hum of idling interlock motors in aged movie projectors and interference caused by a television set on a shieldless microphone. Burtt discovered the latter accidentally as he was looking for a buzzing, sparking sound to add to the projector-motor hum.[12]

The pitch changes of lightsaber movement were produced by playing the basic lightsaber tone on a loudspeaker and recording it on a moving microphone, generating

Doppler shift to mimic a moving sound source.[13]

Depiction

Lightsabers were present in the earliest drafts as mundane plasma weapons that were used alongside laser guns.[14][15] The introduction of the Force in a later revision made the Jedi and the Sith supernaturally skilled; initially they were only portrayed as swordsmen.[16] The lightsaber became the Force-user's tool, described in A New Hope by Obi-Wan Kenobi as "not as clumsy or random as a blaster. An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age".[17] The source of a lightsaber's power is a kyber crystal.[18] These crystals are also the power source of the Death Star's superlaser.[19][20]

In films such as

electrostaff and plasma-lined blades deflect lightsabers.[21][22]

Types

Lightsabers are depicted as hand-built as part of a Jedi's or Sith's training regimen. Each lightsaber is unique, though some may bear resemblance to others, especially if there is a connection between the builders. The hilt of most lightsabers are straight and predominantly cylindrical, though there are other lightsaber hilt types. The first film appearance of a dual-bladed lightsaber (first depicted in the comic series

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed introduced two other variants: a lightsaber pike (a lightsaber with a shorter blade but a long handle, resembling a spear) and a Tonfa
-style lightsaber with right-angle hilt.

The

greatsword. His blade also has an unstable, fiery appearance, explained in canon reference books as stemming from a cracked kyber crystal.[26] The Inquisitors of the Galactic Empire are depicted as wielding a unique variation of a double-bladed saber, mounted on a rotating ring enabling the blades 360 degrees of rotation and short-term flight capability. More obscure lightsaber variations, such as the "lightwhip", an elongated flexible blade used in a matter akin to a whip
, the "lightclub", an enlarged standard lightsaber, and the "shoto", a dramatically smaller variation often paired with a standard sized saber have also made appearances.

Colors

Lightsabers in the first two released films,

The Rise of Skywalker
, Rey is shown to have built a yellow-bladed lightsaber using part of her staff as the hilt.

As depicted in The Clone Wars and Rebels, the builder of a lightsaber finds a kyber crystal and meditates with it until the crystal acquires a color. The color of this crystal becomes the blade's color when installed into a lightsaber hilt. In the book Star Wars: Ahsoka and the comic series Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, it is shown that dark side users remove the crystal from a defeated Jedi's lightsaber and concentrate Force energy on it to break its connection to the light side, a process known as "bleeding" to create a red crystal. The process can also be reversed, as shown in Ahsoka, when the titular character does so to a pair of crystals taken from an Inquisitor. She uses them in the pair of white-bladed lightsabers she builds at the end of the novel.

The Darksaber is a unique lightsaber that has a distinct black blade with a white halo, introduced in

third season of the show, the weapon (nominally) returns to Kryze's ownership, after she defeats a cyborg creature that captures Djarin (it remains in Din Djarin's possession, however), and she officially reclaims the blade in the season's sixth episode. It is destroyed by Gideon in the third season finale
.

Other colors have appeared in various

expanded media
projects, including many video games where the player can select their character's lightsaber color.

Choreography

The technical lightsaber choreography for the original Star Wars trilogy was developed by

Hollywood sword-master Bob Anderson. Anderson personally trained Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and, in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, performed all the stunts as Darth Vader during the lightsaber duels wearing Vader's costume. Anderson's role in the trilogy was highlighted in the film Reclaiming the Blade
where he shared his experiences as a fencer developing the lightsaber techniques for the three original movies.

The lightsaber duels in the Star Wars prequel trilogy were specifically choreographed by stunt-coordinator Nick Gillard to be miniature "stories". For these films, Gillard was the primary sword instructor for Liam Neeson (Qui-Gon Jinn), Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Ray Park (Darth Maul) and Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader) among other actors. His goal in choreographing the action for The Phantom Menace was to create stunts that flow from the story; "You can't just think, 'I'm a stunt coordinator, I'm going to make a big stunt happen'," Gillard said. "It's all about making it tie in nicely with the film so that you don't notice the stunts."[citation needed]

In writing the prequel trilogy, George Lucas said he wanted the lightsaber combat to be "reminiscent of what had been done in the previous films but also something that was more energized. We'd seen old men, young boys, and characters who were half-droid, but we'd never seen a Jedi in his prime. I wanted to do that with a fight that was faster and more dynamic—and we were able to pull that off."[33]

According to Gillard, various lightsaber combat styles were devised for the prequels and intended to further characterize their practitioners.

I developed different styles for the characters, and gave each of them a flaw or a bonus. So with Obi-Wan Kenobi, for instance, he's got a very business-like style—when he was younger he could border on the flashy and might twirl his lightsaber a bit, because he was taught by Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon was brash, that rubbed off on Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan then taught Anakin, who was way too old to learn anyway... I think the style really worked well. The Jedi style of fighting is an amalgamation of all the great swordfighting styles. Melding them together is the difficult part—to move from a Kendo style to, say, rapier requires a complete change in body and feet movement, and this must look effortless. The style moves seamlessly between the different disciplines, but remains technically correct throughout.[34]

For The Phantom Menace, Gillard set out certain styles and faults for the saber-wielding characters.[35] He added that the Jedi's use of such "a short-range weapon" meant "they would have to be very good at it"; combining a variety of disciplines from various sword fighting styles to martial arts "with a touch of tennis and tree chopping", he created the style seen in the Episode I lightsaber battles.[36]

For The Force Awakens, director

Empire magazine, "When you look at Star Wars and Empire, they are very different lightsaber battles, but for me they felt more powerful because they were not quite as slick. I was hoping to go for something much more primitive, aggressive and rougher, a throwback to the kind of heart-stopping lightsaber fights I remembered being so enthralled by as a kid."[37]

Cultural impact

Lightsaber chopsticks
See also: Cultural impact of Star Wars

Merchandise

Since the release of the first film, replicas of lightsabers have been a popular piece of Star Wars merchandise, ranging from inexpensive plastic toys to the "Force FX" series from Master Replicas, deluxe replicas which use LED-lighted tubes and sound effects to create a close audio-visual representation of what is seen on screen.

Over the years, advancements in technology have allowed for the creation of increasingly immersive and realistic lightsaber replicas. One notable development in this regard is the introduction of neopixel lightsabers, which have revolutionized the lightsaber replica market by utilizing a strip of individually addressable RGB LEDs encased within a durable polycarbonate blade. This design allows for a higher level of control over the lightsaber's appearance and behavior.[38]

Disney Parks

Disneyland in California sells lightsaber-themed churros outside its Star Tours attraction.[39]

Disneyland and Disney World (Hollywood Studios) also sell legacy lightsabers which are replicas of the lightsabers seen used by the Jedi, Sith, and other warriors in the movies and television shows such as Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rey Skywalker, Count Dooku, and Kylo Ren.[40][41]

Disneyland and Hollywood Studios also offer Savi's Workshop, a place where guests can build their own lightsaber and choose their own kyber crystal, thereby changing the blade color of their own unique lightsaber.[42][43][44]

Besides Savi's Workshop, there is another custom lightsaber experience. The Star Trader at Disneyland offers guests a chance to build their own lightsabers, without first paying 200 dollars for the experience.[45]

Attractions

The Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple is a live show where children are selected to learn the teachings of the Jedi Knights, the Force, and the basics of Lightsaber combat to become Padawan learners. The show is present at the Rebels stage next to Star Tours – The Adventures Continue attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios and at the Tomorrowland Terrace at Disneyland. Additionally, Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser has incorporated lightsaber training for each guest aboard the spacecraft during their stay. The training is led by the Saja cast members and teaches the fourth form of lightsaber combat, Ataru, to the guests. Both lightsabers and shields are used during training since the guests learn to use Ataru to deflect incoming projectiles. There is no lightsaber-to-lightsaber combat in this attraction and guests must be at least seven years old to participate.[46]

Similar weapons

The virtual reality rhythm game Beat Saber involves the player using two lightsabers in order to slash a series of oncoming cubes.[47]


In Kamen Rider Black RX, the main character, Black RX also known as Kotaro Minami, uses his lightsaber-ish weapon "Revolcane" to fight Gorgom, a terrorist organization.

Parodies

In the 1987 film

Kyosuke Munakata
.

Games

With the advent of motion-controlled video games, players were given the opportunity to wield an in-game lightsaber with their own hands. In the seventh generation of video game consoles, there were several Star Wars video games available on the Wii (Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Lightsaber Duels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Republic Heroes and Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars) and one on the Xbox 360 (Kinect Star Wars) that utilized motion controls to wield a lightsaber through arm gestures. Unleashed and Duels, both developed by Krome Studios, have more precise control of the lightsaber, allowing players to swing it in any of five different directions (up, down, left, right or forward) with the Wii Remote, while Kinect takes advantage of the eponymous, camera-based motion controller to grant the player a more fluid, one-to-one control method of swinging the lightsaber.

Prior to the seventh generation, there were also a few earlier Star Wars games that used gesture-based control to simulate lightsaber combat, such as the two bonus levels of the

battle droids and clone troopers
) and duel against characters from across the saga.

By the time

Disney purchased Lucasfilm, new technological advances made augmented reality possible, leading to the creation of some more notable motion-controlled lightsaber video games that took advantage of that feature. One of them came in the form of a special activity mode in the official Star Wars fan app on iOS and Android in which players use their smartphone's motion sensors to practice and master blaster deflection with a training droid (which appears on the phone's rear camera), similar to the deflection training exercises featured aboard the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope, while progressing through the ranks of the Jedi or Sith order. Another is in Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, which works with a Lenovo Mirage AR headset, a tracking sensor and a dedicated lightsaber controller that launched in December 2017. One of the multiple game modes available in Challenges, which was jointly developed by Disney and Lenovo, enables players to confront Star Wars villains in lightsaber duels, such as Darth Maul and Kylo Ren.[52]

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ Later titled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
  2. Saesee Tiin had previously been depicted in spin-off works with purple lightsabers.[27][28]

Citations

  1. ^ "Star Wars A New Hope prop light sabre". December 21, 1994. Archived from the original on August 27, 2012. Retrieved July 31, 2018 – via proparchives.com.
  2. ^ Hidalgo, Pablo (2018). Star Wars: Lightsabers a guide to weapons of the force. Washington USA: Becker&mayer. p. 8.
  3. ^ Hidalgo, Pablo (2018). Star Wars: Lightsabers a guide to weapons of the force. Washington USA: becker&mayer. p. 6.
  4. ^ Hidalgo, Pablo (2018). Star Wars: Lightsaber a guide to weapons of the force. Washington USA: becker&mayer. p. 57.
  5. ^ Sophie Borland (January 21, 2008). "Lightsabre wins the battle of movie weapons". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved January 26, 2008.
  6. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: The Game Theorists (January 31, 2016). "Game Theory: Star Wars Lightsaber Vs Halo Energy Sword" – via YouTube.
  7. ^
    OCLC 60419490
    . ...a material called Scotchlite. Covered with millions of tiny glass beads, it has the property of reflecting light directly back to its source. It's the same material used for reflective road signs (and the glowing light sabers in Star Wars, which were sticks wrapped in Scotchlite).
  8. ^ "How the lightsaber was born" (video interview). BBC. December 15, 2017. Retrieved December 20, 2017.
  9. ^ Star Wars Insider magazine issue No 98 January 2008
  10. ^ Sherwood, Seth (July 1, 2018). "The Lightsaber Prop Guidebook" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on March 10, 2018.
  11. ^ "Interview with Nelson Shin". CNN. November 9, 2007.
  12. Star Wars Trilogy: The Definitive Collection, Lucasfilm
    , ...the microphone passed right behind the picture tube and as it did, this particular microphone produced an unusual hum. It picked up a transmission from the television set and a signal was induced into its sound reproducing mechanism, and that was a great buzz, actually. So I took that buzz and recorded it with the projector motor sound and that fifty-fifty kind of combination of those two sounds became the basic Lightsaber tone."
  13. Parade magazine
    . December 3, 2017. p. 9. The lightsaber wooshing sounds are created by waving a microphone in front of a speaker playing humming and buzzing noises.
  14. ^ Lucas, George (May 1973), The Star Wars, story synopsis (PDF), archived (PDF) from the original on May 7, 2016, An alarm sounds. The rebels are forced to fight their way out of the prison with "multiple lazer guns" and swords.
  15. ^ Lucas, George (May 1974), The Star Wars, rough draft (PDF), archived (PDF) from the original on April 18, 2013, Ten troopers break out of the ranks and take up the chase. Starkiller runs down a corridor and rounds a corner, reaching a dead end. The troops round the corner and confront the trapped Jedi.
  16. ^ Bricken, Rob (April 25, 2014). "13 Things You Probably Don't Know About Lightsabers". gizmodo.com. Retrieved December 22, 2016.
  17. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
  18. ^ Eisenberg, Eric (December 18, 2016). "What Are Kyber Crystals, And Why Are They Important To Star Wars?". CinemaBlend. Retrieved December 26, 2016.
  19. ^ "Death Star Superlaser". StarWars.com.
  20. A Death on Utapau". Star Wars: The Clone Wars
    .
  21. ^ "Electrostaff". StarWars.com. Retrieved June 29, 2020.
  22. ISBN 9781465455512
    .
  23. LucasArts
    .
  24. The Jedi Academy Trilogy. Bantam Spectra
    .
  25. ^ Foster, Alan Dean (1979). Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Ballantine Books.
  26. ^ Pinchefsky, Carol (December 31, 2015). "Kylo Ren's janky lightsaber, explained". SyFy Wire. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  27. ^ Harrison, Paul (August 22, 2015). "Ki-Adi-Mundi - EI - Basic Research Droids Reviews". JediTempleArchives.com. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  28. ^ "Saesee Tiin (Power Of The Jedi)". JediBusiness.com. Archived from the original on June 14, 2020. Retrieved June 14, 2020.
  29. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: BBC (June 28, 2013). "Samuel L. Jackson's Purple Light Sabre - The Graham Norton Show: Series 13 Episode 13". BBC One. Retrieved May 10, 2018 – via YouTube.
  30. ^ "Darksaber". StarWars.com. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
  31. ^ Knox, Kelly (February 11, 2020). "What is the Darksaber?". Retrieved February 17, 2020.
  32. ^ Whitbrook, James (January 3, 2020). "Everything You Need to Know About the Darksaber, the Black Blade That Freed Mandalore". io9. Retrieved January 3, 2020.
  33. ISBN 0-345-43111-1
    ., page 99
  34. ^ "Interview with stunt co-ordinator Nick Gillard (Mr. Optimism)- March 2004". Desiring Hayden.net. March 2004. Archived from the original on July 17, 2012. Retrieved June 21, 2009.
  35. ^ "Nick Gillard Talks ROTS Game". TheForce.Net. May 8, 2005. Archived from the original on December 7, 2008. Retrieved November 28, 2008.
  36. ^ Episode I Video: Prime of the Jedi Archived 2008-07-01 at the Wayback Machine -(part of the "Making Episode I" series).
  37. ^ a b Hide, Viral (November 27, 2015). "New Revelations From Empire's New Issue on The Force Awakens". starwarsnewsnet.com. Retrieved December 22, 2016.
  38. ^ "More Info You May Want To Know About Neopixel Lightsabers". Superneox. Retrieved September 27, 2023.
  39. ^ Messina, Victoria (May 9, 2017). "Disneyland Now Has Sparkly Lightsaber Churros, and We Need Them ASAP". PopSugar. Retrieved May 11, 2017.
  40. ^ "Dok-Ondar's Den of Antiquities". disneyland.disney.go.com. Retrieved March 11, 2024.
  41. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: All Star Wars Legacy Lightsabers Review Dok Ondar Galaxy's Edge Walt Disney World, retrieved March 18, 2020
  42. ^ "Savi's Workshop – Handbuilt Lightsabers". Disneyland. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  43. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: FULL Savi's Workshop Custom Handbuilt Lightsaber Experience in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, retrieved March 18, 2020
  44. ^ "Savi's Workshop - Handbuilt Lightsabers". Walt Disney World. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  45. ^ "The Star Trader". Disneyland. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  46. ^ "Experience Highlights During Your Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Adventure". Retrieved October 17, 2022.
  47. ^ Hunt, Cale (April 5, 2018). "Beat Saber: Everything we know about the VR rhythm game". Windows Central. Retrieved May 9, 2018.
  48. New York Times
    , August 17, 1990.
  49. ^ David A. Kaplan, "Requiem for a law firm", Newsweek, January 7, 1991.
  50. ^ Emily Bryson York, "Writers' rights: L.A. attorney Alan Schwartz has represented Truman Capote and Mel Brooks"[permanent dead link], Los Angeles Business Journal, August 14, 2006.
  51. AllGame. Archived from the original
    on January 1, 2014. Retrieved August 24, 2014.
  52. ^ Kharpal, Arjun (August 31, 2017). "Lenovo, Disney launch Star Wars Jedi aurgmented reality game that lets you use a real lightsaber". CNBC. Retrieved October 23, 2017.

External links

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