Lightsaber Combat
April 11, 2007 1:45 AM Subscribe

Lightsaber Combat. Far more than you ever wanted to know. Part of the magic that is the Star Wars Portal on wikipedia.
posted by srboisvert (48 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

I was thinking of posting this myself. The blurb on reddit says this wiki post is longer than the one on William Shakespeare.
posted by zardoz at 2:20 AM on April 11, 2007

i just read the whole thing and thoroughly enjoyed it -- but i can't help wondering what real piece of actual knowledge it replaced in my poor brain.

wait, where am i?
posted by radiosig at 2:48 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is the demostration that even a simple FPP with just two links to Wikipedia can be good.
Flagged as awesome.
posted by darkripper at 3:36 AM on April 11, 2007

zardoz: "The blurb on reddit says this wiki post is longer than the one on William Shakespeare."

That comment exhibits exactly as much Wikipedia knowledge as I'd expect from a poster to a karma-whoring site like reddit. The "William Shakespeare" article has been broken apart exactly because it was so long. At the head of virtually every section, you have a "Main article" note: Shakespeare's life, Shakespeare's plays, Shakespeare's reputation, Shakespearean authorship question, etc. A grand total of 9 of them. The "lightsaber combat" article has none of these, because the topic suffers from a frequently fatal shortcoming: it's Fancruft. Because it's Fancruft of such a prominent fictional work, though, the decision of what to do with an article, say, on Sokan, is "merge into Lightsaber combat" instead of "delete and salt the earth".

Adding up the size of William Shakespeare and all nine sub-articles, you get about 290kB. The Lightsaber combat article is 68kB.
posted by Plutor at 3:49 AM on April 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

Wikipedia once again proves that it is the Alpha and Omega of all made-up knowledge.
posted by moonbiter at 3:50 AM on April 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

Thanks for reminding me I need to do some serious copyediting on the entry for the Yuuzhan Vong invasion.
posted by chinston at 3:51 AM on April 11, 2007

LOL WIKIPEDIA
posted by BeerFilter at 4:38 AM on April 11, 2007

Adding up the size of William Shakespeare and all nine sub-articles, you get about 290kB. The Lightsaber combat article is 68kB.

The point of the comparison is not that the lightsaber combat article is longer than Shakespeare per se but that it is long, period. 68kB is a LOT of information about a totally fictional form of fighting that has maybe a 45 total minutes of depiction on film. (Which destroys the "prominent fictional work" defense by the way: None of this stuff is in the films, which are the prominent part.) If that happens to be shorter than the entry on Shakespeare, so what? Choose some other real topic and plug it into the equation to get the point across just as well.

But don't worry, your precious Wikipedia¹ isn't the butt of this joke AFAICS. The butt of the joke is the NERDs who a) read all the source material b) convinced themselves it was important and c) typed it all in.

¹I think Wikipedia is awesome, but not to the point of posting frothing defenses on the intarwebs.
posted by DU at 5:33 AM on April 11, 2007

Is this something you'd have to inexplicably enjoy Star Wars to understand?

Sorry. Had to.
posted by sourwookie at 5:41 AM on April 11, 2007

I can't work out which is better... the silly pig-Japanese names someone has thought up for each of the 'forms' of light-sabre fighting, or the fact that there is apparently a Jedi called 'Kit Fisto'.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:09 AM on April 11, 2007

Dude, dude, Star Wars is too big for a wiki it has too share. If only there were a more focused reference source.
posted by EatTheWeak at 6:16 AM on April 11, 2007

This is interesting in the same way that different types of kryptonite were interesting. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

But I read it anyway.
posted by Sparx at 6:30 AM on April 11, 2007

I'd never heard of wikipedia portals. Was worth seeing this just to find out about them.
posted by kisch mokusch at 6:34 AM on April 11, 2007

DU: "I think Wikipedia is awesome, but not to the point of posting frothing defenses on the intarwebs."

It wasn't so much a frothing defense of Wikipedia as it was an indictment of "doesn't matter how accurate it is as long as it gets a click" statements that websites with quantitative reputation methods (like Reddit and Digg) inevitably encourage.

But as long as I'm being pointed at for making accurate informed observations instead of more cynical snap ones, 68kB isn't all that long of an article, considering that there are.. uh.. well.. a hell of a lot of Star Wars books. It's not just the films that are part of the "prominent fictional work". They're just the most prominent part thereof.

I guess all I'm saying I don't see any "lesson" here. It's an interesting and detailed summary of a vast, yet fictional, topic that most people don't know about. Wow, almost like something that belongs in an electronic encyclopedia!
posted by Plutor at 6:47 AM on April 11, 2007

Gjd001 has discovered the secret of infinite time. Or he's unemployed and living with his mother. Maybe that's the same thing.
posted by pracowity at 6:55 AM on April 11, 2007

This is less a wikipedia entry and more a guide to the future of battle.
posted by dcress at 6:58 AM on April 11, 2007

I see they include the Sith Lords' awkward yearbook photo.
posted by PlusDistance at 7:16 AM on April 11, 2007

I never understood why Jedi swing their sabers.

This is an endless debate but after several drunken sword fights I'd disagree and conclude the wild swings you see in lightsaber combat make perfect sense. Yes, intuitively the wild swings don't make sense; it seems like lightsaber combat should be more like the epee where the goal is to wound and disable while maintaining maximum defense posture. After all you only need is very minimal cut or a stab and the 'blade' itself will do tremendous damage. But this sort of thinking only to humans. It's not humans doing the fighting though, it's Jedi.

With this in mind there's three good reasons for the wild swings you see in the movies: (1) the Jedi understand that lightsaber combat is so dangerous that a 'total offensive' strategy is necessary and so every movement is designed to be a killing stroke (2) failure to totally engage your opponent's concentration allows him to deploy force powers against you (3) Jedi reflexes are so good that the risk/reward for wild swings makes sense--they don't dramatically increase their exposure but they do potentially get their opponent off balance and out of any safe zone.

Really lightsaber combat can't be anything like sword fighting. The lack of weight and force completely changes the rules of the game. It makes sense to imagine that two Jedi engaged in lightsaber combat are more like two supercomputers engaged in a game of very high speed chess rather than two men engaged in a sword fight. The primary objective is to short circuit the opponent's OODA loop. Speed, feints, major position shifts (flipping, jumping, wild swings), and all sorts of dramatics are necessary to get your opponent off balance and end the fight as soon as possible.
posted by nixerman at 7:33 AM on April 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

I never understood why Jedi swing their sabers.

Because:

In the documentary "Empire of Dreams", George Lucas stated that the origin of the lightsaber stemmed from his desire to place swordfights similar to those in The Adventures of Robin Hood in the Star Wars films. The laser property was inspired simply by the need to make it futuristic (metal swords would feel out of place in futuristic setting that relied on lasers for its firearms).

If they simply shot holes in one another with silent laser guns, it would take all the swash out of their buckles. Any other explanation is just silliness concocted to explain what wasn't really explainable -- why they didn't just shoot one another like Indiana Jones pulling a pistol on the big guy with the sword.
posted by pracowity at 7:37 AM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

nixerman: after several drunken sword fights

Let's agree to never hang out, okay? ;)
posted by sourwookie at 7:47 AM on April 11, 2007

Why settle for Wikipedia's Star Wars coverage when you can go to the Wookieepedia?

I have the suspicion that it has even more material.
posted by mikeh at 8:56 AM on April 11, 2007

Should I feel this shame for enjoying that as much as I did? Can this be wrong, this surging pleasure I feel at such passionate work filling in and extending a framework of story and future history whose own author has tried to destroy? Oh well, we all have our vices.
posted by freebird at 8:57 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

there is apparently a Jedi called 'Kit Fisto'

Clearly a Rimjobbian from planet Pornsylvania.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:27 AM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

In Episode 4, why did the Death Star waste time orbiting the planet Yavin to reach the rebel base on a moon on the planet's far side, instead of just blowing up the planet? Surely that would have had an instant catastrophic effect on the moon, which would have served the Empire's purposes equally well.

Wait. Is this a question better suited for AskMe?
posted by chinston at 9:57 AM on April 11, 2007

You know, there's a Shakespeare Portal on Wikipedia, too. Until we've compared the sizes of all Shakespeare-related pages to the sizes of all Star Wars-related pages, I don't think this debate is over.

Plutor, I'll expect your report by the end of the day.
posted by Acetylene at 9:58 AM on April 11, 2007

The Bard is a bad yardstick. "Shakespeare hasn't any history to record." -- Mark Twain, in "Is Shakespeare Dead?"
posted by Plutor at 10:31 AM on April 11, 2007

Why do people think Shakespeare is more important? He's only appeared in one episode of Doctor Who, after all.
posted by dhartung at 11:36 AM on April 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

pracowity, that Empire of Dreams explanation makes more sense than any BS back-story explanation involving trying to figure out how lightsaber dueling would really work. It also reminds me of lore about how the "transporter" was invented for Star Trek -- Roddenberry, Justman and co. realized they couldn't afford the special effects of landing a multi-story-tall spaceship on a new planet every week. (Which leaves me wondering why they bothered with shuttlecraft.)
posted by pax digita at 11:55 AM on April 11, 2007

there is apparently a Jedi called 'Kit Fisto'.

And he has meat dreadlocks.
posted by homunculus at 12:05 PM on April 11, 2007

Thank you, Mr.Encyclopedia. That made my day. I knew I couldn't be the only one to have wondered.
posted by chinston at 1:05 PM on April 11, 2007

chinston wrote "In Episode 4, why did the Death Star waste time orbiting the planet Yavin to reach the rebel base on a moon on the planet's far side, instead of just blowing up the planet? Surely that would have had an instant catastrophic effect on the moon, which would have served the Empire's purposes equally well"

Yavin is a gas giant, the DS was designed for destroying huge chunks of rock, not even huger lumps of gas. I guess they could fire through it, but maybe the didn't have the range or the atmosphere would ruin the aim and/or power of the shot. And it took the DS1 a good 10+ minutes to charge up so they wanted to get the first shot on target.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:05 PM on April 11, 2007

I never understood why Jedi swing their sabers. It makes sense if you're using a sword, since you need a lot of force to slash through sinew and bone, but lightsabers don't requre that, especially not against a soft target like the human body. Every time the lightsaber leaves the space between the Jedi and the opponent, the Jedi is risking injury or death- it seems like the wise Jedi would never take the huge swings we see in the films.

Stage combat is all about telegraphing your moves. Granted, you're trying to telegraph to the audience and not to the other fighter, but if anything that's harder. After all, the audience doesn't have any combat training and doesn't know what to expect. So you have to be even more blatant if you want them to keep up — and the easiest way to show the audience what you're doing is to make every move a big stupid flashy eye-catching swing.

The thing is, stage combat techniques are just as unrealistic for swordfights as they are for light saber duels. If you watch the fights in The Princess Bride or those old Errol Flynn movies, you'll see the characters make big, wide swings before they parry. Swinging attacks might make sense with heavy swords, but it would be suicide to parry that slowly if the other guy had a real weapon. The swing is pure stagecraft: "Look, audience! Something is happening over there!"
posted by nebulawindphone at 1:18 PM on April 11, 2007

what, no mention of the sacred ritual of the lightsaber duel as part of a wedding reception?
(youtube link to a video of, yes, a lightsaber duel at a wedding reception.)

radiosig: wait, where am i? it's like the never-written scene in memento: "why is there food in my mouth? oh, i must be eating. wait, no, i'm throwing up"
posted by rmd1023 at 1:31 PM on April 11, 2007

I never understood why Jedi swing their sabers.

They swing them so they go wwwwWWWWWWWUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMmmmmmm and not just hhhhuuuummmmmmmmmm.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:52 PM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

We touched on this a while back, including the wiki link, in this askme thread about swordplay in movies..
posted by Manjusri at 3:17 PM on April 11, 2007

"Stage combat is all about telegraphing your moves. Granted, you're trying to telegraph to the audience and not to the other fighter, but if anything that's harder."

You want to do both. The audience, so they can grasp the coherence of the combat, the other fighter so he doesn't lose an eye accidentally.
posted by Manjusri at 3:35 PM on April 11, 2007

Agg. I dislike the mechanics of something that depends on some sort of other mystic superwhatzit.
“Ok, why not just thrust?”
“Because it’s the jedi mind thing man.”
“Ok...so how does that work on the robots then?”
“Because of the mysteries of the force, dude”

Looks good enough on-screen to suspend disbelief (in the earlier movies), but why build some sort of system around it. Especially when the actors themselves are using western or japanese or chinese fencing techniques.
No one from the wood-cut school tho. I mean, why wouldn’t stormtrooper units carry flamethrowers or grenades. Elegance in a weapon is one thing, but c’mon. Dodge this.
Although Trek has similar problems, apparently people can dodge phaser fire.
The only fairly decent non-war type movie I’ve seen that deals pretty well with the mechanics is “Heat.” I mean huh, supressive fire, weird. Basic small unit tactics such as leapfrogging, go figure. A guy can get really tired lugging around a big suitcase full of money and it hampers his aim, amazing.
Hell I can take out 50 stormtroopers with a frying pan if they run at me firing wildly.
posted by Smedleyman at 4:36 PM on April 11, 2007

No one from the wood-cut school tho. I mean, why wouldn’t stormtrooper units carry flamethrowers or grenades. Elegance in a weapon is one thing, but c’mon. Dodge this.

A Jedi could easily use the force to fling grenades back at the thrower, or indeed pull the pins out before the thrower had even started to throw. Similarly, I would not want to carry a tank of flammable material on my back when fighting someone who could crush it with their mind and cause it to explode.

No, if you're going to take down Jedi, massed gunfire is the way to go - see 50+ Jedi dying when up against waves and waves of battledroids on Geonosis (and they'd all be dead if the clones hadn't arrived in time), and the Jedi Temple wiped out by the 501st Stormtrooper legion (although admittedly they had help from Vader).

Jedi were great when all they had to contend with were smugglers, pirates, and assorted low-level bad guys, but all but the top elite weren't prepared for full-scale battles against overwhelming numbers of well-drilled soldiers (droids or clones) and combat with highly trained Sith - the only Jedi who can hold their own against Sith in the prequels are Anakin, Windu, Obi-Wan, and Yoda (and even Obi-Wan and Anakin get their asses kicked somewhat).
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:12 PM on April 11, 2007

Dun möch

Dun möch is the Sith style of combat that aims to defeat an opponent by wearing down his/her spirit by whatever means possible, rather than solely relying on saber skills. Dun möch commonly involves spoken taunts, jeers, comments, and jests that expose the opponent's hidden, inner weaknesses and/or doubts.

That's not lightsaber combat, that's forum trolling.
posted by tehloki at 7:15 PM on April 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

I never understood why Jedi swing their sabers.

What? It's so obvious! The glowing part of lightsabers doesn't go through the glowing part of other people's lightsabers, but it will transmit physical force through it. Stabbing moves would be easily deflected. Gosh, this is like, elementary Star Wars physics.
posted by Citizen Premier at 8:10 AM on April 12, 2007

"This article or section was considered for deletion"

Don't make me beg.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 1:07 PM on April 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

“A Jedi could easily use the force to fling grenades back at the thrower.”

My point on mysticism, fuzzy physics and tactics exactly. You can fuse grenades differently. You can use fusion-based heat weapons. Technology aside, you can create small squad tactics to adapt to force usage.
And people would. There’s no unbeatable technique.

“No, if you're going to take down Jedi, massed gunfire is the way to go”

Or a napalm strike.
Although massive gunfire still doesn’t seem to work that well. Or rather, only selectively. Like Rodger Rabbit can escape a pair of cuffs, but only when it’s funny.
Or maybe they need some new instructors there are the stormtrooper marksmanship academy.

“Jedi were great when all they had to contend with were smugglers, pirates, and assorted low-level bad guys...”

Exactly - my point being any change in a combat environment quickly becomes the norm unless you don’t have the resources to adapt. The low level bad guys know the force exists, but don’t have the resources to deal with it. If they do, then the people with resources adapt. (E.g. remember the guys in heavy body armor and assault rifles who fought off the L.A. P.D.? cops there now carry armor penetration weaponry)

The first thing any general thinks is “Jedi powers, eh? Let’s train everyone on that.”
But, nay, nay, not everyone can be trained because suddenly it’s some sort of genetic superiority thing.
In which case a good general thinks - “Ok, I’m going to breed nothing but high-midichlorian count individuals and train them in the force.”
Over time instead of being elite troops, they become the standard.
One average combat infantry squad today could take out at least division of archaic troops.

Any strategic advantage quickly becomes universal - for the simple reason that you either adapt to the new order or you die.
You can’t tell me an organization that can field massive space ships and can engineer and build small moon sized structures doesn’t have the sophistication or resources to pull that off.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:34 PM on April 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

Smedleyman, where does the death star come into play in all this? Wouldn't conventional land AND space warface become obsolete when the technology to destroy entire planets existed? Nuclear weapons, able to destroy entire cities, changed the way wars are fought on earth, to the point where large-scale trench warfare just doesn't seem like a viable option anymore. The death star and other vessels of its calibre would render anything other than small-scale guerilla attacks suicidal.
posted by tehloki at 5:36 PM on April 12, 2007

“Smedleyman, where does the death star come into play in all this?”

Yeah, absolutely.
Of course, even with guerilla engagements you can kill a lot of roofers and sub-contractors I understand.
(Is it canon that the Death Star was (+being) built with slave labor - or is there any word on that at all?)
posted by Smedleyman at 11:18 AM on April 13, 2007

The Death Star is one of the best-known concepts from the Star Wars universe and is widely recognizable outside of that context. As such, it is frequently referenced in other mass media, even where the context is radically different.[14] A famous example of this phenomenon occurs in the film Clerks, in which two store clerks argue over whether innocent independent civilian contractors were killed when the Rebel Alliance destroyed the second Death Star (still under construction) during Return of the Jedi. George Lucas commented on this in the Attack of the Clones audio commentary, saying that the termite-like Geonosians would have been hired by the Empire, so there was no problem in killing them.
posted by Citizen Premier at 9:00 PM on April 13, 2007

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Hat!
posted by homunculus at 12:21 AM on April 14, 2007

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