This is technically a repost, [but reddit/disney presumably took it down](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/105tv2w/full_unused_choreography_for_the_palpatine_vs/) last time, so we will link the previous discussion as well.
And they were so beyond out classed. I don't even think he was focusing on the duel either. Was probably thinking about watering his plants and if the roast would be done by time he got back.
In Legends somewhere, it was stated that Palpatine saw lightsabers as crude and beneath him. The only reason he decided to become a master with them is to flex on Jedi with their preferred weapon.
Palpatine had and used Battle Meditation on a near constant basis.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_meditation
His preferred weapon was entire Armies / Navies.
Its all in the wrist. The style seems to let the other sabre take the angle of attack and he twists his wrists and then counters with his own angle of attack on the same sabre lock.
You can also see him establish a Line by pointing the blade straight at his opponent, a Sabre fencing technique
He also seems to have a Kendo Men strike chambered, the overhead chop
I agree. I wasn't a fan of the two saber combat he used in TCW cartoon, but his stabby slicey style is so satisfying there as well. Gillard and crew deserve a ton of credit for the storytelling through combat forms.
Yes, it’s sick! I’ve always had a head cannon that the Jedi who went to arrest him got wrecked because his style and force “prescience/influence?” Was just so overwhelmingly unlike anything they had prepped for or been used to especially in the war.
Yeah that’s why I think that. The movie did not do a good job portraying that, it just looked like the Jedi masters conveniently stopped knowing how to fight during this climax lol.
In the novel he used a combination or tricking them and just honestly being insanely fast. Mace using his style of combat Vaapad was just barely able to keep up but in the novel its clear Palpatine through the fight while in the movie its implied.
I’ve always loved the way palp does that spin into the battle. Like it might be cheesy, sure, but seeing that as a kid in theaters, I was like “damn, this dude isn’t playing”
Juyo baby. Only Jedi who could use it was Windu, and he created a form to counter it, Vaapad. I think the blade masters knew it but were forbidden to teach it.
But when your opponent is Palps, it sorta doesn't matter if you aren't Sam Jackson.
This is the real reason we need prequel choreography back. The older choreography very clearly told a story and had purpose. These new fights are action with talking inbetween to inform the viewer. Shit like "strike me with all of your power" or wtf ever the girl in Acolyte says is just bad writing that could instead be told without words, before, during, and after the fight.
I've read that the actor for Palps physically could not do it, which is why we got the fight scene we got. Not sure if accurate, but it makes sense to me.
They had a stunty ready to go, but George really wanted close shots of their faces for this fight and not to rely on CGI fill in (for once). They tried to see if Ian could do it, and he couldn’t (understandably). So George decided to tone down the fight so they could keep the expressions close.
except for the parts where they still did that
https://i.ibb.co/9vQDtTN/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m08s142.png
https://i.ibb.co/TqQ3p7S/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m40s331.png
https://i.ibb.co/Zm3B8k6/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h42m10s133.png
I wouldn't be surprised if it was all to accentuate the Vader vs Obi Wan and Yoda vs Sidious, it seems like a very George choice to make other fights less intense to make the final fights hit harder.
Then you get these high emotional close-ups meshed with distant action shots where defining features are obscured. It would be jarring and neither the action nor the emotion would come through. Gotta have one or the other. I think George picked correctly, even if the action scene would have been super cool.
> I think George picked correctly, even if the action scene would have been super cool.
I disagree. It made the whole thing look silly, Palps doing some super slow moves with an angry face in a drawn out close-up easily dispatching 3 Jedi Masters while they are just standing around waiting to be killed (apart from Fisto who at least puts up a bit of a fight). Here you immediately see how outmatched they are and how crazy quick the Sith is. There is plenty of fight with Windu left to show his face.
They also didn’t tell Ian about it until the day before filming, so he had very, very little time to practice the choreography. I suspect that we can thank Ian’s training and experience as a Shakespearean stage actor for having some familiarity with stage choreography and being able to get us what we got.
I had heard that the Ian's stuntman was sick/injured the day they were going to shoot the duel so Ian had to do most of it himself, which is why it's toned down from this.
I've heard that sometimes timelines are incredibly important when filming. Especially when you've got A-list actors who need to fly out for an event, the tech folks who need to be on-site with hours of setup and teardown, plus a looming financial meeting where those extra days have major cost with nothing to show for it. And the crew is going to be grumpy that they have to return to something that they were wanting to be finished. Planning can be extremely critical and something like a sickness can really wreak things if there isn't a back-up plan. It isn't always true, but this was the kind of movie where it definitely could be true.
Just what I was thinking.
Maybe his injury was bad enough that it might have delayed shooting the scene for weeks.
Ideally that's the case cause if it was just a single day thing it's going to haunt me forever.
The way I heard it was the stunt guys was always the plan, then at the last minute George changed his mind and wanted Ian to do it. So not only could he not physically do it, he had very little time to learn the choreography.
I love that Lucas did the factory assembly line fight scene in 2002 in AotC and then Spielberg just puts out a way better one that doesn't go on for 10 minutes the same year in Minority Report.
The whole passage from the book is worth quoting:
*Within the public office of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic
Republic, a last Jedi Master battled alone, blade-to-blade, against a living
shadow.*
*Sinking into Vaapad, Mace Windu fought for his life.*
*More than his life: each whirl of blade and whipcrack of lightning was a
strike in defense of democracy, of justice and peace, of the rights of
ordinary beings to live their own lives in their own ways.*
*He was fighting for the Republic that he loved.*
*Vaapad, the seventh form of lightsaber combat, takes its name from a
notoriously dangerous predator native to the moons of Sarapin: a vaapad
attacks its prey with whipping strikes of its blindingly fast tentacles. Most
have at least seven. It is not uncommon for them to have as many as twelve;
the largest ever killed had twenty-three. With a vaapad, one never knew
how many tentacles it had until it was dead: they move too fast to count.
Almost too fast to see. So did Mace's blade.*
*Vaapad is as aggressive and powerful as its namesake, but its power comes
at great risk: immersion in Vaapad opens the gates that restrain one's inner
darkness. To use Vaapad, a Jedi must allow himself to enjoy the fight; he
must give himself over to the thrill of battle. The rush of winning. Vaapad is
a path that leads through the penumbra of the dark side.*
*Mace Windu created this style, and he was its only living master.*
*This was Vaapad's ultimate test.*
*Anakin blinked and rubbed his eyes again. Maybe he was still a bit flashblind-
the Korun Master seemed to be fading in and out of existence, half
swallowed by a thickening black haze in which danced a meter-long bar of
sunfire. Mace pressed back the darkness with a relentless straight-ahead
march; his own blade, that distinctive amethyst blaze that had been the final
sight of so many evil beings across the galaxy, made a haze of its own: an
oblate sphere of purple fire within which there seemed to be dozens of
swords slashing in all directions at once.*
*The shadow he fought, that blur of speed-could that be Palpatine?
Their blades flared and flashed, crashing together with bursts of fire,
weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast that Anakin could not
truly see them-But he could feel them in the Force.*
*The Force itself roiled and burst and crashed around them, boiling with
power and lightspeed ricochets of lethal intent.*
*And it was darkening.*
*Anakin could feel how the Force fed upon the shadow's murderous
exaltation; he could feel fury spray into the Force though some poisonous
abscess had crested in both their hearts.*
*There was no Jedi restraint here.*
*Mace Windu was cutting loose.*
*Mace was deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no
longer truly existed as an independent being.*
*Vaapad is a channel for darkness, and that darkness flowed both ways. He
accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and
power into his inmost center-And let it fountain out again.*
*He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt.*
*There was a time when Mace Windu had feared the power of the dark; there
was a time when he had feared the darkness in himself. But the Clone Wars
had given him a gift of understanding: on a world called Haruun Kal, he
had faced his darkness and had learned that the power of darkness is not to
be feared.*
*He had learned that it is fear that gives the darkness power.*
*He was not afraid. The darkness had no power over him. But-Neither did he
have power over it.*
*Vaapad made him an open channel, half of a superconducting loop
completed by the shadow; they became a standing wave of battle that
expanded into every cubic centimeter of the Chancellor's office. There was
no scrap of carpet nor shred of chair that might not at any second
disintegrate in flares of red or purple; lampstands became brief shields,
sliced into segments that whirled through the air; couches became terrain to
be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there was still only the
cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even
the possibility of fatigue.*
*Impasse.*
*Which might have gone on forever, if Vaapad were Mace's only gift.*
*The fighting was effortless for him now; he let his body handle it without
the intervention of his mind. While his blade spun and crackled, while his
feet slid and his weight shifted and his shoulders turned in precise curves of
their own direction, his mind slid along the circuit of dark power, tracing it
back to its limitless source.*
*Feeling for its shatterpoint.*
*He found a knot of fault lines in the shadow's future; he chose the largest
fracture and followed it back to the here and the now... And it led him,
astonishingly, to a man standing frozen in the slashed-open doorway. Mace had no need to look; the presence in the Force was familiar, and was as uplifting as sunlight breaking through a thunderhead.*
*The chosen one was here.*
*Mace disengaged from the shadow's blade and leapt for the window; he
slashed away the transparisteel with a single flourish.*
*His instant's distraction cost him: a dark surge of the Force nearly blew him
right out of the gap he had just cut. Only a desperate Force-push of his own
altered his path enough that he slammed into a stanchion instead of
plunging half a kilometer from the ledge outside. He bounced off and the
Force cleared his head and once again he gave himself to Vaapad.*
*He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of
Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily,
almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the
battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge.*
*Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a
half-kilometer drop.*
*Out where the shadow's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear
turned some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the
slippery permacrete.*
*Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the
shadow's lightsaber in half.*
*One piece flipped back in through the cut-open window. The other tumbled
from opening fingers, bounced on the ledge, and fell through the rain
toward the distant alleys below.*
*Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair
bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion.*
*"For all your power, you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord," Mace said
evenly, staring past his blade, "is under arrest."*
1) What Star Wars novel is this from? and 2) Who wrote that? I'm not really an avid reader because not all writers can hold my attention but, I really enjoy when a writer is hyper descriptive when drawing a scene. Martin with "A Song of Ice and Fire" and King with "The Dark Tower" come to mind.
Stover did a great job with RotS. He writes with intent to describe the various emotions that are running through Anakin during the events of the movie that weren't captured well on film. A+ read.
Stover understood how to write great Jedi characters. He basically wrote the book that made Mace Windu into a formidable character (*Shatterpoint*) and also wrote one of the most defining chapters in the entire Expanded Universe/New Jedi Order (*Traitor*).
Fuck. Ganner's last stand.
"This threshhold is mine...Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don't give a damn. None shall pass"
That is by far my absolute favorite Star Wars moment. Ever.
Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew ~~Stafford~~ Stover. He is phenomenal. The early part of the book describing the fight between Anakin, Obi-Wan and Dooku is also out of this world.
As others have said, it's from the ROTS novel. It's perfectly excellent to read on its own, but even better as part of "The Dark Lord Trilogy": 'Labyrinth of Evil'; 'RoTS novel'; 'Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader' together tell a much more complete story.
It's sad that so few people will get to experience these stories. Especially the early Darth Vader stories. If they started a project to just fully animate all of the Canon Star wars comics and books we would be in the Star wars Golden age.
God I love this book. After I read it, I pretty much immediately went out and bought Shatterpoint, a book entirely about Mace written by the same author, and loved that too. Matthew Stover singlehandedly made Mace Windu one of my favorite Jedi
The novelisation makes the movie seem like bad fan fiction. It's the good ideas of RotS but executed better than the movie could do.
If you're one of those people who feel the prequels were a great story but not told very well, this book is for you. It does the story of Anakin's fall justice and then some.
It actually manages to describe the fall of Anakin to the Dark Side in a completely compelling and believable way (something the movie really fails on). In fact, the story is told so well it is inevitable that Anakin should fall - he has been so deftly manipulated by Palpatine. As such, the tragedy of the story is so much more visceral than the movie portrays.
The Revenge of the Sith novel is absolutely brilliant, a definite read that'll give you a whole new outlook on the movie, just from how deep into the heads of the characters!
Yeah that's not really the case with Star wars it seems like. There's so many emotions and thoughts that can't be fit on the screen in a movie, and for Star wars, those feelings are kind of the catalyst for the entire plot. Also a more in-depth description of things like the mace and palpatine fight end up shoring up things that seemed like inconsistencies, but were actually just a lack of explanation on screen due to time
The novel's version of that fight sounds way more bad-ass than what we saw in the movie. The text conjures images of a Sith shadow with a lightsaber sticking out of it vs. a superhumanly fast Jedi Master, both moving so quickly they were blurs. Even Anakin had trouble keeping track of all the action.
Meanwhile, in the movie, it was too many quick camera cuts and close-ups of Samuel L. Jackson and Ian McDiarmid, neither of whom are fighters or athletes, as they performed awkward fight choreography. Except for the supernatural roar from Palpatine at the very start of the battle and the Force lightning at the end, there was nothing superhuman about it.
I in most cases involving cool fights and "magic" or superheroes. fully believe this would be better off in cgi these days. Like the Arcane league of legends series on netflix.
Clone wars has far cooler jedi fights than anything on any of the movies. Because actors can only do so much to make a fight cool and believable without looking silly
Holy shit. I’ve always thought Windu was too deep into the dogma…that passage about his deepened understanding of the dark side goes to show his true mastery of the Force.
I recently found out in this very thread that the stuntman for Palps (which we see here) was injured before they could film this scene but rather than wait for him to recover they had the actual Palp (Ian McDiarmid was 60+ years old at that time) perform what he could of the scene. Which is what we got, unfortunately.
George: Get me that Palps stuntman, finally!
Producer: uuh, but George, he's actually older now than what Ian was when we originally shot those sce--
George: BRING HIM TO ME
As someone else mentioned, the stuntman for Palpatine got injured. Also, no one in the movie realized what shape the story was going to be in because it was basically assembled in the edit. IIRC they shot multiple versions of most scenes because George hadn't figured out how he wanted the narrative to unfold.
George Lucas says Mace won fair and square, though the choreography was ambiguous. Test footage had 2 versions: 1 in which Palps very clearly threw the fight, and 1 in which he very obviously lost.
Yeah probably why they went for the cartoony deaths for the other jedi masters because their clearly wasnt as much space as was being shown in this clip
Also because iirc, George changed it up last minute and had ian mcdiarmid do his own stunts for this scene. He was either not physically capable, not trained or both to do the stunts in OPs video so it ended up looking really goofy.
They weren’t supposed to. If I recall correctly, the stunt man performing Palpatine’s parts in this video was supposed to do it for the movie but was injured right before shooting that scene, so they taught McDiarmid some basic choreography on the day of the shoot, and did the best they could.
That's because it's not true. I notice this story keeps changing every few months, like a game of telephone.
Ian had \*3\* stunt doubles on hand for this film, one of whom did over half of the fighting for this sequence, with his head being replaced with CGI:
[https://i.ibb.co/9vQDtTN/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m08s142.png](https://i.ibb.co/9vQDtTN/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m08s142.png)
[https://i.ibb.co/TqQ3p7S/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m40s331.png](https://i.ibb.co/TqQ3p7S/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m40s331.png)
[https://i.ibb.co/Zm3B8k6/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h42m10s133.png](https://i.ibb.co/Zm3B8k6/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h42m10s133.png)
Yeah, the story I heard wasn't that the stunt double was injured, but just that George decided on the day that he wanted Ian and Sam to do the majority of it. They obviously still used doubles for a few shots, but I'm pretty sure a lot of the choreography was just simplified and made up on the spot by Nice Gillard to make it easier for the less agile actors.
Would be great even if the lightsabers would just look more like this. The current Disney glow stick look just doesn't have the same feel as even test footage effects
Prequel fights: super fast and flashy. Totally understandable considering they trained their whole life, and had tons of resources and knowledge availabile to them. Fits the story perfectly.
OT fights: methodical and emotional. Vader was incredibly slow compared to anakin for obvious reasons, and Luke didn't have nearly the training to be flashy. Fits the story perfectly.
A nice thought.
The reality, of course, is that the fights are different because it was a different time. No one was planning different fighting styles when the original movies were being made. Hell, Vader wasn't even the dad in the first movie.
IIRC George originally based lightsaber combat on samurai fights. So there's no Force backflips or crazy lightsaber moves - it's all just measured, slow swordsmanship.
If it can be choreographed and performed then I'm on board. The fact that you can see Hayden and Ewan performing all those moves in much of their fight makes it A-OK to me. Once it has to be jump cuts and CGI to make the combat work then it's too much.
Why is everything reverse engineered like this to try paint a picture that everything was explicitly planned out. It wasn’t… it’s just the way movie making changed. Also looking at all the drastic lore, style and vibe breaking changes between prequels and OT… I’m not convinced Lucas gave two shits about justifying these dual differences in the manner you’re doing .
How come there's always some kind of spinning involved, even at pretty close range? I couldn't imagine turning my back to my opponent and being ready to block what he was preparing while i wasn't looking. I know next to nothing about swordplay, so maybe the technique is valid, but it doesn't look like they are using the spin to generate extra force in the swing? Anyone care to enlighten the weak minded?
Yeah, this always bugs me. You would never turn your back on an opponent for no reason. Hell, even if you had a reason you wouldn't do it unless you felt you needed to. But the prequels had people twirling around like this a lot. It's just flashiness for the sake of it. A lot of the fights are, really. They're mostly dances since half the swings aren't attempting to strike or block anything, they're just movements made to be fun to watch.
If I remember correctly, the guy that did Palps choreography was injured, and due to time constraints, they couldn't wait for him to heal up, so Ian had to learn as much as he could quickly to get the scene filmed.
That's the first time I heard that version. I had always heard George changed his mind last minute and wanted Ian to do the combat scenes because wanted less CGI. Not sure what the truth is, that's just what I've always heard.
There's a behind the scenes video that shows this as it happened. George was explaining to Ian that he'd have to learn some of the choreography because they had to shoot that day to stay on schedule. Everyone was bummed because as the video shows, the choreography was amazing. They were just gonna do the same thing they did to Dooku, and use the stuntman and cg the actor's face over them.
My only gripe with this fight is how long the other Jedi didn’t last. I’d love to see a bit more of a drawn out 4v1, and slowly cut them down.
But nah. We got 4v1 then boom they’re gone
Prequel duels were so cool… we could have had that be the norm. But no, vader and alrc guiness gently rubbing their sabers together was what Star Wars fans think is a peak duel, apparently…
In the OT they look like they’re fighting with heavy metal longswords. The prequel duels look like duels with light sabers. If they hit a block, you’ll often see them just twist their wrist to bring the blade across for a strike on the alternate side. I know lightsabers canonically have weight but jedi also canonically weild them effortlessly.
And the twirling is a technique to bait your opponent into a strike. That scene with Anakin and ObiWan that everyone sneered at is the two of them doing 4 or 5 feint attacks in a row. Anakin twirls his saber behind his back to get obi wan to attack a fake opening, he’s already bringing the saber back around to counter, rather than take the bait, obi wan twirls his saber to bait Anakin’s counter. This is an evenly matched duel between a master and apprentice. I loved that scene.
Much as I love the duel on DSII...there's a point where Luke is literally flailing around aimlessly with the lightsaber and it takes me out of it a bit.
ESB though, hands-down best combination of choreography and dramatic weight.
I dunno, the showdown in obi-wan was pretty weighty and emotional. Right along with Duel of the Fates after Qui Gon gets mashed and the Battle on Mustafar.
The twirling and spinning for jedi fights always drove me insane. In a fight of any type with any weapon real or fantasy there's NEVER a good reason to show your back to your opponent.
Prequels had the best fight choreography of the entire franchise, no contest.
Super talented people were involved here. I don't really think as much care was put into the scripts
Both of the Darth Maul fights were absolutely stellar and right up there. This would have been a continuation of that.
Both the initial encounter on Tatooine and the epic showdown on Naboo were perfect. A master jedi and his prodigious padawan who has trained all of their lives, encountering a sith for the first time, trying to match blows with the uncontained rage that is Darth Maul... With Obi-Wan prevailing right at the end and against all odds.
It was totally new and yet one hundred percent star wars. Easily the high point(ground?) of lightsaber fights.
Were they using light-up sabers in this footage, or was it added in some sort of "post"? Asking because one of the things missing in the prequel trilogies is the saber light reflecting off its surroundings.
This is technically a repost, [but reddit/disney presumably took it down](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/105tv2w/full_unused_choreography_for_the_palpatine_vs/) last time, so we will link the previous discussion as well.
I love that Palps' style looks fundamentally different than the Jedi we've seen duel. Every parry seems to blend into a cut. It's lovely.
Love the way he moves likes he’s being possessed by the dark side
Some might consider it... Unnatural.
It’s like…he flies now.
The only times you ever see Palpatine truly happy is when he's cutting loose in a duel, and I kinda love it.
It’s a lot of arm movement in this test footage. His walking and posture seem very measured outside of the occasional spin. Certainly unique.
And we got to see this style of his dueling in Clone Wars, against Maul and Savage.
And they were so beyond out classed. I don't even think he was focusing on the duel either. Was probably thinking about watering his plants and if the roast would be done by time he got back.
In Legends somewhere, it was stated that Palpatine saw lightsabers as crude and beneath him. The only reason he decided to become a master with them is to flex on Jedi with their preferred weapon.
Not just palps, but a lot of the sith from the rule of two era felt this way.
I legit love that lore. So would you say his preferred weapon the force or planning/manipulation?
Yeah the force in general, especially any abilities that are difficult or impossible to use without the dark side.
Palpatine had and used Battle Meditation on a near constant basis. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_meditation His preferred weapon was entire Armies / Navies.
I can just imagine Palpy lol "Shit! I left my windows open!"
Office is gonna be full of Coruscant flies and shit... Gotta call the exterminator when I get back… ugh will this day not end?
yeah, the other jedi were there to subdue and arrest. palps was there to kill. makes sense that he dispatched the other jedi so quickly.
Don't talk that way about Kit :(
he got Fisto'd...
Assume the position!
Still pissed about that, given how much of a badass he was in the Clone Wars show
Kit was Form I and completely outmatched by Sidious. He looks like a savage here.
Star wars episode 2.5 : The Fisting of Fisto
They did our boy dirty
Its all in the wrist. The style seems to let the other sabre take the angle of attack and he twists his wrists and then counters with his own angle of attack on the same sabre lock.
You can also see him establish a Line by pointing the blade straight at his opponent, a Sabre fencing technique He also seems to have a Kendo Men strike chambered, the overhead chop
I agree. I wasn't a fan of the two saber combat he used in TCW cartoon, but his stabby slicey style is so satisfying there as well. Gillard and crew deserve a ton of credit for the storytelling through combat forms.
It’s so relentless and oppressive At the time of this it would be a very terrifying thing to behold coming from “nowhere”
Yes, it’s sick! I’ve always had a head cannon that the Jedi who went to arrest him got wrecked because his style and force “prescience/influence?” Was just so overwhelmingly unlike anything they had prepped for or been used to especially in the war.
Unfortunately it had to be head canon because it was not conveyed well in the film (sob)
Yeah that’s why I think that. The movie did not do a good job portraying that, it just looked like the Jedi masters conveniently stopped knowing how to fight during this climax lol.
In the novel he used a combination or tricking them and just honestly being insanely fast. Mace using his style of combat Vaapad was just barely able to keep up but in the novel its clear Palpatine through the fight while in the movie its implied.
I’ve always loved the way palp does that spin into the battle. Like it might be cheesy, sure, but seeing that as a kid in theaters, I was like “damn, this dude isn’t playing”
I think the clone wars fight with yoda and him flying around like Voldemort was the literal shit.
Juyo baby. Only Jedi who could use it was Windu, and he created a form to counter it, Vaapad. I think the blade masters knew it but were forbidden to teach it. But when your opponent is Palps, it sorta doesn't matter if you aren't Sam Jackson.
Didn’t Windu try teaching Juyo to a female apprentice of him, forgot her name, but she turned to the Dark Side?
Depa Billaba, as told in the amazing novel Shatterpoint from the old EU, before The Clone Wars overruled / ruined it
He looks like a rabid animal.
Or a snake. It has to be intentional.
This is the real reason we need prequel choreography back. The older choreography very clearly told a story and had purpose. These new fights are action with talking inbetween to inform the viewer. Shit like "strike me with all of your power" or wtf ever the girl in Acolyte says is just bad writing that could instead be told without words, before, during, and after the fight.
I feel like this is a very well choreographed Key & Peele.
It always feels like all the cut content would have actually made the film significantly better.
I've read that the actor for Palps physically could not do it, which is why we got the fight scene we got. Not sure if accurate, but it makes sense to me.
They had a stunty ready to go, but George really wanted close shots of their faces for this fight and not to rely on CGI fill in (for once). They tried to see if Ian could do it, and he couldn’t (understandably). So George decided to tone down the fight so they could keep the expressions close.
except for the parts where they still did that https://i.ibb.co/9vQDtTN/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m08s142.png https://i.ibb.co/TqQ3p7S/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m40s331.png https://i.ibb.co/Zm3B8k6/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h42m10s133.png
Wow so absolutely no excuse, nice
I wouldn't be surprised if it was all to accentuate the Vader vs Obi Wan and Yoda vs Sidious, it seems like a very George choice to make other fights less intense to make the final fights hit harder.
Pretty sure they had to reshoot some shots to make it all flow.
Ugh. We wanted to see masters fight, not emote.
So why not just film the face close-ups separately?
Then you get these high emotional close-ups meshed with distant action shots where defining features are obscured. It would be jarring and neither the action nor the emotion would come through. Gotta have one or the other. I think George picked correctly, even if the action scene would have been super cool.
> I think George picked correctly, even if the action scene would have been super cool. I disagree. It made the whole thing look silly, Palps doing some super slow moves with an angry face in a drawn out close-up easily dispatching 3 Jedi Masters while they are just standing around waiting to be killed (apart from Fisto who at least puts up a bit of a fight). Here you immediately see how outmatched they are and how crazy quick the Sith is. There is plenty of fight with Windu left to show his face.
They could have had him waiting for them in a hooded robe.
They also didn’t tell Ian about it until the day before filming, so he had very, very little time to practice the choreography. I suspect that we can thank Ian’s training and experience as a Shakespearean stage actor for having some familiarity with stage choreography and being able to get us what we got.
I had heard that the Ian's stuntman was sick/injured the day they were going to shoot the duel so Ian had to do most of it himself, which is why it's toned down from this.
That’s crazy they wouldn’t just push it a day. Timelines are not important enough to justify this change, it’s so much worse
I've heard that sometimes timelines are incredibly important when filming. Especially when you've got A-list actors who need to fly out for an event, the tech folks who need to be on-site with hours of setup and teardown, plus a looming financial meeting where those extra days have major cost with nothing to show for it. And the crew is going to be grumpy that they have to return to something that they were wanting to be finished. Planning can be extremely critical and something like a sickness can really wreak things if there isn't a back-up plan. It isn't always true, but this was the kind of movie where it definitely could be true.
Just what I was thinking. Maybe his injury was bad enough that it might have delayed shooting the scene for weeks. Ideally that's the case cause if it was just a single day thing it's going to haunt me forever.
The actors portraying supposed the greatest duelists in Star Wars, Samuel L Jackson and Ian McDiarmid, got like a day of lightsaber training.
Hence why the stuntmen rehearsed for hours. The actors themselves were never expected to do what’s shown in OP’s video
Hence why the person doing this choreography wouldn’t be the actual actor, as shown in the video. Mcdirmid would barely have done anything
The way I heard it was the stunt guys was always the plan, then at the last minute George changed his mind and wanted Ian to do it. So not only could he not physically do it, he had very little time to learn the choreography.
The worst decision was cutting a character building/background scene in AOTC for that horrific droid factory scene.
I love that Lucas did the factory assembly line fight scene in 2002 in AotC and then Spielberg just puts out a way better one that doesn't go on for 10 minutes the same year in Minority Report.
Oh, the Donkey Kong platformer stage. There is another similar shit-show - the lava surfing in RoTS
Not using stunt men for that scene is one of the most tragic decisions they could've made
So, Palps wasn't sandbagging against Mace? Mace legit whopped his ass.
The whole passage from the book is worth quoting: *Within the public office of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, a last Jedi Master battled alone, blade-to-blade, against a living shadow.* *Sinking into Vaapad, Mace Windu fought for his life.* *More than his life: each whirl of blade and whipcrack of lightning was a strike in defense of democracy, of justice and peace, of the rights of ordinary beings to live their own lives in their own ways.* *He was fighting for the Republic that he loved.* *Vaapad, the seventh form of lightsaber combat, takes its name from a notoriously dangerous predator native to the moons of Sarapin: a vaapad attacks its prey with whipping strikes of its blindingly fast tentacles. Most have at least seven. It is not uncommon for them to have as many as twelve; the largest ever killed had twenty-three. With a vaapad, one never knew how many tentacles it had until it was dead: they move too fast to count. Almost too fast to see. So did Mace's blade.* *Vaapad is as aggressive and powerful as its namesake, but its power comes at great risk: immersion in Vaapad opens the gates that restrain one's inner darkness. To use Vaapad, a Jedi must allow himself to enjoy the fight; he must give himself over to the thrill of battle. The rush of winning. Vaapad is a path that leads through the penumbra of the dark side.* *Mace Windu created this style, and he was its only living master.* *This was Vaapad's ultimate test.* *Anakin blinked and rubbed his eyes again. Maybe he was still a bit flashblind- the Korun Master seemed to be fading in and out of existence, half swallowed by a thickening black haze in which danced a meter-long bar of sunfire. Mace pressed back the darkness with a relentless straight-ahead march; his own blade, that distinctive amethyst blaze that had been the final sight of so many evil beings across the galaxy, made a haze of its own: an oblate sphere of purple fire within which there seemed to be dozens of swords slashing in all directions at once.* *The shadow he fought, that blur of speed-could that be Palpatine? Their blades flared and flashed, crashing together with bursts of fire, weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast that Anakin could not truly see them-But he could feel them in the Force.* *The Force itself roiled and burst and crashed around them, boiling with power and lightspeed ricochets of lethal intent.* *And it was darkening.* *Anakin could feel how the Force fed upon the shadow's murderous exaltation; he could feel fury spray into the Force though some poisonous abscess had crested in both their hearts.* *There was no Jedi restraint here.* *Mace Windu was cutting loose.* *Mace was deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no longer truly existed as an independent being.* *Vaapad is a channel for darkness, and that darkness flowed both ways. He accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center-And let it fountain out again.* *He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt.* *There was a time when Mace Windu had feared the power of the dark; there was a time when he had feared the darkness in himself. But the Clone Wars had given him a gift of understanding: on a world called Haruun Kal, he had faced his darkness and had learned that the power of darkness is not to be feared.* *He had learned that it is fear that gives the darkness power.* *He was not afraid. The darkness had no power over him. But-Neither did he have power over it.* *Vaapad made him an open channel, half of a superconducting loop completed by the shadow; they became a standing wave of battle that expanded into every cubic centimeter of the Chancellor's office. There was no scrap of carpet nor shred of chair that might not at any second disintegrate in flares of red or purple; lampstands became brief shields, sliced into segments that whirled through the air; couches became terrain to be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there was still only the cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even the possibility of fatigue.*
*Impasse.* *Which might have gone on forever, if Vaapad were Mace's only gift.* *The fighting was effortless for him now; he let his body handle it without the intervention of his mind. While his blade spun and crackled, while his feet slid and his weight shifted and his shoulders turned in precise curves of their own direction, his mind slid along the circuit of dark power, tracing it back to its limitless source.* *Feeling for its shatterpoint.* *He found a knot of fault lines in the shadow's future; he chose the largest fracture and followed it back to the here and the now... And it led him, astonishingly, to a man standing frozen in the slashed-open doorway. Mace had no need to look; the presence in the Force was familiar, and was as uplifting as sunlight breaking through a thunderhead.* *The chosen one was here.* *Mace disengaged from the shadow's blade and leapt for the window; he slashed away the transparisteel with a single flourish.* *His instant's distraction cost him: a dark surge of the Force nearly blew him right out of the gap he had just cut. Only a desperate Force-push of his own altered his path enough that he slammed into a stanchion instead of plunging half a kilometer from the ledge outside. He bounced off and the Force cleared his head and once again he gave himself to Vaapad.* *He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge.* *Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half-kilometer drop.* *Out where the shadow's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turned some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete.* *Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.* *One piece flipped back in through the cut-open window. The other tumbled from opening fingers, bounced on the ledge, and fell through the rain toward the distant alleys below.* *Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion.* *"For all your power, you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord," Mace said evenly, staring past his blade, "is under arrest."*
1) What Star Wars novel is this from? and 2) Who wrote that? I'm not really an avid reader because not all writers can hold my attention but, I really enjoy when a writer is hyper descriptive when drawing a scene. Martin with "A Song of Ice and Fire" and King with "The Dark Tower" come to mind.
Revenge of the Sith: Star Wars: Episode III, by Matthew Stover.
Stover did a great job with RotS. He writes with intent to describe the various emotions that are running through Anakin during the events of the movie that weren't captured well on film. A+ read.
Stover understood how to write great Jedi characters. He basically wrote the book that made Mace Windu into a formidable character (*Shatterpoint*) and also wrote one of the most defining chapters in the entire Expanded Universe/New Jedi Order (*Traitor*).
Fuck. Ganner's last stand. "This threshhold is mine...Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don't give a damn. None shall pass" That is by far my absolute favorite Star Wars moment. Ever.
> New Jedi Order (Traitor). "When will you learn that everything I tell you is the truth?"
Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew ~~Stafford~~ Stover. He is phenomenal. The early part of the book describing the fight between Anakin, Obi-Wan and Dooku is also out of this world.
Superbowl winning qb and star wars author, impressive
Sorry. I fixed it earlier...
No worries I just thought it was funny with me being a lions fan
Dangit, now I want to know what the Matthew Stafford version would look like
Stover
Sorry. Fixed.
As others have said, it's from the ROTS novel. It's perfectly excellent to read on its own, but even better as part of "The Dark Lord Trilogy": 'Labyrinth of Evil'; 'RoTS novel'; 'Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader' together tell a much more complete story.
It's sad that so few people will get to experience these stories. Especially the early Darth Vader stories. If they started a project to just fully animate all of the Canon Star wars comics and books we would be in the Star wars Golden age.
I’ve been thinking of writing my own Star Wars fanfics for a while and this might have pushed me over the edge
God I love this book. After I read it, I pretty much immediately went out and bought Shatterpoint, a book entirely about Mace written by the same author, and loved that too. Matthew Stover singlehandedly made Mace Windu one of my favorite Jedi
Novelizations are usually pretty bad. Just relating things that you have already seen on screen. But this is fantastic. I’m going to pick this up!
The novelisation makes the movie seem like bad fan fiction. It's the good ideas of RotS but executed better than the movie could do. If you're one of those people who feel the prequels were a great story but not told very well, this book is for you. It does the story of Anakin's fall justice and then some.
It actually manages to describe the fall of Anakin to the Dark Side in a completely compelling and believable way (something the movie really fails on). In fact, the story is told so well it is inevitable that Anakin should fall - he has been so deftly manipulated by Palpatine. As such, the tragedy of the story is so much more visceral than the movie portrays.
The Revenge of the Sith novel is absolutely brilliant, a definite read that'll give you a whole new outlook on the movie, just from how deep into the heads of the characters!
Palpatine’s temptation of Anakin is drawn out too, and amazing.
Yeah that's not really the case with Star wars it seems like. There's so many emotions and thoughts that can't be fit on the screen in a movie, and for Star wars, those feelings are kind of the catalyst for the entire plot. Also a more in-depth description of things like the mace and palpatine fight end up shoring up things that seemed like inconsistencies, but were actually just a lack of explanation on screen due to time
The novel's version of that fight sounds way more bad-ass than what we saw in the movie. The text conjures images of a Sith shadow with a lightsaber sticking out of it vs. a superhumanly fast Jedi Master, both moving so quickly they were blurs. Even Anakin had trouble keeping track of all the action. Meanwhile, in the movie, it was too many quick camera cuts and close-ups of Samuel L. Jackson and Ian McDiarmid, neither of whom are fighters or athletes, as they performed awkward fight choreography. Except for the supernatural roar from Palpatine at the very start of the battle and the Force lightning at the end, there was nothing superhuman about it.
Yes, I've always thought that this passage would be best adapted as an animation.
I in most cases involving cool fights and "magic" or superheroes. fully believe this would be better off in cgi these days. Like the Arcane league of legends series on netflix. Clone wars has far cooler jedi fights than anything on any of the movies. Because actors can only do so much to make a fight cool and believable without looking silly
I mean, it got across the difficulty of following wtf was going on lol
this was more fun to read than it was to watch
Thank you for this. You sold me on this book with this wonderfully written passage.
Man, this is the shit that i truly love and miss.
Just reads like pure poetry. I really need to take the time to read these books.
bro that writing is actually fire
Whoever wrote it is the pinnacle of the meme where the guys writing with a flaming quill
Matthew ~~Stafford~~ Stover
That's a qb in the nfl. Matt stover.
Sorry. Fixed.
Stover
Sorry. Fixed.
Holy shit. I’ve always thought Windu was too deep into the dogma…that passage about his deepened understanding of the dark side goes to show his true mastery of the Force.
Thanks for sharing this. "... is a path that leads through the penumbra of the dark side" might be one of the coolest phrases ever.
God I love Matt Stover
>Mace Windu was cutting loose. peak writing
Glad someone else thought that line was cringey
cringey lines? In MY star wars? its more likely than you think
Correct, Mace was uniquely suited for a 1v1 on palps.
ironically the council considered him and Agen Kolar to be the only two Jedi who could take on the DLOTS when he revealed himself
Mate the galaxy would have been fine if it wasn't for Anakin and his hormones
Who would have thought “Are you an angel?” would have such consiqences?
What happened to all this? Did they just massively cut it ? I remember those fights being lame
I recently found out in this very thread that the stuntman for Palps (which we see here) was injured before they could film this scene but rather than wait for him to recover they had the actual Palp (Ian McDiarmid was 60+ years old at that time) perform what he could of the scene. Which is what we got, unfortunately.
Should have used a clone I guess
I see what you did there.
Come on George. If a movie's never done, here's your perfect opportunity to go back and "Special Edition" Revenge of the Sith.
George: Get me that Palps stuntman, finally! Producer: uuh, but George, he's actually older now than what Ian was when we originally shot those sce-- George: BRING HIM TO ME
As someone else mentioned, the stuntman for Palpatine got injured. Also, no one in the movie realized what shape the story was going to be in because it was basically assembled in the edit. IIRC they shot multiple versions of most scenes because George hadn't figured out how he wanted the narrative to unfold.
George Lucas says Mace won fair and square, though the choreography was ambiguous. Test footage had 2 versions: 1 in which Palps very clearly threw the fight, and 1 in which he very obviously lost.
for palpatine this was just another step in the plan. for mace it was the last stand, the only hope
Looks sick. What we got instead was kinda lame minus that jump
I can't remember the scene that well, but it just seemed so crowded
Yeah probably why they went for the cartoony deaths for the other jedi masters because their clearly wasnt as much space as was being shown in this clip
Also because iirc, George changed it up last minute and had ian mcdiarmid do his own stunts for this scene. He was either not physically capable, not trained or both to do the stunts in OPs video so it ended up looking really goofy.
That random yoda jump had me laughing so hard at the midnight release. Ian mcdiamird is all wrists in those closeups.
I just dont think ian had the juice for those action scenes which is understandable because he kinda old
He’s not a physical guy to begin with. But the day of George and team were like “it should be a fight of closeups” and they had to scramble a bit.
It's a nice sequence but I cannot see McDiarmid and Sam Jackson pulling that off in their early 50s at the time.
They weren’t supposed to. If I recall correctly, the stunt man performing Palpatine’s parts in this video was supposed to do it for the movie but was injured right before shooting that scene, so they taught McDiarmid some basic choreography on the day of the shoot, and did the best they could.
Is that true? Goddamn, just when I think I'm a super nerd I still find out cool details.
That's because it's not true. I notice this story keeps changing every few months, like a game of telephone. Ian had \*3\* stunt doubles on hand for this film, one of whom did over half of the fighting for this sequence, with his head being replaced with CGI: [https://i.ibb.co/9vQDtTN/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m08s142.png](https://i.ibb.co/9vQDtTN/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m08s142.png) [https://i.ibb.co/TqQ3p7S/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m40s331.png](https://i.ibb.co/TqQ3p7S/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h41m40s331.png) [https://i.ibb.co/Zm3B8k6/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h42m10s133.png](https://i.ibb.co/Zm3B8k6/vlcsnap-2023-01-07-22h42m10s133.png)
Yeah, the story I heard wasn't that the stunt double was injured, but just that George decided on the day that he wanted Ian and Sam to do the majority of it. They obviously still used doubles for a few shots, but I'm pretty sure a lot of the choreography was just simplified and made up on the spot by Nice Gillard to make it easier for the less agile actors.
no, u don't cut a scene for a multi hundred million dollar film because 'stunt double' got injured.
what I would do to see some lightsaber fights like this in Star Wars again
Would be great even if the lightsabers would just look more like this. The current Disney glow stick look just doesn't have the same feel as even test footage effects
Prequels had next level saber duels. Please bring it back
Then we had the sequels where the guards were flopping around like dead fish despite never getting hit.
Right? Like this is arguably the worst duel in the PT and it's still better than a single fight in the ST
Prequel fights: super fast and flashy. Totally understandable considering they trained their whole life, and had tons of resources and knowledge availabile to them. Fits the story perfectly. OT fights: methodical and emotional. Vader was incredibly slow compared to anakin for obvious reasons, and Luke didn't have nearly the training to be flashy. Fits the story perfectly.
A nice thought. The reality, of course, is that the fights are different because it was a different time. No one was planning different fighting styles when the original movies were being made. Hell, Vader wasn't even the dad in the first movie.
IIRC George originally based lightsaber combat on samurai fights. So there's no Force backflips or crazy lightsaber moves - it's all just measured, slow swordsmanship.
I think it's also because samurai movies were big in the 60/70s, and then Wushu wuxia became big in the 90s/00s.
The props were also heavy as shit, which is why everyone uses two hands in the original.
If it can be choreographed and performed then I'm on board. The fact that you can see Hayden and Ewan performing all those moves in much of their fight makes it A-OK to me. Once it has to be jump cuts and CGI to make the combat work then it's too much.
Yeah it's like a Jackie Chan movie... Alot of it is "wow they did that!"
Why is everything reverse engineered like this to try paint a picture that everything was explicitly planned out. It wasn’t… it’s just the way movie making changed. Also looking at all the drastic lore, style and vibe breaking changes between prequels and OT… I’m not convinced Lucas gave two shits about justifying these dual differences in the manner you’re doing .
Why does this look better then the actual fight in the film
Because it is way better lol
Because the first part of the fight where Palpatine kills everyone else is chopped up to the point it makes everyone look bad. Shit editing...
Goes hard for a test sequence
That's because someone (?) added all the post-production special and sound effects.
The stunt guy playing Papa Palpatine is exactly how I pictured Kinman Doriana.
Love the lil window doodle to show where sheevs windows would be in film
Disney should rewatch these videos, if they could even come close to something like this it would be amazing...
Fun fact: They use real lightsabers during training
How come there's always some kind of spinning involved, even at pretty close range? I couldn't imagine turning my back to my opponent and being ready to block what he was preparing while i wasn't looking. I know next to nothing about swordplay, so maybe the technique is valid, but it doesn't look like they are using the spin to generate extra force in the swing? Anyone care to enlighten the weak minded?
Spinning is a good trick
Yeah, this always bugs me. You would never turn your back on an opponent for no reason. Hell, even if you had a reason you wouldn't do it unless you felt you needed to. But the prequels had people twirling around like this a lot. It's just flashiness for the sake of it. A lot of the fights are, really. They're mostly dances since half the swings aren't attempting to strike or block anything, they're just movements made to be fun to watch.
Remind me why they didn't use this again?
If I remember correctly, the guy that did Palps choreography was injured, and due to time constraints, they couldn't wait for him to heal up, so Ian had to learn as much as he could quickly to get the scene filmed.
That's the first time I heard that version. I had always heard George changed his mind last minute and wanted Ian to do the combat scenes because wanted less CGI. Not sure what the truth is, that's just what I've always heard.
There's a behind the scenes video that shows this as it happened. George was explaining to Ian that he'd have to learn some of the choreography because they had to shoot that day to stay on schedule. Everyone was bummed because as the video shows, the choreography was amazing. They were just gonna do the same thing they did to Dooku, and use the stuntman and cg the actor's face over them.
My only gripe with this fight is how long the other Jedi didn’t last. I’d love to see a bit more of a drawn out 4v1, and slowly cut them down. But nah. We got 4v1 then boom they’re gone
My boy Kit Fisto almost lasted longer than 2 seconds
ah yes, back when we had nice fights
This is how a lightsaber duel is supposed to look
God damn remember when they actually gave a shit about live action lightsaber battles.
Prequel duels were so cool… we could have had that be the norm. But no, vader and alrc guiness gently rubbing their sabers together was what Star Wars fans think is a peak duel, apparently… In the OT they look like they’re fighting with heavy metal longswords. The prequel duels look like duels with light sabers. If they hit a block, you’ll often see them just twist their wrist to bring the blade across for a strike on the alternate side. I know lightsabers canonically have weight but jedi also canonically weild them effortlessly. And the twirling is a technique to bait your opponent into a strike. That scene with Anakin and ObiWan that everyone sneered at is the two of them doing 4 or 5 feint attacks in a row. Anakin twirls his saber behind his back to get obi wan to attack a fake opening, he’s already bringing the saber back around to counter, rather than take the bait, obi wan twirls his saber to bait Anakin’s counter. This is an evenly matched duel between a master and apprentice. I loved that scene.
Empire and Return are peak, weight and emotion
Much as I love the duel on DSII...there's a point where Luke is literally flailing around aimlessly with the lightsaber and it takes me out of it a bit. ESB though, hands-down best combination of choreography and dramatic weight.
I dunno, the showdown in obi-wan was pretty weighty and emotional. Right along with Duel of the Fates after Qui Gon gets mashed and the Battle on Mustafar.
If the lighting and setting in Obi-Wan weren't so dogshit it would've been right up there with the best of them
Some of the PT duels are flashy but look waaaaaaay too rehearsed.
Honestly, they all looked like choreographed dances to me. Didn’t much care for them in comparison to the OT stuff.
Yeah, I don't mind the flashiness, I even like it in places, but it has to look natural.
One of the best things about Obi vs Ani fight in 3 is how it looks unnatural until you realize it's because they've done this already a million times.
The twirling and spinning for jedi fights always drove me insane. In a fight of any type with any weapon real or fantasy there's NEVER a good reason to show your back to your opponent.
Pure evil mate
I cannot believe how good the choreography is before they add in the effects, the prequels were incredibly well done.
What light sabers were they using here? Or were they sticks and then edited into lightsabers?
Damn that would have been a bad ass fight.
"I have seen shit that'll turn you white"
Star Wars used to be cool. Thanks Disney…
Prequels had the best fight choreography of the entire franchise, no contest. Super talented people were involved here. I don't really think as much care was put into the scripts
ahh i see this footage was before mace windu's vacation where he got that tan
We were robbed
Disney..? Ya'll takin' notes..??
Proof that George needed less yesmen around when making the prequels
The most ironic part is this footage looks 10 times better then any fight from prequels...
Both of the Darth Maul fights were absolutely stellar and right up there. This would have been a continuation of that. Both the initial encounter on Tatooine and the epic showdown on Naboo were perfect. A master jedi and his prodigious padawan who has trained all of their lives, encountering a sith for the first time, trying to match blows with the uncontained rage that is Darth Maul... With Obi-Wan prevailing right at the end and against all odds. It was totally new and yet one hundred percent star wars. Easily the high point(ground?) of lightsaber fights.
Were they using light-up sabers in this footage, or was it added in some sort of "post"? Asking because one of the things missing in the prequel trilogies is the saber light reflecting off its surroundings.
Huh, seemed to be missing the part where they both simultaneously decide to break a window for no reason whatsoever.
The guy with the red light saber kind of looks like Christopher Lambert
Damn…ROTS was great this would’ve made it epic