Well, since the new Star wars trailer came out, people been bombarding me with messages, asking me for my opinion on the new Lightsaber cross guard thing.
And since this seems to be such a matter of utmost urgency,
[here's] my take on it. Considering how the debates have already set the internet on fire,
I'm pretty sure what I'm about to say has already been pointed out, probably quite a few times.
In fact, Matt Easton has already made a video about this and
yeah, what I'm about to say is pretty similar.
Just have some minor points to add. As far as the design is concerned, I can definitely appreciate the innovation.
It looks nice and, well, if you interpret it positively, you would say that, "Oh, they try to make the thing a bit more
practical and in a more efficient in combat and whatnot," but then again, it's Hollywood.
What they probably had in mind is "Hey. Let's put more glowy stuff on there. It looks cool!"
That's what I would expect at least. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.
But in any case, I actually think that the standard traditional
Lightsaber design looks a bit lackluster.
Oh, it's a very simple handle with a glowstick protruding from it.
Yeah that remark is probably gonna set off some nerd rage from Devout Star Wars fans, but yeah
It's just my personal opinion and the new one looks a bit nicer. One thing that people have criticized is if you have a guard
of
plasma laser
Magic Thingamajig
whatever
that can
cut or burn you at the slightest touch.
You don't really want to have that there because if you accidentally touch yourself with the guard you're gonna be in trouble.
Well, I don't necessarily think that's a big deal.
And I agree with Matt here. If you're actually used to it,
If you've been practicing with the thing for a long time (which you would have to in order to be effective with it),
I think you would be used to it at that point. There is a bit of safety at its distance between the hand and the guard.
Heat might be an issue depending on
exactly how it works. There could be a lot of heat radiating off of it, but then again,
that's always a potential issue with it. Like, even with a blade. If the blade radiated a lot of heat,
it would be a problem to use
so I'm just going to assume that that's not the case. So in terms of protective value on a traditional Lightsaber the
complete lack of a guard does seem like a bit of a hazard.
There are situations in which your opponent could aim for your hands and get away with it.
Which they couldn't with a guard. If you don't have any guard,
this kind of cut goes directly on the hand. If you have a guard,
It doesn't work. With steel swords, what is very common is as soon as you have blade contact
they will slide, at least if at least one of the two is contacting with the flat of the blade. If
both have a sharp edge,
the edge is actually going to bite into one another and they're going to want to stick
but if there's contact against a flat that's not a problem, so then what typically happens is this.
And the blade in that case strikes very close
to the blade to your blade in the trailer you can see that the handles actually came t-shaped and has a
metal of whatever material that is on the sides kind of a plasma laser
or whatever emitter where the guard comes out of so that's exactly the spot that would be cut by the
Opponent's Lightsaber, if it slides down it's there. I'm not sure if they could
slide much. I mean,
typically in the movies you see the and it's just holding the light saber blades against one another, but that's a typical
movie cliche that they keep doing all the time, even with steel swords. They're just standard
We're gonna do their ridiculous pointless pushing which achieves nothing.
So that it doesn't really tell too much. Those spots are definitely a weakness in the guard.
So it would be a lot better if the entire thing
consisted of plasma laser
Magical unicorn farts, whatever, whatever it is that makes this work.
But if you think about it having a weak spot on the guard is still better than no guard at all isn't it because yeah
Sure if the opponent's blade can slide down, it could cut through it.
But if there's nothing in the first place it can also slide down and cut your fingers.
So in that case, there's at least here you have something with which to parry or
attack, alternatively. So even in that case it still seems better than nothing right at least that's how I view it
A
better alternative
however, in my opinion, would be to make the guard out of a material that can actually withstand a lightsaber blade
and there are such materials in the star wars universe. Kurtosis is one example: a material which has the additional benefit of
actually
short-circuiting lightsaber blades so they don't work for a while.
But that's of course perfect for the purpose and there are other materials like Mandalorian
Iron is said to be able to stop a lightsaber and
several other materials as well. So if it was made out of that material, that would be pretty much a perfect solution.
I can see why they wouldn't do that in a trailer, even if they had considered that because
if you had just seen a
an apparently metal guard on
The Lightsaber in the trailer then everybody would have lost their shit and ranted about how stupid is a lightsaber
if I could just cut right through it. So yeah, I can kind of see why they didn't go for that.
And that's pretty much all I have to say about this and I'm pretty baffled by all the outrage
I mean really is it just the case of, "They change something about my favorite franchise and any kind of change is bad automatically!"
Well ok, after some of the movies I can kind of see the attitude
but, in any case, people have asked me for it. Here it is, and
as if you can't already tell I'm not a particularly big Star Wars fan, but
I don't mind it either. So it's kinda meh.
Anyway, thanks for watching.