every single person who picks up a lightsaber in the force awakens fights
like they've never heard of a guard stance or if they have they're not
entirely sure about what those are supposed to achieve. And to be honest
that's actually kind of brilliant. Let me tell you why. Since a long time ago in a
galaxy far far away every time characters in Star Wars have
picked up their laser swords to go into battle there has been a lot of
comparison criticism and probably some other things beginning with C
particularly for the prequel trilogy over how showy they are and over their
lack of realism my name is Jill Bearup and I recently completed my seventh
advanced level stage combat qualification in tonfa if you're
interested my goal is ten advanced qualifications
before the end of the year because then you can call yourself an Actor Combatant
and that just sounds awesome. Stage combat or fight choreography is about
the creation of theatrical violence that is to say the illusion of violence in
theater or film or TV or opera or ballet for that matter. The precise requirements
of each medium are different but the general principles are the same: to
further your story when your characters decide that words are no longer
sufficient and to do so without actually harming your performers. Safety in the
workplace kids. Which requires the use of a number of different techniques we're
not going to go into today but the point is to have a series of choreographed
moves that look convincing, tell the story that you want to tell, are safe for
everyone involved, and preferably can be repeated ad infinitum for the number of
takes or the number of shows you have to do. And the creation of those fights is
what you hire your fight choreographer for. So let's set the scene the big
lightsaber fight in The Force Awakens is Kylo Ren versus Finn and then Rey. Kylo
Ren has just killed his dad Han Solo spoiler for a four-year-old movie and
subsequently been shot in the kind of left hand torso area so it goes: Rey
tries to shoot Kylo he Force pushes her into a tree Finn picks up the blue
lightsaber and fights kylo gets grievously injured the lightsaber flies
off Kylo attempts to get it back but wait Rey Force pulls it over to her
and the fight is on until Rey uses the Force properly and
slashes him in the face and then the ground breaks up our heroes escape the
end. The thing is if you know something about actual fighting the conclusion you
come to from watching these characters fight with lightsabers is that none of
them seem to be particularly good at fighting with lightsabers
specifically and this is underlined by the fact that as far as I can see nobody
takes a guard stance for basically the entirety of the fight. What do I mean
okay if you have a sword in your hand or hands for that matter it is generally
advised let's go with generally advised that you take a fighting stance which is
to say you bend your knees you have one foot forward one foot back but not
directly behind the other one you centre your weight in the middle you keep
your back straight and in general you point your sword at your opponent there
are some stances where you don't do that so for example these stances for long
sword you're not actually pointing the tip of your blade at your opponent but
there's generally a reason or a rationale behind that you don't just
stand there. Why? Because it doesn't matter if your sword is relatively heavy
or if it's light and whippy, it takes time and momentum to move it from one
position to another so if you have a sword the first stance you are taught is
the one where you are pointing your sword at your opponent and in stage
combat when you learn to fight with a single sword you're taught to point the
sword at the chest of your partner now it makes sense for Rey and Finn who only
picked up a lightsaber in the course of this film not to be au fait with the finer
points of light saber combat but Kylo Ren should he know better?
Kylo Ren's big dramatic stance is: well his feet are apart I guess his legs are sorta bent, yeah?
but his sword is just hanging down at his side there. rey and finn have blasters
and at least one of them has a lightsaber you'd think he'd want to be
using his lightsaber to threaten them since the whole point of him being there
is to stop them from escaping hmm well yes and no but hold that thought
Finn picks up Luke's lightsaber big character moment dramatically ignites it
we're gonna have to zoom out... and this is also not a very useful stance first
because it's a laser sword near your face which I don't know if they're hot
but they're certainly bright so are you not obscuring your own vision there? And
second the blade is perpendicular so it's not particularly useful to set you
up to do an easy cut it's also not nearer your opponent than you are so
it's not threatening them and it's not doing anything to keep them away and
when Rey picks up the lightsaber? exactly the same thing. if this were real life
here are a couple of stances which might work better better if this
were real life and not space fantasy but for a movie and particularly for a Star
Wars movie this is the perfect stance and similarly that stance kylo Ren
takes at the start of the fight beautiful wonderful because the fact
that it's not technically correct is much much less important than the story
it tells. why these characters are fighting has been set up already we know
what's going on we know the stakes the point of the fight is not just to
resolve that tension it's also to tell us things about the characters we want
it to move the plot forward but we also want to learn things about these people
that we're gonna be spending another two movies with also it sells us the
goods but I'll get back to that. so let's take the hero stance to begin with first
it gets you close into the characters face it sells you what you came here to
see it gets you right into that medium shot and then that close-up you can see
their eyes their expressions their emotions all that good stuff. because the
blade is vertical you don't have to worry about stabbing the camera or the
cameraman with a big tube of polycarbonate or whatever it is they're
using nowadays you can push right in. second it gets the blade close enough to
their face that you can have that dramatic lighting and this is
particularly true in the new movies where they have the self-lighting blades
sidenote love the self-lighting blades and they must make rotoscoping and
lighting the scene so much easier third it looks fighty but defensive it's back
it's not threatening the other person but you're clear again because you can
see their eyes and their expression that they are not mucking around anymore and
of course in the medium shot you can see the hilt of the lightsaber
remember I said it sells you the goods okay this is what I mean: this is the
hero shot this is on the movie poster this is that shot that makes every kid
in the playground want to be them when they're playing at lunchtime and for
that hero shot you need the actors face as large as you can make it in the frame
while also getting in the blade to provide that dramatic lighting effect
but also hey laser sword and preferably the hilt the hilt is important for plot
reasons because you know it's the lightsaber of Luke Skywalker and yada
yada we've been carrying it around for most
of this movie and Kylo Ren really wants it and all of that jazz but it's not
just that. It's not just Luke's saber, for anybody who's seen any of the earlier
movies it's also Anakin's saber. It is the most recognizable piece of kit in
the entire Star Wars universe and when you see it you know this is the person
you are supposed to be paying attention to. also you can buy one for $39.99 and
it lights up and makes whooshing noises sells you the goods so that's the hero
stance but the villain stance is equally brilliant from a character point of view
it is sloppy his lightsaber is just hanging there by his side he is a hot
mess. that's perfect that is exactly what the movie needs you to know about kylo
Ren. why doesn't he take a stance he trained with Luke he knows how to use a
lightsaber. he's not a scrapper who's self-taught on the quarterstaff like Rey
or a press-ganged former stormtrooper like Finn he knows what a lightsaber
isn't how to use one yeah but that fact is less important than what the movie
really wants you to know about kylo Ren and I know they really want you to know
because they emphasize it with the chest beating and the blood on the ground and
the fact that he breaks off in the middle of a fight when he could have had
the kill: Kylo Ren is much more badly hurt than he would like to let on to our
heroes. Kylo Ren may know how you're supposed to stand with a lightsaber but
that would hurt and also he'd rather do his own thing because he's a maverick
dangit and this carries over into his fight style which is aggressive but it's
also inconsistent impulsive sadistic even and communicating this to the
audience is much more important than him using proper guards. if the story
requires it or would be made better by it: character over technique every time
that is not to say that I'm in favor of people improvising their fight sequences
but that's a whole other story Kylo seems to ignore excellent
opportunities to end the fight quickly despite the fact that he's really
injured and probably in need of a lie down. Because of his injury because he's
toying with Finn who's only picked up a lightsaber once? Bit of both? and after he
incapacitates Finn by stabbing him in the shoulder
he doesn't just kill him he punches him and then he slices him up the back: a
move that could have been immediately fatal but isn't and so from Kylo Ren's
perspective Finn is just gonna bleed out paralyzed on the snow
like the good-for-nothing traitor he is this is what the fight is trying to
emphasize for Kylo Ren he is a bad person a malicious demented sadist if
you can take the opportunity to underline that then you should because
if he wasn't such an awful person then there would be no need to redeem him now
would there? honestly I'm just getting warmed up
consider the weird ways in which Rey and Finn fight and what this tells us about
their characters note for a start the Finn is not terrible with a lightsaber
he's no match for someone traind in it even if that person is injured and for
example here you can see he hasn't quite figured out how you're supposed to parry
with it but for someone who canonically, see the
before the awakening novel learned to fight with a resonator mace on shield
which basically a one handed club for the uninitiated doesn't do too badly. true
story i was hilariously bad the first time I tried Hema which was last year
at a Lithuanian fan convention they handed me this long sword which is a 2 handed
weapon and I've never done basically anything with 2 handed weapons before and so
I stood there going I know where it needs to to get to but I'm not sure how
to get it there efficiently it was a bruising afternoon let's put it like
that and it's kind of the same here he has a general idea but mostly it's just
overhead strike try to parry try to parry ahhhh overhead strike parry a bit
more effectively but still ahhhh and that helps establish kylo Ren as formidable
as well as crazy and helps to establish Finn as someone who's brave and
resourceful just completely out of his depth. then look at Rey. Rey we know from
earlier in the film is used to fighting with what is basically a quarterstaff
so no cutting edges but you can do a lot of damage with it if you put enough
force behind it no pun intended and you can also see that obviously she
does not immediately grasp all of the possibilities of a weapon which is
basically entirely made of cutting edge. so during the fight there is a move
she does at least three times which is this very kind of effortful stab like
she's expecting it to be disabling but she's also expecting to have to provide
power behind it to make it so maybe because having fought with a quarter
staff her entire life her reflex in this situation is to try and open out the
distance by moving them back by stabbing at them with the end of the staff and
not getting them to move back ideally
disabling them at the same time character through fighting don't you
love it? basically what I'm saying is I like realistic movie fights as much as
the next person but the desire for realism or practicality or even looking
really really cool for me comes way way below the desire to have this fight tell
me things about the characters their past experiences their current
preoccupations how they're feeling right now anything really because if you're
not taking the opportunity to convey that then just feel like it's a waste of
potential. If you enjoyed this video and you would like to listen to me talking
some more about stage combat then there will be videos on my face probably and
of course if you like this kind of content you should definitely subscribe
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next time!