The Star Wars sequels finally got lightsabers right
1Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21024785/star-wars-lightsabers-sequels-rise-of-skywalker-special-effects-light-cgi-digital
Reported today in The Verge.
The Star Wars sequels finally got lightsabers right
The Star Wars saga is full of iconic imagery, characters, weapons, and spaceships, but perhaps none more so than the lightsaber. They're powerful weapons and tools, and we're told time and again throughout the films how important they are - each weapon marks the personal style of its Jedi wielder - and how critical it is that each warrior never lose theirs.
But it wasn't until the modern prequel Star Wars movies that the lightsaber really came into its own on film. And that has to do with a subtle change that finally gave the weapons their namesake quality by actually casting light.
There's a subtle wrongness that permeates the sabers in both the original trilogy and the prequel Star Wars films that makes them always feel a step removed from the actual events on-screen, thanks to that isolated aspect. But to understand how the sequel trilogy - The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker - got lightsabers so right, we first need to take a trip down memory lane to look at cinematic lightsaber tech of ages past.
For the first film (Star Wars, or later, Star Wars: A New Hope), the lightsabers were largely a real-world effect. As detailed in a 2004 featurette titled "The Birth of the Lightsaber," the early sabers consisted of a rotating pole that had reflective tape applied to it, creating the "glowing" effect. Then, using rotoscoping technology, the overlays for the saber colors were added to the film, creating the first lightsaber effect. But as actor Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) explains in the featurette, if the blades were held at the wrong angle, the lights wouldn't reflect properly, leaving a far less dramatic-looking prop sword. Creator George Lucas would go on to