Skip to main content

star wars - Why Do Jedi Use One Lightsaber in Combat?


While I've seen Ahsoko Tano, in The Clone Wars, fight with two lightsabers (one in each hand), this seems to be extremely rare for Jedi. We've seen Sith do this frequently, like Asajj Ventress, with two lightsabers. Darth Maul used a dual lightsaber against Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi and then there's General Grievous, who uses multiple lightsabers with his multiple limbs.


But most Jedi use just one blade, and their lightsaber hilts tend to be simple, just a straight cylinder without much adornment, while Sith sometimes use curved grips or other more exotic stylings.


Is there a reason Jedi stick with the simplest lightsaber designs and why the vast majority (at least in the movies and in The Clone Wars series) use only a single lightsaber?



Answer



The limiting factor is not open hands - it's the agility of the mind to move them, and the efficacy of the training involved. I did some fencing back in college, which is light-years, if you'll pardon the expression, from a lightsaber battle, but does share some things in common, and I've studied a number of martial arts.


What you're contending against in a confrontation is not the attacker's hand, foot or sword, but their coordinated will. "Coordinated" is the key word there - if the hand and feet are not moving together, you can't attack effectively. So putting another sword in someone's hand doesn't make them twice as effective, any more than trying to kick and punch someone at the same time does...it's more likely to make you fall over, or at least be off balance and open to attack.



Consider the difference in footwork between kendo and fencing. In fencing, the body is high, light and fast, moving rapidly (potentially) up and down. In kendo, the movement is more lateral, with the center of gravity lower to the ground. Kendo movement is crossovers with feet, fencing is more like natural stepping. Why?


Kendo (generally) adopts a two-handed grip, while fencing has a one-handed grip - the other hand is available for balance:


foil with hand extended for balance


Having said all of this - the key to using multiple weapons in this context would be kata, a coordinated and heavily pre-practiced set of movements which allow the performer to coordinate those motions in a way which has been determined in advance to be effective. But there's nothing to say that these kata will, per se, be more effective than single weapon kata.


It's all about the coordinated will and training of your opponent. Whether they have one weapon or two is not the question - if I started out with a weapon in each hand, I would literally toss it away (out of the reach of my opponent). I don't need the additional brainspace of managing it, and I want my hand open for balance.


While some kendo practitioners do use two swords (nito) in matches, it is rather rare because of the difficulty to focus on two points effectively:


nito


UPDATE:


One more point - Count Dooku defeats a dual-wielding Anakin in short order. Obi-wan defeats a MULTIPLE-wielding General Grievous in short order. I think the real question is - why do the Sith tend to dual-wield when it doesn't seem to confer any significant advantage?


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...