George Lucas had a lightsaber rule for fight sequences in the original STAR WARS movies

when Mark Hammill he set to work Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, he wanted to perform every possible stunt he could himself. In fact, Hamill did so much of the stunt work he did in Star Wars film which was later made a member of the British Stunt Union.

During an interview with StarWars.com, Hamill talked about doing stunts, saying:

“And I’ll tell you what, back in those days — it changed as I got older — but back in those days, I wanted to do every possible stunt I could. [Empire] it was the most physically exhausting of all because of the lightsaber duels and all.

This film was the first time Hamill actually used a lightsaber to fight in his battle with Darth Vader. Choreographing this fight sequence took a long time, and was even delayed because Hamill injured his thumb diving away from an imaginary AT-AT onto a salt-covered stage the day his son was born.

Either way, this duel would have involved more stunts and choreography than the duel between Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first film. They wanted to do something cool and get flashy! However, the first fight sequence they choreographed didn’t appeal to George Lucas, and they found out that he had a rule about lightsaber fights at the time. That rule was that the character had to hold the lightsaber with two hands. They could not hold the lightsaber in one hand during combat. Hamill explained:

“I worked with Peter Diamond, who was the stunt coordinator, and Bob Anderson, who voiced Vader, who was an Olympic fencing champion, so there was intensive training. We had worked out a sequence that we were all particularly proud of. And I’m talking weeks and weeks of this… and we said, ‘Let’s bring George [Lucas] in.’ We took George to see what we had done and he said, “Um, you can’t take your hands off a lightsaber.” You can’t hold it in one hand.” And we said, ‘What?’ We had some choreography where, you know, we would just spin around and do various things…he didn’t want us to ever take both hands off the hilt. So we had to go back and re-choreograph the whole thing. It was frustrating, but I was very lucky to have Peter, who was so skilled as a stunt coordinator, and Bob. He was someone who, he could counter if I made a mistake, he could counter it and build it into the routine and we could move forward. It takes an expert to make a beginner look good, and that was certainly the case with him.

That rule has since been thrown out the window, and the choreography of lightsaber combat has gotten a lot more awesome! I’d like to hear Lucas’ thoughts on why this was his original vision for lightsaber battles. I guess he just liked the look of them fighting like they’re wielding broad swords, but lightsabers are made. of light so they don’t have the same weight as a real sword. Being able to fight one-handed would have made a lot of sense.

I’d love to see that original choreographed fight sequence they worked on! There must be a video out there somewhere! What do you think of Lucas’ initial lightsaber combat rule?