Star Wars lightsabers used to be a feared and deadly weapon. These days? Not so much.
When I was a kid, lightsabers weren't just the coolest fictional weapon in the galaxy, they were also the most feared. Amongst all the good ideas George Lucas dreamed up when he created the original Star Wars, a sword with a blade made out of pure energy that could cut through anything was the most brilliant. Lightsabers were awesome -- a sci-fi update of the Samurai swords Lucas was probably obsessed with when he was a kid.
COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAY Cut to four-plus decades later, and lightsabers have been neutered as the genre's weapon of choice when you've got to settle matters with some sense of finality. It probably started with Darth Maul. Actually, it probably started with Marvel's Star Wars comic books or some other extended universe nonsense, but I'm not about to count that or bother to do any research into it.
Honestly, things have been trending in the wrong direction as far as respecting lightsabers goes for a while now. Do you remember how lightsaber training was conducted in the original trilogy? I'll tell you how — by yourself with a harmless training droid. In The Empire Strikes Back, you don't see Yoda whipping out his little green lightsaber to challenge Luke to a practice round.
Yet, 39 years later, in The Rise of Skywalker, we have a flashback to a period shortly after Return of the Jedi where Luke and Leia are out the woods just whaling on each other with their sabers during training. Seems pretty ill-advised and dangerous to me, but I just wrote it off as another example of J.J. Abrams playing fast and loose with the mythology.
Lightsabers need to go back to being used for what they do best — chopping off limbs and heads and permanently ending the lives of anyone who takes one across the waist, through the gut, or anywhere else that looks like it should be lethal. And don't try to win a Star Wars No-Prize by insisting that the blade cauterizes the wound, thus vastly increasing the chance of survival. Ask Qui-Gon's Force ghost if his wound got cauterized.
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