Lucas originally planned to make Luke’s lightsaber red and Vader’s blue, but Hirsch suggested switching them because of his knowledge of Christian iconography from the Renaissance era he’d studied in art history at Columbia University in the mid-‘60s.
from this article on Paul Hirsch’s new book
This dovetails with mention of the early lightsaber colors being swapped (and the tractor beam gauge also) in Paul Duncan’s SW Archives book.
I have given a name to my pain, and it is Paul Hirsch.
*shoots laptop*
Care to elaborate, or is this just more negative waves?
It’s no secret that I’m no fan of “blue lightsabers = good, red lightsabers = bad”, is it? It didn’t bother me so much in the OT, as there were only three lightsaber wielders running about, but I’ve since found it incredibly trite and irksome after the PT made it universal. The status quo’s even more vexing now with the revelation that Lucas initially seriously considered the inverse.
This I agree with. It shouldn’t be as simplistic as “red = evil, blue & green = good”. What the wielder does with the blade should matter, not just its color. (Having said that, the color dichotomy seems like a storytelling tool ripe for subversion, but good luck finding that in SW stories released these days.)
It’s also worth remembering that Luke’s green blade in ROTJ was meant to suggest him being somewhere between light & dark, due to his conflict after learning that Vader was his father and Ben & Yoda lied to him. Of course the prequels threw that out the window.