Another thing… after the Prequels came out, everyone got a sense of what a Jedi was capable of doing. Taking out a room full of armed goons with a single laser sword seems firmly within a Jedi’s normal capabilities. But when ROTJ came out, we had never seen a Jedi do anything remotely like that. The most impressive thing we saw was Yoda lifting the X-wing, which suggested that a powerful Jedi would probably be able to use telekinesis to devastating effect in a fight. And Darth Vader does just this in ESB when he knocks Luke out the window on Bespin.

But when I first saw Luke just start flipping around and stabbing or slashing at everyone onboard the sail barge, it kind of just came off as completely unbelievable and silly. Like… why can’t any of Jabba’s guys just shoot him from a distance? He can’t reflect every single bolt, can he? (To be fair, he does take a hit in his hand.) Plus Jabba’s henchmen have the high ground! Luke is basically fighting an upward battle from inside a pit, with gravity against him. Regardless, I had imagined that Jedi were more about subtle mental trickery and telekinesis rather than just straight up doing backflips and stabbing people. I thought lightsabers were almost ceremonial, used mostly for Jedi vs. Jedi combat.

But after seeing the Prequels, Luke’s lethal acrobatics in ROTJ seem a lot less far fetched now. If only his lightsaber actually worked correctly, instead of turning into a baseball bat. (To be fair, he just constructed it. Maybe factory default settings are “baseball bat” mode.)