Post #519899

Thank you for the informative response!

Just to clear it up, though, that's what I meant - that they're much better than the BEST in real life, you know, for awesome movie purposes.
Their reflexes are so fast that they can deflect strokes that would've killed the very best real life fighters 15 times.

I'm not trying to be a smartass here (I know very little about swordfighting or martial arts), but I guess it's a matter of how believably it comes off on screen.
When they do their minute long exchanges, or twirl around, can one analyze their movements and show where exactly the other guy could've hit and pwnd, but didn't because he's so lame (=for movie purposes)?
Or is it more like "it does work on screen, but real-life people would've long failed at some move by that point"?


I guess that's really my question here. Some unconvincing examples from the prequels aside, I've looked at some in slow motion, particularly Maul vs. Obi (it was a while ago, though), and my impression was that there was no time for Maul to hit Obi while he was twirling, because his saber was still recovering from the momentum of a previous stroke, and Obi's saber was ready for defense in a matter of no time.

It becomes a point of just how far can you suspend your disbelief? I would relate it to jumping ability of the Jedi. In ESB & ROTJ, we see that Luke, as he progresses in his jedi training, gains the ability to jump higher, farther, and faster than normal humans. He has become superhuman. But it's not "MILES" farther... It's enough to clearly be beyond the ability of real people, but not so much that it becomes totally unbelievable. Cut to the prequels where we now have Jedi jumping like frogs so far and high that it becomes utterly laughable. They pushed the boundaries too far & it results in destroying the credibility of anything on screen. I submit that the sword fights suffer the same problem.