cthulhu1138 said:
I know I always wondered what it would look like if Yoda fought Palpatine and all they used were force powers.
That question was answered when I watched HP and the Order of the Phoenix.
Dumbledore vs Voldemort was what I wanted to see happen in ROTS.
but alas no
"And did you tell her about my kidnapping by the Bpfasshi Dark Jedi? That's where it all really began.
It was a terrible experience, possibly the first time in my life I'd felt truly and genuinely terrified. He was half mad with rage - maybe more than half mad - with all of Darth Vader's power and none of his self-control. One of my crewmen he physically ripped to shreds, literally tearing his body apart. The other three he took over mentally, twisting and searing their minds and turning them into little more than living extensions of himself. Me - me, he left mostly alone. I'm still not sure why, unless he thought he might need my knowledge of ports and spacelanes to make his escape. Or perhaps he simply wanted an intact mind left aboard who could recognize his power and greatness and be properly frightened by it.
We headed across the spacelanes, dodging or avoiding the forces gathering against him. [...] Finally, for reasons I still don't entirely understand, we made for a little backwater system not even important enough to make it onto most of the charts. A planet with nothing but swamps and dank forests and frozen slush. A planet named Dagobah.
I don't know if the Dark Jedi expected to be alone down there, but if he did, he was quickly disappointed. We'd barely stepped outside the ship when we spotted a funny-looking little creature with big, pointed ears standing at the edge of the clearing where we'd put down. He was a Jedi Master named Yoda. I don't know if that was his home, or if he had just flown in specially for the occasion. What I do know is that he was waiting for us.
I won't try to describe their battle. Even after forty-five years of thinking about it, I'm not sure I can. For nearly a day and a half the swamp blazed with fire and lightning and things I still don't understand. At the end of it the Dark Jedi was dead, disintegrating in a final, massive blaze of blue fire."
- from Zahn's Vision of the Future
That's approximately what I would have expected. Sort of like if two motherships from Close Encounters were fighting each other.
I definitely thought the Masters were above using physical weaponry.
The Emperor's pure energy even works well within my personal model of Force use, with users like Yoda directly the flow subtly, using mostly normal physical possibilities to influence things, while dark siders like the Emperor just go straight for brute power.
Also note that the Dark Jedi in the story explodes in blue fire the same way the Emperor does in ROTJ.
I miss the pre-prequel inference-based models of SW.
By the way, this is a poster that was sold in the 90s sometime:
Though, while searching for that I also came across this more recent one:
... which actually makes Yoda with a saber look comparatively classy. So I guess it has to do with how it is handled as well. I still prefer the first, in terms of vibe, though.