Leading up to the release of Star Wars: The Acolyte, it was shared that the “duel of fates” lightsaber battle in The Phantom Menace served as inspiration for the kinds of battles we were going to see in this series.
In fact, according to series actress Dafne Keen, the creative team hoped to top Darth Maul’s lightsaber battle.
Keen said: “Yeah, that was a very frequent conversation we had. It was very much: We want to top the Darth Maul fight—the most iconic fight, I think, in the Star Wars cinematic universe.”
She continued: “It’s such an amazing fight and we were all so excited about the saber fights. There’s such a skill and a craft to it that it feels so OG Star Wars and feels so impressive when you see it as a viewer.”
Episode 5 of The Acolyte, which is titled “Night” gave us our first big Lightsaber battle. This is the battle that has been teased by the creative team, and now that we’ve seen it, I wanted to see what everyone thought.
Did this episode and fight sequence, live up to your expectations? Surpass them? Or was it a disappointment? I’ve been reading a lot of things online and on social media and there are obviously still a lot of people who are continuing to complain about the series.
But, I’ve also come across a lot of fans saying how incredible the brutal lightsaber battle sequence is and are discussing the moments that were emotionally devastating for them.
Spoilers follow:
The death toll of the Jedi characters continues to rise in this recent episode with the deaths of Dafne Keen‘s Jecki and Charlie Barnett’s Yord Fandar, who are two of the main characters.
I can see how devastating this can be for those fans who are into the show and engulfed in the story. Then there are people, like me, who have had a hard time getting invested in these characters and caring for them.
The writing and the character development has done nothing for me to care for any of the characters in the series, so when they died, I was indifferent.
As the battle and story play out we learn that Qimir (Manny Jacinto) is the evil primary Sith villain in the series. This was something a lot of fans seemed to see coming from a mile away, so it wasn’t quite a surprise.
But, his crazy powerful Force powers are a surprise for a lot of fans.
As for the lightsaber fighting, the series did some cool and unique things that I’ve never seen in a Star Wars project before, and I can appreciate what it was trying to do.
But, because I’m not emotionally invested in the story, it didn’t hit hard like the awesome lightsaber battles in other Star Wars projects like The Phantom Menace, The Clone Wars, and Rebels, which I included below for you to watch so that you can compare it.
While I love the “Duel of Fates” lightsaber battle, which is an all-time fan-favorite and set a standard, nothing has captured the greatness of the kinds of fights like The Clone Wars did.
You may have also noticed in the episode that during the lightsaber fights the villain is repeatedly able to disable the weapons entirely for a few moments before the power back up.
How is he about to do this? His helmet and parts of his outfit are made from a metal Cortosis, which was introduced in the Legends stories. It makes lightsabers short circuit on impact. It’s also resistant to blaster fire, which explains why Qimir was able to shake off being shot by Osha.
Cortosis was first mentioned in the Star Wars Rebels novel A New Dawn and it has shown up a few times since, but this is the first time we’ve ever seen it in live-action.
This was a cool element to introduce into the series and made things interesting as the fight sequence played out.
So, what do you all think of the lightsaber fight sequence in The Acolyte episode 5?
Joey Paur
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