How Ahsoka’s Breathtaking Lightsaber Battles Came About
One of the best parts of the latest Star Wars series, Ahsoka, has been the sheer amount of lightsaber battles that we have gotten.
More than any other Disney+ series, Ahsoka has put its Jedi front and center, with Ahsoka Tano, Sabine Wren, Baylan Skull, Shin Hati, and even Anakin Skywalker wielding their lightsabers and doing battle.
The series has been praised for its choreography and fight sequences, especially the battle between Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano in The World Between Worlds.
Realistic But Interesting
According to stuntwoman MIng Qui, Ahsoka showrunner Dave FIloni knew exactly what he wanted when it came to the battles- realism.
“Dave knows what he wants. He’s very organized. We go read a script, understand the fight, and we choreograph it first. Dave will give an opinion and will give us notes. Dave wants everything to be realistic. Everything has a reason,” she explained.
Photo: Lucasfilm
The problem with realism, however, is that realistic lightsaber fights would be too short for television.
Qui therefore, was tasked with creating fights that were “realistic but interesting”.
Photo: Star Wars
“Dave told me at the very beginning, ‘I want you to look at Seven Samurai.’ But the tricky part is that the old samurai style – it’s very realistic. It’s like: one strike, one kill. Or two strikes, you’re dead. For a fight scene, you cannot just do one strike, you’re dead. You have to continue. So that’s the part we needed to figure out how to make it realistic but interesting. My job is to figure out how to make each fight different. If you watch a lightsaber fight every episode, with the same kind of fighting, that won’t be interesting.”
Ahsoka’s Unique Style
For Ahsoka, Qui and Dawson created a style that was “between Japanese and Chinese.” According to Qui, this was largely due to the limitations of working with a lightsaber.
Photo: Star Wars
“Not everybody is good with the left hand if you’re right-handed. Ahsoka’s style is between Japanese and Chinese. A lightsaber is different than a regular sword. A Japanese sword is a one-sided blade, which means you can use the other side to block. But with a lightsaber, you cannot block, which means a lot of twirling and a lot of movements will be different than a regular samurai style. That’s a Chinese style. So I combine two styles together for her. Every single character has a different style and a different story.”
Photo: Star Wars
In the end, Qui, Filoni, and Dawson created the kind of unique lightsaber battles that Star Wars became famous for. Hopefully, with two episodes left in Ahsoka, the team saved the best for last.
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