The lightsaber was introduced in the first Star Wars film and has made an appearance in almost every other piece of media in the franchise. It is the weapon of choice for most of the biggest heroes and villains, and therefore the tool of the trade for the franchise’s most iconic fight scenes.
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There are a few details of the lightsaber that are endemic and well-known to all fans of the franchise. The lightsaber is an energy sword that projects a glowing blade of plasma from a metal hilt and can be used to cut through almost anything. They’re the standard issue weapon for Force-sensitive warriors, both good and evil, but anyone can pick one up and swing it. The Jedi prefer cooler colors like blue and green, but purple and yellow are occasional options. The Sith are restricted to red blades. The original designs have the same general build with many unique aesthetic details, but future iterations have introduced twin-blades or cross guards. There’s a lightsaber duel or two in every film of the Skywalker Saga, but the idea didn’t originate wholly with the iconic franchise.
The lightsaber likely took inspiration from multiple earlier sci-fi works which featured laser swords as a concept. A 1933 issue of The Magic Carpet Magazine featured Kaldar: World of Antares by Edmond Hamilton, which told the story of mankind battling giant spiders with “light-swords.” Fritz Leiber’s 1943 novel Gather, Darkness! featured warrior-priests armed with “wrath rods” which projected burning plasma blades that extended through any solid matter. Isaac Asimov introduced a penknife with a force-field blade in Foundation, then expanded that idea into the “force-blade” in his 1952 Lucky Starr series. Gordon R. Dickson’s Wolfling featured “the rod,” which features a nearly-identical metal hilt and a blade that resembles a welding torch wreathed in electricity. For his part, George Lucas credits a Harry Harrison story that came packaged with a drawing of a laser-sword duel.
Lucas undoubtedly got the idea from a hodgepodge of sci-fi inspirations, but none of those examples are identical to the lightsabers that made it to the screen. The original conception of the lightsaber depicted it as a plasma weapon that was as common as the blaster, a sword to match the universe’s guns, but later drafts made it a bit more special. Like most Star Wars iconography, there’s a slightly different version in the sketchbooks of beloved artist Ralph McQuarrie. The original 70s take on the design is fairly small, often too small to be held with both hands. It resembles a flashlight with a distinctive gray-white beam (Vader’s was blue in the initial drawings). It also features a lightbulb-like protrusion at the blade’s beginning. It’s clearly the basis for the eventual design, but there are a few key details that mark it as a first draft.
When the time came to build the tool, Oscar-winning set decorator Roger Christian and Academy Award winner John Stears were tasked with the first design. The handle of Luke’s lightsaber started as the flash on a Graflex press camera. The classic camera, which can be seen in the hands of old-timey photojournalists, gave the cylindrical rod of its flash system to be the basis of the design. To that metal tube, the designers added the T-track of a cabinet and a variety of random surface details with glue. George Lucas added the idea of a belt clip on the weapon for easier travel, and with that update, the simple hilt was ready for early shooting.
Found objects were the building materials for all the lightsabers in the original trilogy, giving them a distinct classic sci-fi appearance. By the time of the prequels and in the modern-day, lightsabers are carefully machined from metal materials and molded in resin to use on-screen; however, it was the resourcefulness of the original prop builders, scavenging and repurposing old materials, that gave them their iconic look.
The hard part of the lightsaber process was giving them their distinctive glow. Originally, Lucas and the crew wanted to give the weapons a glow that could be seen on camera. The blades of the early lightsabers were three-sided wooden dowels that were coated with retroreflectors, much like the material that is used to make street signs visible. Unfortunately, that technique was dependent on the orientation of the camera, and many shots would have revealed the true form of the wooden blade.
To resolve the issue, Nelson Shin created the distinctive glow with a rotoscope, carefully drawing every action of the weapon over the live-action footage. Modern lightsabers carry blades that are covered in chroma-key material which are granted their glow by visual effects teams after production. The more explosive lightsaber fights feature a “dueling blade”, which was once a metal pole, but now takes a more polycarbonate form. Shin also suggested that the lightsaber carry a distinctive sound, which was later crafted by Ben Burtt from the sound of old film projectors and the sound interference of TV sets on microphones.
Whether it’s cleverly pieced together from whatever the designer has to hand or carefully crafted with bespoke materials, the lightsaber is an important piece of film history. Like the best parts of Star Wars, creative collaboration is the key to the success of the most iconic weapon in sci-fi.
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