On the Forciness of Lightsabers
D. Paul Angel

|| I was thinking of Star Wars recently, like you do, and I had a thought about lightsabers that I think would have made them even cooler: what if Forciness was required to control the blade? Right? So instead of just anyone flicking on a lightsaber and going to town, as Han did on the Giving Tauntaun, you would have to actually have some ability with the Force.. This is not, however, without a few consequences…

• Consider the scene with Han. As soon he lights up Luke’s lightsaber there be an unrestrained burst of energy. Although it would make for a messy sleeping bag, to say the least, you could replace Han’s, “And I thought they smelled bad… on the outside…” line with, “At least that went better than last time!” In theory you could even do both 🙂
• When deflecting blaster rounds, our intrepid lightsaberers could not only move the whole weapon, but make the blade itself deform or bend here and there as well.
• General Grievous, being a Forciless droid, would live up to his name in a matter of milli-seconds and become the poster child for organic life forms trolling their mechanical creations.
• It would also make Luke’s initial training on the Falcon far more interesting. “Concentrate!” would take on a whole other level of meaning since Luke’s lightsaber could rather easily punch a hole straight through the Falcon.
• Those who can touch the force would necessarily become much more powerful. It would make Darth Maul’s duel-weilding all the more impressive since he would be maintaining the containment on two separate energy streams, in addition to flight with them.
• And, when Qui-Gon’s assault on the bridge of the Trade Federation’s flagship is slowed by the second blast door, instead of restarting his work when it’s closed, he could use the Force to extend his beam instead.

Now if you want to really go down this rabbit hole though, I have one last “what if” to ponder. What if the Force wasn’t just necessary to control the blade, but to power it as well? Just using a lightsaber would require a tremendous amount of exertion, making the warriors using them even more badass. In that case Luke’s lightsaber would have been of no more use to Han than a chunk of metal. (Though Han strikes me as the type who always has a knife on him too- just like a good blaster!)

Finally, I offer this not in the the hopes of changing Star Wars (it’s already seen enough retconning!) but as a thought for others who, like me, sometimes dream of being Jedi Knights.

Or Sith Lords.