Monday, July 18, 2005

The Lightsaber was blue (or white?)

On a whim I stopped by Toys R Us the other night looking for accessories for my PSP. Which on a side note: there's been a ton of price drops across the board including UMD movies for just over $10 instead of $20!

Anyway, I found that they had those Master Replicas "Force FX" lightsabers in stock again. Seriously thought about picking up a blue one (in my childhood I held the misconception that Luke and Obi-Wan both shared the same blue lightsaber). Anyway, the blue one in stock was actually "Anakin's Lightsaber" from Episode 3... which if memory serves, is also the one given to Luke about 28 years ago.

But I wasn't so sure - were those two hilts indeed identical - I decided to Google it. You wouldn't believe the forum debates that pop up with that search... Granted most of these forum posts were made prior to the release of the prequels. It's now generally accepted that good-guys have blue or green blades and the bad-guys use red... a rare exception is the case of Samual L Jackson saying "how about purple?" and George Lucas saying "okay, why not?"

But there are folks out there convinced that the original lightsaber in Star Wars was yellow!
...common sense should tell us that visual effects of 1977 hardly stand up to today's standards, but I'm fairly certain that even as a child I recognized that it was supposed to be blue. Yes, I'll agree there were several times where the footage looks washed out and the blade didn't have any colour at all (it appears gray-white), but it never once looked yellow to me.

Anywhow - just find it funny to see that some people are so adamant in their belief that the blade was yellow...

BTW - I never did find a clear screen shot of the "Luke" lightsaber prop from the 1977 movie. :P

3 comments:

Becks said...

Blue. Definitely blue. However, in order to make the effect, the sticks they use are green, I believe.

Personally, I think I'd like the space balls ring. "Use the Shcwartz". hehehhe

Ben-Ohki said...

I've seen documentaries firmly establishing that there were several versions of props and techniques used through the original filming (which explains the inconsistencies). But still, we know it was meant to be blue (and the recent DVD has a goof where it appears slightly blue-green)... but it was never yellow in my opinion. I'm just sayin' how funny it is that some folks are so convinced that you can't tell them otherwise...

drama queen said...

it's blue. i've watched "star wars" over and over again when i was younger and it was definitely blue. i think yellow would be totally noticeable. i almost wanna double check and watch eps. 4-6......besides i don't think they sell yellow ones...? what about some people thinking that padme' was killed by anakin?? padme' died from a broken heart. she chose to die.