[Paracelsus]

(01-04-2016 07:45 PM)Grit Wrote:  

I just watched a behind the scenes and Boyega mentions "I had to do all this training with a light saber to prepare for my role."

Can anybody explain what JJ's logic is there?

"Well, the actor has no experience with a sword, so we need to give him lots of training with a sword to prepare him for a character who...has no experience with a sword.

Eithe Abrams has little respect for his audience, or is purposely taking a shit on concepts like learning or training. No wonder kids are screwed up.

Finn was trained as a stormtrooper which -- as implied by the other stormtrooper who comes after him with a lightsaber-proof baton -- suggests he was at least drilled in melee weapons. He doesn't recognise the lightsaber as a weapon to begin with, but the stance he takes with it suggests he's been trained in some form of swordsmanship. I can accept him improvising with a weapon that at least approximates a sword, and it's not like he pulls out Jedi Master acrobatics in that fight or in the one against Kylo Ren.

(EDIT: Indeed that stun baton is a callback - one of the few in the series - to the Prequel Trilogy. In Episode 3, Grievous's droids start using staves with these electric-looking attachments against Obi-Wan and Anakin, principally because they can't be cut by lightsabers. I could see some theoretical training at least with lightsabers for that reason in the First Order.)

It's Rey's sudden improvisation with a lightsaber that bothers the fuck out of me, leaving aside all the rest of the May the Mary Sue Be With You that springs out of her character late in the second act. People have been saying "Oh, she's had some experience knocking guys around with a staff" ... yeah, ah, no. Staff fighting has very little crossover with longsword use, whether you're using the staff as a polearm to vastly enhance your reach or with your hands fixed in the centre as Darth Maul did. Indeed if you are used to a staff you're probably at a disadvantage when you pick up a sword because a staff can be used to block and then counterstrike quickly with the far end. This can be done with a single blade too but it's a different battery of techniques. Likewise you would also tend to overestimate your reach picking up a sword for the first time when you've been using a bo for a while.

It's Bullshido to think the skills are transferable between weapons that easily; there's a reason you have to train extensively with both types of weapon in the real world. To return to Darth Maul for a second, take another look at the full fight between him and Obi-Wan after Qui-Gon is killed in Episode 1. Even allowing for the fact it's stage combat and nobody is actually trying to kill anybody else in that show, real world physics is still very relevant. Maul gets his staff cut in half in that fight and goes to a single blade. His moves are entirely different: up to that point in the fight he's either locking people's weapons up and going for a strike with the far end or making people forget entirely about the second blade, but he shifts to a barrage of moves designed to get Obi-Wan's weapon out of place -- which doesn't work, such that eventually Maul just Force pushes Kenobi off the edge of the pit. (In passing, that fight is glorious, probably the best lightsaber duel of all seven films, literally the only reason to put the DVD in your drive. Ewan McGregor just looks completely pumped in his role and is clearly digging getting into it with Ray Park. And Park is just amazing: he sells every strike and the strikes come thick and fast.)