I'm watching what now?

In general, I've never accepted interviews in my critique, analysis or writing. A creator can say whatever they want in interviews, it doesn't actually matter.

Lucas' statements on the Dark Side is undermined by a very simple concept: It isn't canon. There isn't a single version of Star Wars that has ever adhered to this idea.

Return of the Jedi showed Luke rocking up wielding Force Choke. The first Force Power we see on screen is fucking mind control. And even when Disney reset the canon to get everything back to basics, Rey straight up pulls out Force Rage during her fight with Kylo. Then you have Mace Windu's special "Dark Side but Not Dark Side" lightsaber form.

Using the Dark Side in limited quantities is something every Force User does. I think the best example of this is Electric Judgment. Plo Koon used Force Lightning, but did so to effectively be a taser to stun a man who had taken a young girl hostage. There's two ways to look at this power.

An example of Legends not understanding the real Force as Lucas intended.

The Jedi using the Dark Side and giving it its own fuckspecial name to make it sound more just because it's apparently different when they do it.

And if you're not keeping up: The second one is WAY better of an explanation. Like, Electric Judgment doesn't exist. You just used Force Lightning. That's not Vapaad, Master Windu, that's Juyo. You're using the Dark Side, fucking own up to it.

And the thing about the Jedi is that their own ideas about the Force aren't free of evil. Sure, the Jedi by and large favor diplomacy, but the thing about diplomacy is that it's very easy to come to a diplomatic solution when you walk in with the deadliest weapon in the universe attached to your belt. You see this in The Phantom Menace, when the Jedi show up to negotiate on the Chancellor's behalf, the Nemoidians are terrified. They're afraid to go into the room with them.

The Jedi's philosphy is fundamentally "Speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far."

And let's be honest here: How the hell is Lightning more evil than sticking a rod of superheated plasma in someone's body? That's like saying a taser is more evil than stabbing someone with a blowtorch.

Lucas can say whatever he wants in Interviews about the nature of the Force, but none of what actually goes into the work ever adheres to that. And what's worse, all the best Star Wars media is the stuff that throws that shit away at the first opportunity.

Like when Gandalf spent literal PAGES trying to figure out why the vibes were off in Moria and Legolas chimes in with just "it's a balrog :) that shit's evil :) we're so fucked :)" like what do you MEAN you knew already and just didn't tell him??

Or at the beginning of Two Towers when Aragorn thinks there's something nearby so he puts his ear to the ground to listen, and then like 10 minutes later is like "hmmm i hear horses" and Legolas is just like "mm yep. there are 105 blond bitches with spears" like you just let your friend put his face in the dirt and you can SEE them??

gandalf is scratching his head in moria, and legolas is thinking "oh man, the wizard noticed something off *besides* the obvious balrog that we all are aware of??"

Lightsaber crystals used to work in a very simple way: The color of the crystal sets the color of the lightsaber.

In the Old Republic, Jedi used lightsabers of every hue, but by the time of the Prequel, most Jedi got most of their crystals from Ilum, where Blue and Green were the most plentiful. The reason the Sith used predominately red is because the Jedi controlled the places where lightsaber crystals were found, so they used synthetic crystals which almost always came out red.

After a while, it just became the aesthetic.

The new canon Kyber crystals are clear until it seeks a Jedi out and forms a bond with it, where it will then turn to whatever color it wants, and like a living being forms a “bond” with its owner, and the color is set based on the owner's personality.

This introduces so many problems, like when Jedi use another person's lightsaber, or in Attack of the Clones when Anakin and Obi Wan are thrown spare lightsabers. It also means that standard-issue lightsabers like the ones the Inquisitors get make even less sense than before. They work when you can manufacture red crystals, not so much when you have to "Bleed" them like the edgy emo bitch you are.

But the reason Disney made it this way is because the fandom had spent the last decade turning a simple aesthetic choice into something "meaningful." The idea of your lightsaber color saying something about your personality is something backported from the Harry Potter series because if you leave a fandom long enough they'll eventually remake the Hogwarts Houses in everything.

So Disney, because they wanted to sell you a lightsaber building experience, made them work the same way wands do in Harry Potter so when you go to Galaxy's Edge you get to build your unique lightsaber that's completely special to you and only to you.

Which is really fucking stupid given that the hilt designs were already unique in the first place.

Apparently this wasn't adequate.

It's the opposite problem of midi-chlorians. They have over-mystified the lightsaber as a concept, and it's telling that in no way does this concept actually work in-universe.

IT WAS FUCKING

Three reasons.

For one, in the prequels they used bamboo sticks for the fight choreography, which were lighter and easier to wield. The blades could also detach meaning it was easy to make it look like a lightsaber was going through someone. Disney switched to using heavy LED props so that the sabers would glow, which are harder to swing and don't detach without ruining the light effect.

For two, the Prequels hired Nick Gillard for stunt choreography. The man knows his stuff. Disney didn't bring him back because he would have demanded actually decent pay.

Which fucking sucks because it would've been such a cool visual of Ahsoka being unable to match her Master's sheer tenacity.

And it would've pissed off a lot of sad people by showing how much better Anakin is then Vader.

Strangely enough it actually made the duels look worse, because Hayden is flourishing and moving like a fucking ninja, and then has to come to a jarring stop to let Rosario react.

And the fact of the matter is that everyone in Prequels had months of training under a very skilled stunt coordinator, and Disney doesn't want to spend the money to do the same thing. Especially when a lot of Star Wars fans still think lightsabers being battle axes where all the weight is at the tip is "better"