This article is entirely speculative, but based on evidence and observation from lightsabers we have seen in episodes 1-6, contrasted to what we have seen since 2014 when Disney acquired Lucasfilm. My goal is to explain lightsabers and show the differentiating factors between the two eras to show why the new era lightsabers may feel different than what we have previously seen.
LED Lightsabers and Location
Since Disney acquired Lucasfilm, and every lightsaber fight we have seen since, I have a hard time trying to think of a time where a lightsaber was ignited during the day, or in any type of lighting. It seems that they’re always ignited during the night or dim lighting. I think the only time where it was somewhat light out was during the small battle on Takodana where Finn ignites his (Luke’s) lightsaber. And it feels odd that the lightsabers are only now seen in the dark. It does look aesthetically nice at times, but it leaves little room for variety, both in location and time of day. Where the originals and the prequels are seen during various lighting conditions. And the reason for this is, since 2014, they switched to LED lightsabers, to emanate a glow off of the characters and environment. I will explain how this is a flaw later on in this article. But the LED lightsabers only work in dim lighting conditions or in the dark, leaving little room for any deviation outside of this. They then rotoscope over the sabers in post production, however it seems they often ignore the rotoscoping over motion blurred lightsaber swings. This is also a reason why the lightsabers may feel disjointed, as any swing will feel less powerful and lively visually, due to the translucent motion blurred glow. Where the original six films showed the white center expand as it was swung, leaving almost a light trail from the swing, making the energy from the beam feel more powerful.
Lightsabers Emanating Light
The flaw with having the lightsabers emanate light in general, is that it doesn’t fit. Now this is more speculative in regards to this, however it makes sense. I feel if you saw a lightsaber in real life, it wouldn’t look like an LED lightsaber, it would resemble more closely to how a laser beam shining through a fog machine looks, where you see the glowing beam of light in whatever color it is. It would be more akin to this, where a laser beam doesn’t emit light, or at least a small amount of light, as opposed to the LED shine. We can look at the original six films, where the only time any light emanated from lightsabers was in Attack of the Clones, during Anakin’s duel with Count Dooku. Every other instance we see the lightsabers not emitting light from the blade other than the soft glow around the white center. They introduced lightsabers having a light source in the clone wars, for the first time in a Star Wars show or film (aside from AOTC) and in a few games prior to that. But in the films, this wasn’t a thing. One could argue, the technology wasn’t there to produce the light source, and creating light bouncing off everything and looking natural in post production would have been either pain staking or impossible. So you could say the light wasn’t present due to limitations in filmmaking. However, I still find it is the most realistic if we take the laser beam appearance as what it would look like. This also brings a continuity issue into play with the fact that every instance of seeing a lightsaber now, shows the glowing light source, and feels disjointed from what we saw in the original six films. I feel they should have stuck with what was already present, as there are more problems with using LED lightsabers now.
Delicate Blades
Another issue with using LED lightsabers in any Star Wars project now is the fact that the blades used during filming are now delicate. LED lightsabers aren’t very strong, and the higher impact ones begin to shine less light through as it uses a thicker material to strengthen it. This also poses an inconsistency as the original six films (barring A New Hope) used metal rods for the blade. This gave it weight and power behind each swing, and made each impact feel heavy. Where current lightsaber duels, due to the blades being lighter and and more delicate, the swings feel soft and weak. It’s the difference between swinging an axe, and a wiffle ball bat. This is not to say the lightsabers should look heavy when being swung, and should be fluid and have some grace, but just due to what is being used while filming, impacts the way the lightsaber prop will move and operate in its own capacity.
Choreography
The choreography is also lacking. It’s fast and flashy, but a lot of swings made in the films and shows now, miss the target, and though it’s hard to catch, your brain subconsciously understands that it’s not dangerous and there’s no real threat. Yes there were some choreography flaws in the original six films too, but it felt more like each swing was a direct attack at the opponent, rather than directed at their opponent’s blade or missing entirely. The lightsaber fights should be based off of kendo, that’s what they were in episodes 4-6, and then were expanded upon in the prequels by Nick Gillard, to add more flair and flourishes to the base kendo sword fighting.
Final Thoughts
With that all being said, this is why I feel the lightsabers and the duels feel off in Disney’s Star Wars. Using the LED lightsabers greatly affects the choreography in terms of power behind the swings, it limits the locations on where and when the lightsaber can be used, and affects the appearance of it visually when it is swung. However I think it’s too late now to fix this now, as if they went back on it, it would look disjointed once again to what has been made since 2014. But there could be some small tweaks they can make to make them better moving forward. But these are my thoughts, what do you think?