The first lightsaber duel in Star Wars film history is the battle between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader on the Death Star in A New Hope.
After the battle, Obi-Wan mysteriously vanishes, later revealing himself as a Force ghost.
But did you know there’s a fascinating reason why Vader didn’t use any Force abilities on Obi-Wan during their fight?
There’s an intriguing detail about this iconic fight that many fans might not know: during the duel, Darth Vader couldn’t use the Force against Obi-Wan.
George Lucas, the mastermind behind Star Wars, revealed in a video by Star Wars Theory some fascinating details about the duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
During the early development of the sequel to Star Wars, Lucas tried to come up with an in-universe reason why the battle didn’t look so spectacular.
He decided that much of the battle was taking place within the Force, viewing the Force as a different dimension that charges a Jedi or Sith’s power.
The Star Wars Theory channel gained access to the script discussions between George Lucas and his writers about the duel on the Death Star.
The script revealed that during the fight, Darth Vader couldn’t use any Force powers on Obi-Wan.
Lucas stated, “I’d like the end conflict to be a moral conflict in addition to a physical one.”
He continued, “It should have Vader using a moral law that we learned earlier, but Vader turns it around. It has to be a mystical thing, something you can look at from two sides. In the end, Vader is trying to undo everything Luke just learned. The real drama is whether Luke will become Darth Vader or not. We have tested him, and we know he is weak. He really had to struggle to stay good; he has the same potential that Darth Vader had.”
Earlier, when Luke speaks to Ben as a Force ghost, it foreshadows the events to come.
Ben says, “Vader has more power than you can imagine. When he and I met, we fought on such a level that there didn’t appear to be much of a battle. It appeared to be a sword fight, but it was a battle of our wills. I’d like to make it a battle with lightning or electrical bolts and throwing things around the room, an exorcist kind of battle where you can bring all kinds of supernatural powers to bear. Ben will say, ‘Vader couldn’t use his supernatural powers—the Force—against me because I was too strong. He had to rely on brute force, which wasn’t of any value because I was too advanced for that. So everything he did to me was useless.”
