Star Wars Prequels' Stunt Coordinator Created A Scale Ranking Every Jedi & Sith's Strength
If you're a "Star Wars" fan, it's pretty likely you've engaged in a debate over who is the strongest Force user. Maybe you picked wise and tiny Yoda (Frank Oz). Perhaps it's Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) who somehow returned. We've seen some of these Force users battle each other on the big and small screens to varying outcomes, but pretty much everyone has an internal ranking of Jedi and Sith.
As it turns out, we filmgoers aren't the only ones who do that. According to the book "The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" by J.W. Rinzler, one of the crew members on "Revenge of the Sith" did the same thing. Nick Gillard, who was lead lightsaber fight and stunt coordinator for the prequel trilogy, has done it as well. Gillard also played the Jedi instructor Cin Drallig (his name spelled backwards without the "k") who was killed in the Jedi Temple by Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) in "Revenge of the Sith." But when he wasn't getting executed by a lightsaber, Gillard was creating a scale ranking for himself of all the Jedi and Sith in the film.
'The difference in this particular film is they have to fight each other'
In an excerpt from the book, George Lucas talked about the film's lightsaber duels and how they brought out the best in the cast's performances, especially Christensen and Obi-Wan Kenobi actor Ewan McGregor. Noting that McGregor had always been "a great swordfighter," Lucas explained:
"He and [Darth Maul actor] Ray Park were very good [in 'The Phantom Menace']. Christensen is very athletic, and he's also very good at it. The difference in this particular film is they [McGregor and Christensen] have to fight each other. As actors there's a little bit of competitiveness about who's going to be the better swordfighter."
Fan rankings might be partially based on just loving our favorite characters, but it's also influenced by the skills we see on the screen — something that is determined by the fight choreography. That also means there has to be a decision made about skill levels before shooting takes place. Obviously, that starts with the script, but Gillard also gave Lucas and his fellow creatives his own personal rankings for the film's various Jedi and Sith to draw from.
Gillard spoke about his rankings for Rinzler's book, explaining:
"On 'Attack of the Clones,' I had to give them levels. Sidious is a level nine [out of 10]. On this film ['Revenge of the Sith'], Obi is eight — he's moved up — Anakin is a nine; Mace [Samuel L. Jackson] is a nine, Yoda is a nine. They're up with Sidious. Once you get to eight, you have a Pandora's box. You could go any way with it. The way not to go is the dark side. But it would tempt you, because that would jump you right past the others. So you need to arrive at level eight at the right age — not as young as Anakin. That young, the dark side is just too tempting."
'The way not to go is the dark side'
I would have to agree with those rankings (which I should because Gillard choreographed the film's duels according to that list). It's interesting that he mentions that Anakin is too young to have gotten to that level with his morals intact. It makes complete sense, and for me, it just underlines that fact that the Jedi should have handled the whole situation differently with Anakin. I mean, of course that's true knowing the outcome, but it's one of the issues I have with the Jedi as a whole. For a group that is supposed to be wise, and who have known of the "chosen one" for a long time, they really bungled the handling of a young kid who isn't quite young enough, but who has the raw talent, regardless of his age.
It's one of the things that make the prequels less than stellar for me. No judgement if you feel differently, of course. I just don't buy that an entire council of wise people who have been studying this sort of thing for their entire lives (assuming they joined up as young as they wanted Anakin to be) wouldn't see that there was an issue with leaving him inappropriately trained.
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