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Regardless of how you feel about the new, Disney-run versions of Star Wars, at least we can all agree that they’re head and shoulders better than the abominations that were the prequels.
Seemingly forgetting what made Star Wars magic in the first place, the George Lucas-helmed prequels — The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith — were oddly fixated on politics and overly-complicated exposition.
And apparently, not only was George Lucas hellbent on dulling the prequels down with needless discourse about midichlorians and geopolitics, but he was actively removing some of the franchise’s best action sequences.
According to Star Wars stunt coordinator Nick Gillard, Lucas actually decided to cut what has been described as “the best lightsaber battle” in the entire saga from Revenge of the Sith.
Stunt coordinator Nick Gillard was discussing the lightsaber battle in The Phantom Menance when we mentioned that the Darth Maul vs. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon three-way bout is considered by many fans to be the best laser sword contest in the entire saga.
Then Gillard surprised us by revealing: No, there is another. There is “a better one” fans never saw, Gillard said — a Revenge of the Sith fight in which Obi-Wan takes on six of General Grievous’ bodyguards at the same time.
Star Ewan McGregor trained for weeks just to get Obi-Wan’s choreography down for the complicated sequence. But when it came time to film, the production was running short on time. Since the fight wasn’t essential to the storyline, George Lucas invented a simpler to eliminate the bodyguards: Obi-Wan uses the Force to crush them with a piece of the ceiling.
“It was the most complicated fight we ever did, and George said, ‘I’m really sorry, I’m going to drop a container on five of them!’” [via Entertainment Weekly]
So, just so we’re clear, instead of giving us what some call the best lightsaber battle in the history of the iconic franchise, Lucas gave us this:
Luckily for fans of the franchise, Disney would eventually swoop in to purchase Lucasfilm in 2012. And while Disney’s outputs thus far have been far from perfect, they’ve certainly been better than whatever bullshit Lucas was peddling in the early 2000s.
The next entry in the Star Wars universe, The Rise of Skywalker, hits theaters on December 20.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him eric@brobible.com