The lightsaber is a weapon of peace. It was built to block shots.

It is the manifestation of what the order stands for, protection.

The lightsaber is a weapon of peace. It was built to block shots.

Harder to sufficiently bonk the guy/gal shooting you with a laser shield, laser swords totally where it is at.

The lightsaber is a weapon of peace. It was built to block shots.

Wouldn't, like, a shield be better at that?

The Jedi are Space Samurai, not Space Captain America!

The Jedi are Space Samurai, not Space Captain America!

Harder to sufficiently bonk the guy/gal shooting you with a laser shield

For a weapon designed to block shots, it's pretty good at maiming, mangling, and cutting thru doors, decks, and be thrown boomerang-style wrecking havoc.

The lightsaber is said to be "Ah, a Jedi's weapon. Not unlike your father's." (Emperor Palpatiner, Return of the Jedi)

Then in the prequels everyone has at least one. Jedi, Sith, the droid general... Probably even Padme cuts her toenails with a little one.

Even Palpatine has one hidden in his sleeve always, we might suppose.

Is the Emperor then calling himself "a Jedi"?

The Jedi and the Force aren't really developed in a consistent way in the canon canon sources: the movies.

First the Force is a field of energy that keeps the galaxy together, and penetrates everybody.

Then it is a mystical presence created by all living things (so I guess it exists mainly on planets sustaining life? But not in the deep space, right?)

Then in the EU it was everywhere, had unlimited power including the ability to create Force Storms able to swallow entire fleets of spaceships, and minor things like healing, levitating, instinctive hyperjumping, mass mind control, ...

Then in the prequels it's something similar to mitochondria, living inside our cells. I guess these midichlorians have some telekinetic powers to affect inert objects that don't have midichlorians... And the Jedi at their peak weren't able to use it for anything bigger than throwing a battledroid around.

Why the Jedi don't just Force-crush the internal components of the battledroids (or those beasts hearts or brains in the arena in Geonosis), and instead need to fight them with melee weapons?

If they can use the Force to keep big falling rocks from crushing them by pushing them upwards, like all the time, why don't they just do the same to themselves and fly around in the battlefield instead of running everywhere at slow speeds, easier to hit?

The Jedi are Space Samurai, not Space Captain America!

Yes, well, katanas are also not built to block arrows.

Harder to sufficiently bonk the guy/gal shooting you with a laser shield

Hey, if you're an order of peace, why would you want to? Why are you even getting into shootouts in the first place?

Thing 1: No, they're not. That doesn't keep there from being mythologized samurai who were able to deflect arrows with their swords... or other far Eastern mythologized folks who were supposed to be able to deflect or catch arrows with their bare hands. And period art does show swords being used to defend against arrows. Not likely to be effective in real life, but it's myth and legend: Actual effectiveness is secondary to telling a good story (where does that sound familiar from?).

Thing 2: They're not an order of peace. They're peacekeepers. They're police, marshals, wardens, &c. Sometimes (often times) the guys they're there to apprehend or keep from fighting really, really don't want to go along with the Jedi and/or stop fighting. Sometimes, one does not go into a place desiring a violent outcome, but the violent outcome occurs anyway, because one cannot control everything. Not least of all being other people, particularly belligerent people.

That's why cartoon Clone Wars was better than CGI Clone Wars.

Mace Windu using the Force to pull all the bolts out of a bunch of droids...

The Jedi are Space Samurai, not Space Captain America!

Yes, well, katanas are also not built to block arrows.

Harder to sufficiently bonk the guy/gal shooting you with a laser shield

Hey, if you're an order of peace, why would you want to? Why are you even getting into shootouts in the first place?

See the above comment about being Peacekeepers, not inherently Peaceful. The Jedi are there to ensure order and justice and the American way prevail, not be hippies. To paraphrase Frank Miller, "sometimes being a good peacekeeper means killing a whole lot of people"

Why the Jedi don't just Force-crush the internal components of the battledroids (or those beasts hearts or brains in the arena in Geonosis), and instead need to fight them with melee weapons?

If they can use the Force to keep big falling rocks from crushing them by pushing them upwards, like all the time, why don't they just do the same to themselves and fly around in the battlefield instead of running everywhere at slow speeds, easier to hit?

Because the force requires extensive discipline and concentration. Leave powerwank to comics and the people that like to argue that goku could totally kill superman.

More complex tasks can't just be done on the fly.

And crushing **** is hate, hate and the force are a bad combination.

Thing 1: No, they're not. That doesn't keep there from being mythologized samurai who were able to deflect arrows with their swords

It's clearly a sword, it was built to cut things. The fact that it can also block shots is incidental. It's a weapon designed to kill people.

Thing 2: They're not an order of peace. They're peacekeepers. They're police, marshals, wardens, &c.

To paraphrase Frank Miller, "sometimes being a good peacekeeper means killing a whole lot of people"

The comic series "Dawn of the Jedi" goes into the earliest form of the lightsabre. From construction, to use, to how the Jedi, then Je'dai, adopted it as their weapon of choice. Turns out the first ones could only be used by channeling the dark side of the force, there wasn't any power switch to turn them on otherwise. They were originally in this story called Forcesabres as I recall. Where those comics sit in the canon I have no idea though so might be nothing. Interesting read though for a while.

A shield blocks shots better than a sword. I have no clue where the concept that lightsabers were designed to block shots came from.

Of course, Kylo Ren's just destroys them which is friggin' amazing.

And crushing **** is hate, hate and the force are a bad combination.

Crushing is hate but slicing them in halves isn't?

Yes, yes. But the Sith use synthetic Kyber Krystals ™, which presumably can grown larger and cut into discs, tubes, and other build-convenient shapes for building lightsabers.

Yeah, uh, no. No presuming. And inquisitors are not Sith, exactly.

I never liked the requirement of Jedi and other force users to build their actual ligtsabres. Did knights in the Middle Ages have to be weaponsmiths too? What about samuria or ninja? No, they all obtained their weapons from craftsmen. In the OT it made sense that Vader and Luke had to build their lightsabers, there was no other way to get them other than finding them as relics.

In the PT it would have been nice to see Jedi swordsmiths that crafted each sabre. Then if we must have a mystical part to an otherwise technological piece of equipment, we can have young Jedi choose their sabre from a collection of many, perhaps like Harry in the wand shop. That's basically what we have now as cannon, except the Jedi went on a quest to find the crystal that called to them.

TPM: Obi Wan uses (and summons to his hand using the force) Qui Gonn's sabre to defeat Maul. This sabre was in his presence many times but had never been his personal possession.

AOTC: Anakin and Obi Wan are tossed some Sabres during the arena rescue and have no trouble using them effectively, although both are defeated by Tyranus (mostly through Anakin rushing into battle). Anakin even used both of these Sabres at once. Anakin doesn't seem too upset about his first sabre being destroyed

ANH and ESB: Luke uses his father's sabre (either a different one than AOTC or that sabre after it was repaired). We do not know ultimately who made Anakin's sabre although since he built his own pod racer and droid he probably made it himself. It is unlikely that all Jedi were so skilled mechanically. Vader uses a new sabre, probably of his own construction.

ROTJ: Luke has definately built his green bladed sabre and may have used extra parts lying around Ben's hut, since it resembles Kenobi's ANH sabre. Luke was a skilled mechanic like his father.

So, we see many instances of Jedi using random Sabres in battle, usually with success. We also see very few examples of Jedi building their own Sabres, and none of them mentioned anything about crystals.

Lightsabres cannot be manufactured any other way Because Reasons, and explains why they are so rare and valuable. Otherwise we would have things like The Star Wars where everybody and his dog carries a lightsabre. The lightsabre construction is mostly training and the Khyber crystal quest is analogous to the Kobayashi Maru. Basically, if you have the discipline and self-control to build a lightsabre, those qualities, including mechanical aptitude, will make you a Jedi Knight instead of a Force-sensitive janitor. Plus, what they really do with the weapon is assemble it. They don't put anything in a lathe, calculate the beam angles, make exotic alloys or design their own circuit boards. The weaponsmith droid did all of that - the lightsabres were basically plug and play.

And crushing **** is hate, hate and the force are a bad combination.

Crushing is hate but slicing them in halves isn't?

I'm not entirely sure why that made me laugh, but it did.

The Lightsaber idea does require lots of suspended disbelief, unfortuantely.

If the Jedi are a police force, then pretty obviously they should be using non-lethal weapons (stunners, shock-prods, clubs) as opposed to maiming/decapacitating criminals. Even if you are an evil policeman, apprehending criminals mostly intact (for interrogation) is more effective than cutting them in half.

If the Jedi are a military force, lightsabers are ludicrously ineffective as a front-line weapons.

But the worst part is how easy it should be to counter the Jedi in the Clone wars. Close-combat specialists that can deflect some incoming projectiles? And they're a problem?

Solutions:

Projectile saturation: use shotguns and miniguns (up to 6000 rounds per minute) as opposed to blasters, which seem to have a poor rate of fire. A battle droid armed with two miniguns would fire 200 rounds per second, and even if the Jedi had the reflexes and speed necessary to block that volume of bullets, the strain of doing so would rip his muscles apart

High-explosive munitions: if the shrapnel doesn't kill them, the blast/heat wave will do the trick

Non-projectile weapons: Napalm sticks to Jedi, or at least can't be deflected with a sword. Flamethrowers (real ones, not the funky little gas-burners Bobba used), poisonous gas, radiation - most of the above would do.

In order to defeat the jedi, it would also help:

- Not to arrange all your droids squads packed like if it were a napoleonic army, slowly walking forward at snail pace while they are basically getting a rain of enemy fire. That is stupid.

- Not to make laughable bidepal droids that a single blaster hit is enough to destroy, that experience fear and run when overwhelmed, that stop functioning when they are beheaded.

- Actually, just don't make them resemble a weak humanoid. There is no point at all for that. Why not just flying things that attack their enemies from above where they cannot be reached by lightsaber?

- If you absolutely must do all of the above, equip them with an internal thermal detonator that explodes when the droid is destroyed (a deadman's switch), and see those Jedi keep their distances and become little else than glorified portable shields.

And in the other way too...

If you are facing an army made almost entirely of clumsy, walking, mechanical soldiers, why not just shoot ion blasts and ion bombs all over the place?

Why shooting blasters against metal men? Okay, you can damage them, but wouldn't it be more intelligent not to use the same weapons you use against flesh and bone enemies?

In order to defeat the jedi, it would also help:

- Not to arrange all your droids squads packed like if it were a napoleonic army, slowly walking forward at snail pace while they are basically getting a rain of enemy fire. That is stupid. It also covers accuracy shortfalls, quantity is a quality all of it's own.

- Not to make laughable bidepal droids that a single blaster hit is enough to destroy, that experience fear and run when overwhelmed, that stop functioning when they are beheaded. Yeah, this is dumb.

- Actually, just don't make them resemble a weak humanoid. There is no point at all for that. Why not just flying things that attack their enemies from above where they cannot be reached by lightsaber? Oldcanon indicates that they were costructed to look like dessicated neimoidian warriors, so probably a psychological tactic.

- If you absolutely must do all of the above, equip them with an internal thermal detonator that explodes when the droid is destroyed (a deadman's switch), and see those Jedi keep their distances and become little else than glorified portable shields. This is actually a particularly bad idea, as that means that blaster bolt that took DX1138 out now also exploded DX1139, 1140, 1141 and 1142.

And in the other way too...

If you are facing an army made almost entirely of clumsy, walking, mechanical soldiers, why not just shoot ion blasts and ion bombs all over the place?

Why shooting blasters against metal men? Okay, you can damage them, but wouldn't it be more intelligent not to use the same weapons you use against flesh and bone enemies?

When your primary enemy is Jedi the weapons those droids had (blasters) probably aren't the best choice. Napalm/incendiary would be my goto. Shotguns and slugthrowers too.

Of course, interestingly enough - had they went with slugthrowers and shotguns, Clones would walk over them roughshod even more than they already did in the clone wars,

Everything should be Droidekas!

Slugthrowers just result in the jedi going all neo on you.

Blasters are also just cheaper.

I guess these midichlorians have some telekinetic powers to affect inert objects that don't have midichlorians...

That's not what they were/are. I never cared for them myself, but they aren't nearly as bad as some people claim.

Midichlorians were simply able to allow humans to touch the force, they didn't create the force themselves. It was still a mystical energy field, just one that humans and other races aren't able to interact with on their own.

ANH showed us a model of what the Jedi were and how they operated. Sure, Ben was I hiding, but look at how he went about while trying to get off the planet. He tried to lay low and only used his lightsabre when he had to (when Luke was gonna be killed by some crazy mo to in a bar). For the most part he tried to blend in, and any action he took was swift and decisive.

Jedi weren't supposed to wave their Sabres around deflecting blaster bolts, they were to avoid open combat with mooks and take the fight to the enemy leadership. And Yoda really didn't need to do all that spinning around (thanks Ani), he's he kind of guy who ends fights like he did when the clones attack on Kasyyyk, by flipping overhead once and decapitating both attackers in one motion. Every fight involving a Jedi should be over as quickly unless the foes are evenly matched, and then it would probably resemble the ANH duel with posturing and waiting for openings, and not the prequel dancing and prancing.

But that's just the point of view of a Star Wars fan getting ready to turn 40, thankful there's a Rebels cartoon and a new movie less than a month away and happy to hang on to what ever 'head canon' makes sense to me.

ANH showed us a model of what the Jedi were and how they operated. Sure, Ben was I hiding, but look at how he went about while trying to get off the planet. He tried to lay low and only used his lightsabre when he had to (when Luke was gonna be killed by some crazy mo to in a bar). For the most part he tried to blend in, and any action he took was swift and decisive.

Jedi weren't supposed to wave their Sabres around deflecting blaster bolts, they were to avoid open combat with mooks and take the fight to the enemy leadership. And Yoda really didn't need to do all that spinning around (thanks Ani), he's he kind of guy who ends fights like he did when the clones attack on Kasyyyk, by flipping overhead once and decapitating both attackers in one motion. Every fight involving a Jedi should be over as quickly unless the foes are evenly matched, and then it would probably resemble the ANH duel with posturing and waiting for openings, and not the prequel dancing and prancing.

But that's just the point of view of a Star Wars fan getting ready to turn 40, thankful there's a Rebels cartoon and a new movie less than a month away and happy to hang on to what ever 'head canon' makes sense to me.

That changed because the order was in exile in the original films