Hehe.. I lost it with Jabba.

I think people like to bitch about Star Wars for the sake of bitching about Star Wars. The original trailer post on here's comments are like an ouroboros: "This one's nothing like the Lucas ones. The Lucas ones sucked, etc."

I really don't get what's supposed to be "wrong" with that lightsaber. It actually makes total sense: the lack of any crossguard on a traditional lightsaber is a serious design flaw! While the primary function of the crossguard - that is, to prevent the wielder's hand from slipping up the blade during a thrust - would be largely unnecessary due to the weightless nature of the lightsaber blade, the secondary function of the crossguard - to prevent an opponent from making sliding cuts along the blade and chopping off your fingers - is still very much a concern.

I am actually a little surprised that no force-wielder up till now has thought of this. I'd chalk it up to the stifling conservatism and herd-like groupthink of the Jedi world order; so long as their Council of Platonic philosopher-tyrants sees no immediate personal gain in a thing, it shall not be done. Leave it to the Sith to think outside the box and drive true progress, as usual.

How do you know that's a Sith/Dark Jedi/bad fella type ??

edit - sorry, (near) massless nature of the lightsaber. If I understand correctly, the primary cause of sword-hand slippage is inertia and the sudden deceleration of the sword as the blade it embeds itself into flesh and bone. With a beam of almost massless force energy like a lightsaber, which can pass through the dense atomic structure of solid steel with as little resistance as it passes through air, thrusting into an Ewok's quivering body should not cause any appreciable deceleration of forward momentum, at least not until you've buried your saber clear up to the hilt (at which point slipping will simply result in your hand hitting a mess of rapidly cauterizing Ewok-flesh). Star Wars geeks can feel free to correct me on this, however.

Oddeye - the black cloak is usually a fair give away (black cloaks are a common Bad Guy trope; I don't know the official trope name offhand, but I could try looking it up for you), as is the narrative suggesting a resurgence of the Dark Side, coinciding with the mystery swordsman's reveal. However, the biggest give away is the color of his lightsaber: red is the hallmark of synth-crystal blades, traditionally (indeed, almost exclusively) associated with the Sith.

Now I don't know much about the post-Imperial Extended Universe, but according to Wookieepedia (Ed. why is "Wookieepedia" in my autocorrect dictionary, but the word "cauterizing" is not?!), synth-crystals were commonly adopted by the Jedi of the New Order era because something something something stuff that's probably not even canon anymore. HOWEVER, the New Order synth-crystals seem to have been manufactured specifically in the Jedi's traditional, "natural crystal" colors - like green, and blue. I find it highly unlikely that a Jedi would walk around with a red bladed lightsaber, unless he were being ironic (and the Jedi are not known for their postmodern sense of humor).

Can someone summarize this discussion?

If a lightsaber can cut through anything, what good is a crossguard, especially one that can also cut through anything, like the person holding it, if not their hands?

Also, said "crossguard" has metal emitters or whatever that pop out. Those are presumably made of the same stuff the rest of the saber is made out of, and we've seen that material can be cut by the blade. Ergo, it's useless to stop another blade from making a "sliding cut."

I'm glad you asked that, SPK! I actually thought of this, minutes after posting that last comment, and was in the process of drafting a lengthy retraction/ self-rebuttal, only by this time I'd arrived at work, and my boss was coming, so I had to shut down everything and pretend to be busy. My ruse was a partial success.

The upshot of that was it gave me time to consider the matter, and you know what, I think it still works! Lightsabers are able to cut through a great many things, but strictly speaking, not through absolutely "anything". Some things will stop, or at least slow, a lightsaber blade (apart from another lightsaber blade, of course), particularly when these things have been tempered and strengthened through close contact with the Force. I do not have the full list of these materials available (rancor hide, perhaps? Certain metals from Most Sacred Korriban?) but it is entirely possible that the crossguard/saber-hilt is made of, or even simply reinforced with, one of these materials.

The aesthetics of it are totally off, because a lightsabre should look like something a space samurai would use. The mediaeval western look of that thing really throws it into 'Game of Lasers' territory.

it's a jedi KNIGHT weapon, geddit?!

I spat my drink at 0:36.

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