“Obi-Wan Kenobi” aside, the Disney+ “Star Wars” shows have been relatively light on lightsaber battles with “The Mandalorian” and especially “Andor” all about minimising the use of that most familiar piece of “Star Wars” iconography.
That’s about to change. The upcoming “Star Wars: Ahsoka” is set to reinclude them in a big way, with trailers offering glimpses of Ahsoka’s own white lightsaber and two of its villains boasting dark orange ones.
The upcoming “Star Wars: The Acolyte” next year, however, will be going much further than that with a ton of fight choreography and stuntwork involving these glowing swords.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, a trio of actors involved discussed the series and compared their action scenes to the famous three-way duel at the end of “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace”.
Manny Jacinto: “If you loved that sequence with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and Darth Maul, I think you’re going to enjoy this show.”
Charlie Barnett: “I will say too — not to shade’ but we have a lot more tangible physical moves than I saw in that fight. As badass as it is, there’s a lot more grounded work that goes into our stunt training and our stunt performances.
Dafne Keen: “I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, but I will just say it. There’s a lack of guns, which personally, as someone who loves fighting and stunts and stuff, I love. Because it gives you that body-to-body choreography – that dance feeling. It actually looks like a real fight as opposed to just I point, and I shoot, which is kind of an easy cop-out in a way. We get a lot of that body-to-body.”
The series is set a century before ‘The Phantom Menace’ at the end of the High Republic in what’s dubbed a Sith-led story about “a former Padawan (Amandla Stenberg) reuniting with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.”
Lee Jung-jae, Carrie-Anne Moss, Keen and Barnett all play Jedi, whilst Jacinto plays a “regular guy swept up into the High Republic world”.
Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Dean-Charles Chapman, Margarita Levieva, and Joonas Suotamo also star. Leslye Headland serves as creator/showrunner, and the eight-episode series is scheduled to arrive on Disney+ next year.
