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I have only just saw the Dooku sabre. I have heard people saying it wouldn't work, and that "piece of metal" would block the beam.

Here are my thoughts:

That "piece of metal" may not be metal, it may be some sort of prism which allows the beam to flare out to a scimitar-style blade. I printed out the handle and drew on the blade and it does look good.

The same part of the sabre also seems as if it can be folded out (similar to a lock knife). Why? I don't know but if you look at the bottom there seems to be a sort of hinge.

Sorry for bringing this old topic back up, but like I said, this is new news to me.

I don't know what the big idea is. First off, is it even confirmed that the saber in the pic is the one used by Dooku? If so, I still don't know what the big deal is. The whole idea of a lightsaber is impossible to begin with. A double-bladed saber is kinda pointless, but it looked cool, and that is the whole idea. Lucas wants to make money from merchadise, so a curved blade is fine by me.

A curved laser beam?

It's not a laser beam. In any event, earlier shots look like he has a straight sabre to me; am I wrong? No matter what the shape of the handle is.

The physics of a curved sabre are only as questionable as those of a normal blade, whose light is thought to arc over at the top (similar style of bending). Yeah, it'll look more obviously dodgy, but the sabre nutters amongst us should have no problem they haven't already encountered. The earlier shots could have been quite misleading, remember, they were only preliminary effects shots and plus, do any of us have any idea what Select photos are trying to tell us anyway? Maybe it wasn't Dooku at all.

Sabres blades aren't made of light... they cast shadows... they are solid...

could you put the link up here for the scan of his saber as i cant find it. Cheers.

http://www.collectstarwars/ep2/dooku_sabre.jpg

Sorry thats...
http://www.collectstarwars.com/ep2/dooku_saber.jpg

I mis-spelled saber

So Ush you say the light saber is not a laser beam? If it`s not a laser beam please tell me what it is then.

No no no fellas

The light saber is made from these special harvested crystals and the colour of the saber depends on the colour of the crystal. The length of the saber determines the refraction of the crystal so you can have any type of grip handle you want as long as the crystal is directly below the out put tube i guess. But then again lucas does like to spin shit and make us go o wow thats awesome, it didnt really work for me when i saw these silly gungans.

I know the crystal part, but the energy beam has to be called something.

Either way, a light saber is some sort of laser/light beam or a field. As Ush said, the beam is solid as it casts shadows. The blade is also weighted which, again, tells us it is solid. I would not say a lightsabre is impossible (yes with today's technology) but in the future?. I can't see how a curved blade would work though.

That is if one even exists in EP2. Pesonally I don't think GL should **** on with fancy lightsabres anymore. It is starting to make the good old jedi weapon look crap.

The role of crystals in the sabre is EXTRMELY debatable; but suffice to say that all that refraction=length stuff is nonsensical because it's not refracted at all.

The blade is some kind of substance enclosed in a solid field; the substance is presumably extremely good at cutting.

However, we can only make vague extrapolations like that; trying to come up with specifics is near impossible.

But we DO know that:

1. it is not light/laser or anything like that
2. It is solid
3. It does not produce conventional heat
4. Any crystal couldn't be used for focusing because it's not optical
5. The blade is massless yet appears to exert some form of force

Thanks for the support, DJ. We ALSO know the blade is solid because Qui-Gobn was impaled on it. Can't impale someone on a laser beam...

How do we know it is not laser/light or anything like that?

To get back to Dooku's sabre, I reckon a curved handle with a straight beam requires some different handling, since the beam would be angled more at the one who wields the sabre. But it may also be a bit more tricky to fight against, since the curved handle and the angle of the blade to the hands may cause very tricky blows.

It's not laser/light because it's solid. Laser/light cannot be solid. It also gives off a shadow. Light creates shadows, it does not cast them. Qui-Gon was impaled on Maul's sabre. If it was a laser, he would have rather messily fallen through it. As it was, he was able to be supported by it.

The blade is clearly solid, some sort of freaky hi-tech futuristic sci-fi field-contained substance.

Meanwhile, plenty of historical swords have curved handles but straight blades. It's a style thing.

Lightsabres do not cast shadows. Please listen to my reasoning. People base that idea on:

1) ROTJ final duel, sabres casting shadows on the floor as they fought towards the bridge: They didn't have the technology to do clean passes in FX editing back then, hence the shadows stayed.

2) Qui Gon in desert: probably overlooked or deemed unecessary to correct as it's barely visible.

By sensible reasoning, if something cast a shadow, then viewing that thing against the light source would show a silhouette. Watch the battle in the Theed generator room, when the Jedi and Maul are fighting with the energy beam behind them (as Obi Wan gets kicked off onto a lower level), their sabres aren't silhouetted, they are at least as bright as the light source.
People put forward so many dodgy sabre ideas, like the ridiculous notion that the sabre doesn't give out any energy at all unless it hits something. If you can see or hear it, it's giving out energy which you are receiving.

I agree about the field containment idea, the sabres bouncing off eachother, walls etc proves they aren't just light.

I meant that the sabres HAD shadows, which is clear. They even cleaned them up for the special editions. It has always been true that they had shadows and hence are solid.

Well if GL intended them to have shadows, then I'll give up on side-taking in any arguments regarding scientific accuracy in Star Wars now, and brand the idea of lightsabres cool to look at, but upsettingly inaccurate.

Well, they are weird things... but clearly solid and hence shadow casting.

The solid without mass idea is messing with my head. If that's the way GL wanted it though...

I think a gyroscopic affect is the ebst way they try and explain it. Still, that's a fantasy weapon for you...

just a thought, but if the blade is going to be slightly curved like a samuri sword or whatever, then how is GL goin to merchandise it? it will be pretty hard to make a toy out of.

Commercialism will ALWAYS find a way...

But I am pretty sure it is straight.

i'm still not convinced by the scan of dooku's sabre. Looking at it i imagine it would be very difficult to handle. Much more so than a standard saber. It is even more difficult to hold and move than the double sabre by the looks of it. There seem to be no advantage to it , unless it is a hidden advantage. The bit of metal at the bottom / top intrigues me as it seems to serve no obvious function and would oonly get in the way during combat. What if the sbare splits into two or ghas some hidden weapon in it? There seems to be a diagnoal line down it, what if it splits in two to give dooku two sabers which some people suspect he wields.

How can we prove that that is his lighsaber at all? I want to know where you guys get your info. Thanks.

Oh we have NO proof that the shot is genuine at all. Scepticism degrees are quite varied around here; you will find myself and Dim are normally very wary.

I'm not certain where that pic actually originated from.

Nothing is proven until the film is released, that's my line. Even the OS may be BS...

Yeah, but it's so much fun to speculate, to cast wild ideas that are shot down in flames, or discussed further and then shot down in flames.
Remember too, that we can only ponder on what Episode 2 will be like until that day wen we find out for certain what's true and what's not. Then it's set in stone.

...unless it's wrong...

Mind you, I think everyone understands the point of a discussion forum.

Well most do, some just think it's a place to beat the other guy into submission.

(Who? Me? Nah!!!)

With a big stick!

You have a big stick???

I have a tremendous, difficult to wield one. I can hardly lift it, so you have nothing to fear from me.

It's QUITE big...

Does it have a sharp, pointy end?

Careful! You could have someone's eye out with that!

Ok, is there ANY more good info about his sabre anywhere?

I don't believe there's any real info yet, IMHO.

The best I can tell you is that I have seen a picture of Ewan practising against an opponent who seemed to have a straight lightsabre (opponent's picture was blocked by a text box). I posted a new thread a while back about some new insider pics (whihc you all let drift to the bottom of the board without a single reply - weep).As I remember, there was a picture of Hayden practising against a young looking guy, but he was swinging his sabre quickly, and you couldn't tell if it was curved or not.

I just keep wondering what that pointy piece would do.. maybe it would cause the blade to flatten..I don't know.

It runs parrallel to the centre core of the sabre. It would be inside the glow but not the core, which as I say may reveal some more about how a sabre works.

I'm convinced that lightsabres are based on force field technology, with the energy being contained in a field in a similar way that blaster bolts are deflected by shields. If that piece of metal had the effect of bending the field's course (mass spectrometer, cathode ray tube style), it could account for a scimiter shaped blade which fans out slightly. Still think it will look ridiculous though.

hmm i can't see the point of coming on a 'discussion' board if you think there is no real info to discuss about episode 2 and 3.

Does anyone else think that that sketch lacks elegance?

Firstly there IS proof that it is Dooku's saber.

Secondly, the blade is straight. Straight and long. If you watch the recently leaked stolen EpII footage you get a glimse of it at around 1.00 in.

Dooku will rock.

Well, I'm not doubting that Dooku's saber is similar..just this exact design.

Do we really know that Dooku will use a saber?

(Sorry, haven't read any of the leaked scripts cos I think they probably all BS)

Well, of course we don't know..he may very well not. But I'm guessing that GL will leave force lightening to Palpatine.

But we can't even be certain that Dooku will do any fighting at all.

If we ignore the "scripts"

Certain, no, but if that's not Dooku holding a red sabre opposite to Anakin in that earlier select shot I will be extremely surprised.

Well, I haven't seen anything to make me think that yet.

Well, I can't prove anything of course, but we have some good indicators- and this is from sceptical old me...

The guy is holding a red sabre and is wearing black. Two good indicators that he is a big bad guy. And it LOOKED like they were posing before or during a fight.

Now, it is highly likely that Christopher Lee is playing a bad guy, for a lot of reasons. COULD be an enormous bluff, of course...

And if he is a bad guy, it is likely he is the new bad guy sabre opponent as well- it is very difficult to see what else he could be- presumably making him Sidious' new apprentice, presumably making him Darth Tyrannous (assuming that name is true, of course).

So, if Lee is playing the new Darth, and that pic is also of the new Darth, wielding a sabre, we have a direct link. Granted, this is hardly conclusive proof, but it's a strong pointer.

Mind you, if someone gave me a good reason why it couldn't be so, it would not be the greatest surprise I ever recieved.

It does follow, but there's a hell of a lot of supposition in there.

There is, yes, and I'm certainly not pushing this as fact, but as my assumptions about Episode II go, that is one of the ones I am more comfortable with.

Well, with the detail, I don't think it's too much to assume..it doesn't give a whole lot away.

Oh I agree Ush. My wrry here is that a lot of people, fandom wide, have their hearts set on this Dooku battle that might never happen.

Remember, even though Select pictures are 100% official, we have no idea what they really are or why GL is showing them to us. Everyone assumes that the strange ones are just manipulated from what we will see in the film, we could be very wrong. In addition, as I remember, the duel select picture was taken very early on, and the fights were nearly the last scenes to be filmed.

Yes, that kind of proofs the point that we don't have any real "offical" information of the Dooku battle..other than that one..and honestly, that could have been someone else.

Everyone says that pic is a Duel, could be Anakin going to the can!