If memory serves, Leland Chee once commented that while events that contradict the film must submit to the movie's superior placement in the canon hierarchy, narrative and perceptions aren't necessarily negated.
Count Dooku could still very well come to the conclusion that Obi-Wan's defenses were too polished to overcome in those circumstances through sheer bladework.
Originally posted by Galan007
Because Dooku isn't one of the best lightsaber practitioners ever, and knows absolutely nothing about form/technique, right? srslyFor instance: I'm certainly not a professional fighter, but it would only take one hit from Anderson Silva for me to know I'm outclassed.
G007, I think anyone with an ounce of logic would, given your statement about Dooku realizing during a 2 second saber clash w/ Kenobi that his defenses were unbreachable, would consider such a statement as absurd. Moreover - from the RotS script: "Your moves are clumsy, Kenobi . . . too predictable. You'll have to do better" I think this sums it up nicely.
Originally posted by Jinsoku TakaiThen those people (you) wouldn't be taking into consideration Dooku's experience and mastery in the area of lightsaber combat.
G007, I think anyone with an ounce of logic would, given your statement about Dooku realizing during a 2 second saber clash w/ Kenobi that his defenses were unbreachable, would consider such a statement as absurd.
In the novel it only took a few parries for Dooku to come to the conclusion that there was no point trying to overcome Kenobi's defenses, saber to saber - thus he trounced him with the force instead. This correlates perfectly with the cut away in the film.
Why are you making it more than it needs to be?
Originally posted by Jinsoku Takai...Which is a non-canon statement, and was also stated before Kenobi began using Soresu.
Moreover - from the RotS script: "Your moves are clumsy, Kenobi . . . too predictable. You'll have to do better" I think this sums it up nicely.
Originally posted by Galan007
...and was also stated before Kenobi began using Soresu.
Non-canon (according to your philosophy from an earlier comment) since Kenobi follows Dooku up the stairs AFTER the quote and slashes and chops at Dooku. This, according to you, IS NOT Soresu. See:
Originally posted by Galan007
"Obi-Wan leapt and spun, slashing side to side, chopping and thrusting, but all of Dooku's movements seemed far more efficient[...]His words spurred Obi-Wan forward with another series of slashes and chops, but Dooku's red blade angled left and then right, then up just enough to send Obi-Wan's descending blade slipping off to the side[...]
Obi-Wan steadied himself and shifted his lightsaber from hand to hand, getting a better grip on it. Then he exploded into motion, coming on again fiercely, his blue lightsaber flashing all about. He kept a better measure of his cuts this time, though, reversing his angle often, turning a wide slash into a sudden thrust[...]" - Attack of the Clones
.Slashes and chops are not part of Form III combat.
Disarm him in sabers only? No, he did not.
Originally posted by Jinsoku TakaiHuh? I simply mentioned that the quote you posted from the script is non-canon because it wasn't stated in the film. Again, don't make things more than they need to be. 😉
Non-canon (according to your philosophy from an earlier comment) since Kenobi follows Dooku up the stairs AFTER the quote and slashes and chops at Dooku. This, according to you, IS NOT Soresu.
...And why did you repost the excerpt I posted from the AotC novelization?
Originally posted by Galan007
Then those people (you) wouldn't be taking into consideration Dooku's experience and mastery in the area of lightsaber combat.In the novel it only took a few parries for Dooku to come to the conclusion that there was no point trying to overcome Kenobi's defenses, saber to saber - thus he trounced him with the force instead. This correlates perfectly with the cut away in the film.
Why are you making it more than it needs to be?
...Which is a non-canon statement, and was also stated before Kenobi began using Soresu.
Post the quote, in full context from the novel please.
Originally posted by Galan007
TIn the novel it only took a few parries for Dooku to come to the conclusion that there was no point trying to overcome Kenobi's defenses, saber to saber - thus he trounced him with the force instead.
No wrong this didn't happen in the novel. Nowhere was it stated Dooku was forced to use The Force on Kenobi. He takes him out with a kick.
My problem with this Dooku having difficulty with Kenobi's defence, is that theres no hint of him struggling aginst Kenob in any way shape or form in the movie, and the novel contadicts the notion Itself, when Dooku kicks Kenobi in the face.
Originally posted by Jinsoku Takai
So... let me get this right... since you're going by 'real time', you're saying that Dooku realized in a one-on-one encounter w/ Kenobi that lasted for all of 2 seconds that he couldn't breach Kenobi's defense because it was too damn difficult? That's ***king hilarious!!
LOL.. This is so true.. The camera pointed to Palps for a good 2 secs, and in that time, everything we read in the novel happened! LOL
He sprang, lightsaber angled for the kill.
Obi-Wan leapt from Dooku's far side in perfect coordination-and they met in midair, for the Sith Lord was no longer between them.
Anakin looked up just in time to glimpse the bottom of Dooku's rancor-leather boot as it came down on his face and smacked him tumbling toward the floor; he reached into the Force to effortlessly right himself and touched down in perfect balance to spring again toward the lightning flares, scarlet against sky blue, that sprayed from clashing lightsabers as Dooku pressed Obi-Wan away with a succession of weaving, flourishing thrusts that drove the Jedi's blade out of line while they reached for his heart.
Anakin launched himself at Dooku's back-and the Count half turned, gesturing casually while holding Obi-Wan at bay with an elegant one-handed bind. Chairs leapt up from the situation table and whirled toward Anakin's head. He slashed the first one in half contemptuously, but the second caught him across the knees and the third battered his shoulder and knocked him down.
He snarled to himself and reached through the Force to pick up some chairs of his own-and the situation table itself slammed into him and drove him back to crush him against the wall. His lightsaber came loose from his slackening fingers and clattered across the tabletop to drop to the floor on the far side.
And Dooku barely even seemed to be paying attention to him.
Pinned, breathless, half stunned, Anakin thought, If this keeps up, I am going to get mad.
While effortlessly deflecting a rain of blue-streaking cuts from Kenobi, Dooku felt the Force shove the situation table away from the wall and send it hurtling toward his back with astonishing speed; he barely managed to lift himself enough that he could backroll over it instead of having it shatter his spine.
"My my," he said, chuckling. "The boy has some power after all."
His backroll brought him to his feet directly in front of the lad, who was charging, headlong and unarmed, after the table he had tossed, and was already thoroughly red in the face.
"I'm twice the Jedi I was last time!"
Ah, Dooku thought. Such a fragile little ego. Sidious will have to help him with that. But until then-The grip of Skywalker's blade whistled through the air to meet his hand in perfect synchrony with a sweeping slash. "My powers have doubled since we last met-"
"How lovely for you." Dooku neatly sidestepped, cutting at the boy's leg, yet Skywalker's blade met the cut as he passed and he managed to sweep his blade behind his head to slap aside the casual thrust Dooku aimed at the back of his neck-but his clumsy charge had put him in Kenobi's path, so that the Jedi Master had to Force-roll over his partner's head.
Directly at Dooku's upraised blade.
Kenobi drove a slash at the scarlet blade while he pivoted in the air, and again Dooku sidestepped so that now it was Kenobi in Skywalker's way.
"Really," Dooku said, "this is pathetic."
Oh, they were certainly energetic enough, leaping and whirling, raining blows almost at random, cutting chairs to pieces and Force-hurling them in every conceivable direction, while Dooku continued, in his gracefully methodical way, to out-maneuver them so thoroughly it was all he could to do keep from laughing out loud.
It was a simple matter of countering their tactics, which were depressingly straightforward; Skywalker was the swift one, whooshing here and there like a spastic hawk-bat-attempting a Jedi variant of neek-in-the-middle so they could come at him from both sides-while Kenobi came on in a measured Shii-Cho cadence, deliberate as a lumberdroid, moving step by step, cutting off the angles, clumsy but relentlessly dogged as he tried to chivvy Dooku into a corner.
Whereas all Dooku need do was to slip from one side to another-and occasionally flip over a head here and there-so that he could fight each of them in turn, rather than both of them at the same time. He supposed that in their own milieu, they might actually prove reasonably effective; it was clear that their style had been developed by fighting as a team against large numbers of opponents. They were not prepared to fight together against a single Force-user, certainly not one of Dooku's power; he, on the other hand, had always fought alone. It was laughably easy to keep the Jedi tripping and stumbling and getting in each other's way.
They didn't even comprehend how utterly he dominated the combat. Because they fought as they had been trained, by releasing all desire and allowing the Force to flow through them, they had no hope of countering Dooku's mastery of Sith techniques They had learned nothing since he had bested them on Geonosis.
They allowed the Force to direct them; Dooku directed the Force.
He drew their strikes to his parries, and drove his own ripostes with thrusts of dark power that subtly altered the Jedi's balance and disrupted their timing. He could have slaughtered both of them as casually as that creature Maul had destroyed the vigos of the Black Sun.
However, only one death was in his plan, and this dumb-show was becoming tiresome. Not to mention tiring. The dark power that served him went only so far, and he was, after all, not a young man.
He leaned into a thrust at Kenobi's gut that the Jedi Master deflected with a rising parry, bringing them chest-to-chest, blades flaring, locked together a handbreadth from each other's throats. "Your moves are too slow, Kenobi. Too predictable. You'll have to do better."
Kenobi's response to this friendly word was to regard him with a twinkle of gentle amusement in his eye.
"Very well, then," the Jedi said, and shot straight upward over Dooku's head so fast it seemed he'd vanished.
And in the space where Kenobi's chest had been was now only the blue lightning of Skywalker's blade driving straight for Dooku's heart.
Only a desperate whirl to one side made what would have been a smoking hole in his chest into a line of scorch through his armorweave cloak.
Dooku thought, What?
He threw himself spinning up and away from the two Jedi to land on the situation table, disengaging for a moment to recover his composure-that had been entirely too close-but by the time his boots touched down Kenobi was there to meet him, blade weaving through a defensive velocity so bewilderingly fast that Dooku dared not even try a strike; he threw a feint toward Kenobi's face, then dropped and spun in a reverse ankle-sweep-But not only did Kenobi easily overleap this attack, Dooku nearly lost his own foot to a slash from Skywalker who had again come out of nowhere and now carved through the table so that it collapsed under Dooku's weight and dumped the Sith Lord un-:eremoniously to the floor. This was not in the plan. Skywalker slammed his following strike down so hard that the shock of deflecting it buckled Dooku's elbows. Dooku threw himself into a backroll that brought him to his feet-and Kenobi's blade was there to meet his neck. Only a desperate whirling slash-block, coupled with a wheel kick that caught Kenobi on the thigh, bought him enough time to leap away again, and when he touched down-Skywalker was already there.
The first overhand chop of Skywalker's blade slid off Dooku's instinctive guard. The second bent Dooku's wrist. The third flash of blue forced Dooku's scarlet blade so far to the inside that his own lightsaber scorched his shoulder, and Dooku was forced to give ground.
Dooku felt himself blanch. Where had this come from? Skywalker came on, mechanically inexorable, impossibly powerful, a destroyer droid with a lightsaber: each step a blow and each blow a step. Dooku backed away as fast as he dared; Skywalker stayed right on top of him. Dooku's breath went short and hard. He no longer tried to block Skywalker's strikes but only to guide them slanting away; he could not meet Skywalker strength-to-strength-not only did the boy wield tremendous reserves of Force energy, but his sheer physical power was astonishing-And only then did Dooku understand that he'd been suckered.
Skywalker's Shien ready-stance had been a ruse, as had his Ataro gymnastics; the boy was a Djem So stylist, and as fine a one as Dooku had ever seen. His own elegant Makashi simply did not generate the kinetic power to meet Djem So head-to-head. Especially not while also defending against a second attacker.
It was time to alter his own tactics.
He dropped low and spun into another reverse ankle-sweep-the weakness of Djem So was its lack of mobility-that slapped Skywalker's boot sharply enough to throw the young Jedi off balance, giving Dooku the opportunity to leap away-Only to find himself again facing the wheel of blue lightning that was Kenobi's blade.
Dooku decided that the comedy had ended.
Now it was time to kill.
Kenobi's Master had been Qui-Gon Jinn, Dooku's own Padawan; Dooku had fenced Qui-Gon thousands of times, and he knew every weakness of the Ataro form, with its ridiculous acrobatics. He drove a series of flashing thrusts toward Kenobi's legs to draw the Jedi Master into a flipping overhead leap so that Dooku could burn through his spine from kidneys to shoulder blades-and this image, this plan, was so clear in Dooku's mind that he almost failed to notice that Kenobi met every one of his thrusts without so much as moving his feet, staying perfectly centered, perfectly balanced, blade never moving a millimeter more than was necessary, deflecting without effort, riposting with flickering strikes and stabs swifter than the tongue of a Garollian ghost viper, and when Dooku felt Skywalker regain his feet and stride once more toward his back, he finally registered the source of that blinding defensive velocity Kenobi had used a moment ago, and only then, belatedly, did he understand that Kenobi's Ataro and Shii-Cho had been ploys, as well.
Kenobi had become a master of Soresu.
An incredibly proficient master of Soresu who would have totally kicked Qui-Gons ass. It wouldn't eevn be a contest. Also DARTH POWER is dumb and Takai sucks chode.
Dooku found himself having a sudden, unexpected, overpowering, and entirely distressing bad feeling about this . . .
His farce had suddenly, inexplicably, spun from humorous to deadly serious and was tumbling rapidly toward terrifying. Realization burst through Dooku's consciousness like the blossoming fireballs of dying ships outside: this pair of Jedi fools had somehow managed to become entirely dangerous.
These clowns might-just possibly-actually be able to beat him.
No sense taking chances; even his Master would agree with that. Lord Sidious could come up with a new plan more easily than a new apprentice.
He gathered the Force once more in a single indrawn breath that summoned power from throughout the universe; the slightest whipcrack of that power, negligent as a flick of his wrist, sent Kenobi flying backward to crash hard against the wall, but Dooku didn't have time to enjoy it.
Skywalker was all over him.
The shining blue lightsaber whirled and spat and every overhand chop crashed against Dooku's defense with the unstoppable power of a meteor strike; the Sith Lord spent lavishly of his reserve of the Force merely to meet these attacks without being cut in half, and Skywalker-Skywalker was getting stronger.
Each parry cost Dooku more power than he'd used to throw Kenobi across the room; each block aged him a decade.
He decided he'd best revise his strategy once again.
He no longer even tried to strike back. Force exhaustion began to close down his perceptions, drawing his consciousness back down to his physical form, trapping him within his own skull until he could barely even feel the contours of the room around him; he dimly sensed stairs at his back, stairs that led up to the entrance balcony. He retreated up them, using the higher ground for leverage, but Skywalker just kept on coming, tirelessly ferocious.
That blue blade was everywhere, flashing and whirling faster and faster until Dooku saw the room through an electric haze and now Kenobi was back in the picture: with a shout of the Force, he shot like a torpedo up the stairs behind Skywalker, and Dooku decided that under these rather extreme circumstances, it was at least arguably permissible for a gentleman to cheat.
"Guards!" he said to the pair of super battle droids that still stood at attention to either side of the entrance. "Open fire!"
Instantly the two droids sprang forward and lifted their hands. Energy hammered out from the heavy blasters built into their arms; Skywalker whirled and his blade batted every blast back at the droids, whose mirror-polished carapace armor deflected the bolts again. Galvened particle beams screeched through the room in blinding ricochets.
Kenobi reached the top of the stairs and a single slash of his lightsaber dismantled both droids. Before their pieces could even hit the floor Dooku was in motion, landing a spinning side-stamp that folded Skywalker in half; he used his last burst of dark power to continue his spin into a blindingly fast wheel-kick that brought his heel against the point of Kenobi's chin with a crack like the report of a huge-bore slugthrower, knocking the Jedi Master back down the stairs. Sounded like he'd broken his neck.
Wouldn't that be lovely?
There was no sense in taking chances, however.
While Kenobi's bonelessly limp body was still tumbling toward the floor far below, Dooku sent a surge of energy through the Force. Kenobi's fall suddenly accelerated like a missile burning the last of its drives before impact. The Jedi Master struck the floor at a steep angle, skidded along it, and slammed into the wall so hard the hydrofoamed permacrete buckled and collapsed onto him.
This Dooku found exceedingly gratifying.
Now, as for Skywalker-Which was as far as Dooku got, because by the time his attention returned to the younger Jedi, his vision was rather completely obstructed by the sole of a boot approaching his face with something resembling terminal velocity.
The impact was a blast of white fire, and there was a second impact against his back that was the balcony rail, and then the room turned upside down and he fell toward the ceiling, but not really, of course: it only felt that way because he had flipped over the rail and he was falling headfirst toward the floor, and neither his arms nor his legs were paying any attention to what he was trying to make them do. The Force seemed to be busy elsewhere, and really, the whole process was entirely mortifying.
He was barely able to summon a last surge of dark power before what would have been a disabling impact. The Force cradled him, cushioning his fall and setting him on his feet.
He dusted himself off and fixed a supercilious gaze on Skywalker, who now stood upon the balcony looking down at him-and Dooku couldn't hold the stare; he found this reversal of their original positions oddly unsettling.
There was something troublingly appropriate about it. Seeing Skywalker standing where Dooku himself had stood only moments ago ... it was as though he was trying to remember a dream he'd never actually had . . .
He pushed this aside, drawing once more upon the certain knowledge of his personal invincibility to open a channel to the Force. Power flowed into him, and the weight of his years dropped away.
He lifted his blade, and beckoned.
Skywalker leapt from the balcony. Even as the boy hurtled downward, Dooku felt a new twist in the currents of the Force between them, and he finally understood.
He understood how Skywalker was getting stronger. Why he no longer spoke. How he had become a machine of battle. He understood why Sidious had been so interested in him for so long.
Skywalker was a natural.
There was a thermonuclear furnace where his heart should be, and it was burning through the firewalls of his Jedi training. He held the Force in the clench of a white-hot fist. He was half Sith already, and he didn't even know it.
This boy had the gift of fury.
And even now, he was holding himself back; even now, as he landed at Dooku's flank and rained blows upon the Sith Lord's defenses, even as he drove Dooku backward step after step, Dooku could feel how Skywalker kept his fury banked behind walls of will: walls that were hardened by some uncontrollable dread.
Dread, Dooku surmised, of himself. Of what might happen if he should ever allow that furnace he used for a heart to go supercritical.
Dooku slipped aside from an overhand chop and sprang backward. "I sense great fear in you. You are consumed by it. Hero With No Fear, indeed. You're a fraud, Skywalker. You are nothing but a posturing child."
He pointed his lightsaber at the young Jedi like an accusing finger. "Aren't you a little old to be afraid of the dark?"
Skywalker leapt for him again, and this time Dooku met the boy's charge easily. They stood nearly toe-to-toe, blades flashing faster than the eye could see, but Skywalker had lost his edge: a simple taunt was all that had been required to shift the focus of his attention from winning the fight to controlling his own emotions. The angrier he got, the more afraid he became, and the fear fed his anger in turn; like the proverbial Corellian multipede, now that he had started thinking about what he was doing, he could no longer walk.
Dooku allowed himself to relax; he felt that spirit of playfulness coming over him again as he and Skywalker spun 'round each other in their lethal dance. Whatever fun was to be had, he should enjoy while he could.
Then Sidious, for some reason, decided to intervene.
"Don't fear what you're feeling, Anakin, use it!" he barked in Palpatine's voice. "Call upon your fury. Focus it, and he cannot stand against you. Rage is your weapon. Strike now! Strike! Kill him!"
Dooku thought blankly, Kill me?
He and Skywalker paused for one single, final instant, blades locked together, staring at each other past a sizzling cross of scarlet against blue, and in that instant Dooku found himself wondering in bewildered astonishment if Sidious had suddenly lost his mind. Didn't he understand the advice he'd just given? Whose side was he on, anyway?
And through the cross of their blades he saw in Skywalker's eyes the promise of hell, and he felt a sickening presentiment that he already knew the answer to that question. Treachery is the way of the Sith.
=4=
Jedi Trap
This is the death of Count Dooku:
A starburst of clarity blossoms within Anakin Skywalker's mind, when he says to himself Oh. I get it, now and discovers that the fear within his heart can be a weapon, too.
It is that simple, and that complex.
And it is final.
Dooku is dead already. The rest is mere detail.
The play is still on; the comedy of lightsabers flashes and snaps and hisses. Dooku & Skywalker, a one-time-only command performance, for an audience of one. Jedi and Sith and Sith and Jedi, spinning, whirling, crashing together, slashing and chopping, parrying, binding, slipping and whipping and ripping the air around them with snarls of power.
And all for nothing, because a nuclear flame has consumed Anakin Skywalker's Jedi restraint, and fear becomes fury without effort, and fury is a blade that makes his lightsaber into a toy.
The play goes on, but the suspense is over. It has become mere pantomime, as intricate and as meaningless as the space-time curves that guide galactic clusters through a measureless cosmos.
Dooku's decades of combat experience are irrelevant. His mastery of swordplay is useless. His vast wealth, his political influence, impeccable breeding, immaculate manners, exquisite taste-the pursuits and points of pride to which he has devoted so much of his time and attention over the long, long years of his life-are now chains hung upon his spirit, bending his neck before the ax.
Even his knowledge of the Force has become a joke.
It is this knowledge that shows him his death, makes him handle it, turn it this way and that in his mind, examine it in detail like a black gemstone so cold it burns. Dooku's elegant farce has degenerated into bathetic melodrama, and not one shed tear will mark the passing of its hero.
But for Anakin, in the fight there is only terror, and rage.
Only he stands between death and the two men he loves best in all the world, and he can no longer afford to hold anything back. That imaginary dead-star dragon tries its best to freeze away his strength, to whisper him that Dooku has beaten him before, that Dooku has all the power of the darkness, to remind him how Dooku took his hand, how Dooku could strike down even Obi-Wan himself seemingly without effort and now Anakin is all alone and he will never be a match for any Lord of the Sith-But Palpatine's words rage is your weapon have given Anakin permission to unseal the shielding around his furnace heart, and all his fears and all his doubts shrivel in its flame.
When Count Dooku flies at him, blade flashing, Watto's fist cracks out from Anakin's childhood to knock the Sith Lord tumbling back.
When with all the power that the dark side can draw from throughout the universe, Dooku hurls a jagged fragment of the durasteel table, Shmi Skywalker's gentle murmur I knew you would come for me, Anakin smashes it aside.
His head has been filled with the smoke from his smothered heart for far too long; it has been the thunder that darkens his mind. On Aargonar, on Jabiim, in the Tusken camp on Tatooine, that smoke had clouded his mind, had blinded him and left him flailing in the dark, a mindless machine of slaughter; but here now, within this ship, this microscopic cell of life in the infinite sterile desert of space, his firewalls have opened so that the terror and the rage are out there, in the fight instead of in his head, and Anakin's mind is clear as a crystal bell.
In that pristine clarity, there is only one thing he must do.
Decide.
So he does.
He decides to win.
He decides that Dooku should lose the same hand he took. Decision is reality, here: his blade moves simultaneously with his will and blue fire vaporizes black Corellian nanosilk and disintegrates flesh and shears bone, and away falls a Sith Lord's lightsaber hand, trailing smoke that tastes of charred meat and burned hair. The hand falls with a bar of scarlet blaze still extending from its spastic death grip, and Anakin's heart sings for the fall of that red blade.
He reaches out and the Force catches it for him.
And then Anakin takes Dooku's other hand as well.
This...
Kenobi's Master had been Qui-Gon Jinn, Dooku's own Padawan; Dooku had fenced Qui-Gon thousands of times, and he knew every weakness of the Ataro form, with its ridiculous acrobatics. He drove a series of flashing thrusts toward Kenobi's legs to draw the Jedi Master into a flipping overhead leap so that Dooku could burn through his spine from kidneys to shoulder blades-and this image, this plan, was so clear in Dooku's mind that he almost failed to notice that Kenobi met every one of his thrusts without so much as moving his feet, staying perfectly centered, perfectly balanced, blade never moving a millimeter more than was necessary, deflecting without effort, riposting with flickering strikes and stabs swifter than the tongue of a Garollian ghost viper, and when Dooku felt Skywalker regain his feet and stride once more toward his back, he finally registered the source of that blinding defensive velocity Kenobi had used a moment ago, and only then, belatedly, did he understand that Kenobi's Ataro and Shii-Cho had been ploys, as well.Kenobi had become a master of Soresu
...Never happened. Not in the 2 second cut-away, not in the fight PERIOD. Therefore Dooku's 'trouble w/ Kenobi's defense' is non-canon.
Moreover, according to G007 (of whom you agreed with), Kenobi never once used Soresu in the movie fight. See his philosophy regarding the AotC fight:
Originally posted by Galan007
"Obi-Wan leapt and spun, slashing side to side, chopping and thrusting, but all of Dooku's movements seemed far more efficient[...]His words spurred Obi-Wan forward with another series of slashes and chops, but Dooku's red blade angled left and then right, then up just enough to send Obi-Wan's descending blade slipping off to the side[...]
Obi-Wan steadied himself and shifted his lightsaber from hand to hand, getting a better grip on it. Then he exploded into motion, coming on again fiercely, his blue lightsaber flashing all about. He kept a better measure of his cuts this time, though, reversing his angle often, turning a wide slash into a sudden thrust[...]" - Attack of the Clones
.Slashes and chops are not part of Form III combat.
Disarm him in sabers only? No, he did not.
The entire on-screen fight depicts Kenobi doing nothing more than slashing and chopping at Dooku - hardly Soresu. Therefore the change from Ataro to Soresu never occured. With this being said, the novel's description of the fight also never occured rendering it non-canon.