Remember Ahsoka’s original set of lightsabers from the Clone Wars cartoon? Weren’t they distinctive? Mostly because of how ugly they were? For those who are blessed with poor memories of the subject, the hilt essentially took the worst parts of Anakin’s standard saber, doubled them, and then dashed some of Obi-Wan’s terrible design choices in there for good measure. It doesn’t have the same distinctive backglow that the other colors have and makes the temple guards’ beige uniforms look ugly in its light. Finally, though no doubt important to Star Wars lore, yellow is just a bad color for a lightsaber. Also, what’s up with the short blades? The saber could at least look powerful if it had the same reach as Maul’s double-saber, but these are shorter shoto blades that make the weapon appear ineffective and weak. There are thin green lights near the head of each emitter which could be a bizarre power adjuster but are just as likely just lights slapped on to make it look futuristic. The design of the emitter seems to incorporate criss-crossing shrouds which actually looks pretty good but is wasted in the overall disjointed aesthetic of the hilt. Said hilt is surprisingly thick and has clashing shades of regal red and paltry yellow. Technically speaking, the lightsaber pike is a jaunty double-bladed saber with extremely short blades and an extended hilt. And since most lightsabers, including the yellow pike sabers used by the Jedi Temple guards, are based generally on real-life weapons, they were pretty much doomed from the start. Spears, while not limited to a single use, doesn’t have nearly as much variety options as swords. Swords are deceptively versatile, capable of being used in a variety of forms and styles. There’s a very distinct reason why swords are considered a more traditional hero’s weapon than spears. It looks foolish and seems to serve no practical purpose apart from making the saber stand out like a sore thumb. Colored black, this sphere has a series of large, bulky silver cubes sticking out of it’s equator. But the most bizarre element to the hilt is the pommel, which is machined to look like a giant ball bearing attached to the end of the saber. Imagine holding it with both hands when suddenly your top hand gets scorched from the exhaust heat of a literal laser sword. Towards the emitter is what appears to be a black vent system, which is impractical if nothing else. The activation stud and power adjuster are both weirdly large and stand out against the sheen of the upper hilt. Based around a fairly simple silver tube, it features a plastic black grip on only half of the hilt’s base, broken up by a series of openings that expose the metal tubing beneath. Seriously, he carries at least six of these things on him at all times and it feels like one of the comedy droids from Clone Wars should have asked him why he always had six PVC tubes.Īfter his first and very basic lightsaber was destroyed in Phantom Menace during his fight with fight with Darth Maul, newly-minted Jedi knight Obi-Wan Kenobi made himself a new saber that was, somehow, even more basic than his first one. Instead, Grievous seems to wield a set of generic metal tubes with the occasional emitter ornament, a trait they carry from Revenge of the Sith to Clone Wars. What if you could recognize one of the sabers he was using as one from the then-still canon extended universe? Wouldn’t that have been insanely cool? Or even if writers took him in the direction they ultimately did, collecting the lightsabers of all the Jedi he’d killed, wouldn’t it make him seem so much more intimidating if the Jedi he’d killed had unique sabers that made them stand out amongst the crowd? If he were to make his own sabers, he could have four copies of very cybernetic saber hilts, or maybe he could make four slightly different but thematically similar blades. Which is a real shame considering the potential that his character presents. It’s very obvious from the offset that more effort was put into designing General Grievous’s cyborg body and four-armed fighting style than the actual design of his lightsabers.
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