Should Lightsabers Be "Special"?

Can confirm this. Swinging around a plastic lightsaber like a maniac can and will end in injury and embarrassment...

 

You are right about that. I forgot about those. I guess I just don't want to see your average to above average stormtrooper walk up to Luke and whip a lightsaber out.​

 

Anyone can turn on and use a lightsaber, like Han cutting open the Tauntaun, but it's not that useful if you're not trained unless you want to cut open a Tauntaun or fighting someone equally untrained with a lightsaber. Remember Luke's original training with the remote in ANH, it's about sensing things 'before they happen', knowing where the remote is going to blast and instinctively placing the lightsaber in its path.
So unless there is a new 'batch' of force sensitive clones, it's more likely to be an elite force sensitive regiment (kind of hinted at in Rebels last year) led by Captain Phasma. And as an elite regiment, she'd be understandably upset by one of her people defecting.

 

Yes, someone with a lightsaber is useless against a blaster, unless they're force sensitive and trained, then they're extremely effective. As the Force sensitive aren't that common, either they're cloning them, or it's a very, very small elite regiment.

 

I doubt they've cloned a mass Force sensitive army, plus the evidence seems they're not clones anymore. It's just an outside possibility. I'm guessing like in Rebels, the very small number of Force sensitive recruits are taken out and put in special programs.

 

It's just my opinion, GL gives his, no worries.

 

Not sure if it's non canon any more or not, but one of the reasons Jedi couldn't be cloned was that because of their attachment to the force. Cloning caused a psychosis and the cloned jedi would essentially be insane.

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 2, 2015, Original Post Date: Oct 2, 2015 ---

I don't think we are going to see a ton of lightsaber wielding non-jedi / sith in this. JJ is too attached to the original films to allow that change in the mythology. Unless he wanted to show why only Jedi carried such a weapon.

 

I've always thought that Jedi used lightsabers instead of projectile weapons because of their philosophy toward combat - it should be defensive. In that regard it's pretty ideal, in that you can deflect shots fired at you and effectively, and literally, disarm your opponent without killing him. But in essence it's just a blade like any other, and there are plenty of people who are proficient with blades. So why not train to use one? You won't be as preternaturally skilled as a Jedi (or Sith), but you could hold your own.

Lightsabers aren't magical weapons that only FOrce users can wield, but Force users do wield them better. That's my belief and has been since I was a little kid.

 

IMHO, a lightsaber is just a piece of technolohy, albeit a very sophisticated one. One only needs Force powers to use a lightsaber with extreme sophistication, like deflecting blaster bolts. Again, IMHO.

 

Also very hard to produce? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't force mandatory in process, to align crystal properly, or something?

 

Possibly; this I don't know. (I assume this is from one of the comic shows?). In any case, there is, as far as I know, no indication you have to be a force user to use/wield a lightsaber (nor fire the Death Star supercanon, which appearently also require Kyber crystals).

 

This would beg the question - assuming there are lightsaber wielding platoons of Stormtroopers in TFA - who are masproducing lightsabers for the First Order? Perhapts someone have found a cache full of ancient lightsabers beyond the Outer Rim? (Which might explain why Kylo Ren's weapon is so odd).

 

Lightsabers are special, despite their overuse in the prequels. The poll is too restrictive in its options. I've no problem with non force users using them, because when they come up against a Jedi, they'll be taken to task. I don't foresee it being a problem though (lightsabers in boxes of cornflakes)- people who use them will have to have some competency with them for the weapon to be a viable option. If I see non-force users deflecting laser bolts without any difficulty, then we may have a problem.

All that been said, I like the idea of a lightsaber being unique to the user. One has to craft it themselves and they aren't made in a factory to be handed out to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

 

I posted bits and pieces here and there in several other threads about the same topic. There hasn't been enough discussion here about the example's we've had in cannon about non Force sensitives utilizing a lightsaber in combat. Outside the exceptions like Cad Bane and Han Solo temporarily using one, we only have two primary wielders that I can remember; General Grievous and Pre Vizsla. The only way these two were able to wield lightsabers in battle was due to their martial prowess, and even then, both of these characters were eventually bested by Jedi in saber-to-saber combat. Furthermore, these characters had circumstances surrounding their sabers background which made them "special". Grievous' sabers served as his smug reminder to opponents of the previous Jedi he had killed. Pre Vizsla weilded the Dark Saber, an ancient weapon that his Mandalorian ancestors took from the Jedi in one of their early battles.

The point of bringing this up is that with our two primary canon non-force saber wielders were "special" in a sense; their lightsabers provided background and context within the story. I hope that the sequel trilogy continues this type of exception, with only a subset of elite Stormtoopers receiving saber training.