Star Wars turns 50 next year, but the filming already does now.
50 years ago today, the duel between Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader on the Death Star was filmed. More precisely, from May 27 to May 30, 1976, at Elstree Studios near London. The actual face-off between the two opponents, however, was filmed on June 1.
The film's stunt coordinator, Peter Diamond, described the style of the duel like this:
„George said, I’ve got these laser swords- I don’t want broadswords and I don’t want fencing. I want it somewhere in between, so I had to create a style that was unique.“
The simple reason the duel took several days to film at all was that a lot of blades broke:
„It’s a natural tendency when you are cutting at someone’s head to bring it down as hard as you can. The fight took slightly longer to shoot than anticipated because of that problem .. and David Prowse is such a heavy-handed man, every time they touched swords, the blades kept breaking.“
The blades, back then simple wooden rods coated with the same material used for cinema screens, simply broke because Darth Vader's actor, David Prowse, hit too hard.
So remember, even 50 years later: hitting too hard in choreographies doesn't pay off 😉
Source: J. W. Rinzler's The Making of Star Wars (2007), Paul Duncan's The Star Wars Archives (2018, Taschen) – required reading for anyone who wants to dive deep into the saga.
