Rodent Wars Forum

This is for evaluation of sword/lightsaber/etc fighting in fiction. No current member of this forum is an experienced martial artist.

[Gif no longer available; you can find the scene on YouTube.]

I found 6 mistakes:
Ahsoka does a suicide spin.
Maul fails to take advantage of the spin.
Maul does a suicide spin.
Ahsoka fails to take advantage of the spin.
The moves are too fancy and flashy. For example, Maul twirls his lightsaber behind his back.
Ahsoka fails to take advantage of the twirl.

Rating: 4/10

Grievous (the robot-looking guy) is apparently aiming for Kenobi’s saber and electrostaff.
Grievous keeps leaving himself open.
Grievous keeps bringing all his sabers down in the same place.
Kenobi makes a suicidal leap over Grievous’ head.
Grievous fails to cut Kenobi in half as he makes the suicidal leap.
Kenobi gets kicked by Grievous and somehow flies about twelve feet.

Rating: 3/10

This it literally my favorite lightsaber duel. And my second favorite sword fight of all.

I don't see anything wrong with it. It's a masterpiece. A sword expert rated it at fifteen out of ten in (language warning).

And if you think the distance is off, remember that that's the point. Obi-Wan makes it look as if he's falling into Maul's trap by not retreating. That's what allows Maul to strike, and Obi-Wan to counter.

Rating: 9/10 at least, probably 10/10

Dooku is aiming for Kenobi's lightsaber.
Kenobi barely attacks, even when to do so might win the fight.
Kenobi could have cut off Dooku's legs, but he didn't extend his arms nearly enough.

Rating: 5/10

Poor bindwork. Why do they just shove each other? Also, Ahsoka doesn't defend herself properly, and Grievous doesn't seem to realize he has four lightsabers!

Rating: 5/10

That's not how you dual-wield. Anakin spins around suicidally, using one blade at a time.
Look carefully. If the fighters didn't block, they still wouldn't be hit, because they aren't aiming for each other.
The footwork is basically walking. It's not terrible, but it doesn't help.

Rating: 4/10

Commonly in VS debates the claim that Dooku is weak to strength-based attacks is brought up. This is supposedly because his lightsaber form, Makashi, is light and elegant and prefers to use one hand, making it physically weaker (inaccurate, but that's another story).


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.
—RotS Novel

The source above is often used to show that Dooku is weak to strength based assaults. But all it says is that Dooku tries to meet Skywalker strength-to-strength, and he's not strong enough to succeed. But in a real fight, raw strength is not that important. You don't just block—you parry, which means also countering in some way. In the movie, Dooku can be seen to try to push through Skywalker's guard, but gets stomped because he's not as strong.


Here are some times Dooku statically blocks enemy blows, which is not normally a good idea.





When Dooku gets in a bind or blade lock, he tries to push, either to force their blade into them or to shove them away.

But that's not good bindwork. In a bind, you want to wind, strike, tackle, or disengage—basically either get out or attack. Not just push. He's relying too much on brute strength. More examples of Dooku's poor bindwork can be found here.


On occasion Dooku uses some not-so-horrible bindwork.

The problem here is that he's still just shoving. Then he uses an accurate but super-obvious slide attack, which Kenobi should've seen coming.

Here he redirects Ventress' shove. But he still doesn't do much with the bind.


Sometimes the Count deflects blows instead of statically blocking.

While this is certainly better than some of his other performances, he's still overly relying on force. It's not completely stupid because he's using Opress's motion against him; but his deflections consist of hitting his opponent's blade to guide it away. The second and third deflections are okay, though, as they are much more technical.



So Dooku isn't weak to raw strength because he's elegant. He's weak because he tries to muscle his way to victory.

A realistic discussion of why Makashi is weak against Djem So.