JoltVib

Let’s talk about this new lightsaber. About a minute into the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer, a cloaked figure is tromping through a snowy forest and ignites a weird-looking lightsaber: it’s big, sort of flickery, and it has a crossbar.

Some on Twitter have taken to calling it a laser claymore.

Immediately, speculation began about the possible wisdom or stupidity of this design. Here at The Verge, we fell roughly into two camps. On one side, there are those who say this is terrible design. Their argument is as follows:

To which the other side responded:

The big question, in my opinion, is whether lightsaber blades can even slide. I don’t recall a time in the original three movies when blades slid. Opponents would cross blades, which seemed to stick together and make that crackling sound, and then push apart again. I assumed there was some sort of electrical force that locked blades together when they touch.

But Russell Brandom points out that there seems to be case of sliding here at 1:08 in the Anakin / Obi Wan / Yoda / Count Dooku fight, and that a crossguard could’ve helped.

The best explanation I’ve heard comes from the commenter squiz, who points out that the crossbar beams look unfocused and that maybe this guy is an old Sith "reawakened," and that he has an early model lightsaber. This seems plausible! But then the question is: did people realize the crossbar makes no sense? Did lightsabers get stickier at some point, making the crossbar useless? Is the crossbar a good idea or a dumb one? Discuss in the comments.

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