I don’t recall any “mysticism” attached to lightsabers prior to the RPG coming out in '86 or '87; not that there was a lot of EU material available back then, compared to the glut of stuff that began flowing after the Thrawn Trilogy by T. Zahn which was introduced in '91.
As someone with some very limited experience with swordplay, I can attest that a weightless blade like a lightsaber would take some getting used to, but would not be impossible for a non-Jedi to master.
I always thought that a better lightsaber would be similar to the bloodswords in the Star of the Guardians series- if you didn’t have the micromachines already in your body, you could still wield a bloodsword, but only once, as you would begin to die as soon as the needles in the hilt went into your palm.
Grievous in EpIII wielded lightsabers, and I don’t think he was a jedi. With enough training anyone could probably use it, but you probably wouldn’t be able to use it to deflect blaster shots or survive a duel with another jedi.
I expect that Grievous had better than human reflexes though, what with being “more machine than man.” Besides that, his ‘technique’ was basically multiple windmills of death, rather than anything that could really be called swordplay.
That said, I tend to agree with you. A lightsaber is simple and predictable, not like (say) a monofilament whip that could very easily recoil in an unpredictable way and slice its owner in half. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why a normal swordsman couldn’t use one skillfully.
in the scene in question, obi-wan shuts down his saber, puts it into the saber holster/hook/thingy; picks up anakin’s and walks away.
it is a “you are no longer a jedi, no lightsaber for you” thing. anakin is no longer worthy of the saber, he has turned from the jedi ways. like a court marshal, you are stripped of rank, and your sword is broken.
he then took it to tatooine with him, along with luke. i figure he thought he would use anakin’s saber while training luke. lars wisely kept them apart.
the “your father would have wanted you to have this” thing would be true if anakin had died a jedi, he would have wanted it to go to his son.
obi wan after years in the hot desert suns and sand storms seems to see anakin as one person, and darth vader a completely different person. a rather interesting defense mechanism.
But there’s only a few Jedi spread out over an entire galaxy. Sure, people have HEARD of Jedi, they’ve heard they have some powers and stuff, but they’ve never seen a Jedi in action. It’s like, you know there are Secret Service agents that protect the president, but you’ve probably never seen one, and even if you had you don’t know their techniques and procedures except in a general way.
And any officers who worked closely with the Jedi twenty years ago were certainly all purged by the Emperor. The ones left are chosen not for their skills but for their political reliabilty, which is why they constantly make boneheaded military blunders and can’t hit the broad side of a barn.
I just assume it was Tarkin spouting propaganda/the official government position, much like the Soviets claiming to have stamped out religion or President Amindjabwossname declaring there are no homosexuals in Iran.
People are pretty stupid though, You wouldn’t think thousands of people could think the Holocaust was a myth a few decades after the fact either.
They don’t have you tube, libraries or access to old news reports in the empire?
I think you’re right; that’s definitely the best explanation for it.
But it still bugs me, because Darth Vader is right there using his Jedi powers to do stuff all the time. I could see if everyone was sort of pretending that there had been no Jedi (although again, we plainly see at the end of Episode 3 that at least one Star Destroyer is already staffed with people who were presumably part of the Old Republic, so it isn’t as if there was no continuity between the OR and the Empire), but it doesn’t really make any sense for an officer to be getting all up in Vader’s face about it.
Except that it would hardly be a new height of hypocrisy in the dictators’ tradition to use Vader while at the same time making it official propaganda that Jedi powers were exaggerated myth. And Tarkin is exactly the sort of person who would call Vader on that. Remember, Vader is an outside consultant brought in by the Emperor to “help” Tarkin. Tarkin knows that Vader is the Emperor’s right-hand man, but he’s still the one in command, not Vader.
In the original scenes, after the “disarming” Gollum floats by on his own lava flow and says “ooh, another precious”, so Obi Wan takes the sword, whereupon Gollum thinks a moment, says “Trade ya!”, and then goes over the lava falls. Unfortunately there was a copyright infringement lawsuit so it was removed.
Well, it is a damned good movie, is what I meant. (Although I do like the prequels, unlike most people.)
Yeah, but how heavily censored would they be in the Empire? It’s supposed to be like Nazi German, or the Soviet Union.
Besides, it’s not like Tarkin didn’t believe in the Force so much, as that he just thought the Jedi were pretty much wiped out. Vader and the Emperor were the only ones left. He didn’t feel that the Force was stronger than technology.
And a lot of Imperials probably hadn’t seen Vader first hand, and probably thought the rumors were phony, and that Vader hadn’t actually choked them telekinetically.
Sorry for the hijack…hey, I started the thread.
While I’ve got you all here, what’s a Grand Moff?
But even Han had never heard of them, and he’d been around a bit. Oh, and he was the only non-Jedi/Sith character who was shown using a lightsabre.
The books said that Moffs were sector governors. Grand Moffs were in charge of super-sector groups, typically “trouble spots.”
The next rank up from a common, everyday Moff, of course! 
Grand Moffs. Basically, people who were in charge of trouble spots, like ExTank said, and reported directly to the emperor.
I don’t recall who posted this, but :
A bit off topic, but how much did Annakin’s maiming and burns and transformation into James Earl Jones affect his ability to use the Force? Was he unaltered, or “not what he was before but still more powerful than others”? And I wonder if Vader could use force lightning.
Well, if you accept that the ability to tap the Force comes from microscopic creatures in your body, then there’s a theory that, by losing his limbs, Anakin actually lost a significant portion of his strength. As the only remaining Jedi (aside from Palpatine), he’s still pretty damn fearsome to mundane folk, but he could have been stupidly powerful had he gotten out of that situation intact.
There’s a further theory that Palpatine wanted that to happen so that Vader couldn’t actually overthrow him, as Sith apprentices were meant to eventually do to their masters. By making sure his apprentice could never be strong enough, Palpatine’s power was completely cemented. But I think that assumes Palpatine isn’t merely a master schemer, but omniscient as well.