rachel on 19/10/2007 at 15:35

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I'm no expert but I believe the correct term in fencing is indeed "touche" without accent, pronounced "toosh".

ignatios on 19/10/2007 at 16:42

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stick it to him raph

Also I feel compelled to point out that as far removed from real sword fighting as kendo is, tennis and baseball are closer to Star Wars sword fighting than kendo is. Modern kendo is highly stylised and focuses on one killing blow (or chopping his hand off at the wrist). If you want Star Wars style sword fighting, haidong gumdo is probably as close as you're gonna get.

And no I'm not a nipponophile!

demagogue on 19/10/2007 at 20:03

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Yeah, it's really the other way around. Not that kendo tries to be like Star Wars fighting, but Star Wars sword fighting was choreographed as a kind of stylized kendo ... the way they hold and sweep the swords, their posture, their stepping movements. I mean, Star Wars is a glorified remake of Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, so it makes sense Lucas wanted to have it kendo influenced. That's the basic form intended look ... not European fencing, not the broadswords of knights, not Arabian scimitars ... (haidong gumdo, interesting, that gets a footnote).

And like all theatrical sword fighting, it reverses the basic instinct. Rather than making your moves slight and unexpected, you want to make them huge, exaggerated, and expected from a mile away ... and you want a lot more motion where they're walking around. No one would ever actually fight that way. It's not a style to fight with, but more like a dance to be watched ... but both share the same basic posture and choreography. You see it with old samurai movies, too; they'll look more Star Wars like.

If you look at juniors or amateurs fighting kendo, it also looks more Star Wars like. They are doing lots of exaggerated sweeps and parries, slashing air, and are stepping around each other in circles. If you look at the pros doing it, yeah, it's like they both sit there almost motionless for a full minute, barely nudging their swords back and forth in the air, testing their opponent, looking for the millimeter opening in the other guy's position, and when they have it, it's that very quick, single killing blow to the head or wrist and it's over. It's dramatic to see the difference.

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edit: Haidong gumdo is interesting. Acc to Wiki:



I can see why you'd say that because haidong gumdo is the same basic style look, but a lot more in motion; people moving around. I'm not sure it was intentional, but that's how Star Wars ended up looking because they wanted it to be more dynamic looking for the movie and weren't going to be purists like samurai movie directors, like they started with kendo then added the movement. Star Wars is still focused on one-on-one fighting, but what you said makes sense.

demagogue on 19/10/2007 at 21:01

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Fair enough. I was thinking in terms of theatrical sword fighting, which is a technique all its own (or rather, a lack of one) that begs borrows and steals from all sorts of things and uses real technique only as far as it carries a look and feel. Everything I said was only meant to be about the "look" of this stuff; I didn't mean to say a thing about any actual style or technique. I really don't know much about real technique of sword fighting (except from my kendo practice), but neither did George Lucas in directing Star Wars fights (I imagine). I can just imagine from my experience what a director is thinking when he wants to transport its look and feel to the stage or screen. You watch a lot of swordfighting videos of the styles you like, get some pros from a particular style, point out what you like and don't, and gum it all together. They aren't really paying attention to the technique at all, just how it looks.

On "global swordfighting style", I just meant to say that, in interviews, iirc, Lucas said he wanted the look of his swordfighting to be broadly kendo-looking; that's what was in his mind, the look of kendo and not another style, and then he warped it from there to his own ends. I didn't mean to say anything about its or any other actual technique, and changed the wording of that post to hopefully say that better.

DinkyDogg on 19/10/2007 at 21:14

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I fenced for six years and I still don't know whether it's pronounced tooshay or toosh.