The staffers at Starwars.com came together to rank the top ten Star Wars lightsaber battles. The battles were ranked by “”inventiveness, choreography and emotional impact”. The results will be no doubt controversial. Here’s what I have to say: as visually pleasing the lightsaber battles are in the newer trilogy, they lack the emotional impact of those in the original trilogy. In Episode IV, you have Obi Wan sacrificing himself to save Luke. It was not an incredibly well choreographed or pretty fight, but it still had an emotional impact. In The Empire Strikes Back, you have padawan Luke Skywalker facing off against a fully trained master in Darth Vader, which ends in one of the greatest movie twists in history, giving the fight an extremely emotional impact. Not to mention the fight contains some of the best cinematography in the series. And in Return of the Jedi, you have Luke facing off with Vader while fighting himself in choosing light or dark. The incredible thing about this fight is that, unlike the showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan, where Anakin remains remarkably calm and composed while fighting. Luke loses his stuff, he loses all composure; his fighting style is not refined or graceful. He is reduced to wailing on Vader in a pure fit of rage, giving the viewer our first true glimpse of what the dark side actually looks like.

But as I said before, these results will be controversial, so let me know what you think. You can view the results for yourself below: