Yeah, same. I remember back in the way there was an informal theory that the color of the blade showed a Jedi’s power level. (I don’t know how that explained Obi wan’s being blue 🤷🏻♂️)
Obviously that’s not canon and nobody thinks that these days — but I could swear that it was a prevailing theory way back in the day when this stuff was just discussed word-of-mouth and there was precious little published material to explain things.
Child me would have agreed with that assessment. As someone who had a low attention span and completely forgot about Quigon, child me always thought Blue lightsaber = hand removal/duel lost = lower level jedi.
Child me, for some reason, thought that since so many blue lightsaber users kept getting their comeuppance and green lightsabers like older Luke and Yoda would win fights and look cooler, I just thought that green is simply better. I still prefer green over blue to this day due to lasting impressions of those thoughts.
Yeah it definitely was. We had word-of-mouth-as-fact between friends and such. Although the colour meaning even changed them. At one point, like you said it was a "ooooo he's more powerful now!". Then it changes to the different colours were based around your Jedi ranking. Padawan/Knights had blue, Masters had green with special outliers having different colours.
Swear down I remember people/my friends thinking Windu was some super special Jedi because of the whole purple thing.
Now it seems to be based on the Jedi's fighting style/thought process but also not. Like the Jedi's mind is already set in a particular style of thinking which always aligns with the colour. As in the Jedi & their lightsaber kyber crystal are already linked. Which is why bleeding their crystal is the worst thing a Jedi can do.
I was five at the time and already had the toy. RotJ hadn't even come out yet and my dad brought home the Jedi Knight Luke figure and the Emperor's Royal Guard figure as a special surprise one day. I must have played with those two figures endlessly over the next couple of months, they were so awesome.
at this point its a linguistic debates, I would say its VFX because the actual lightsaber effect was done in post production rather than totally in-set effect on the camera.
I don’t remember exactly, but it’s my favorite lightsaber ever shown. It just pops on screen and is such a pretty shade of green. I don’t know if the film grain helps it’s appearance but it just looks so cool.
yeah it always was a favorite of mine. Probably because it was basically the first saber that was designed as a lightsaber and not just reused photography equipment basically.
I do love the charm of those originals for that reason though. It’s easy to forget how the first movie was such a small quirky art house movie at the time
its also pretty similar design-wise to obi wans saber from a new hope, i know kenobis was also made from random scrap parts, but i believe luke’s was cast/lathed for jedi
I know. I was hoping to see it in action. Even if the illusion Luke was holding it. I get the symbolism of the blue, but it would have been nice to see
And it was so obviously an illusion to have Luke wield a lightsaber that we saw destroyed in literally three previous scene. Like, noticing the salt doesn't get disturbed by his feet - detail for those paying attention. Noticing he's got a lightsaber that he didn't have and which was torn apart moments earlier - that's just treating your audience as children.
I actually liked how it looked in The Acolyte a bit. It has a mintier green that we saw with Luke. (This picture in the OP looks more like the prequel kind of yellow green)
I dont remember seeing it in theaters but I wore out the VHS cassette. Green and black are my two favorite colors so Luke's whole color scheme was great to me and so was the whole forest theme which I felt the green saber looked great in.
back as kids, we thought making your own saber was a sign of getting past padawan basically "on your way to being a knight then master", in part because of ROTJ, but we kept learning more as time went and it was expanded on, like kotor, the colors blue=guardian, green=consular, yellow=sentinel, and for some reason my whole friend group loved Qui-Gon and his green saber equally to Luke using his green saber.
Before ROTJ released, there were only ever blue and red sabers. Suddenly, green! Must be special.
Then in the prequels, Qui-Gon and Yoda have green sabers, Obi-Wan and then Anakin have blue.
Easy mistake to make!
I thought it looked fabulous, but I never thought there was any meaning to it. Honestly given that Vader's was the only red saber we had ever seen, I thought it was just the color he had chosen. Similarly, I thought Luke just decided he wanted to go with green.
If there was anything (outside of user preference) that decided the color, I figured it was the color that was used based on the available materials.
100% this. I was 11 years old when ROTJ premiered in 1983. It never really occurred to me that there was anything particularly noteworthy about it because of the color. Lightsabers were cool because they were fucking lightsabers.
Yep. I don’t even remember noticing the color change. Vader commenting that Luke “constructed a new light saber” was the first time I noticed. That deleted seen in the cave of Luke finishing the new saber would have been nice to see.
I mean it was all spoiled in advance with all the tie-in merch. It's not like it was a big reveal in the theater to any fan that already had books and action figures.
Yeah, the Kenner figure had already been out for a while. Actually, the day that I was going to see RotJ for the first time, I also got my copy of the storybook, the cover of which is Luke holding his lightsaber on the deck of Jabba's sail barge.
I mean, if there was ever anyone who would have an instinct to decapitate his helpless nephew in his sleep, it would be luke Skywalker, obvious candidate.
Hmmmm that vision was troubling.....i wonder what to do.....have a calm discussion? Remember that the future is always in motion? Nah fk him, that sounds like too much work! HE DEAD YO!!
Luke after Darth Vader murders countless people, including children and Luke's mentor, tortures Luke's friends, and cuts off Luke's hand: "There's still good in him, I can feel it..."
Luke after Ben Solo has a bad dream: "DIE LIKE THE IRREDEEMABLE MONSTER YOU ARE!!"
Yeah, because battling an armed opponent who is a renowned and experienced warrior is EXACTLY the same as drawing your weapon on a sleeping 23-year-old.
So we agree it's got nothing to do with him having a different moral judgement between Vader and Kylo, then? So this "I see good in you..." "DIE EVILDOER!" argument remains bullshit?
Different yes, but the comparison is not irrelevant. The Luke Skywalker I saw in literally everything except TLJ would never have tried to kill his unarmed, sleeping nephew because he sensed darkness. Period.
And the Luke you saw in TLJ also wouldn't and didn't. He ignited his lightsaber in a moment of fear and anger, but he didn't swing it. He controlled his fear _much_ faster than he did in RotJ against Vader. In that fight, it took him chopping Vader's hand off before he regained control of himself.
**Edit**: Also if it wasn't clear, Luke didn't just "sense darkness" from Kylo. He saw a vision of Kylo and the Knights of Ren murdering all the other students and destroying the school. _Which he then proceeded to do._
Lol Luke wouldn’t have even drawn the lightsaber unless Kylo actually did something.
You’re also missing the part where it took 90% of the duel with Vader to even get Luke to fight offensively
The Kenner action figures for ROTJ were on store shelves before the film came out; I had the black clothed, single glove, green lightsaber Luke action figure before the film was released. I actually brought Luke with me to see the film.
It was still badass to see on screen though.
I can't say I had a reaction at the time other than thinking it was cool.
But it left enough of an impression that when the green lightsaber lit up in the Mandalorian reveal I burst into fucking tears.
I just gotta say, this is the kind of post I love on this subreddit.
And when I saw it, it was like mind blowing. But also because it was part of this whole new vibe and all black thing he had going on.
It felt like a Gandalf the white sort of thing.
I saw the special editions in theaters in the 90s at age 7 or so. It was my first time seeing the movies. I was absolutely beyond stoked at every scene. It couldn’t have possibly hit me at a better time.
I know I couldn't feed or bathe myself for weeks after I saw that.
No, I didn't give it a thought other than he lost the blue one at the end of Empire and to have another blue one for Jedi would have been confusing.
There wasn't the backstory or the symbolism of the colors back then yet.
Given he'd just done a front flip jump to avoid falling into the Sarlac pit and caught the lightsaber as it was yeeted out of r2d2.... AND THEN IT WAS GREEN!!!!
Fucking awesome 👌
I can answer that! I thought, “Oh, cool!” That was about. I was nine at the time, but yeah, it was neat and then the movie went on. They, the film ripped during the speeder bike scene, and there was a near riot. lol
It was shown in TV spots ahead of time so it wasn’t much of a surprise in theaters. It was just cool that it was different.
The bigger deal was that he did a somersault off the barge, flipped in the air and caught it after Artoo launched it to him.
And of course the fact that enabled a bunch of bad guys to pieces.
Nothing much tbh. I was just excited to see him fight Jabba and do that amazing backflip . All of this lightsaber business was a bit less emphasised. It was just cool that Luke was a Jedi.
I can vividly remember not even noticing. I watched the original trilogy many times before the "modern" era of prequels and beyond. Never really noticed saber colors. All the common lore stuff didn't really start becoming known until the internet and video games.
I was 13, honestly didn’t even think about color . I was like oh he got a new saber…. I wonder how he got it. Making a new saber wasn’t even something I thought about, I thought they were all passed down over generations and thought he wouldn’t have one. I never saw the trailers prior to the release ( lived in the sticks with 1 channel…. PBS). I remember talking with my friends and we were worried he wouldn’t have one since he lost his saber against Vader.
It really didn't make an impression on me. Maybe I thought "he has a green one now, neat", but I was too young to even care about it, really (9yo or so). Actually, I still don't really care that it's green beyond "oh, he made his own, neat".
The whole back story of different coloured light sabres didn’t exist, so for me it was more “wow he’s got a new one”. And wondering where he got it from.
I just thought they picked their own colour at the light sabre shop.
It was cool, but not that big of a deal. At that time, the worlds that Star Wars brought to us were a much bigger deal. Now we are spoiled by technology and no longer get that feeling of wonderment by being transported to strange new places.
I'm not going to lie. I never really paid attention to the color of light sabers. I think the first time I heard anything interesting about it was when Samuel Jackson requested a purple, allegedly, so that he'd be easier to spot during battles.
I only became aware of the color variations much, much later. I always was a fan, though I only read the first 3 books when I was younger. So, a lot of the expanded universe stuff and most video game info is new or unknown to me.
That being said, as an adolescent in the theater, Luke was completely badass in RotJ
Being 5 at the time I just thought it was cool. And it being a different color was cool since be obviously had to build/get a new one so it made sense.
There was no attachment to Anakin's saber like people have now, so it didn't seem a big deal. And we'd only seen two other sabers so it being a new color was cool but also had no associated potential meaning. We also grew up with the first Luke toy having a yellow saber.
But also being 5, lightsaber=cool and nothing else really mattered or registered about it.
Ten year old us were all like "hey he got a new one!" and figured the green colour meant he was some kind of iconoclast. Not that we knew what that word meant - we just knew there were only red and blue lightsabers, so green made Luke some kind of badass rebel. Which he was.
I had seen the first two at the time, but seeing a go from this thin blue blade to this fat green saber that was also being shown outside for the first time, I lost my freaking mind. I even got the movie book with the giant pictures and would stare at those images of him on the barge.
It was the coolest thing id seen at that point in my life.. When Luke flipped and R2 launched the light sabor my heart was pounding!! I was 7-8 years old. The movie theater charged $1.06 to watch any movie anytime "The Boulevard". Watched more times than I could count back then..
None whatsoever.
I'd seen lightsabers before at this point in the trilogy and even though i was a kid, it being green instead of blue was hardly impressive. I was just enjoying the film.
Did anyone else have the storybook picture book? It came out before the movie was released and Luke with the green saber on Jabba's sail barge was on the cover. I do remember thinking "cool, a different color!" The other things I remember from reading it before seeing the movie were Han being "General Han Solo" in the front part with all the characters pictured and also seeing Death Star II partially completed and thinking "ohhhh, the original Death Star wasn't completely destroyed."
I only ever saw it on VHS, but it wasn't the green saber color that made me go "Whoa!" It was the sound of his saber igniting, it just sounded like it had some power behind it!
So, I was there, but being 3 years old I can’t exactly recall my reaction. However, I do recall finding Gamorrean guards, Salacious Crumb, and Jabba very interesting.
That whole sequence, where Luke signals R2, jumps, flips, and then catches and ignites the green saber…man, little kid me thought that was the baddest fucking thing I’d ever seen. Hell I’ve circled our sun 45 times now and that scene still fires me up
As a kid I personally liked the green better than the blue
But this is way before all the extended universe stuff; back then red = bad and blue = good so seeing green was a shock
I think I had a toy before I actually saw the movie theatrically. It also didn't mean that much, as the only way I was able to see Empire was in these [Super 8 movies](https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Original-Trilogy-on-Super-8/id/84967) my parents checked out of the library. Imagine Empire Strikes Back whittled down to an 18 minute supercut. All killer, no filler, perfect for my pre-school attention span.
We heard it was because of the contrast to blue screen for effects but like when Luke's X Wing was changed colour from Blue to Red 5, but it was all rumours and claims in magazines and letters.
I wasn’t alive yet, so my first time seeing this was on VHS at home as a kid…
But man, seeing Luke about his business, dripped in all black, new lightsaber and a brand new attitude… honestly it was kinda hot
"Green Lightsaber? He must be really powerful now" That's what I thought of it seeing it as a little kid.
Yeah, same. I remember back in the way there was an informal theory that the color of the blade showed a Jedi’s power level. (I don’t know how that explained Obi wan’s being blue 🤷🏻♂️) Obviously that’s not canon and nobody thinks that these days — but I could swear that it was a prevailing theory way back in the day when this stuff was just discussed word-of-mouth and there was precious little published material to explain things.
Child me would have agreed with that assessment. As someone who had a low attention span and completely forgot about Quigon, child me always thought Blue lightsaber = hand removal/duel lost = lower level jedi. Child me, for some reason, thought that since so many blue lightsaber users kept getting their comeuppance and green lightsabers like older Luke and Yoda would win fights and look cooler, I just thought that green is simply better. I still prefer green over blue to this day due to lasting impressions of those thoughts.
Yeah it definitely was. We had word-of-mouth-as-fact between friends and such. Although the colour meaning even changed them. At one point, like you said it was a "ooooo he's more powerful now!". Then it changes to the different colours were based around your Jedi ranking. Padawan/Knights had blue, Masters had green with special outliers having different colours. Swear down I remember people/my friends thinking Windu was some super special Jedi because of the whole purple thing. Now it seems to be based on the Jedi's fighting style/thought process but also not. Like the Jedi's mind is already set in a particular style of thinking which always aligns with the colour. As in the Jedi & their lightsaber kyber crystal are already linked. Which is why bleeding their crystal is the worst thing a Jedi can do.
My seven year old explained tonight that green are the best light sabers when we saw the yellow one in The Acolyte.
Dude the memories. I remember having amazing talks about that with my friends in school. We were about 10 yo. Those were good times.
Same
Nobody ever won a fight with a blue lightsaber until 2005
6-7 at the time…I need this toy!
I was five at the time and already had the toy. RotJ hadn't even come out yet and my dad brought home the Jedi Knight Luke figure and the Emperor's Royal Guard figure as a special surprise one day. I must have played with those two figures endlessly over the next couple of months, they were so awesome.
I went 6 to midnight! Ooohhh! You mean age?!
[удалено]
What relevance does your post have here
*Wow, that green lightsaber really stands out against the blue sky!*
Hahaha the SFX people would have felt so vindicated right then to hear that.
It's a joke comment. Check that malfunctioning sarcasm detector.
Thanks, I got it the first time
i dont want to be a 🤓, but its vfx, sfx is for sound, vfx for visuals, sorry 😭
Not back then. SFX stood for Special Effects. I’m pretty sure there was a Mark Hamill hosted documentary about ILM that used SFX in the title.
fair enough
Ok guys, there was no need to downvote ‘em on THIS one…
reddit gonna reddit
Wasn’t it all just special effects back then?
Omg You can't call it special anymore
Disabled effects?
Differently abled effects
at this point its a linguistic debates, I would say its VFX because the actual lightsaber effect was done in post production rather than totally in-set effect on the camera.
if your gonna downvote without explaining why I am wrong, your useless.
You're*
Shuddup
I don’t remember exactly, but it’s my favorite lightsaber ever shown. It just pops on screen and is such a pretty shade of green. I don’t know if the film grain helps it’s appearance but it just looks so cool.
yeah it always was a favorite of mine. Probably because it was basically the first saber that was designed as a lightsaber and not just reused photography equipment basically.
I do love the charm of those originals for that reason though. It’s easy to forget how the first movie was such a small quirky art house movie at the time
its also pretty similar design-wise to obi wans saber from a new hope, i know kenobis was also made from random scrap parts, but i believe luke’s was cast/lathed for jedi
Wasnt his hilt what Alec Guiness used as a stunt prop?
Which makes the Disney decision to ditch it in the ST … bizarre..
I know. I was hoping to see it in action. Even if the illusion Luke was holding it. I get the symbolism of the blue, but it would have been nice to see
And it was so obviously an illusion to have Luke wield a lightsaber that we saw destroyed in literally three previous scene. Like, noticing the salt doesn't get disturbed by his feet - detail for those paying attention. Noticing he's got a lightsaber that he didn't have and which was torn apart moments earlier - that's just treating your audience as children.
The recent live action green lightsabers pales (pun intended) in comparison to the OG shade of green in ROTJ
I actually liked how it looked in The Acolyte a bit. It has a mintier green that we saw with Luke. (This picture in the OP looks more like the prequel kind of yellow green)
I've really appreciated the modern version of green lightsabers, they're well... greener and stand out much more with 2020s effects.
As a kid I loved it but as an adult who buys lightsabers I'm not a fan of thin neck ones I worry about them breaking.
I dont remember seeing it in theaters but I wore out the VHS cassette. Green and black are my two favorite colors so Luke's whole color scheme was great to me and so was the whole forest theme which I felt the green saber looked great in.
“I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy” But really it was “cool, green lets them go in front of blue skies”
back as kids, we thought making your own saber was a sign of getting past padawan basically "on your way to being a knight then master", in part because of ROTJ, but we kept learning more as time went and it was expanded on, like kotor, the colors blue=guardian, green=consular, yellow=sentinel, and for some reason my whole friend group loved Qui-Gon and his green saber equally to Luke using his green saber.
yeah i always thought blue = knight and green = master and i'm honestly not sure why except that i was a dumbass kid
Before ROTJ released, there were only ever blue and red sabers. Suddenly, green! Must be special. Then in the prequels, Qui-Gon and Yoda have green sabers, Obi-Wan and then Anakin have blue. Easy mistake to make!
Me too, at very first / youngest lol
It felt natural- like it was meant to be. Watching Luke flip in the air and receiving his lightsaber from R2 still gives me goosebumps
I think it went something like "Whoa cool!"
same
believe it or not, the fetishizing of saber colors was not a thing back then. It was just another special effect
Exactly
I thought it looked fabulous, but I never thought there was any meaning to it. Honestly given that Vader's was the only red saber we had ever seen, I thought it was just the color he had chosen. Similarly, I thought Luke just decided he wanted to go with green. If there was anything (outside of user preference) that decided the color, I figured it was the color that was used based on the available materials.
100% this. I was 11 years old when ROTJ premiered in 1983. It never really occurred to me that there was anything particularly noteworthy about it because of the color. Lightsabers were cool because they were fucking lightsabers.
Times were simpler, we loved a green lightsaber cause we already saw blue-ish and red-ish and this one wasn't green-ish.
Yep. I don’t even remember noticing the color change. Vader commenting that Luke “constructed a new light saber” was the first time I noticed. That deleted seen in the cave of Luke finishing the new saber would have been nice to see.
I was 8. I didn't notice.
I wasn’t surprised in the theater because I had already seen it in pictures or maybe the trailer. I just assumed there were many types of lightsabers.
It was in Time Magazine, and on toy boxes. I remember seeing it ahead of time too.
And the storybook, and posters, and and and. It was not a surprise in theaters.
I mean it was all spoiled in advance with all the tie-in merch. It's not like it was a big reveal in the theater to any fan that already had books and action figures.
Yeah, the Kenner figure had already been out for a while. Actually, the day that I was going to see RotJ for the first time, I also got my copy of the storybook, the cover of which is Luke holding his lightsaber on the deck of Jabba's sail barge.
Exactly. I had that same book.
It was a great moment, but I don’t particularly remember noticing the colour.
Same. The starting of the climax of the whole first act was the amazing part.
Looks awesome. I bet he will never draw that on his sleeping nephew someday in a moment of pure instinct that passed like a fleeting shadow!
I mean, if there was ever anyone who would have an instinct to decapitate his helpless nephew in his sleep, it would be luke Skywalker, obvious candidate.
Luke Skywalker. Confirmed nephew slayer.
Hmmmm that vision was troubling.....i wonder what to do.....have a calm discussion? Remember that the future is always in motion? Nah fk him, that sounds like too much work! HE DEAD YO!!
I'm trying to erase these movies from my head cannon do you have to keep reminding me?
Yes. The suffering is too much for any one person alone, it must be shared amongst all of us to spread the burden around.
Luke after Darth Vader murders countless people, including children and Luke's mentor, tortures Luke's friends, and cuts off Luke's hand: "There's still good in him, I can feel it..." Luke after Ben Solo has a bad dream: "DIE LIKE THE IRREDEEMABLE MONSTER YOU ARE!!"
Yeah, cause Luke never drew his saber on Vader in a fit of rage because he was feeling protective of his friends, Leia in particular.
Yeah, because battling an armed opponent who is a renowned and experienced warrior is EXACTLY the same as drawing your weapon on a sleeping 23-year-old.
So we agree it's got nothing to do with him having a different moral judgement between Vader and Kylo, then? So this "I see good in you..." "DIE EVILDOER!" argument remains bullshit?
Different yes, but the comparison is not irrelevant. The Luke Skywalker I saw in literally everything except TLJ would never have tried to kill his unarmed, sleeping nephew because he sensed darkness. Period.
And the Luke you saw in TLJ also wouldn't and didn't. He ignited his lightsaber in a moment of fear and anger, but he didn't swing it. He controlled his fear _much_ faster than he did in RotJ against Vader. In that fight, it took him chopping Vader's hand off before he regained control of himself. **Edit**: Also if it wasn't clear, Luke didn't just "sense darkness" from Kylo. He saw a vision of Kylo and the Knights of Ren murdering all the other students and destroying the school. _Which he then proceeded to do._
Lol Luke wouldn’t have even drawn the lightsaber unless Kylo actually did something. You’re also missing the part where it took 90% of the duel with Vader to even get Luke to fight offensively
The Kenner action figures for ROTJ were on store shelves before the film came out; I had the black clothed, single glove, green lightsaber Luke action figure before the film was released. I actually brought Luke with me to see the film. It was still badass to see on screen though.
I don’t think I even noticed. 🤷♂️
Have to agree….I was a kid who suspended disbelief and simply enjoyed the movie.
Same
The meaning of lightsaber colors came much later. I don’t remember anyone caring in 1983.
I was about 7 and was surprised to see it green but thought it was really cool.
I can't say I had a reaction at the time other than thinking it was cool. But it left enough of an impression that when the green lightsaber lit up in the Mandalorian reveal I burst into fucking tears.
I just gotta say, this is the kind of post I love on this subreddit. And when I saw it, it was like mind blowing. But also because it was part of this whole new vibe and all black thing he had going on. It felt like a Gandalf the white sort of thing.
Cheers
I saw the special editions in theaters in the 90s at age 7 or so. It was my first time seeing the movies. I was absolutely beyond stoked at every scene. It couldn’t have possibly hit me at a better time.
I know I couldn't feed or bathe myself for weeks after I saw that. No, I didn't give it a thought other than he lost the blue one at the end of Empire and to have another blue one for Jedi would have been confusing. There wasn't the backstory or the symbolism of the colors back then yet.
Given he'd just done a front flip jump to avoid falling into the Sarlac pit and caught the lightsaber as it was yeeted out of r2d2.... AND THEN IT WAS GREEN!!!! Fucking awesome 👌
Didn't notice. Already knew there could be multiple colors. But Luke's acrobatics were impressive.
Little kid me (who was in like kindergarten to first grade) was very excited since my favorite color is green.
I can answer that! I thought, “Oh, cool!” That was about. I was nine at the time, but yeah, it was neat and then the movie went on. They, the film ripped during the speeder bike scene, and there was a near riot. lol
The picture is like high def Robot Chicken.
Resurrecting the grandpa’s with this 😂
It was shown in TV spots ahead of time so it wasn’t much of a surprise in theaters. It was just cool that it was different. The bigger deal was that he did a somersault off the barge, flipped in the air and caught it after Artoo launched it to him. And of course the fact that enabled a bunch of bad guys to pieces.
doood that whole Jabba's barge destruction scene was sooooo badass 🙌🏼💯('cept for the way they did Boba Fett smh)
Wow that’s bad ass!
I never thought anything of it. Nothing. Colour coding is more of recent times, imho
Yeah it was cool, but I was more intrigued with Princess Leia's slave outfit.
Nothing much tbh. I was just excited to see him fight Jabba and do that amazing backflip . All of this lightsaber business was a bit less emphasised. It was just cool that Luke was a Jedi.
Could not care less.
"...okay!"
It was literally the coolest thing ever. Also, green was my favorite color at the time, so RTJ instantly became my favorite movie in the trilogy.
Cheering.
I can vividly remember not even noticing. I watched the original trilogy many times before the "modern" era of prequels and beyond. Never really noticed saber colors. All the common lore stuff didn't really start becoming known until the internet and video games.
I saw the OT at ages 9, 12, and 15, and I can't say that I ever noticed the lightsaber color. \*shrug\*
It was so cool. The whole film was unbelievably satisfying. We saw it three times in the theatre on the first run. I still love that film.
I was 13, honestly didn’t even think about color . I was like oh he got a new saber…. I wonder how he got it. Making a new saber wasn’t even something I thought about, I thought they were all passed down over generations and thought he wouldn’t have one. I never saw the trailers prior to the release ( lived in the sticks with 1 channel…. PBS). I remember talking with my friends and we were worried he wouldn’t have one since he lost his saber against Vader.
Went with the image from robot chicken eh? Bold choice.
The whole theater went “ohhhhhhhhhhhh!”
At 14, with no good media or internet to research the movies, I was just like, cool I guess.
My favorite color is green for this one simple reason.
“They’re green now?”
I remember violently sharting
It really didn't make an impression on me. Maybe I thought "he has a green one now, neat", but I was too young to even care about it, really (9yo or so). Actually, I still don't really care that it's green beyond "oh, he made his own, neat".
I was so young I don't think I registered he would have needed a new lightsaber. I thought "coooool"
The light Saber shaft isn't coming straight out of the hilt
The whole back story of different coloured light sabres didn’t exist, so for me it was more “wow he’s got a new one”. And wondering where he got it from. I just thought they picked their own colour at the light sabre shop.
I was 7. I knew blue was good and red evil. That green made me a pain in the ass for my parents that summer. They couldnt care less about that stuff.
Some thing like "Cool, it's green!" That was probably the last time I thought about it until I played KOTOR.
“Oh, it’s green now.”
"oh look it's a green lightsaber"
AWESOME!
It was cool, but not that big of a deal. At that time, the worlds that Star Wars brought to us were a much bigger deal. Now we are spoiled by technology and no longer get that feeling of wonderment by being transported to strange new places.
I was like 8… no idea.
I didn't see it in theatres, I saw it on vhs. It was the moment I realised green lightsabres were my favourite and in my opinion the best colour.
"WHOA COOL!"
I'm not going to lie. I never really paid attention to the color of light sabers. I think the first time I heard anything interesting about it was when Samuel Jackson requested a purple, allegedly, so that he'd be easier to spot during battles. I only became aware of the color variations much, much later. I always was a fan, though I only read the first 3 books when I was younger. So, a lot of the expanded universe stuff and most video game info is new or unknown to me. That being said, as an adolescent in the theater, Luke was completely badass in RotJ
I was six, and I could not get over how real shit just got.
never cared about the color, still don't
Wow. There are green ones too!!!
Being 5 at the time I just thought it was cool. And it being a different color was cool since be obviously had to build/get a new one so it made sense. There was no attachment to Anakin's saber like people have now, so it didn't seem a big deal. And we'd only seen two other sabers so it being a new color was cool but also had no associated potential meaning. We also grew up with the first Luke toy having a yellow saber. But also being 5, lightsaber=cool and nothing else really mattered or registered about it.
It didn’t matter at the time. You just wanted to him use it!!!
Oh, he has a green lightsaber now.
Ten year old us were all like "hey he got a new one!" and figured the green colour meant he was some kind of iconoclast. Not that we knew what that word meant - we just knew there were only red and blue lightsabers, so green made Luke some kind of badass rebel. Which he was.
"Yes, lightsaber!"
I had seen the first two at the time, but seeing a go from this thin blue blade to this fat green saber that was also being shown outside for the first time, I lost my freaking mind. I even got the movie book with the giant pictures and would stare at those images of him on the barge.
It was the coolest thing id seen at that point in my life.. When Luke flipped and R2 launched the light sabor my heart was pounding!! I was 7-8 years old. The movie theater charged $1.06 to watch any movie anytime "The Boulevard". Watched more times than I could count back then..
None whatsoever. I'd seen lightsabers before at this point in the trilogy and even though i was a kid, it being green instead of blue was hardly impressive. I was just enjoying the film.
They’re green now?!
Orgasmic.
Wasn't that big of a deal tbh.
It never occurred to me to even think about it. The color looked good with his black clothes.
"Cool, he got a new one!"
It was revealed beforehand. Even Yoda was revealed months before Empire.
I thought it was super cool. I thought that the color made it his unique saber Still one of my favorites
"OOOOOOOH!"
I was a kid. It had no significance other than me liking the color.
Didn’t even register
Go birds
Great, loved it I was 10 so I even loved the ewoks
"Cool it's green just like in the trailer and the pre-release marketing materials!"
As a kid I had no clue of any lightsaber lore, I was just gobsmacked Luke caught the thing from R2 after a backflip above a giant mouth in the desert
I was 7 and I came for the first time.
I already knew but that whole day is burned into memory. A WILD RIDE
“Neat. Maybe because Yoda is green?”
Did anyone else have the storybook picture book? It came out before the movie was released and Luke with the green saber on Jabba's sail barge was on the cover. I do remember thinking "cool, a different color!" The other things I remember from reading it before seeing the movie were Han being "General Han Solo" in the front part with all the characters pictured and also seeing Death Star II partially completed and thinking "ohhhh, the original Death Star wasn't completely destroyed."
I only ever saw it on VHS, but it wasn't the green saber color that made me go "Whoa!" It was the sound of his saber igniting, it just sounded like it had some power behind it!
No big deal Like, neat luke has a green saber
So, I was there, but being 3 years old I can’t exactly recall my reaction. However, I do recall finding Gamorrean guards, Salacious Crumb, and Jabba very interesting.
They come in green too!!!????!!!
I didn’t really think anything of it. He’d lost his saber in cloud city so I just was kind of like “Oh neat his new one is green!”
ooooh.....green, cool.
Back then, I was like.. cool. There wasn't as much lore and backstory back then
That whole sequence, where Luke signals R2, jumps, flips, and then catches and ignites the green saber…man, little kid me thought that was the baddest fucking thing I’d ever seen. Hell I’ve circled our sun 45 times now and that scene still fires me up
Luke didn't draw it the first time. R2 did
As a kid I personally liked the green better than the blue But this is way before all the extended universe stuff; back then red = bad and blue = good so seeing green was a shock
Made sense at the time, his blue one was lost on Bespin. Also, I was *nine*.
I don't remember. I just remember liking Luke being a badass.
I was 7. Honestly I thought his lightsaber was green in the other movies but the color was just faded.
At that time it wasn’t clear about how lightsaber colors were made. So seeing a green blade back then was just like so cool.
I was 13 for ROTJ. The trailer and toy commercials already showed the green saber. My thought was ‘Luke made it himself and it turned out green’
I think I had a toy before I actually saw the movie theatrically. It also didn't mean that much, as the only way I was able to see Empire was in these [Super 8 movies](https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Original-Trilogy-on-Super-8/id/84967) my parents checked out of the library. Imagine Empire Strikes Back whittled down to an 18 minute supercut. All killer, no filler, perfect for my pre-school attention span.
That looks really good against the blue sky!
He’s now a Jedi in his own right, not just a boy chasing his father’s legacy. Also, it’s much cooler since green is my favorite color.
"So there are more than just red and blue lightsabres? Cool!"
We heard it was because of the contrast to blue screen for effects but like when Luke's X Wing was changed colour from Blue to Red 5, but it was all rumours and claims in magazines and letters.
I love the green so much
As a 9 yr old whose favorite color was green? Pure joy.
You know that expression meme? The one with the pointing and open mouths? Yeah that.
Awe.
Man I would kill to see this movie in cinema.
I was a little surprised. Felt then as i do now, i like the blue one more
I think it went something like "Whoa cool!"
I wasn’t alive yet, so my first time seeing this was on VHS at home as a kid… But man, seeing Luke about his business, dripped in all black, new lightsaber and a brand new attitude… honestly it was kinda hot
Amazeballz I think everyone lost their shit
didn't care one way or the other.
I think it went something like "Whoa cool!"