Ever since the world first glimpsed the teaser trailer for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens,’ the debate has raged on about whether the crazy red lightsaber held by Kylo Ren with the crossguard blades was incredibly stupid or sensible “from a certain point of view.” Many fans have made the argument that the crossguard would be destroyed if an opponent’s lightsaber sliced through the blade emitters on the sides of the hilt, while other superfans such as Stephen Colbert have made the scientific argument that the crossguard blades are actually part of the main blade, and thus would be able to stop an opponent’s blade from cutting through them.

According to Obi-Wan Kenobi, well, actually the second man to play the vaunted Jedi Master, Ewan McGregor, while he is excited for the new films and to see what JJ Abrams has in store for us, he feels the crossguard is completely unnecessary:

“I’m excited about it as much as anyone else…I saw the trailer and it looks like [JJ Abrams] absolutely nailed it and it feels right. But I’m not sure about the [crossguard] lightsaber. If you fight with a lightsaber properly you don’t need one.”

Earlier this year he made similar comments to MTV while at the Sundance Film Festival, stating:

“You don’t need hilts…If you know how to handle a lightsaber, you don’t need a silly hilt. We managed very well, the Jedi order managed very well without hilts for hundreds of millions of years.”

Considering all the work McGregor put into his lightsaber training in the early 2000’s, I would take his opinion seriously on this matter, as over the course of his films he held his own and then some against 3 Sith Lords, including Darth Maul, Darth Tyranus, and finally, Darth Vader. McGregor’s input does make us wonder if we will ever get to see him back in the ‘Star Wars’ universe playing our favorite Jedi Master, to which he also had an opinion:

“I’ll say it publicly, here, now. I’d be happy to do the story between Episode III, that I finished in, and Episode IV that Alec Guinness started in. I think that would be good. Disney should definitely do that.”

And it seems that is something Disney might be considering, which really makes me hope we get to see Obi-Wan go up against an earlier version of a crossguarded lightsaber and utterly destroy it, proving that classic training and good swordsmanship will always trump a fancy redesign.

Source: Slashfilm