‘Star Wars’ is more than just franchise to dedicated fans
Aaron Ruacho
Mesa Legend
“Star Wars” is much more than a franchise; it has become a way of life for some.Spawning a prequel trilogy, hundreds of books, television shows, games, toys, T-shirts, and now a sequel trilogy, one might wonder what makes the original trilogy different from any other film series. There are people who haven’t seen the Harry Potter or James Bond films, but there’s a sort of shock that comes over many when they meet someone who has not seen George Lucas’s sci-fi film series.
Those who have not experienced the Star Wars movies may wonder what draws so many. MCC professor Bob Baron, offers up a reason. “Back before ‘Star Wars’ came out, movies were beginning to get a lot more bloody and violent. ‘Star Wars’ is almost like an old fashioned thing, with good guys versus bad guys,” Baron said. “There’s no real blood, and it’s got a lighter, comedic tone, what with the two droids being in the middle of everything, and whole families could go and see it together so I think that was a big reason it became popular.”
Photo by Tania Ritco / Mesa Legend
An iconic and recognizable piece of weaponry in cinema history is the lightsaber. Since its first appearance in the hands of Luke Skywalker, the world has been fascinated with them. “We once took our kids to Disneyland. One of them, he was around 6, he picked up a lightsaber and a little 5-year-old girl from Japan ran up to him, also holding a lightsaber, and they just started whacking each other. They don’t even speak the same language, but they know lightsabers,” Baron said. It is the fantasy of many people around the world to wield an actual lightsaber, and while the technology does not exist there are at least ways to live this fantasy out.
One such outlet is Mesa’s Lightsaber Fighting Club, a group that practices lightsaber fighting and choreography. The group was founded by former MCC student Keegan Moss and his friend Junior. “Junior and I were taking Fencing 101 at MCC. Our professor brought this combat built lightsaber, which interested us so much we bought ourselves a couple of lightsabers. We began to fight with them, then we began to practice the fighting styles that followed them as well,” Moss said.
Soon after, they decided to go to Phoenix Comic-Con in order to show off what they had done and how much they had learned. Another friend of Moss’s got interested, so he helped her get her own lightsaber. They then had the idea to choreograph a fight scene with the sabers. “Instead of making the fight seem fairly safe and such, we made it much more realistic, and rehearsed quite a lot,” Baron said. “So we were ready for Comic-Con and we prepped ourselves to show off, so to speak. We went there and we thought ‘Hey, why don’t we make a group out of this?’”
This idea was apparently something people had been wanting, as the group became a success, currently running with 58 members. The group meets every Wednesday and Saturday at Dobson Ranch Park from 7 to 10 p.m. In addition to practicing form and the technique behind lightsaber battling that stays true to the “Star Wars” universe, they often play games like capture the flag and team elimination.
There are also activities with conditioning, games like long distance capture the flag and defense and attack based games, requiring players to run around a larger battlefield in order to win and teaching control of their weapon, respectively. “We also practice control so that if anyone hears the blade hit their opponent, then we disqualify them due to too much aggression,” Moss said.
The group wants to focus on safety while keeping true to the “Star Wars” lore. Players will swing their sabers around and perform moves like the Jedi do in the films. “So we practice as much safety as possible even though we hit each other with light up swords.” The rules of the game are simple; follow the target zone rules of above the knees, above the elbows. “The neck and below is the region of valid touch, where if you get hit in that area of your body, it counts as elimination,” Moss said.
Star Wars is a franchise that doesn’t show signs of slowing down, and with a sequel trilogy in the works by J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan returning to pen the scripts.
