There are 224 days until Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters, wrapping up the trilogy trio series with a ninth episode that looks to tie up a lot of loose ends and answer all sorts of questions. One question it will not answer is why there was such a limp-dick lightsaber battle in A New Hope’s fourth episode between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, especially when the two battled like motherfuckers just two decades earlier on Mustafar in Revenge Of The Sith.
Of course, the obvious answer — besides the two being oh so much older on that damn Death Star; Rogue One’s final scene ignored for a moment — is that technology in 1977 just wasn’t developed for this sort of thing, we guess. Lightsaber battles got a bit more intricate and choreographed a few years later for Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and by the time the prequels rolled around at the turn of the millennium, everyone was pretty much a laser-sword swingin’ ninja.
So the duel between Obi-Wan and Vader in A New Hope remained fairly quaint and docile, until a new fan video came along this week that turned up the intensity like never before. It was created by FXitinPost, and holy sith this seven-minute video, where the battle has been recreated and reimagined in its entirety, using adapted footage and weaved into original scenes, is absolutely incredible. It’s dubbed Star Wars SC 38 Reimagined, referring to the 38th scene in A New Hope.
“Scene 38 Reimagined is about the final confrontation between Ben Kenobi & Darth Vader in A New Hope nearly 20 years after the events of Revenge Of The Sith,” reads the video description. “This is a one-off, story-driven scene reflecting the characters in its chronological order from the point of Revenge of the Sith through Rebels, Rogue One, and all canon material leading to A New Hope.”
There have been a lot of updates to the original Star Wars film over the past 40 years, and some have come with a bit of controversy, erasing the at-the-time groundbreaking special effects created by a talented studio and staff. But this update is just too awesome to be a purist about. It’s the type of lightsaber battle we’ve come to expect from Star Wars, and it makes the rebels escape from the Death Star that much more dramatic.