Lightsaber construction

[Alzrius]

A friend of mine told me that the color of the lightsaber's blade is indicative of rank somehow; that is, the colors a Jedi or Sith have for their lightsaber denote their rank in their organizations, with the color being changed (manually) when you are promoted or demoted.

Any truth to that?

 

[DarkSoldier]

Ask him what his source is for that bit of info. I doubt it's correct, and wouldn't affect the films in any way.

Notice that of all the Jedi with colours of the rainbow for their lightsabres in the EU, who participated in the Battle of Geonosis, they all had blue or green blades in AotC.

 

[Ferret]

Now we've settled crystals not the maker decide the colour. Would it be possible to have a lightsaber that simply distorted the air? That would be cool.

 

[Orius]

There are only four canon colorus of sabre blade: blue and green for Jedi, red for Sith, and purple for Mace Windu, because he's a mad mutha.

Lucas says something to that extent in on of the special features for the AotC DVD. He basically says something like Jedi use blue/gree, Sith use red. Maybe it's like the old cliche of the bad guy wearing black; if a guy pulls out a red lightsaber you know he's a baddie. After that, Sam Jackson asks, "What about purple?" or something like that, to which Lucas replies, "We'll see," or something. So I don't think it's really set in stone.

As stated above, some of the novels like the Jedi Academy Trilogy give more details. Jedi construct lightsabers that are individualized. That however, seems to contradict AotC where everyone's using blue and green. I think maybe though, the lightsaber a Jedi constructs is ceremonial, and part of the padawan training. Perhaps the Jedi also have a stockpile of more generic green/blue lightsabers for battle. For example, in Clones, the Jedi toss Obi-Wan and Anakin lightsabers during their rescue. I doubt these were the characters' actual lightsabers, since Dooku would have almost certainly confiscated Obi-Wan's, and of course Anakin's was trashed in the droid factory.

 

[Ferret]

On the red lightsabers, I read that they artificially grow the crystals, and can only get red ones because of that.

 

[ConnorSB]

Well, also in the Young Jedi Knights series, the "bad guys", who are a sort of rival Sith school, they mass manufacture thier lightsabres, all in red. But I'm betting that if you can manufacture one type of crystal, you can manufacture most kinds. So it probably isnt that you can only manufacture red, its that they chose to only manufacture one color.

It might have played out something like this:

Worker: "uh, boss... what color should we make these sabres?"
Darth Maul: "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED! THE COLOR OF MY HEAD!"
Worker: ".... right."

 

[Anime Kidd]

Lucas says something to that extent in on of the special features for the AotC DVD. He basically says something like Jedi use blue/gree, Sith use red. Maybe it's like the old cliche of the bad guy wearing black; if a guy pulls out a red lightsaber you know he's a baddie. After that, Sam Jackson asks, "What about purple?" or something like that, to which Lucas replies, "We'll see," or something. So I don't think it's really set in stone.

As stated above, some of the novels like the Jedi Academy Trilogy give more details. Jedi construct lightsabers that are individualized. That however, seems to contradict AotC where everyone's using blue and green. I think maybe though, the lightsaber a Jedi constructs is ceremonial, and part of the padawan training. Perhaps the Jedi also have a stockpile of more generic green/blue lightsabers for battle. For example, in Clones, the Jedi toss Obi-Wan and Anakin lightsabers during their rescue. I doubt these were the characters' actual lightsabers, since Dooku would have almost certainly confiscated Obi-Wan's, and of course Anakin's was trashed in the droid factory.

I got the impression that each jedi knight has two lightsabers, one that they made and one to pass down to their padawan. In turn, the padawan-now-knight would pass that one down as well when they make their own, etc. So they would have many a saber lying around. Now I haven't gotten into SW as most, but just my opinion.

PS. If I wanted to start reading some SW novels, which would I start with first? I'm guessing the novel thats after the original trilogy right?

 

[DarkSoldier]

Jedi Padawans receive "loaner" sabres from the Jedi Academy until they build their own; their hand-crafted sabres often resemble the "loaner" or the Master's sabre (see the similartiy between Darth Vader's Sith sabre and Anakin Skywalker's last sabre, and Obi-Wan's Master sabre and Luke's new sabre).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I got the impression that each jedi knight has two lightsabers, one that they made and one to pass down to their padawan. In turn, the padawan-now-knight would pass that one down as well when they make their own, etc. So they would have many a saber lying around. Now I haven't gotten into SW as most, but just my opinion.

PS. If I wanted to start reading some SW novels, which would I start with first? I'm guessing the novel thats after the original trilogy right?

It depends. I think the best books are in the trilogy written by Timothy Zahn, but later many books appeared that played between Return of the Jedi and these books. (Especially the X-Wing books).
But since Zahns book were written before them, they are easy to jump on and don`t require any more knowledge. And they have some interesting characters that will continue to play a role in the later books (sometimes regardless if they are set before or after the trilogy).

Spoiler

I would perhaps recommend against the newest books around the New Jedi Order and the Yuzan Vong invasion. I don`t really like them, they are...
well, depressing to read. Failure after failure, I really hate it. I might continue it, if I hear that a victory and end is in reach, but it might as well be that this "saga" will continue as long as it makes money and there are several more books till then.

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Orius]

It depends. I think the best books are in the trilogy written by Timothy Zahn, but later many books appeared that played between Return of the Jedi and these books. (Especially the X-Wing books).
But since Zahns book were written before them, they are easy to jump on and don`t require any more knowledge. And they have some interesting characters that will continue to play a role in the later books (sometimes regardless if they are set before or after the trilogy).

I'll second that. Starting with Zahn's books if you want to get into the Star Wars novels is kind of like starting with Chronicles (or maybe Legends) if you're trying to get into DL. Zahn's novels were the first ones to be published in the current batch of Star Wars books, not counting the novelizations of the original movies, as well as some older Star Wars novels published about 20-25 years ago. Plus they're among the better books out there. After that, I'd suggest the Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin Anderson. Although his writing isn't as good as Zahn's, in particular he seems to use a [/i]lot[/i] of silly and stupid villains, which is grating. However, the events of that Trilogy are pretty important to the overall Expanded Universe storyline. In particular,

Spoiler

this is where Luke finally reestablishes the Jedi.

After Jedi Academy, you can pretty much go anywhere.