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Apple Designer Inspired New Lightsaber For ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 14:08 PST, Feb 16, 2015

A new profile of Jony Ive, senior vice president of design at Apple, has revealed his conversation with Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, during which he imparted several ideas about new lightsaber designs that are now set to appear in the franchise.

In a rare interview conducted with the New Yorker, Ive recalls a dinner party he attended in New York, during which he sat next to Abrams. Ive made suggestions about lightsabers that Abrams would later recall as specific, and which the report asserts will feature in the new Star Wars movies. Though Ive didn’t posit the much-debated crossguard lightsaber design that appeared in the first teaser for The Force Awakens, another aspect of the weapon was a direct result of his ideas.

“I thought it would be interesting if it were less precise, and just a little bit more spitty.”

Ive asserted that a lightsaber that was redesigned to have a more primitive and “analog” feel could be far more ominous, in many ways, than the well-known sabers from prior Star Wars films.

Fans have hotly debated the crossguard lightsaber ever since it first appeared in the teaser last year. Though many are unsure if the off-screen expanded universe lore of Star Wars will be considered canonical since the franchise was purchased by Disney, fans have cited those sources to explain the intermittent, rough blade of the lightsaber.

The swords use a series of crystals to focus energy into a coherent blade, according to the Star Wars expanded universe. The flickering nature of the trailer lightsaber, fans assert, could be caused by the hooded figure using rough or unfinished crystals. It has also been postulated that the Sith figure bearing the sword, Kylo Ren, may not have mastered the art of lightsaber construction. This theory enjoys particular synergy with unconfirmed reports that the plot of the next Star Wars film may center around the rise of a new dark figure, the direct inverse of Luke Skywalker’s awakening in the original 1977 film.

As some sources point out, Kylo Ren’s lightsaber is the only one that has been revealed so far from The Force Awakens. This leaves much room for other possible new lightsaber designs which could appear as the next Star Wars film nears release later this year.

[Image via MovieWeb]

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