From a certain point of view, it may be true that the more lightsabers in a Star Wars movie, the worse it is. However, the actual numbers suggest otherwise in terms of there being an inverse relationship between sabers being drawn and film quality.
Kit Bashed has done the hard work for us all and counted up the number of times a lightsaber is drawn or ignited in the movies and compared this to ratings of the first movies against a range of reputable rating websites. Let's hope he got his numbers correct…
Asked a rabid reader*: “What did Kit Bashed find? Is it true? I think he found it's true cos the prequels sucked and there were heaps of lightsaber fights in the Prequels!”
So the theory we are exploring is whether an increase in the number of times a lightsaber is turned on or drawn in a Star Wars movie decreases the quality of the movie in question. We can use “good” as a rating by the rating numbers determined by the review sites selected by Kit Bashed (Metacritic, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes).
| Episode | Ignitions | Metacritic | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDb | Average |
| IV | 3 | 91 | 93 | 88 | 91 |
| V | 3 | 78 | 97 | 88 | 88 |
| VI | 5 | 52 | 79 | 84 | 72 |
| I | 18 | 51 | 57 | 65 | 58 |
| II | 25 | 53 | 67 | 67 | 62 |
| III | 35 | 68 | 80 | 77 | 75 |
Before we start burning effigies of George Lucas in the street, let's turn these numbers into a graph:
That's a really pretty graph. But what in the name of a womp rat am I looking at? You are not looking at a truly inverse relationship. Look at how the number of ignitions increases for the prequel films and that the average review numbers ALSO increase. That is arguably a direct relationship.
Note, too, that the original trilogy movies did not have an increase in ignitions at the same rate. In fact, they stayed fairly static, yet the average scores declined – indeed Revenge of the Sith is rated HIGHER than Return of the Jedi (Metacritic appears to hate Return of the Jedi…).
What can we conclude?