It's long been believed that Obi-Wan's climactic lightsaber duel with Darth Maul in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was slowed down due to actors Ewan McGregor and Ray Park looking a little too good on screen.
Now, that urban legend in a galaxy far, far away has been confirmed once more by McGregor himself during an appearance at Fan Expo Boston.
“When me and Ray did that fight… George over-cranked," McGregor said (via Collider). "We used to shoot on film, and you can adjust the speed that the film’s going through the camera. If you want it to be slow motion, you make the camera run really fast so when you play it back, it’s in slow motion.”
"I remember hearing him saying, ‘They’re going too fast. Slightly over-crank the camera.’ So they over-cranked the camera to make it slightly slower because me and Ray were so fast doing this fight. He was worried that people wouldn’t believe it," McGregor said.
McGregor appeared as Obi-Wan in the three live-action prequels, later picking up a lightsaber once more in 2022's Obi-Wan Kenobi series alongside Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker in a Clone Wars-era flashback scene.
Lucas, meanwhile, wasn't content with tinkering with cameras on set. He once had plans to make a Star Wars series that, according to one producer, would have "blown up the Star Wars universe" and contained an eye-watering budget.
"The problem was that each episode was bigger than the films, so the lowest I could get it down to with the tech that existed then was $40 million an episode," Rick McCallum said of Star Wars: Underworld on the Young Indy Chronicles podcast.
For more, dive into the latest on the upcoming Star Wars movies currently in the works.
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