Today’s Darth Vader would absolutely mulch 1977 Darth Vader in a fight

polygon.com:

Pretty much everything about screen storytelling has changed since George Lucas made 1977’s Star Wars, or as it’s now known in the canon, A New Hope. Cameras are smaller and more mobile, special effects have exploded in complexity, computers changed everything from shot choices to editing to color grading to sound design. And all those factors made fight choreography much more complicated and demanding than it was 45 years ago. Just look at the difference between Darth Vader fighting his old mentor Ben Kenobi in A New Hope, and the two of them facing off in the 2022 TV series Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Darth Vader of Kenobi would absolutely wipe the floor with A New Hope’s Vader, and it would take him about three seconds to do it.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t a problem. This isn’t a continuity error, just as Kenobi being played by two different men over that time period is not a continuity error. This isn’t a burning issue that should send loyal fans screaming to the internet. It’s just an observable fact that highlights how much has changed about on-screen combat (and about Star Wars) over the last four and a half decades.

Given how much space the Darth Vader of A New Hope takes up in the collective consciousness of American pop culture, given how terrifying audiences found him in 1977, it’s fascinating to go back and revisit the final lightsaber combat between Vader and Kenobi, and see how stiff, short, and minimal it is. Alec Guinness, who played Kenobi in the original trilogy, was 62 when the film was shot, and looked considerably older. The duel plays out with the careful blow-by-blow choreography of two amateurs sword-fighting in a stage play. Neither combatant uses the Force against their opponent.

And when the movie