With all due respect to the elder, final-chapter “Ben” Kenobi (late of the Dune Sea, Tatooine), it’s the young Obi-Wan, droll and unflappable and vaguely Ewan McGregor-ish, who most impresses with his fighting abilities. Only a few years removed from his Jedi training, Obi-Wan is a master with the lightsaber, the esteemed order’s wonderfully old-fashioned weapon of choice. (“Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster,” he later famously tells Luke Skywalker, “an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.”) That skill (and a high midi-chlorian count) serves Obi-Wan well in many missions, first with his mentor Qui-Gon Jinn, and later with his star-crossed protege Anakin Skywalker. In a long career that sees him dispatch a Galactic phonebook’s worth of Darths (including D. Tyranus, D. Sidious, and D. Vader), Kenobi’s greatest fight—even more satisfying than his epic showdown with Anakin, and the one that finally earned him Jedi knighthood—was the duel that pitted him and Jinn against the double-bladed fury of Darth Maul.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4gcqi2ynpg]