Nearly 12 years ago, we got our very first glimpse at the new big Star Wars villain — Kylo Ren, aka Ben Solo, the grandson of Darth Vader — in what would become one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Smack dab in the middle of the first teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Ren lumbers through a snowy planet and fires up his red lightsaber. A second later – in a moment in which the internet would lose its collective mind – he switched on the crossguard of his saber, a big screen first.
While the exact design of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber has been canonically explained, many of the secrets about its creation have been under wraps – until now. Jet Cooper, the 3D Modelling Supervisor of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, says that both Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader’s sliced-off hands directly led to the inclusion of the crossguard on Kylo Ren’s saber. I spoke with Cooper exclusively about the many decisions that went into crafting the iconic weapon and how much changed between the initial design and on-screen product.
The lightsaber had gone through various iterations throughout the design process. Cooper and The Force Awakens director and producer J.J. Abrams dug back centuries, looking at knights’ swords, for inspiration.
“The original [version] was in a saber shape without a flare on the end of it,” Cooper says, “because Kylo Ren was very much a knight but really, really crude. We’d suggested casually in a conversation one day that everyone was losing their hands. Luke lost his hand. Vader lost his hand. And the reason Europeans put quillons on swords was to stop that from happening.
“[Ren’s saber has] the main beam with the cracked crystal, so it’s really irregular. But what happens if we split that beam and divert it at the sides? Then, of course, Europeans used that part of the sword like a weapon, like a blade. It was nice that J.J. had Kylo Ren turn that and then push [the guard] into the person up against a tree. So, basically it’s an old-fashioned broad sword.”
While the weapon has roots in European history, Cooper says he and Abrams had another rationale for changing up Kylo’s lightsaber design.
“[Another] reason we flared the end out was so that, when you have a silhouette of it, that a 12-year-old could tell what it was.”
Cooper, who also worked on movies like Skyfall, X-Men: First Class, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, says that Kylo Ren’s lightsaber is among the creations he’s most proud of.
“My favorite thing I’ve got in my office that I always do a show-and-tell with is Kylo Ren’s lightsaber,” Cooper says. “I got to design that with J.J. Abrams and [we] finished on version number 13. Lucky number 13.”
In addition to making props for blockbuster movies, Cooper serves as Creative Director and Head of 3D at Makinarium – who just unveiled a one-of-a-kind Terminator collectible that’s available to preorder now. While he’s had a long career in the movie business working on massive franchises and smaller movies alike, much of Cooper’s love of prop making traces back to a galaxy far, far away.
“When I was 8 years old, I saw the original Star Wars,” Cooper says. “I came out of the theater thinking ‘That’s what I want to do when I grow up!’ It’s magic.”
Michael Peyton is the Senior Editorial Director of Events & Entertainment at IGN, leading entertainment content and coverage of tentpole events including IGN Live, San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He’s spent 20 years working in the games and entertainment industry, and his adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on Bluesky @MichaelPeyton
