Stephen Colbert’s relationship with light sabers is the funniest thing so far this week

By Jessica ellis

November 10, 2015

By Jessica ellis

November 10, 2015

Stephen Colbert is known far and wide as a Star Wars superfan, but like just about anyone emotionally involved with a franchise these days, he has a beef with its creator. Colbert, who got to live out his dream of having a light saber battle with George Lucas back in 2006, has finally gone public with the frankly adorable story of his emotional scarring from that day.

In a segment on The Late Show, Colbert tells the tale of how he tried to use his extreme geekboy knowledge of the franchise to bond with Lucas: in the original draft of Lucas’ script for Star Wars: A New Hope, the famous lightsabers were actually referred to as laser swords.

Perhaps hoping for a Yoda-like nod of acknowledgment from the series’ creator, Colbert suggested they have a “laser sword” battle as part of Lucas’ appearance on The Colbert Report. Seconds before the camera started rolling, Lucas informed him, “you should know, most people call them lightsabers.”

Colbert, stranded in front of the cameras, couldn’t respond at the time, and Lucas left before he could tell him he knows they’re called lightsabers. Like the shadow of the Dark Side in his soul, Colbert has been left to carry this mortifying moment around with him for eight long years. Now, however, he at last addresses the truth. “Everyone knows they’re called lightsabers,” he deadpans.

But what if that was really Lucas’ point? “Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view,” Obi-Wan tells us, and Colbert, in his fear and anger (psst, which are the path to the Dark Side) might have missed what the filmmaker was really telling him: perhaps the original Jedi Master was letting the entertainer know that his insider terminology was not meant for “most people” and should be reserved only for insider Jedis.

Check out the vid in which Colbert hilariously tells his traumatizing story below: