6. Darth Vader (Star Wars: Episodes IV to VI)
Why am I doing this to myself? And why not the Vader/Anakin of the more recent trilogy? Well to answer the second one, the young Anakin is still learning how to fight and as much as I despised the over the top (but not always well choreographed) fight scenes and special effects (and poor acting, script, plot, etc), he does fight a lot and it's at least fun to watch. Original trilogy Vader has three lightsaber duels. The first one is the opposite to the duel at the end of episode III, a low-key affair with Alec Guinness performing an awkward spinning attack that resembles an older gentleman who needed a stunt double. This fight was poor but really just due to production value rather than the character, and the eventual winner of course couldn't be determined as Obi Wan decided the best distraction was to commit suicide. Vader then fought Luke in Empire Strikes Back, he's toying with him for sure and wants him alive but Luke made this fight so much closer than it should have been and lands a clean shot on Vader's shoulder near the end. Luke's just done a day course in Jedi training with an eccentric hermit in a swamp and he's actually surviving a fight with a very experienced Sith Lord. For people who follow MMA, that's like me taking a week to train at an MMA camp and then squaring off with Cain Velasquez and not dying horribly inside of a minute (and that'd be with him going easy on me and not wanting me to die). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-DeI3ohVbY Vader loses to Luke in Return of the Jedi and it's pretty one-sided and to make matters worse, Luke was kind of holding back for a lot of the fight. Luke's had a bit more training by this stage but again if I had a year to prepare to fight Cain Velasquez...I'd still die from heavy blood loss in record time. I get that Luke's the "chosen one" and a lot can apparently be learnt in a short space of time in the movies but Vader wasn't just some standard Jedi who had climbed the ranks (and who still should be too experienced for Luke to beat), he was the previous "chosen one" with a lot of lightsaber training and without the confines of being the "good guy" and the results do not back any of this up.