Some of the most impressive feats in Star Wars have been conducted by its most seasoned members. Whether it's Count Dooku keeping up with two trained Jedi or the Emperor giving Yoda a challenging fight, the Force shows that skill can come from any user at any point in their lives. But one style in particular, Form IV, also known as Ataru, is a lightsaber form best known for giving even its oldest fighters the ability to perform feats that many would believe impossible.
Known as The Aggression Form, the foundation of Ataru relies on a practitioner's balance with the Force. For the style to be used perfectly, a user must allow the Force to flow through them while in combat. When successful, fighters can move at incredible speeds and strike with powerful attacks. Thanks to the Force, its users can also implement complex flips and acrobatics, making it hard for an opponent to keep up.
Yoda is considered the most powerful user of the style, even overcoming its weakness against blaster fire, which aided him in surviving Order 66. Despite being hundreds of years old, the form allowed him to conduct intricate flips while in combat which aided him in his battle against Dooku in Attack of the Clones. Ataru is also considered a strong dueling form and is why even Yoda was a match for Dooku's stronger dueling style, Makashi. However, the Jedi's powerful style comes with a costly weakness.
Because Ataru requires strong balance with the Force, practitioners can extend their stamina. This is why even older users can perform superhuman feats. However, that stamina can still deplete and become even more taxing for its users the longer it is implemented. An example of this can be found in The Phantom Menace's final battle between Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul. The seasoned Ataru user was able to keep Maul at bay, but his fatigue caught up with him and left him open for a killing strike. While Ataru is a powerful form, it's just as important to mitigate how much energy a user expels.
However, Ataru is not designed solely for older Jedi. Some of the Republic's best Jedi practiced both before and during the Clone Wars. Before moving to a defensive form, Obi-Wan Kenobi studied Master Qui-Gon's form. Ahsoka Tano was also a user of Ataru, mainly in the use of acrobatics. Her ability to use the Force to move quickly and unpredictably has saved her on more than one occasion, most recently in Star Wars: The Clone Wars during Order 66.
One of the most notable practitioners of the form was Luke Skywalker. Following his training in Return of the Jedi, Luke began to learn the form and provided a more refined approach to its use. His appearance in The Mandalorian showed Luke using the Force in combat to crush enemies and pull them in, conserving his own energy. In The Last Jedi, his battle with Kylo Ren sees him using unique evasive maneuvers to dodge attacks by being parallel to the ground rather than flipping. Ataru is a fast and powerful form and, under the right user, can be applied to accomplish almost anything, no matter the age.
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