For a series of movies about wizards in space, the Star Wars films feature a lot less overt magic than you probably realized. In fact, as a new infographic from Bloomberg points out, there's only 34 minutes of actual Force use in all 805 minutes of series runtime.
Star Wars: The Force Accounted does a granular inventory of every appearance, mention, practitioner, or use-case scenario of the Force from the original Star Wars all the way to Revenge of the Sith. And it actually breaks out some surprising facts:
- Light side force powers (like levitating objects, talking to benevolent ghosts, and Jedi mind tricks) are used almost three times as often in Star Wars than dark side powers, like force choking someone (Darth Vader over multiple occasions, Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi), or frying them with bolts of lightning until their eyeballs explode (Emperor Palpatine).
- Although he's relatively untrained compared to the likes of Obi-Wan Kenobi or Yoda, Luke Skywalker is the most overt Force user in all the films. Of the 34 minutes of Force usage in the Star Wars series, Luke accounts for 11 minutes of them, or almost a third. However, keep in mind that many of those minutes are spent conversing with a dead Alec Guinness.
- The most widely used Force power in Star Wars? Jumping really high. The Force Leap ability was used 100 times in the series, mostly by Yoda, who spent a huge chunk of Attack of the Clones bouncing around like a green jumping been.
- Which Force-sensitive characters used the Force least in the Star Wars films? The first one probably won't surprise you: Princess Leia, who spends 10 seconds of on-screen time across The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi using the Force to sense the location of Luke. But the second? The biggest bad-ass in all Star Wars, Darth Maul! He might wield a mean lightsaber, but the acrobatic warrior from The Phantom Menace only uses the Force for eight seconds in the entire film!
Ahead of Friday's release of A Force Awakens, this infographic is a great refresher that reveals something that is often overlooked about the Star Wars movies: Jedis, lightsabers, and the Force are actually a very small part of what they're about. Let's hope that's something J.J. Abrams has kept in mind.