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Did Palpatine really lose against Mace Windu?

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I've always believed Mace kicked his ass because of who Mace was. I remember reading Mace was the most powerful Jedi on the council so him beating Sidious seemed plausible to me.

Actually Yoda is the most powerful Jedi ever.

Or was up to that point.
 
Sheev was stronger in the force, but I think he underestimated Mace's swordsmanship (he was suppose to be the best in that class among the Jedi IIRC). The point was to turn Darth Doofus on his side, but I think there was a point where he could have legit been wrecked by Mace due to that underestimation.

Granted, all of this was so poorly handled by Lucas who the hell really knows.
 
Mace was pretty powerful, he would have killed Sidious if not for Anakin.

IIRC, Mace is one of a handful of Jedi who can use the dark side of the force while retaining his moral compass. Being around a beacon of the dark side like Sidious may have made him stronger.
 
But Anakin's Midi-chlorian count was even more powerful than Yoda's.

He was getting stronger (look at how he got defeated by Dooku in the second movie and lost a limb but in the third movie soundly beats him) but he wasn't powerful enough to go against Yoda or Mace. It's why Palpatine did want him, Anakin was suppose to be the next big thing.

Him getting BBQ'ed and losing his limbs kinda put an end to that and he more or less became Palpatines attack dog.

Anakin ended up losing a lot of his potential, Lucas even stated as much as in the official Star Wars magazine.
 
As a kid seeing this, I thought this was one of the best scenes in ROTS what with Palpatine finally revealing himself and giving Vader his name. I totally thought he lost to Windu on purpose.
 
I watched all the Redlettermedia Star Wars prequel reviews and I completely hate these movies now. Like, I can't even muster up the will to write anything about that fight because Lucas had to be on some heavy shit while making these movies and probably didn't give a fuck.
 
That was ruined as well though.

It was widely believed that his RotJ appearance was his real form but he was hiding it through his mastery of the force. His real form was to be unleashed when he attacked the Jedi as they tried to arrest him.

Instead they went with some crappy scarred by force lightening angle.

I don't think that was the original idea. He was supposed to wither slowly across the films until in ROTJ he looks like a corpse. For AOTC they aged McDiarmid with makeup and prosthetics around the eyes, but in his wisdom George thought it would be better to prey on people's nostalgia and make him look like the ROTJ Emperor in ROTS, despite it making no sense at all.

I believe Lucas' producer confirmed the 'true appearance revealed' angle rather than him being scarred. Which is still vey stupid. What you see on screen makes him look like he's being scarred.
 
Palpatine's Force Lightning didn't do shit to Mace Windu, it just nicked him, in reality he furiously shanked Sheev to death against the wall of that chamber that night, shanked that shit into Pulpatine.

Anakin was a weak-minded fictional shit and Mace Windu knew his shit, Mace Windu Force-projected pulpy Palpatine teen fiction onto Annie's mental pornography, made him think he amputated Mace Windu's arm when in reality Annie gave Mace Windu a fine-ass straight-laser shave while Mace Windu was reclining on top of his latest peanut-brittle shank puppet.

Then Mace Windu Force-revived Sheev because tickles are his aftershave then threw his own ass off that ledge because he was tired of Anakin's shit and faked his own death for the last Sith aftershave in the galaxy. He's lived in Coruscant's urban underworld ever since as a professional lawnmower-for-hire known on the tongues of aliens as Shaft.
 
Isn't Mace suppose to the best Jedi sword fighter, even above Yoda? Seem plausible for him to out do Palp.
 
The Jedi accompanying Windu are useless. They stand there for like five seconds while Palpatine poses then kills the first one. The other two go down fair, but they should have had him dead-to-rights at first.

Still better than how the novel did it, blech. He makes a fake recording of him begging for his life which he plays for the senate later.

Personally I think Windu did have the advantage, then Palpatine played it in his favor. Palpatine's a schemer, not a fighter. Yoda's not even really much of a duelist, he's just stronger than Dooku.

But not Palpatine.
 
Mace Windu was winning fair and square. It's possible that Palpatine could have still turned the tables had Anakin not shown up, but he wasn't faking it. Windu was second to Yoda in force strength, but he's one of the best lightsaber fighters in history. He really could have won.
 
My favorite part of that fight:

rJx7ATw.gif


"Just walk forward and wildly swing your lightsaber around, Sam. We'll be adding the CGI Palpatine in post."
 
Mace was pretty powerful, he would have killed Sidious if not for Anakin.

IIRC, Mace is one of a handful of Jedi who can use the dark side of the force while retaining his moral compass. Being around a beacon of the dark side like Sidious may have made him stronger.

Only Yoda, Dooku and Mace during this time had good knowledge of the dark side. Dooku decided he could become more powerful by embracing the dark side. Mace did not.

Whether planned or not, Palpatine did not expect Mace to be that strong with the saber. Palpatine is frikken amazing with a blade and he had Mace on the fences until they had their standstill clash. Mace is not just younger but physically stronger.

Mace adapted better to strikes and allowed Palpatine to go "ape shit" with arrogance as all Sith do, and bid his moment to disarm him.

Lucas' garbage dialogue here doesn't work. But the scarring on the face was clearly a self-sacrifice - playing the old and weak card. Then "unlimited power" banter afterwards reveal that Palpatine had a lot left in the tank.

I don't think Mace stood a chance, no matter how you cut it.

The whole point of this was to lure Anakin in, and when Palpatine sensed Anakin was close, he lost his saber in the most amateurish way possible.
 
I believe Lucas' producer confirmed the 'true appearance revealed' angle rather than him being scarred. Which is still vey stupid. What you see on screen makes him look like he's being scarred.

I thought Lucas did say at one point that he was scarred from the fight?
 
You can't definitively say what happened. The scene is unreadably ambiguous, I don't think even George knows for sure what he wanted or intended.
 
Considering how he manhandled Maul and Savage in TCW and beats Yoda at the end of RotS, I'd say he threw it on purpose knowing that Anakin would come. He knows the boy's psychology too well since he spent over a decade grooming him for the role of a Sith lord.

I thought it was very odd back in 2005 when I first saw Sidious using a lightsaber but after TCW I'm fine with it just because that one fight with Maul and Savage was so good that I'd rather have him use one (or two) than not.
 
According to clone wars mace was strongest fighter among all Jedi. So in my mind yes he defeated palpatine events tough it was implied that he was just playing.

It was just a shity scene just like in sequels obi van says strike me down and I'll become stronger. Well even its so at least fight Vader may be you will defeat him or at least buy some more time for anakin to run away.

Still can't believe how how weak and stupid Jedi were.
 
I think I would feel better if the other three jedi would've put up something like a fight instead of just being cut down before their turn came.

That sound Palpatine makes at the beginning of the fight is supposed to be a force scream like the dark side power you can use in the KoToR series. Theoretically, they're too disoriented to fight back.

That's not to say that I think that's a valid excuse for the poor quality of the fight or the prequel trilogy in general.
 
Palpatine could have defeated Windu. Didn't he take care of Windu's buddies with no problem?

He saw the future through the Dark Side and let Anakin fall further so he would completely give himself to the Dark Side.

Redemption made even more difficult, no going back.
 
My interpretation from the movie, disregargind word of Lucas, Producers, script or novelization, is that up until Anakin's arrival, Mace was absolutely besting Palpatine in the duel. There is no way Sheev could have perfectly timed his "loss" with Anakin's arrival.

By the time Anakin arrived, Mace had already disarmed Sheev and force lightining was absolutely useless, no matter how much fuel Palpatine still had in him tank, Mace would just redirected using his saber.
I prefer this way. I like to think that Darth Sidous, despite all his power and knowledge, wasn't an absolutely unstoppable fighter and a top tier Jedi Master could beat him fair and square, and got away with it because of luck and cunning. Yoda pretty much lost his duel because Sidious, after the force clash. managed to grab a senate platform while he did not and fell.
 
guess we'll never know for sure, unless Lucas decides to say something about it. Too many theories with nothing concrete to clench on

Lucas doesn't have a say in it anymore. Disney can make up whatever the hell they want and Lucas can't do a thing to stop them.
 
Well apparently he didn't melt his face. He just let his 'mask' slip.

Why would the lightning make his fingernails grow an inch?

I don't know, but it looked like the lightning bounced back off Windu's light saber and hit him in the face. I don't know why he didn't just stop.
 
That sound Palpatine makes at the beginning of the fight is supposed to be a [urlhttp://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Force_scream]force scream[/url] like the dark side power you can use in the KoToR series. Theoretically, they're too disoriented to fight back.

That's not to say that I think that's a valid excuse for the poor quality of the fight or the prequel trilogy in general.
Oh, that is actually an interesting explanation! I always thought that the scream was kinda weird, but being a Forcescream changes something.

I don't know, but it looked like the lightning bounced back off Windu's light saber and hit him in the face. I don't know why he didn't just stop.
My guess whould be that this was the only thing that kept Mace from killing him. Mace could defeflect the lightning, but if he would take away the sword, he would've been maybe grilled too. So it seemed to be a stillstand with Mace getting the way better end.
I think the genuine belief from the fans and what it's better to just believe for the sake of the narrative, is that Palpatine allowed Mace to get the upper hand so that it looked like he was being attacked when Anakin walked in (he could sense Anakin coming...).

In reality, Lucas bowed to peer pressure from Jackson, who wanted his character to go out looking strong. The same thing happened when Jackson wanted a purple lightsaber.

Palpatine looks like a weak crazy old man in that fight but then looks like an absolute monster of the force when faces Yoda later on.

Conclusion, it was a combination of Lucas being a bitch to Jackson, along with poor direction.
I am starting to understand the fury of Star Wars fans.
 
Isn't Mace considered the best Jedi fighter at this time according to the lore ?

No surprise he won the fight, even if Sheev overpowered Yoda after this.

There is only one Aizen. Pal just got lucky.
 
Of course, if Windu had just trusted Anakin, Palpatine probably would've died to all five of them. That sowed the seeds of his death.
 
My favorite part of that fight:

rJx7ATw.gif


"Just walk forward and wildly swing your lightsaber around, Sam. We'll be adding the CGI Palpatine in post."

I miss the classy lightsaber fights of the first movies.

But I guess like for most of the parts of the new movies it was all about to show how great they are at doing CG.
 
So weird, I had a dream last night that I was watching Ep. VII, and there was a short scene with Luke and Han at the beginning, then they never showed up again and everyone was just talking endlessly in boring scenes with no action at all. I kept thinking "Why couldn't Abrams realize this sucks??".
 
Mace isn't dead right? As in, there's no definitive evidence that he is?
Is the Clone Wars series still canon? They brought Darth Maul back as half cyborg. In comparison it should be easy for Mace to survive.

For the first point, let me show how this happened. Mace received a temporary, critical speed augmentation for this duel. This happened because of the nature of Vaapad. Vaapad is an off-shoot of the Juyo form of lightsaber combat. Juyo is an aggressive and erratic fighting form, much more than even Ataru is, and it is this aggression that has made it a matter of discussion among Jedi whether Juyo is a safe style to learn. It relies on simply relentless strokes thrown continually until the user's opponent is defeated. The notable difference between Juyo and Vaapad is that Vaapad is a channel for darkness.
aaaand I'm out. That's just too much deep lore.
 
Yup. I always hated that. I kind of figured that the Emperor and Yoda were such godlike masters of the force that they didn't need to toy around with silly laser swords. They could pretty much do anything. But no, Palpatine and Yoda have to jump around with lightsabers and throw chairs at each other.

That's actually why they can do all that lightsaber stuff. They augment their abilities with the force to make up for being so old.
I thought Lucas did say at one point that he was scarred from the fight?
I assumed it was both. The lightning destroyed his disguise and scarred his face.
 
Is the Clone Wars series still canon? They brought Darth Maul back as half cyborg. In comparison it should be easy for Mace to survive.



aaaand I'm out. That's just too much deep lore.

Yep the Official TV/movie Canon goes like this

The Phantom Menace>Attack of the Clones>The Clone Wars>Revenge of the Sith>REBELS>A New Hope>The Empire Strikes Back>Return of the Jedi>The Force Awakens>...


You can add official comics and books that are NOT part of the "Legends" brand, and also every single videogame is non canon now, yes even your favorite one.
 

This excerpt made me laugh so much.
MACE WINDU: You're a Sith Lord!

PALPATINE: Am I? Even if true, that's hardly a crime. My philosophical outlook is a personal matter. In fact—the last time I read the Constitution, anyway—we have very strict laws against this type of persecution. So I ask you again: what is my alleged crime? How do you expect to justify your mutiny before the Senate? Or do you intend to arrest the Senate as well?
 
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