PT Mace Windu's Fatal Flaw

It's hard to say what the Jedi did/did not do in the gap between TPM and AOTC because there's so few material about it.

But yeah, I'd be very comforted by the Jedi having control instead of Palpatine. The Jedi have proven themselves over thousands of years and during the war, so they are in some ways less mysterious than Palpatine (rich, old white guy who sits there and leaves fighting to others).

 

Mace is the head of the Order but he doesn't have sole control, he has to answer to the Council and to Yoda in fact so even if the Jedi DID take temporary control there wouldn't be the centralised power in one person as there was in Palpatine's case. There is always the possibility of power corrupting but I would think that if Mace or Yoda or any of the others did start to get a bit power-crazed the others would be able to talk them down. The more power there is the more corrupting it would be, share the power around amongst the whole council and no single Jedi would be faced with the chance/temptation to be a Light-side Palpatine.

 

There seems to be some misconception about the role of the Jedi during that short period of time. They aren't ruling anything. They are just there to prevent any chaos that could occur during that time, just like the police. They don't have any legislative power (or even judiciary).

 

I didn't think they did either, but maybe it's like a Martial Law thing. Palpatine seems to imply that much anyway.

 

Except the Jedi aren't the one's who try to take over the galaxy..Palpatine is. Palpatine is the bad guy.

 

Mace Windu's fatal flaw was having Samuel L. Jackson phone in his lines.

 

Not sure if 'phoned it in' is entirely fair but Mace as described in extra material is stern and stoic but cares deeply and has a devotion to the Republic and the Order as a whole that can make him seem cold and unfeeling to the untrained eye regarding individuals. The actual Mace we see on screen has the stern and stoic bit down pat but the sensitive side is conspicuous in it's absence - as performed by Jackson he's just a pretty cold dude. The line about 'earning [his] trust' would have been a lot better had we seen it as Mace being accepting of Anakin as a flawed person rather than coming across as basically 'I never liked you but at least you're not completely useless', which is how it felt to me.

 

I didn't get much "coldness" from Jackson's performance, though. I just got...boredom. He seemed bored (as did Portman, at least in Ep I and parts of II and III). Extra material certainly explains why he was so emotionless, but that doesn't fix the fact that his performance was so sleep-inducing.

I've seen cold and emotionless done really well on screen. Lee Pace, for example, as Thranduil.

 

A question of interpretation then. In either case, I think it fair to call it not amongst Jackson's finest ever performances, sadly. On a side not, I agree that Lee Pace is a good example of the cold/emotionless done well, and would be quite interested in seeing a Jedi who promoted non-involvement in galactic affairs Thranduil style.