PT Analysis of Mace Windu's plan to overthrow Palpatine

In short, I think Mace's plan was rushed and not well thought out. Lol. First of all, he took the wrong three Jedi with him to arrest Palpatine. If he had brought Yoda, Shaak Ti, Obi-Wan, and a large group of Jedi, the plan would have worked. Some Jedi would have died, but Sidious was NOT invincible. If they all mobbed him, he would have been dead. In terms of a one-on-one duel with the Dark Lord, Mace himself was 60% as powerful as Sidious. There was no question that he was the superior martial artist and duelist. The question was not whether or not Mace would win the duel. The question is whether or not Mace would survive the explosion.

I believe that Mace was blinded by his love for the Republic and his desire to end the war as speedily as possible. I mean, the Jedi had become arrogant. Yoda was not example of that, but Mace was. He was a good person who essentially had grown too overconfident and world-weary.

 

Mace did kind of bring Larry Moe and Curley with him.

 

His plan to arrest the Chancellor? Just because Palpatine had managed to easily defeat Kit Fisto and the other two Jedi Masters that had accompanied Mace, doesn't mean they were incompetent. Palpatine was simply a superior lightsaber duellist and had a more powerful connection to the Force. I can recall reading a book on the making of "Revenge of the Sith" that had clearly stated only three were powerful enough to take on Palpatine - Yoda, Anakin and Mace.

Is this another example of fans using Mace Windu as the scapegoat of the Jedi Order? Yoda, in his own way, was just as arrogant as Mace and nearly every other member of the Order. He may have recognized signs of arrogance within the Order, but I sometimes wonder if he had failed to recognize within himself.

 

Well, he had zero seconds to come up with an elaborate plan, just as Sidious maneuvered it.

It seems they were the only Masters available. The others were spread out elsewhere fighting, etc.

I'm not catching what that is supposed to mean. As guardians of peace and justice it's the Jedi's duty to protect the citizens of the Republic from threats to their safety and freedom.

After the deaths of Dooku and Greivous the war was essentially as good as over. That is why it was time for Palpatine to hand his emergency powers back over to the Senate as promised, and if not, be arrested.

Sidious used their duty-bound good intentions to steer them into his traps. And they had to act immediately with what they had.

 

Mace was unable to form attachments to people, and he clung to his attachment to the Republic itself. Similarly, Kazdan Paratus loved the Jedi Order, and his mind broke after it fell.

Yeah, well, I understand those were the only masters available. But what I meant was that there were more qualified masters who could have been a threat to Sidious. I wasn't questioning Mace's reason. I'm just well-versed in versus series videos and I'm cognizant of the challenge he faced.

Technically, the Clone Wars were not over for a while. The Separatist holdouts existed, and once Sidious had Anakin eliminate the heads of the corporations, the Empire set about with a second Clone Wars to brutally take down the remaining resistance and take their resources for the Empire.

 

Mace could have taken more then a few seconds to come up with a plan. He could have contacted the rest of the council and have Anakin repeat what he told him. And they could discuss what to do.
Palpatine has been chancellor for many years and been a sith. So why the rush?
Sure, had Mace questioned Anakin a bit more and learned that the sith they have been looking for for over a decade just tells a Jedi who he is and then lets that Jedi leave. On the one hand, said sith knows that the Jedi will be informed and thus could trigger some action. On the other, he still told the Jedi who he was and let them leave. Clearly baiting the Jedi into some sort of trap. Reacting rashly and too quickly is dangerous.
"The hasty stroke oft goes astray" as Tolkien put it. Shame the Jedi did not think about that.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Mace wasn't exactly brimming with good ideas in the last movie either. Mace walks 200 Jedi right into a kill zone in AOTC and only like a dozen manage to escape because Yoda showed up with the clones in the nick of time.

I think the best part of Palpatine's plan was guilting the Jedi into becoming Generals in the first place even though they clearly were not cut out for it.

 

I remember the novelization kind of elaborated on this a little bit-not so much that those other Jedi were stooges , but IIRC as they were gathering and waiting for Mace before they headed to Palpatine's office one of them (can't remember which) mentioned that they would feel much more confident if Anakin or Obi Wan were with them when they confront Palpatine.

Not sure if I've got all the exact details right-but it did express to me that there was a sense of insecurity among them all (except Mace perhaps) as to whether or not their plan would work-if Anakin was right about Palpatine. To me their being so unsure of themselves kind of lends itself a little bit to the fact that they were offed so quickly in the confrontation.

 

Let’s say some assistant in the White House went to the chief of security and started accusing Biden of being a foreign born agent turned American career politician that is responsible for terrorist attacks on America, and that Biden just tried to recruit the assistant for an upcoming terrorist plot.

This assistant has an upstanding reputation and is well liked. Security goes to confront Biden and Biden says something clearly hostile but unintelligible in a language other than English and pulls a gun.

I would imagine some, if not all of the security might be caught completely surprised and freeze.

We know that Mace sensed the Dark Side around Palpatine and he was ready to act on Anakin’s word, when he distrusted Anakin the rest of the time.

But there’s the possibility that the Jedi that went with Mace had some degree of doubt that caused them to hesitate.

I know that some fans (and Luke) point to Sidious’ rise as being evidence of Jedi overconfidence, but I disagree. When you lose at something or get tricked it doesn’t automatically mean that you were overconfident or arrogant.

Let’s say I had some hatred for a country. I moved to that country in my 30s and had a child born there. I raise my child as a citizen of that country, and ensure he’s immersed in the native culture of the country so as to blend in perfectly. I urge him to become a career politician and pass on my hatred for the country that we live in. My child has a political career for 40 years and then he betrays the country. Is this the fault of security forces for being arrogant? I’d just say that they were outplayed by an extremely long preposterous plot that nobody would suspect, especially in a free society.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Actually it was Yoda they wished was with them in that part of the novel; and you are right that the novel explains the situation better; for obvious reasons, novels have a way of doing that.

I think a lot of this speculation in the thread runs contradictory to the story. SW fans come up with everything up to the Empire actually being good rather than villainous. I mean, all of that is fun, but the actual story doesn't support any of it, including Mace going evil here.

The point is politics. Palp had total control of the government, and arresting him would be pointless. As Mace said, "we must move quickly if the Jedi order is to survive." He was 100% right; the Jedi order fell right after that when they failed. It would not have fallen if he had been successful at killing Palatine, and the galaxy would not have suffered under the tyranny of the Empire (and lots of death star genocides). There really was every justification for him to do what he did. Still, there are some interesting and amusing slants on all of this, I must say.

 

Kit Fisto would still feel better if Kenobi was here, on Ord Cestus......

But they were the best they had at the time and Mace didn't want to waste time. A foolish decision I think.


I also think that even if he had killed Palpatine the jedi would still have fallen. An unpopular cult has just overthrown and killed a very popular leader. The people would hate them.

The jedi couldn't win this fight, but fighting at all they had already lost.

 

All interesting, but again, not congruent with the actual story. It's all in the novel. If Palp is killed, there is no order 66, and no mass death of the Jedi. Palp turns the people and the government against the Jedi AFTER Mace attacks him and gets chopped by Anakin; if he had been killed, he would not have been able to do that. The Jedi were commanding the armies before that, and the armies would never have turned on them without Order 66.

 

I am trapped in multi quote hell. Never again will I mention the 3 Stooges

 

If you think that I won't argue with you.

To be the tragedy isn't that the Jedi lost, but that they ever thought they could win.

 

It was that failure that caused the Jedi to fall. All the Jedi platitudes about fear, being patient, being calm, overconfidence, etc. went out the window.

Anakin told Mace. And Mace immediately took off to fight Palpatine. I.E. he was not patient.

Palpatine had been in politics for decades. The fact that Anakin tipped Mace off to his true nature didn’t mean that he needed to be dealt with immediately without any sort of warning to the Senate, other Jedi, etc. At least Obi-Wan and Yoda thought to use the beacon to warn other Jedi before going into their respective confrontations.


This Sith Lord hid right under their noses for years and was obviously very powerful. He had made himself master of Count Dooku. But Mace obviously thought he could handle it.

That’s the same guy that took 200 Jedi to Geonosis, was told he was impossibly outnumbered, was confident that they could handle it, and then nearly got all of them killed had it not been for the clones.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Have some respect. That's MASTER Larry, MASTER Curly, and MASTER Moe.

 

Now, if Master Shemp had come along, too, then Palpatine would've been finished.

 

What "plan"?

 

The; Get these Mother****ing Sith, out of the Mother****ing government, plan.

edit - star out the whole word, plz. thx. /heels

 

To George's credit, after seeing these warrior monks for two and half films by this point of ROTS, I totally bought that they were stupid enough to just waltz into the Chancellor's office and try to kill him.

 

Evil always triumphs over good, because good is dumb.

 

I thought that was just a funny line from a Mel Brooks movie and not like, a foundation for an entire trilogy of films.

 

Then you just haven't been paying attention to the Star Wars films, for the last 20 years, or so

 

Yeah, the ST got real dumb with it.

 

No bashing of other SW trilogies on this board.

/heels