PT How planned (by Palpatine) was the confrontation involving Anakin and Mace in ROTS?

he isn't saying he beat palps, he's saying he overpowered him as we can all see. that doesn't mean mace defeated him or was winning. it was a set up. palps could have just killed mace but he was waiting for anakin to get there. it sells the story that palps is spinning, that the jedi want to kill him. if he kills all the jedi and anakin comes back, palps looks like the bad guy. palps made anakin chop mace by dragging out the battle and appearing to be in a helpless position, laying on the ground.

think about it this way, palps isn't going to risk taking on a jedi he may lose to right at the height of his master stroke. he was alone with mace. if he thought there was any chance he might die he would have had clones on hand like he did with yoda. there's no way he's going to take on 4 jedi masters, kill 3 in 3 seconds and then die to the last one. he knows anakin will show up and he makes anakin do it for him.

 

Think Palp had some idea of what was going to happen but windu overpowered him and he would've died if a Jedi other than anakin shows up

 

Agree to disagree then, because that's not how I interpreted that quote.

 

My one issue with Palpatine orchestrating all of this is Yoda.

What if Yoda was not helping the wookies and instead was still on Coruscant? What if it was Yoda and Mace confronting Palpatine? It would be a completely different outcome in my opinion. While Palpatine could still make it appear that the Jedi were taking over, I highly doubt having Yoda and Mace there would result in the same outcome.

Did Palaptine know Yoda would go to the aid of the wookies? That seems to be a stretch and a huge gamble on his part.

 

IMHO:

Forget commentaries, forget fact-files that come out monthly. Look at what is on the screen. Pretend you are in 1950 if you have to, where there is no readily available internet information.

We see two force users going at it with light sabers. Both testing each others power, both thinking they are better than the other (hence the close-up on the faces...a cinematography trick)

at this point many people state examples of "sidious could have killed him here, Mace could have killed him there" totally missing the point that you can do this with EVERY lightsaber duel in the saga.

The duel seems to be going at somewhat of a stale mate and then suddenly BAM Windu kicks him in the face, Palpatine stumbles, lightsaber flies out the window and Palpatine is on his behind, backing off cowering away in the corner just before Anakin is there to witness it. Who was Palpatine putting on a show for there? Mace? why?.

In order for Palpatine to plan all of this meticulously is too far fetched and makes him no more than a Saturday morning cartoon villain. What if it went wrong? what if Mace killed him right there and then before Anakin got there? I know Palpatine takes risks, but this is LIFE and DEATH, if he died then...the Sith die too. It makes more sense and more in character for Palpatine to turn the situation to his advantage, which is what he did.

I love Palpatine, he is my favourite character in the saga, but lets not put him to near god like status. He won in the end because of his intelligence and because Anakin was there to save him, not because of super duper powers. Mace beat him.

the Jedi in ROTS are an unfortunate side effect of being the close end of useless, lets not put Mace in the same category.

 

So I have a question about this duel...

I see here it says:

"I'd feel better if Yoda were here. Or even Kenobi. On Ord Cestus, Obi-Wan and I—"
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Showdown_on_Coruscant

So it seems Mace would have preferred to confront Sidious with Yoda and Obi-Wan by his side.

However, since we know Anakin was seemingly more powerful than Obi-Wan at the time, Mace chose not to take him and instead brought the 3 masters that dropped like flies.

If Mace chose to bring Anakin and Mace and Anakin confronted Sidious together, would that have changed anything?

What happens if Yoda and Obi-Wan are in town? Is Sidious dead meat then?

 

Actually, it was Kit Fisto that said that quote up above. If Yoda was there with Mace I believe they both could've taken Sidious. I saw a previous post in another thread a couple months back that said Sidious lost his lightsaber against Mace and Yoda, and both had the ability to block his force lightning. They would've been too much for Sidious to handle imo.

 

Yeah, if Yoda AND Mace had been present then Sidious would have been toast, metaphorically. BUT... If Yoda had been there, he would almost certainly have stopped Mace going for the death blow. Not by cutting off his hands, of course, but either by managing to talk Mace down or simply using the force to yank Palpatine out of the way or something similar. Mace was perpetually on the edge of the Dark Side and veering closer, as Palpatine well knew and accounted for, but Yoda would not have fallen for it.

 

But what if Anakin joined in on Sidious' side.

Yoda & Mace vs Sidious and Anakin/Vader

Ooooooh....

Or...

What ideally should have happened.


Palpatine: "Hello, is someone at the door?"


*sound of a dozen lightsabers igniting*
Yoda: "Under arrest, you are"


Palpatine: "Aww crap"

 

*oops double post*

 

"i told you the jedi were evil. execute order 66!" all jedi are shot to death by troopers.

 

If Palpatine was drawing out the fight, why would he intentionally keep the strongest swordsman in the order alive when he could just as easily do the same with any of the Jedi he took out with absolutely no effort? While I agree that it was planned to a degree, him getting kicked in the face, losing his lightsaber, and being cornered against a wall doesn't seem like something easily faked, regardless of how capable he was of defending himself at this point. So my point is: was Palpatine trying to draw out the fight, or was he just trying to stay alive until Anakin returned? Obviously, I'm more inclined to believe the latter; though I can agree that he calculated that Anakin would return.

Another thing Palpatine seemed to predict was him going up against the most powerful Jedi in the order. This was the beginning of Order 66 to me; while Anakin could hold his own against just about any Jedi, it would be an uphill battle for the Clones to purge the Jedi Temple when the Jedi are on their own turf. But now after this, all of the senior Jedi Masters have either been killed, or are away on missions; this was the prime time to attack the Temple.

 

I know where you are coming from but I think the two things aren't mutually exclusive. He's confident he can keep Mace busy, forseeing at the very least that Anakin would arrive at some point. If Anakin wasn't coming I would think he could kill Mace in a straight fight. It could have gone either way in their duel, but I think arguably Palpatine is playing a bit defensively during the lightsaber portion, and when Palpatine is cornered he knows he can get Mace pissed off. But Mace is focused on Palpatine, not seeing fully the hold Palpatine has over a fellow Jedi Anakin. Anakin's destiny of course is really interwined with Palps and Mace at the breaking point when he finally turns. Anakin is basically like a fulcrum for the force in ROTS and ROTJ, everything depends on what he is doing.
Mace I've said in other threads actually was actually relieved Anakin arrived Imo, the betrayal aspect of Mace's death comes from the fact Mace is starting to trust Anakin; in the novelisation he is relieved the chosen one is there, onscreen the shocked reaction and stay-back hand-gesture Mace makes when he spots Anakin is telling, like "phew, reinforcements!"
Mace unlike Palpatine can't see clearly what will happen if he wins or loses. Additionally Mace has only got to know Anakin a little compared to Palpatine, Palpatine can read Anakin like a book.
There are a lot of really ambiguous aspects in the film that I think are done just so you ask questions.

Yes, Palpatine's "We will catch them off balance" is a telling line, it is mostly his fault the Jedi are wasting their time with a false war. He has been sewing deceit in the Republic and the galaxy for a significant period before the events of ROTS.

I think the force is very "active" in the PT, if that makes sense, just the confrontation in Palpatine's office gets thunder heard in the background as the three powerful force users are desperately arguing with each other.

 

Great signature btw lol

 

I've argued a fair bit with Alexrd on this thread. We seem to be in disagreement, I believe Mace felt Palpatine was defeated when he attempted to kill him, therefore regardless of Palpatine's strength Mace's actions were immoral.

If you take the novelisation into account, Mace feels victory "flooding through his aching body", when Palpatine pretends to be weak. He is also happy to see Anakin arrive, "The chosen one was here!", he is actually looking at Anakin as a fellow Jedi, and back-up, before Anakin shocks him by betraying Mace and siding with the Sith.
Finally, Mace sees Palpatine's shatterpoint is Anakin, yet in his focus on ending the Sith, fails to see Anakin's shatterpoint is Palpatine.

 

palps at that point was confirmed as the sith lord and was a murderer. it's the jedi's responsibility to destroy the sith. no immorality there.

 

We know that, but from the perspective of the characters in-universe they had no evidence and no clue how deep in they actually were. Of course, we know Palpatine - by admitting to being the remaining Sith Lord - was basically behind everything transpiring in the galaxy. But Palpatine has stressed the Council to breaking point with the war and general atmosphere of uncertainty. It is why, as soon as word of Grievous's destruction arrives, Mace is instantly on his way to see that the Chancellor returns emergency power and ends the war - what Palpatine promised in Mace and Palpatine's first scene together early in the film. When Anakin informs him of their greatest fear, Mace realises that everything can be traced back to Palpatine, as you imply. That they had lost before they even begun fighting. But Mace makes no move to inform any of the other Jedi Masters or cross-check any of their presumed built-up evidence. They don't have solid proof. He just leaves to arrest Palpatine straight away. I don't think Mace's choice of words is coincidental - "The our greatest fears have been realised." "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." He is afraid of losing the Jedi Order and the Republic. His actions in Palpatine's office seem pretty anger-induced, and he clearly hates the Sith and everything they stand for - "You Sith disease. I am going to end this once and for all!" His attempt to kill Palpatine, while probably entirely justified, isn't really a rational or logic based decision. He came to Palpatine's office to at first attempt arrest (granted, with two separate attempts, only the latter of which Anakin actually hears). But he already knew everything he knew after Palpatine killed his colleagues and tried to fry him with lightning. There is no new information to justify his attempted execution, Palpatine is the murderous Sith Lord behind everything, just like before. Mace still would be able to take the safer bet and arrest the seemingly defenseless Chancellor, if even just for the chosen one's peace of mind (who Mace has seemed to stop believing is ultimately destined to kill Palpatine). If Mace still arrests him, Palpatine is still alive; Anakin gets his wish, and Palpatine still controls the courts; Sidious isn't that worried. But everything Palpatine has done is actually to provoke his preferred alternate reaction - pushing Mace too far and tempting him to kill Palpatine in cold-blood in front of Anakin. Palpatine is now legitimately willing to go quietly for the conflicted Anakin's benefit. Mace attempts to arrest Palpatine twice - as Lucas states in the commentary he should attempt to do for a third time - then Palpatine pisses him off with the lightning barrage and angers Mace into taking the law into his own hands, for the good of the galaxy. You can easily argue in favour of this decision, but the films seem to reinforce the philosophy that deciding what unarmed person lives or dies is not in an individual Jedi's duty. Anakin faced a similar decision when he beheaded Dooku, and now one of the Jedi Masters who he felt ashamed to not live up to the standard of appears to turn out to be no better than Anakin or Palpatine. Notice Mace is attempting to behead Palpatine when Anakin intervenes. Sound familiar? It is the same way Luke takes out the Vader apparition in the Dagobah cave in ESB - Luke's failed test. Luke never truly understands the lesson of the cave until he finds himself in his father's shoes at the climax of ROTJ - a defeated Sith at his mercy, just like Dooku at the mercy of Anakin, and Sidious seemingly at the mercy of Mace. But Luke does what none of the Jedi in the PT could - spares the life of a helpless person regardless of how evil they are - after coming to this epiphany comparing Vader's robotic limbs to his own robot hand. There are many examples of the PT Jedi's contrasting actions in ROTS - Anakin vengefully killing Dooku in cold-blood, Mace attempting to kill Palpatine and paying the price (after arrogantly stating "You have lost!"), Yoda failing to take out The Emperor ("At an end your rule is! And not short enough it was."), and Obi-Wan dismembering his fallen brother and leaving him to burn.
The whole point of the climax of ROTJ is that Luke surpasses all these Jedi with his compassion, and where Mace contributed to Anakin's decision to enslave the galaxy, Luke's sacrifice encourages Vader to return as a good man and end said tyranny. It is implied in the films, Lucas states the Jedi shouldn't fight the Sith, they should essentially love the Sith. It is on your own interpretation, but this is clearly Lucas's intention watching the movies from 1-6.

 

What is never mentioned is the fact that Palpatine raises his hands to shoot lightening at Mace if Anakin doesn't come through. He always meant to end up appearing to be the victim, but he never would have relinquished his left; he never was helpless. That implies to me that he threw the fight.


Probably there were many opportunities that he had to kill Mace that he didn't take, and due to trying not to kill him WITHOUT making it clear that he was avoiding killing him, this gave Mace a genuine shot at winning the fight, which was intentional on the part of the emperor, the loss had to be genuine in order for Mace to see him as too dangerous to live. If you play a computer game with someone who is rubbish at games (your girl, a child, a grandparent) but you don't want to be continuously thrashing them, so you go easy on them without trying to make it obvious, you actually end up conceding a lot of points that you don't want to, that you could have avoided while on your A game, Sidious went easy on Mace in the same way, and as such Mace actually did gain the upper hand and beat Palpatine. Does that make sense?

 

As mentioned by others, ones opinion hinges largely on how much foresight they attribute to Sidious.

With none, this - and everything up to this point - has been a decision more or less made on the fly, which: 1) makes it all seem a bit less plausible, and 2) doesn't square with the confidence Sidious projects.

With at least *some*, we can conceive of Sidious envisioning Anakin at least being there at some point during the duel (perhaps Anakin's force strength and teetering light/dark status prohibits him from seeing *exactly* what Anakin would do). So at that point we can imagine Sidious prolonging the fight to get to a point where Anakin shows up, but knows full well that it's a bit of a crapshoot from there.

I hadn't really considered it before, but I like that theory because it makes Sidious easily more powerful than Mace (which I can buy), but not so powerful that he is A - Z omniscient (how boring is that?), AND it identifies him as power-submissive to Anakin (which of course, Sidious has known all along), the reveal of which we get at the end of ROTJ (and serves to validate Vader's dismissing of Sidious, which I admit has always left me with a bit of a "What, that's all it took?!" feeling).

As always, IMHO.

 

This is similar to how I see it. I feel, unlike some other fans, that he full wants to be at Mace's mercy at the crucial moment. He is taking a risk, in letting it get to that level of intensity just because Anakin is on his way and primed to turn. But this is just how cocky Palpatine is really being here (As Luke will one day tell him "Your overconfidence is your weakness."), he doesn't necessarily have to have total omniscience to have hoped this plan turns out roughly as it ends up when Anakin betrays Mace. He is purposely trying to provoke Mace's anger and cause Mace to act brash in the heat of the moment. Like you say, Palpatine wants Mace to clearly recognise he has won and attempt to kill Palpatine, hence seemingly confirming for Anakin what Palpatine has warned him of.

Mace is strong, and Palpatine is no fool, he is playing defence and not giving Mace a chance to strike until Anakin displays his fearfulness and uncertainty, something Palpatine has been playing on in Anakin since he started mentoring him between TPM and AOTC. Palpatine's greatest strength is in knowing and reading Anakin (and also reading Mace) far better than Mace can. As skeptical as Mace has been about Anakin of late, he doesn't have a clue Anakin is about to turn on him. Palpatine is as sure that Anakin will intervene as he is in ROTJ - when Vader blocks Luke's strike at the Emperor. The parallel between Luke and Mace is where Mace is symbolically the first Jedi to die, Luke is the last Jedi alive. Furthermore, Mace's lack of empathy for Palpatine and the chosen one partly pushes Anakin away from the Jedi Order, where Luke's blind faith that there is good in Vader draws Anakin back.

Well put, agreed.

I'm just wondering if you could clarify, is your reference to "Vader dismissing Sidious" a reference to him turning on the Emperor to save Luke in ROTJ?

 

HevyDevy

Yes, to your last question; I've been doing a lot of saga watching lately (Although...I still can't seem to stay awake for all of ROTJ in one sitting), and it has really served to magnify that scene for me. The tragedy, absurdity, and irony are so intertwined; the reality that Vader was that powerful all along, and just needed that dose of idealism - the thing that he was so saturated with as a youth - to bring him back from the abyss.

Not painting it as some revolutionary epiphany or anything; it's just something I hadn't really thought much about until I started embracing the prequels more lately.

 

ROTJ is certainly the OT episode most enhanced by the existence of the PT. I like the continuous arc of Anakin/Vader 1-6 generally anyway, it shows Lucas put more thought into where the character ends up in the original trilogy than some give him credit for. But ROTJ is the movie that seems to have the most payoff after viewing it all together. I remember being surprised when Vader turned on the Emperor when I originally watched the OT in '97, there was just so little to go on originally that would assure Vader could ever be a good person again (thanks in part to my lack of foresight to read the signs that are clearly there in retrospect). I mean you always hated the Emperor but he is really asking for it now when you see him greedily toss Vader aside after all the work he put in to corrupt him for his own ends, just because a younger, slightly more powerful Jedi comes along.

Your comment on Palpatine ultimately being power-submissive to Vader is interesting. Was wondering if you have you read this essay by user DarthNerdling. He goes pretty in depth with his argument of why Mace technically lost the duel but the part kind of relevant to this is where he discusses Palpatine's motivation to turn Anakin.

It's largely speculation, but he makes a great argument that Palpatine essentially wants to turn Anakin because he knows of Anakin's prophecised destiny to kill him and is therefore trying to subvert the prophecy by making him a Sith. Something I found really interesting about it is the idea that Palpatine is not entirely personally motivated here - he is attempting to keep the Sith line going even if it means his own death. Meaning by turning the chosen one into a Sith, either Palpatine gets an uber-powerful apprentice who doesn't kill him and the two go on strong until Palpatine dies and Vader trains an apprentice, or Vader kills Palpatine and becomes the Master - therefore continuing the Sith line, as no Sith is ever known to have returned from the dark side. Adds a lot to the irony of ROTJ like you described.

 

Does anyone have the ROTS commentary handy? My dvd drive is broken.

I wanted to verify that Lucas's comment during the turn scene that "Mace should have arrested Palpatine" clearly demonstrates Lucas thought Palpatine would pretend to go quietly for Anakin's benefit, even after the first lightning burst and "I'm too weak". And Mace did exactly as Palpatine hoped by trying to kill him instead of taking the legitimate (third) opportunity to imprison him.

 

30 years of nothing but victory can make even a Sith Lord quite overconfident and prone to mistakes.

 

Agreed.

I would add however that there is a significant parallel in the Jedi's blindness to the dark and everything that was going on around them (ROTS) and the Emperor's blindness to the strength of Luke, the Rebellion and the good in Vader (ROTJ).