'EPISODE III' AT TWENTY: TO DUEL A SITH LORD!

Lucas watches the new choreography between Ian McDiarmid and Samuel L. Jackson, hastily supervised by Nick Gillard.

With the Sith enemy finally revealed as none other than the Supreme Chancellor himself, Mace Windu finds himself in single, brutal lightsaber combat with Darth Sidious and thankfully seems to overpower his nemesis. But when Anakin Skywalker arrives on the scene playing out within the Chancellor's office, and sees Windu readying to kill the evil energy scarred Sith, the young Jedi has no choice but to intervene, so as to save the life of Padme. And so comes a shocking end to the respected Jedi Master, but a man who had nonetheless been wary of Anakin since his introduction to Yoda and the Jedi Council in Episode I.

"I suppose it's easy to play, I think, a hypercritical politician with a smiling face. It's also quite gratifying. Most difficult, certainly for me, were the all action sequences. The sequence fighting Sam (Jackson) and persuading Hayden (Christensen) to send him through the window. But you'll see from the DVD we had our problems that day. They weren't big ones and were easily surmountable."

"I'd learned some stuff and I worked with Nick Gillard, and when George saw it on the set it wasn't what he needed. And interestingly enough what he needed was more of me. I'd rather thought they'd want less of me. But he wanted not just my facial expressions, which would have been obvious and he was not terribly interested in replacing faces unless it was absolutely necessary, he wanted my energy."

Ian McDiarmid - Episode III DVD press launch - 2005

Locking sabers: Darth Sidious and Mace Windu.

Lucas goes through planned moves on set.

Lucas watches Ian McDiarmid with his double, Michael Byrne, as Sam Jackson and Nick Gillard wait to see what is improvised in the duel.

McDiarmid gets some intriguing new duelling moves in the sequence that are far different from any Jedi's attack/defense.

Filming the duel sequence near the what will be a CGI-smashed observation window.

The sparks are flying!

Anakin arrives to see the fallen Palpatine, as seen in this visual script page from Nick Gillard.

Holding two lightsabers (one presumably being Sidious's) in an unseen moment, Mace resists the dark side energies against him, watched by a troubled Anakin.

Onscreen, with just one saber taking on the powers of Palpatine.

Windu, with just his own saber, holds firm against the Sith's evil energies, but Anakin's surprise action leads to his demise at Sidious's hands - 'unlimited power'!

Mace is propelled out the window in the scene shot at the FOX Studios, Australia.

Jackson enjoys his 'death' alongside Nick Gillard.

"Yeah, it was hard work, a lot harder than before. You get what you ask for sometimes, and it's... damn! So, I ended up in Australia, and then I guess I had to rehearse for 8 days before I actually shot it, learned a 137-move saber fight. It was crazy."

Samuel L. Jackson - Tiscali Internet interview - 2005

"All of the stuff that I shot is in the movie. Nothing is on the floor, and George kept calling me back. We filmed Revenge of the Sith two and a half, almost three years ago, and I went back six times to do re-shoots, enhancement shots or whatever. We kept adding more and more, and all my material is in the picture. I even had to go back and sort of redo my death scene because George didn't think it was long enough. Well, I was kind of there like, "Ahhh," and then out of the window, George was like, "No. No. Stay in there." My death is cool. Actually, I could have ended the saga. I'm still a bad mother, but I had Sidious. I had him!" 

Samuel L. Jackson - Starlog magazine issue 337 - August 2005

Sam Jackson celebrates the 20th Anniversary landmark. Image: Facebook.