Originally posted by Ordo
I think the movies clearly show Mace winning.
Yes, the official stance is that Windu overpowered Palpatine legitimately due to the special nature of his lightsaber fighting form, Vaapad, and the shatterpoint charism.
Lucas would not allow good to lose to evil in a fair fight.
That's a very odd perspective, since the entire prequel trilogy depicts evil kicking the utter shit out of good. It was essentially four Sith vs. ten thousand Jedi and a Republic and the Sith pimpsmacked all of them. Darth Maul was beating two Jedi at once (i.e. he was winning despite the good guys "cheating"😉; Count Dooku was beating another two Jedi (twice); Sidious butchered three Jedi Masters and stalemated Yoda in a fair fight.
In fact, in a "fair fight", good tends to lose... a lot in the movies. Even during the OT; the Empire was more powerful, the Rebels had to rely on guerilla warfare. That is the nature of evil: it's powerful and it pays off. If it didn't, no one would be evil.
I also think, given how Lucas portrayed the saga (the OT as the battles old men, young boys, and asthmatic has-been cyborgs) that Palpatine would be weaker post-Mace if his power changed at all.
His power did change and he grew stronger (but that's EU).
Originally posted by Jinsoku Takai
Mace Windu busted his ass. GL confirms this. The RotS novel confirms this. What more can be said... really?
Windu won the fight, but Palpatine was faking being too weak to continue according to the DVD commentary.
Originally posted by steverules_2
Obi wan and quie Gon cheated? How? Not disagreeing I just didn't notice that they did
In my opinion, there's no such thing as "cheating" or "fair" in a fight to the death. Anything goes. But Ordo mentioned that Lucas would never make it so that "evil beats good in a fair fight."
Most people would agree that attacking two on one is "unfair." Yet Darth Maul kicked ass regardless of their advantage.
The point being the "all's fair in love and war" adage has some measure of truth; Palpatine took on the galaxy at an incredible disadvantage and won; evil triumphed 'fair 'n' square.'
Just like the Jedi did at the end.
One things Sidious definitly failed to do was stay in control of his lightsaber fight, even if he was faking at first. Without even using the ROTS novelization (which i believe is frowned upon here, no?) Mace KICKED the lightsaber out of Sids hands. You can't fake that.
The DVD commentary on ROTS (that is acceptable?) has Lucas stating that Mace beat sidious with lightsabers. Sidious faked being too weak to continue the duel after the first lightning attack, he still obviously had the ability to attack, but there is no indication that he actually would have won without Anakin's intervention.