Skip to main content

star wars - Why was Mace Windu Surprised when Jango Fett was Decapitated?


After Mace Windu decapitated Jango Fett, he looks somewhat surprised. Why? Was it because it almost looks like there was no body under that suit of armor?


Boba Fett and Count Dooku also look surprised. Boba is surprised because he just saw his father killed, but why Dooku? Is he worried that his "bodyguard" is now dead?



Answer



R.A. Salvatore's novelization did NOT mention any surprise:



And then it happened, all of a sudden. Mace started to slash to the left, cut it short and stabbed straight out, then reversed his grip and sent the lightsaber slashing across, left to right. He spun a complete circuit, coming around to parry a blaster shot, but there was no shot forthcoming.


That left to right reversal had cleanly landed. Jango Fett's head flew free of his shoulders and fell out of his helmet, to settle in the dirt.




Neither does the screenplay:



Finally, FETT isfree and kills the REEK. MACE WINDU fights fiercely with JANGO FETT. Finally, the bounty hunter falls. His helmet goes flying. The bounty hunter's body falls to the ground.



As far as the movie, it's not surprise on Master Windu's face, I think, but sadness (I'll try to see a formal explanation for it in Shatterpoint novel later):


enter image description here


Also, Dooku is merely looking unhappy, not surprised:


enter image description here


Master Windu's mood is explained in Matthew Stover's C-canon novel Shatterpoint, which centers on that character's story. He felt in the Force that what he must have done was to kill Dooku. Instead, he did not, and that permitted the Clone Wars to start, with no second chance to stop it. He's not sad at Jango's death, but at what that death means as far as signaling his failure.




In my dreams... My blade doesn't light the underside of Fett's square jaw. I don't waste time with words. I don't hesitate.
I believe.
In my dreams, the purple flare of my blade sizzles the gray hairs of Dooku's beard, and in the critical semisecond it takes Jango Fett to aim and fire, I twitch that blade and take Dooku with me into death.
And save the galaxy from civil war.
I could have done it.





Leaving that aside, there's is reason for many (any non-Jedi) to be surprised:





  • Windu himself has a healthy appreciation of Jango's deadliness. From Shatterpoint again, here's Master Windu's thoughts about Geonosian arena (from after the fact remembrance):



    Jango Fett bristles with weapons. An instinctive killer: the deadliest man in the galaxy. Jango can kill me in less than a second. I know it. Even if I had never seen Kenobi's report from Kamino, I can feel the violence Jango radiates: in the Force, a pulsar of death.





  • We see that less that 5 minutes prior, Jango Fett easily killed another Jedi (A Jedi Master, and a member of Jedi Council to boot - Coleman Trebor) with his blaster, one on one. Here's the youtube clip of the event, and a small image montage I made from my copy of AotC:








enter image description here


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...