The Mace Windu/Palpatine confrontation went through a few changes from script to screen. In fact, a few of the shots (mostly the ending) were reworked and reshot in pickups many months after the original shoot in Sydney. This is, as everyone surely understands by now, par for the course when talking about filming a Star Wars movie.

In the original version of the big arrest and following duel, Mace Windu and his Jedi posse come to arrest Palpatine while Anakin is actually in the room. Before they got inside, though, they were supposed to encounter a fellow named Dar Wac who is essentially Palpatine's secretary. Here's the passage from the published script including this encounter plus a small bit before that were the gunship lands and the Jedi exit:

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126 EXT. CORUSCANT-SENATE OFFICE BUILDING-LANDING PLATFORM-EARLY EVENING
The sky is still blue as a JEDI GUNSHIP lands on the Senate Office Building landing platform. FOUR JEDI exit the SHUTTLE and enter the Senate Office Building. MACE WINDU, AGEN KOLAR, KIT FISTO, and SAESEE TIIN, like gunfighters out of the Old West, walk through the massive hallway, four across.

127 INT. CORUSCANT-LOBBY TO CHANCELLOR'S OFFICE-EARLY EVENING
The FOUR JEDI enter the lobby, raising their arms, and send the Chancellor's aide, DAR WAC, flying against the wall, along with TWO REPUBLIC GUARDS. They storm into the Chancellor's office.

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In this earlier version, after the Jedi enter Palpatine's office, Mace Windu tells Anakin to stand behind him but perhaps in a moment of abstract foreshadowing, Anakin does nothing of the sort and stays near Palpatine. When things start to get ugly, Palpatine uses the Force to snatch Anakin's lightsaber from his belt and the fight is on. Palpatine takes out the Jedi posse and then takes on Windu while Anakin just sort of stands there stunned. As you would imagine, the fact that Anakin just stands around watching all this and does nothing is a little hard to swallow so Lucas decided to re-edit some of this sequence to make it flow a little better while reshooting much of the ending plus some other scenes to fill in the gaps on Anakin's whereabouts while the fight is going on.

In reading The Making of Revenge of the Sith, I didn't see much explanation about the reworking of the beginning of the scene and how they got Anakin out of the room. Did they reshoot Palpatine alone or split Anakin out somehow? I don't know for sure but the book certainly makes it clear that just about everything after the fight itself (all the time by the window) was redone so that Anakin could enter the room late in the game.

Below is an excerpt from the published script. Notice that Palpatine slams Windu against a wall early on which wasn't seen in the final film but did make it into the Comic Adaptation. Most of this excerpt is the same as the final version outside of a few small bits of dialogue which were probably removed during editing. The "You old fool" line is noted in the Making of Revenge of the Sith book. The other changes are minimal.

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A close shot of PALPATINE as the fight begins. Close shots of THREE JEDI getting cut down by PALPATINE. PALPATINE and MACE continue to fight.

Jedi Master MACE WINDU and the Sith Lord fight their way down the hallway and into the main office area. PALPATINE is able to use the Force to slam MACE against the wall, but he recovers before the Chancellor can cut him down.

ANAKIN lands his speeder, jumps out, and runs down a long corridor toward the Chancellor's office.

In the heat of battle, MACE cuts the window behind the Chancellor's desk, and it crashes away. MACE is forced out onto the ledge, which is twenty stories up. They fight over the precipice. ANAKIN arrives to see PALPATINE and MACE fighting.

They stop as MACE forces PALPATINE to drop his sword. PALPATINE and MACE start yelling at each other.

MACE WINDU
You are under arrest, My Lord.

PALPATINE
Anakin! I told you it would come to this.
I was right. The Jedi are taking over.

MACE WlNDU
You old fool. The oppression of the Sith
will never return. Your plot to regain
control of the Republic is over . . .
you have lost . . .

PALPATINE
No! No! You will die!

PALPATINE raises his hands, and lightning bolts shoot out. They are blocked by MACE's lightsaber. PALPATINE is pushed back against the window sill.

PALPATINE
He is a traitor, Anakin.

MACE WlNDU
He's the traitor. Stop him!

PALPATINE
Come to your senses, boy.
The Jedi are in revolt.
They will betray you,
just as they betrayed me.

MACE WlNDU
Aarrrrggghhhhh . . .

PALPATINE
You are not one of them,
Anakin. Don't let him kill me.

MACE WlNDU
Aarrrrggghhhhh . . .

PALPATINE
I am your pathway to power.
I have the power to save the one you love.
You must choose. You must stop him.

MACE WlNDU
Don't listen to him, Anakin.

PALPATINE
Help me! Don't let him kill me.
I can't hold on any longer.
Ahhhhhhh . . . ahhhhhhh . . .
ahhhhhhh . . .

MACE pushes PALPATINE out to the edge of the ledge. As the Jedi moves closer, the bolts from Palpatine's hands begin to arch back on him. The Chancellor's face begins to twist and distort. His eyes become yellow as he struggles to intensify his powers.

PALPATINE
I can't ... I give up. Help me.
I am weak ... I am too weak.
Don't kill me. I give up. I'm dying.
I can't hold on any longer.

MACE WlNDU
You Sith disease.
I am going to end this once
and for all.

ANAKIN
You can't kill him, Master.
He must stand trial.

MACE WlNDU
He has too much control of the Senate
and the Courts. He is too dangerous
to be kept alive.

PALPATINE
I'm too weak. Don't kill me. Please.

ANAKIN
It is not the Jedi way . . .

MACE raises his sword to kill the CHANCELLOR.

ANAKIN (continuing)
He must live . . .

PALPATINE
Please don't, please don't . . .

ANAKIN
I need him . . .

PALPATINE
Please don't . . .

ANAKIN
NO!!!

Just as MACE is about to slash PALPATINE, ANAKIN steps in and cuts off the Jedi's hand holding the lightsaber.

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Starwars.com's Pablo Hidalgo wrote about this scene in his June 23rd Homing Beacon write up, meant to be a teaser for his extended Set Diaries on Hyperspace, the pay area of Starwars.com. Pablo was on-set for much of the shooting of EPISODE III so you can take his word as golden when it comes to what happened on the set. Here's his recollection of what happened when these shots were photographed:

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Homing Beacon #139 (June 23, 2005)

It's one of the fieriest debates of online fan forums: when Palpatine was cornered in his office's giant window-frame, was he really overpowered by Mace? Or was he faking to lure Anakin? Could Mace really have gotten the upper hand on the Sith Lord?

George Lucas is the ultimate keeper of the true answer, and he's not telling... yet, anyway. If you had asked me in the Summer of '03, when the sequence was first shot, I would have had a solid answer. But, if you asked me in the Fall of '04, when the sequence was re-shot, well... for those who want to debate, it's best to know more of the story of how this scene came to be.

This entire sequence changed significantly during postproduction. What we witnessed in Sydney told a different story. Anakin did not earn Mace's trust by ratting out Sidious right away. He did not agonize over his decisions while sitting alone in the Jedi Council chamber. He did not rush in at the last minute to witness a questionable balance of power. Instead, he stayed at Palpatine's side, in the Chancellor's private office, as Mace and his posse of Jedi barged in.

"Stand behind me," ordered Mace, in Sam Jackson's demanding tones. But Anakin didn't budge. Instead, he watched passively as Palpatine used the Force to snatch Anakin's lightsaber from his belt and attacks Mace and the Jedi. There's ample evidence of this original version for those with sharp eyes and behind-the-scenes photos. Heck, even Hasbro action figures with Palpatine packaged with Anakin's lightsaber got out there in the initial shipments.

So, if Sidious' entire duel played out before Anakin's stunned eyes, I'd be inclined to think that his fall was just for show. This changed after a screening George Lucas held for a few key colleagues. Their reactions underscored the shortcomings of the way this duel was constructed. Anakin's inaction was hard to justify cinematically. "The story was there, but it wasn't clear," said Lucas at the time it came to rebuild this scene. "It was too abstract. We opened up that part and looked at what we could do."

When word of the change came down, the keepers of continuities started carefully tracking the evolving consequences. Palpatine had two lightsabers, then, since he loses this one in the duel with Mace. I still have in my inbox a tentative email from one of the authors asking, "um, have we figured out yet whose lightsaber Palpatine uses in the fight with the Jedi?"

At first, it was feared it was impossible to CG the small svelte-handled weapon over Anakin's relatively chunky handle, but nonetheless, that was the lightsaber given to McDiarmid for the pickup photography. The shots of Palpatine rising from his chair and extending the weapon were reshot. The bulk of the duel between Sidious and Mace stayed from principal photography, except for a new touch -- a kick to Palpatine's face, done with stunt double Michael Byrne. This was shot on a partial set of just a piece of window-frame on Friday, August 27.

So... with this revised duel, if Sidious threw the fight, it places an awful lot of faith on Anakin's timing ...and he suffered a kicked-in face to boot. For what it's worth to those arguing, I doubt there's anyone who thinks Palpatine's serious when he claims he's too weak. That's obviously a lie. But was the fall into the corner that preceded his pleas for help a lie as well?

What else changed in this scene? There are a few more interesting details, particularly where it moved in the sequencing of the story. But that will have to wait for another entry.

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Some of the photos below clearly show Anakin in the room as the Jedi enter to arrest Palpatine. These are from the original Sydney shoot and scanned from The Making of Revenge of the Sith.

There's another scene involving Mace Windu I should mention. This one is actually available on the Revenge of the Sith DVD so there's no need to go into too much detail here. Mace basically senses a plot to destroy the Jedi - something he still says in the film, just at a later point. Obi-Wan, Yoda and Windu are sitting in a room together discussing the Chancellor and what they think might be happening to the Republic. This scene was dropped in favor of a rewritten scene taking place in a war room.

The image of Mace in the council (from a promo still) IS in the film, after Anakin first sits in a council chair, but I'm including it here because it's slightly different. In the film, the aspect ratio is different - Mace is cut off closer to the hands - and the angle is slightly different.

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