Samuel. L Jackson is a national treasure, a badass and Nick Fury in that order. However, Jackson is also famous for playing, in his own words “the baddest Jedi in the galaxy next to Yoda” and as such, the actor was insistent that the character not die like a punk.
If you haven’t seen the Star Wars Prequel movies, something we absolutely wouldn’t bother to give you crap about, in them Samuel L. Jackson plays a badass Jedi Master with a pimpin’ purple lightsaber called Mace Windu. According to the eternal font of Star Wars wisdom known as Wookiepedia, Windu, along with being feared across the galaxy for his fighting prowess in the more traditional Jedi ass-whupping arts, is also adept at a number of unconventional combat techniques from the Star Wars universe like shattering bulletproof glass with his mind and fucking up robots by punching them the fuck to death with his bare hands.
With this in mind, you’d think that the only thing capable of killing Mace Windu would be a nuclear explosion working in tandem with a honey badger coated in anthrax. Apparently, Samuel L. Jackson agreed with this sentiment and as soon as he learned that his character was set to die, he approached George Lucas and said that he was totally cool with that, as long as he didn’t die “like some punk“. A request Lucas of course listened to because it was being made by Samuel L. Fucking Jackson.
So, to keep Jackson happy, which is always a wise move regardless of whether or not he’s actually in your movie, when Lucas wrote his death scene, he made sure that Windu was killed in perhaps the most metal way possible. Being knocked out of a 300 story window at 80 MPH while being struck by lightning, seconds after having his favourite hand lopped off by a sword made of lasers. As if that wasn’t cool enough, eagle-eyed viewers also noticed that for a split second, while he was being struck by lightning, Mace Windu temporarily turned into fucking Ghostrider.
Amazingly this was actually the second concession made Lucas (who was infamous for ignoring input or suggestions about the Star Wars universe) purely for Jackson’s benefit, with the first being his character’s now iconic purple lightsaber. You see that was never originally in the script and originally Windu was supposed to have a regular green or blue lightsaber. This didn’t sit well with Jackson who got annoyed at the idea that he wouldn’t be able to see his character during the CGI clusterfuck that was the Battle for Geonosis.
So he approached Lucas and asked him if his lightsaber could be purple (his favourite color), to which Lucas initially responded no, because purple wasn’t a color lightsabers could be in the Star Wars universe. However when Lucas realised that since the entire Star Wars universe existed inside his own head he could make whatever fucking changes he wanted to, he called the CGI guys and had them make Jackson’s lightsaber purple. According to Jackson, Lucas got a lot of shit online from Star Wars fanboys shortly after the lightsaber was revealed because it contradicted existing Star Wars canon. Then again, we imagine that, that probably happened a lot to Lucas given all the other shit he pulled with the franchise.
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If you want to read more awesome facts about Samuel L. Jackson, why not check out our article on how Marvel comics made Nick Fury look exactly like him before they asked him to appear in any of their movies and without his permission. Or how about reading an article all about how Jackson signed on to star in Snakes on a Plane after just hearing the title.
