NEW YORK -- In Star Wars: Episode I, Jedi Master Mace Windu never had the opportunity to show off his prowess with a lightsabre.

But perhaps that's because wily George Lucas knew he could get Samuel L. Jackson to reprise his role as the Jedi leader for Episode II by promising Jackson some swashbuckling, sabre-swingin' scenes.

"I'm totally stoked to pull that thing out and get it to come on," says Jackson, decked out in a ball cap and sunglasses as he relaxes in a Manhattan hotel suite.

"I'm trying to figure out what colour I want my light to be. I'm thinking purple."

Someone might want to tell Jackson that the lightsabre that comes with the Mace Windu action figure is blue. But it could be that the star of more than 40 Hollywood films has developed an aversion to that colour, after filming the upcoming undersea action-thriller Deep Blue Sea.

Deep Blue Sea, opening in theatres Friday, pits Jackson and co-stars Saffron Burrows (The Loss of Sexual Innocence), Thomas Jane (Boogie Nights), Stellan Skarsgard (Good Will Hunting) and rap legend LL Cool J against a trio of genetically enhanced mako sharks in a flooded deep-sea scientific research facility.

Director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight) put his actors through a gruelling 80-day shoot that had them executing tricky stunts, being hammered by tons of rushing water and menaced by an eight-tonne mechanical shark that sometimes malfunctioned with unpredictable and destructive results.

Jackson, who plays pharmaceutical company owner Russell Franklin, thought his role as the financial backer behind the series of experiments on sharks would spare him from the physical aspects of the shoot. He was wrong.

"I got there and I was a lot wetter than I figured that character was going to be. I was wet every day for two months," says Jackson, who coincidentally studied oceanography in college before switching to acting.

In Deep Blue Sea, the floating medical research facility that the characters work in is hammered by a typhoon, setting off a chain reaction that floods the structure and allows the super-smart sharks to pursue their human prey.

"That storm sequence was no joke," says Jackson. "It was intense out there, a rough shoot. There's one accident that happens that's still in the movie."

In the mishap, Jackson, Burrows, Jane and co-stars Jacqueline McKenzie and Michael Rapaport dash outside the facility's main doors, only to be confronted by the full fury of the storm.

"The waves are supposed to rush in front of us and behind us," Jackson says. "At one point, three tons of water got thrown on us by accident.

"We scrambled up and kept acting. They hit us full-on with three tons of water, and that was not supposed to happen. We didn't have safety harnesses on or anything, and we were flailing around on this deck."

Jackson's next film shouldn't be quite as physically demanding as Deep Blue Sea - he takes on the role of private detective John Shaft for a remake of the classic blaxploitation flick Shaft.

He'll also appear in the military courtroom drama Rules of Engagement before once again shaving his head and donning the Jedi robes for Star Wars: Episode II, set to begin filming next summer in Australia.

Jackson says he's pleased with Episode I, but the reaction of some fans and critics has made him irate.

"The most upsetting thing to me was the fact people couldn't watch the movie and use their child-like imaginations to enjoy it," he says.

"All these adults who really loved Star Wars forgot that when they saw it they were teenagers, and they don't know how to look at a movie like a teenager again.

"They think that because they've grown up, George (Lucas) should have written a movie that works towards their grown-up sensibilities. And that's not he case."

Jackson was also steamed by the accusations of racial stereotyping that were hurled at Lucas, particularly in reference to the Jar Jar Binks character, which some said came across like a bumbling Caribbean servant.

"Jar Jar is a Gungan (the character's alien race), when you come down to it," he says. "And if you can't watch a movie without putting racial connotations on the people in it, then you've got a problem.

"The movie is about all these people that look different... and nobody ever talks about that in the movie. Nobody is ever referenced by how they look or how they sound."


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