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 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 tomorrow in Calgary, 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 rushing water and menaced by an eight-ton 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.
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 and his co-stars 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. 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 -- 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 drama Rules of Engagement before once again shaving his head for Star Wars: Episode II.
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 childlike 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."
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