One's
potential is determined by strength in the Force, but actually utilizing all of that potential can only be attained through one of two methods: years of training and discipline, OR by simply giving in to your anger and hate.
I believe prequel Anakin was actually quite a poor combatant, because his arrogance caused him to be indisciplined and made his training inefficient. His masive potential goes wasted much of the time. However, by letting go and tapping into the Dark Side, he was able to completely dominate and defeat even Darth Tyranus in mere seconds.
From the novel Dark Lord, it is apparent that after his injuries at Mustafar, his confidence had taken a terrible blow. It took him quite some time to recover his sureness in himself, after which he once again became capable of using the Dark Side of the Force to unleash the full potential of the prophesied Chosen One.
It would help to be more specific whether "Vader in the mask" refers to him immediately after the events of RotS.. or to Vader ten to fifteen years down the line. The former is unlikely to beat Windu, whereas with the latter, it's much harder to say. He's far more powerful, but the canonical ability of Vaapad to rechannel Dark Side aggression (as was done to Sidious) keeps an obvious answer from us.
Mr. T wrote:As a side note, I wonder if the fact that much of Vader is mechanical means that Jedi's could manipulate his mechanical parts potentially as we have seen that Jedi's in the prequels seem to have an easier time demolishing mechanical droids as opposed to humanoids. I suppose however that Vader's strong force powers might mitigate this if it is the case.
The reason why Jedi are more often seen telekinetically smashing droids with the Force is due to their unwillingness to do the same to living beings; apparently, the feeling of using the Force to harm flesh and bone is disturbing, perhaps traumatic, and leads down the path to the Dark Side.
So, really, mechanical prostheses are no more easily manipulated than organs composed of soft organic tissue. At the same time, it's no more viable, because a Force user presumably
protects himself, either actively or passively, from that avenue of enemy attack.
Regardless of the biological or cybernetic nature of the target, Force telekinesis would only work by catching a Force user unprepared, or brutely overpowering the intended victim's abilities (hardly likely against Darth Vader).
In fact, on the RotS novelization, Obi-Wan causes Anakin's replacement hand to spring open and drop his lightsaber.. once. The logical reason he does not use this trick repeatedly is that he was unable to, after that first time.
"..history has shown the best defense against heavy cavalry are pikemen, so aircraft should mount lances on their noses and fly in tight squares to fend off bombers". - RedImperator
"ha ha, raping puppies is FUN!" - Johonebesus
"It would just be Unicron with pew pew instead of nom nom". - Vendetta, explaining his justified disinterest in the idea of the movie Allspark affecting the Death Star
