I've always wondering why George Lucas decided to kill off his most compelling character in Darth Maul. Couldn't he have let him live to be the main antagonist for Obi wan Kenobi and Anakin? It seems like such a waste to kill off the best character in all three prequels, in the very first film.
Maybe if he would have been around for the 2nd and 3rd films the movies would have been received differently.
He was not killed. Watch "Star Wars Rebels" :)
shareSure, I know he still lives on in Star Wars Rebels. But i was just talking about the film version of his character.
It was nice and probably the best thing in solo when he showed up. The theater I was at all gasped when he showed up.
I know what you mean. Yeah. May be they bring out a Darth Maul Movie - I mean the still want to milk that star wars cow, right?
shareMaul came back during Clone Wars. Hopefully you didn't miss that great show. It was the one before Rebels.
shareI watched some episodes but it never really got my full attention because may be I am more connected to
the Empire and Rebels time and not so much to the clone wars era.
Actually, you're not dis-interested, the show feels cookie-cutter and maybe a little lame. You need to stick with it, the show gives you some interesting revelations and insights. Anakin WAS a good person...
shareCompelling? He had a double-lightsaber and looked like Satan. What was compelling about this guy? One thing I've never understood about this film is the love that some people have for Darth Maul. He was about as interesting as a cup of yogurt.
shareWell for starters Ray Park, the actor who played him was a Martial Arts expert, and it showed in the way he moved in his limited fight scenes. Secondly his nightmarish look was intriguing to most, the fact that he didn't have alot of dialogue was probably for the best, since it added mystique and George Lucas really isn't all that great at dialogue.
Your'e in the minority with your opinion..
I know. I'm just baffled as to why.
Ray Park's a physical master and I have mad respect for that dude. But I just found Darth Maul to be boring. I also thought Lucas was trying too hard to make the design "cool". To be honest, it felt like he was trying to mimic people's awe for Darth Vader in Episode IV, but just by telling us, "This guy is cool!" instead of actually making him cool.
The Maul fight is the single best moment of all the blighted prequels. The music is fantastic, Qui'Gon is still alive, the fight is exquisite, we see subtle evidence of Sith/Jedi characteristics. It was pure Star Wars. It is the only shining light in the preq trilogy.
shareYou might be right about that, but I still don't care about Maul as a character. Williams did really knock it out of the park, though. That guy knows how to music.
shareEven being the best scene in it all, I have to agree that his character had zero development. A 2 minutes scene could have given us something about him to identify wtf he is about.
shareI completely agree. The shot of the hangar doors opening to reveal him and then igniting the double saber to the opening notes of Duel of the Fates was amazing.
He also presented a sense of real evil and menace (no pun intended) to the screen. In my view, he was the only Star Wars bad guy other than Vader to pull this off. Palpatine should have done so, but all of the cackling laughter was way overdone and made his character a little too cheesy.
It boils down to the writing. Maul couldve been awesome had Lucas put more light on the character. Instead we get an hour of bumbling jarjar, the most annoying character of all time.
Boba Fett couldve been a lot moreinteresting too, but he died a stupid death.
I agree - when I saw the movie in the theatres, I was just baffled as to why they played that doomsday music as Darth Maul made his appearence for the final showdown. He had done nothing to warrant that kind of music. In fact, he hadn't done much of anything at all up until that point. There was no character development of any kind.
shareI was even a little sick of him by the time I was in the theatre. He had been so hyped and promoted, and then there was just that underwhelming dude. "Make him look eeeeeevil and mysterious!" seemed to be the only idea they had, and then they hyped it, and it worked. And that's the most baffling thing of all to me...
shareYeah, the star characters are basically hardly even characters in the movie/theater sense of the word. Star Wars is about effects, and Darth Maul, and Boba Fett are like special effects. That's why at the bottom line these movies are just not very good except as eye candy escapist fantasy.
shareyogurt is awesome
shareThe only reason I can think of that explains your question is,
Lucas didn’t know how popular Maul would be when writing/filming.
I wish he would’ve kept him also.
Maul was definitely a visually interesting character who many fans wanted to see more of. Was I never fully sold on Dooku. I feel the actor was too old.
shareCompelling? He was a generic hitman who happened to have a lightsaber. No background or motivation were given for the character.
shareCan you name a more interesting (new) character from the prequels?
Thats the point I'm getting at, maybe if he hadn't been killed in the first, we get more of a backstory. But instead we just got a spine-chilling visual Sith assassin. The character had the bones of a great villain but we never got the meat.
Dooku.
He has all the menace of Maul, thanks to the gravitas of the incomparable Christopher Lee, plus we know more about him that makes him interesting. He was a former Jedi, now bitter and going rogue and political. We find out he's a Sith, but the Jedi didn't realise he'd gone that low (despite being aware of him). What were his motives? What is his ideal? What political reality does he think he's getting by sacrificing his soul? Is the Sith a means to an end for him, or does he legitimately like their ways? We'll never know thanks to bad writing, but his potential was far more palpable than "Mr. Mysterious".
I'd rather have learned more about Bail Organa, too.
While "compelling" isn't exactly the word i would use to describe him he was certainly a mysterious & visually interesting character who had more potential.
shareI mean, we are getting into semantics over the word compelling. The fact is, like you stated Darth Maul had potential that was never reached. It would have been nice to have the character further explored in episode 2 and maybe even 3.
shareAs it turns out, Maul became an excellent villain in the future. I'm referring to The Clone Wars and SW Rebels. I enjoyed Maul's appearances a lot, up to his final fight with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan is a beast, I always wondered why he always holds back.
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