I’m probably the only Star Wars fan who didn’t care for Darth Maul all that much. He just seemed kind of like a one-dimensional villain.
Not kind of. He showed up, he fought, he died. There's no dimensions there. But he looked cool, had a new lightsaber, and was probably the first actor in Star Wars that actually knew how to fight IRL.
the first actor in Star Wars that actually knew how to fight IRL
That also goes for Liam Neeson, who had already had a badass sword fight, check out his climactic duel versus Tim Roth in "Rob Roy". In fact, I believe that scene was key in his being considered for the part of Qui-Gon, I remember it being said at the time.
I've seen that movie. It's a great fight scene, but the Darth Maul actor was a straight-up martial artist.
If you watch the clone wars TV show (highly recommend) the character definitely has more depth than what was portrayed in the movies. If you're interested in star wars character development. No better place to look than that show. You just have to suffer the first season a little bit. Since the series ages with it's audience.
Fencing with a rapier is different from waving around something which cuts and burns through stuff without pressure with every side, and doesn't have edges, and its resistance to movement stems not from gravity and aerodynamics, but from oxygen being burnt.
Though that's fans overthinking it, it's not like lightsaber fighting in SW was ever logical.
Fencing with a rapier is different from waving around something which cuts and burns through stuff without pressure with every side
It's actually closer to what Lightsaber dueling would be than the Kendo style used in most of Star Wars. The Light Saber has no mass and a single touch is incapacitating. So two handed hard chops like classic Luke are ridiculous. The rapier fencing technique to parry, thrust or slice quickly and lightly is ideal. You have a massless blade not a two handed clamore. You need only prick the opponent to severely harm them in the same way in fencing a touch, no matter how light, is a point for you.
He was the setup for the need to find the next sith, Darth Vader
Unless my vague opinion doesn't line up with Star Wars lore, in which case, retracted
I was always confused because I thought Dooku (Darth Tyrannus) was Sidious's apprentice. He's the one who arranged the clones to start being made 20 years before episode 2. But that would mean Sidious had two apprentices. Did they know that? Was Maul just given a title to make him feel better but was always seen as disposable?
I never saw Maul as a real apprentice initiated into the mysteries of the sith, just someone trained to fight with the force, although Maul may have thought he was an apprentice. Dooku got the real sith training, hence the force lightning.
All those inquisitors running around at other times aren't sith, just force sensitive enforcers.
Imo rule of two was an unnecessary retcon of a line from Phantom. "Always two Sith are found together" didn't have to mean ONLY two. It was to reflect that like Jedi Master and Jedi Padawan are always two Jedi found together, two Sith are always found together.
Instead of seeing the symmetry that Lucas was so fond of (it's like poetry), the EU ran with the line into an absurd history of how Sith developed into only 2 Sith in the entire Galaxy.
The fact that there was Emperor, Dooku and Maul coexisting meant Lucas saw the Sith as the evil version of the Jedi.
I mean it makes sense considering he was quite literally a pawn
Slightly brainwashed too I believe
And rebels. (I actually loved the scene where Obi owns him for a second time.)
It’s that lightsaber of his that pisses me off. It’s stupid. It’s like…. Worse than just having one blade.
At least it's better than Grand Inquisitor from Rebels, that light saber doesn't know if it wants to be a chakram, a twin blade or a big fan
One of the weapons I've wanted to see make live action were the discblades as used by the Zeizon Sha. as far as a character's load out, one big one, and dozes of, like wrist-bangle-thingies, used in a telekinetic sort of fuck-you.
I'm purposefully ignoring the inquisitor's toys... I'm pretty sure they were actually a joke. (especially at the point that that one dude.... used it like a helicopter rotor...)
Not when your own weapon touches you because they knocked your thrust aside. Or because you shuffled a awquardly in a passing step and they attacked.
It has zero reach advantage because it’s not actually a stave, meaning it has exactly zero of the real advantages staves have.
At that point it was actually the 4th time - they fought on Raydonia with Ventress and Maul's brother, and again on Mandelore during the Clone Wars. I feel like im missing an encounter, but Kenobi faced him for the last time on Tatooine in Rebels.
I think we should think of his lightsaber more like a bow staff than a blade. It became the standard for the Inquisitors in Rebels and other later parts of the various series
The problem with double bladed lightsabers is that they have none of the good aspects of a staff of the same length. Keep in mind, pretty much whatever a lightsaber's blade touches is going to get seared or slagged. Thrusting with one blade, means the other is very awkwardly close to your side. Then, you can't really do vertical strikes or parry vertical strikes. And the "Oh, but you can strike much faster... BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!" thing... well, that's about all you can do. Also, a single bladed lightsaber is going to parry those individual and move to the next both faster and more efficiently than you can strike.
Personally, I'd go something more like the concept art for Darth Bane's Glaive-thing. Maybe a collapsing haft for a second side. You can see the obvious advantage in this HEMA video.
He was, but he got some better attention after his "death".
I just remembered a nice memory about my childhood friend telling me, that he actually didn't die, after watching the movie the first time.
then my question is: did you watch the clone wars? in the main movies, he was just the prealpha of darth vader. but in clone wars and rebels (although i have not finished rebels) he gets a lot more coverage.
still not my favorite bad guy in the franchise by far, but not a shallow character at all. then of course this is my opinion, and my watch-through of media covering him is a long time ago.
Why is that your question? Obviously I did if I could compare the amount of dimension his character had relative to the movie.
Rebels was great too. I just loved the long arc between Maul and Kenobi. Maul was like a revenant that just kept coming back until KenobiI finally defeated him on Tatooine. It struck me how Kenobi just moved on with life, but Maul's sole focus was killing him.
That and outside of the movies you see how brilliant Maul was, mad, but brilliant. He came close to seducing Ashoka and Ezra to the dark side (although Ashoka saw right through him, it took Ezra longer).
still better than the sequels. please put him back in charge, star wars is currently doing an MCU but even worse.
IMO the prequel and sequels are about equal in badness. The odd thing was they're bad in almost exactly opposite ways.
The prequels had a story to tell, but they broke down in the minutia. There was a solid core plot, but once we got to how things played out scene by scene the movies broke down. George knew how he wanted the story go, but he seemed to have no idea how to get from plot point a to plot point b.
The sequels were nearly directionless in story, but ever scene in their rudderless plot had good dialog, pacing and tone. It's like a jigsaw puzzle that has a picture of static printed on it. Episode 7 was just a re-hash of 3, 8 had two weak plots glued together pushed forward by contrived urgency and episode 9 was just a mix of one-upsmanship threat level as well as trying to ret-con the previous two movies into a coherent story arc.
ever scene in their rudderless plot had good dialog, pacing and tone
"They fly now?"
Ex-Trooper who knows troopers are being brainwashed to serve an evil regime shouting "Woooooo" as he slaughters them.
Finn's backstory and Finn's on-screen behaviour have absolutely nothing in common.
Prequels and Sequels are about equal in badness the same way the "left and the right" are about equal in badness.
Despite it's issues, the Prequels has iconic stuff, good world building. The sequels are a fucking mess with no redemptive quality.
The prequels were trash. The only good thing they did was pave the way for more competent writers to expand on the new material, like with the Clone Wars show.
If you like 'em, you do you, but prequels ruined more Star Wars lore than anything in the sequels
Midichlorians is just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, it ruins the Force/the Jedi, turning them from a religion to basically just X-Men, but that's peanuts compared to changing Jedi from being an esoteric order of warrior monks (remember, Han Solo says he's been all over the galaxy and *never* heard of the Force) to actually being the galaxy's space cops just 20 years ago. That means Han was alive when the Jedi were still venerated. Little slave Ani on Tatooine knew more about the Jedi than Luke did when he was on the cusp of joining the Rebellion; the prequels straight up do not fit in the same universe as the original trilogy without crazy mental gymnastics. Darth Vader was literally mocked to his face for being a religious fruitcake in episode 4, that's how much presence the Force originally had.
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I just watch Star Wars for the artistic creativity: words, species, spaceships, clothes, choregraphies, FX, sound design, music ... I except nothing from scenario and acting, because I expect it to be shit.
I've said this before and I think it needs repeating. Filoni is making better stuff than Disney did, and besides, the originals weren't as good as nostalgia thinks they are. Filoni's stuff is on par with the originals and like the originals its a great time for families and kids.
Hard disagree. Filoni made Ahsoka, which is trash. He's the executive producer of The Book of Boba Fett, which is trash. He's the executive producer and wrote some episodes of The Mandalorian, which started promising and then turned to trash. So yeah. He fits right in with anything Disney created.
I like ashoka but boba did feel kinda meh. The rainbow scooters did make me audibly lol, but not really in a good way
filoni did a great job making the clone wars. i'll say that. i'm currently watching rebels and mandalorian S03 and am quite disappointed, as usual with newer star wars stuff.
the main thing is: they may not have a grand roadmap like i imagine george had. none of the newer stuff is really that coherent. it spends more time inventing new stuff that never gets expanded on instead of tying into the previously established lore.
the originals were never the greatest movies ever made, and that's fine. at least it all made sense. it was all explainable. it was coherent.
i feel lost when watching post-2014 stuff, maybe because the lore isn't established yet, but maybe because it just didn't get thought through.
My biggest gruff with Disney is them declaring the extended universe non canon just to cherry pick details from it while ignoring the most exciting lore and shit.
Like the whole palpatine returning thing happened in the EU but was done in a much better way. Different materials like beskar were more fleshed out.
Disney literally had thousands of stories to draw inspiration from and chose to just come up with bullshit over and over again.
absolutely. never read any of the comics, but most of the really interesting stories seem to happen there. would love a well executed starkiller series. i actually did not know about him until i watched some matpat style videos about star wars.
I kind of love Starkiller's story, including the fact that his actions were so instrumental to forming the Rebel Alliance that they took his family crest as their sigil. That's badass.
I'm glad they separated their universe from the EU. It means I can read the EU stuff with the knowledge that it has zero connection to Disney's crap.
Apologies for the wall of text.
Ehhh almost. The best Disney era stuff has been Mandalorian (S1) and Andor, which had, at best, Filoni consulting. Filoni's stuff is good quality but it's also fairly simplistic and self-referential, to the point of being almost masturbatory. I think Clone Wars is the best he's produced and it's 95% awful kids show with 5% very high quality storytelling mixed in, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt since it was literally intended as a kids show.
Prequels and sequels were pretty terrible for opposite reasons, as another poster has already mentioned. The original trilogy is pretty high quality, I don't think that's even debatable. While New Hope was a pretty bog-standard chosen one/heroic epic story, and maybe/definitely just a rip-off of Hidden Fortress, it gets all the credit for the blend of Eastern and Western themes and concepts. Additionally, for absolutely stunning special effects for the era. Empire is just objectively a good movie, and is definitely when Star Wars peaked. It's got excellent writing, directing, and cinematography, and did a phenomenal job maintaining the strengths of New Hope while doing a ton of work developing all of the characters and the universe. Jedi is... okay tbh. I put it about on par with the prequels although the Emperor is my favorite character.
The biggest problem imo with the Disney products lately is exactly that - they are clearly products intended only to capitalize on an already-successful IP, with nothing really to say nor any story to tell. Filoni doesn't have this problem, but he does have the issues above. If Disney can focus on letting creatives tell the stories they want to tell in the Star Wars Universe instead of just churning out products, I think they'll be okay.
Have you watched any of Star Wars Visions? I'm curious what you think about them.
On a related side note, my favorite Star Wars stories were always the ones from the Anthology 'Tales from...' books.
Not OP but I loved Visions, not worrying about canon really freed them up to tell good stories
I Want Old Republic Movie content
Everything around the Empire and Fall and Fallout of the empire is so overtold.
If i have to see another low budget star wars series with darth vader i am gonna shit myself
they made 3 movies and just forgot about them didn't they?
but get ready for lando calrissian for 20 episodes! are you not entertained?
Like Peter Serafinowicz said, there's nothing kids love more than complicated trade negotiations.
Speaking of Peter Serafinowicz and kids, I've been showing my 13-year-old daughter Look Around You, the show he created with Robert Popper that (in the first season anyway) parodies 1980s educational TV shows brilliantly. I forgot how funny it is. Definitely find a copy if you've never seen it.
I think the politics of the prequels is the best part about it. Including the trade dispute :p that's why when you look at them as a whole they are so cool, even though many individual scenes are cringe. That's what's different in the original trilogy. There everything else is great but you never think about the overall story or do you? I don't have to mention that the sequels have neither, right?
Politics can be super interesting, you just have to have good writing. Sadly the prequels don’t.
Specifically, they had bad dialogue. The story was there.
I mean - look at the scene where Anakin finally changes sides. He walks in and Palpatine is on the ground, defeated and unarmed. Then Mace Windu decides to kill him anyway.
This is a betrayal of everything the Jedi are supposed to stand for. They're not supposed to be involved in politics. They aren't supposed to kill prisoners. What makes the Jedi better than the Sith? If both sides are the same, why shouldn't he side with the group that won't hold him back?
The "story* laid an excellent foundation across 3 films to bring us that scene.
Unfortunately the dialogue and the direction were shit the whole way through, so it didn't work.
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lol george lucas , i really liked maul but for some reason i liked qui gon more!!!!!
::: spoiler spoiler the whole story could've changed if qui gon didnt die
anakin would've lived a happy life with padme anakin wouldn't have to life his last of life thinking he killed his wife and padme didnt had to die thinking that anakin's dead thus fulfilling anakin's dream :::