Who knows? For me, the Obi-Wan/Maul duel in "Rebels" was vastly overrated and disappointing. Maul should have remained dead after "The Phantom Menace".
Dave Filoni Named Chief Creative Officer at Lucasfilm
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Who knows? For me, the Obi-Wan/Maul duel in "Rebels" was vastly overrated and disappointing. Maul should have remained dead after "The Phantom Menace".
I mean, those types of films inspired Lucas so why not?
The duel is all about the will of the two against one another. It's not flashy or splashy because it doesn't need to be. It is direct and too the point, and works well as a story in of itself. The history of the characters sets the drama, and the stage is intense.
Or not died in Phantom Menace, and avoid the whole Grievous thing.
Disagree. The prequel trilogy isn't Maul's story, so keeping him around for all three movies would have implicitly imbued him with undue significance, essentially making him the main nemesis for Anakin and by extension making his ultimate defeat the turning point for Anakin's fall.
That may sound like it would work, but that's not the story George wanted to tell. He didn't want Anakin to turn to the dark side out of anger or vengeance; he needed him to be seduced and tempted by it's power and motivated by a fear of loss. This is after all a morality play, and there's really not much of a lesson in "angry man get even more angry then turns evil when he kills a baddie." I mean it was enough of an anti-climax how quickly Dooku was killed off after being built up for most of the previous movie; can you imagine how much worse it would have been after TWO movies with this guy running around, not dying? (see also: Phasma.)
Maul was both killed off and brought back for largely the same reason Boba Fett was; they was a cool characters that didn't have much to actually do beside stand around looking cool, because they didn't really have a place in the respective stories unto themselves. Given the benefit of time, distance and a new medium however, they were able to return and actually get a story all of their own, and the franchise is better for it.
As for Grievous; he is not a problem that needed a solution. He was only ever meant to be an obvious physical threat and a distraction from the true villain of the movie. The whole Utapau thing is very much the b-story of the movie, just there to keep Kenobi out of the way at the critical juncture, while Anakin was over here in the a-story with Palpatine making all the poor life choices.
Ok, but killing him as he was shows a lack of development. It's not something I can easily put in to words, but Maul could serve, well, like he did in Clone Wars. Another view on the Force, rather than just the Sith and the Jedi. There are ways to make it work while not relying about a hack henchman like Grievous. Yes, he was meant as a distraction but it was a poor one as used in the films.
A few years back I did a fan re-write of episodes I and II (still haven't gotten around to finishing it). Among the multitude of changes I made to the entire milieu to bring it back in line with what we expected from the clone wars with nothing but the OT to go on, I took Darth Maul and made a 3-episode villain out of him. He a true Sith Lord, a tactical genius (to complement his master's strategizing), the scourge of the Jedi, and one of the sub-plots was Palpatine deliberately letting slip that Anakln Skywalker (who started EP I as the teenage slave of a very dark, evil Trandoshan- no loving mother or soft Watto anywhere in sight) was a potential rival to his power. Maul then sets about destroying Anakin, which is itself a test designed by Palps to ensure that only the fittest of the two eventually succeeds him as Dark Lord of the Sith. That said, Anakin's fall is driven by many of the same factors as the canon OT- attachments, and the desperation borne from the fact that his love interest (I split Padme into two characters, mother/daughter, in my version) was being held captive by her enemies and was in imminent danger of death.
Point being, it would have been possible to make Maul much more than a throwaway character right from the beginning, without substantially changing the motivations and circumstances behind Anakin's fall.
As a side note, among the other things I changed, the clone wars were actually a conflict between clone armies on both sides, using multiple templates, a Jedi Order that allowed marriage, didn't take infants from their families, and was much more integrated with society and divorced from politics, and a Jedi support group known as the Antarian Rangers, who essentially drove them around and provided armed backup on their missions. (They were sidekicks).
Point being, it would have been possible to make Maul much more than a throwaway character right from the beginning, without substantially changing the motivations and circumstances behind Anakin's fall.
As a side note, among the other things I changed, the clone wars were actually a conflict between clone armies on both sides, using multiple templates, a Jedi Order that allowed marriage, didn't take infants from their families, and was much more integrated with society and divorced from politics, and a Jedi support group known as the Antarian Rangers, who essentially drove them around and provided armed backup on their missions. (They were sidekicks).
I agree. I get what Lucas was trying to do with the three different villians of Maul (Sith), Dooku (Jedi turned Sith) and Grievous. I just think it went overly long with the effort and could have used Maul in a way that highlighted his potential, which is evident by how he came back in Clone Wars and Rebels! Like, there is more to Maul than "Revenge."
Maul's view of the Force would be very much that of the Sith.
Eh, even if Maul hadn't been killed, we might very well have gotten Grievous anyway. After all, Grievous was basically the character created to sell toys. Even if Maul were in ROTS, it's not hard to see them introducing another toy selling character in the movie anyway.
I was fine with the three separate henchmen in each movie. They each represent a different aspect of Darth Vader. I just wish Lucas had thought of them all ahead of time so that Dooku could have been on the Jedi Council in TPM (and then is referred to at the end as having resigned after Qui-Gon's death and the rest of the Council's refusal to support him) and so that maybe Grievous could have appeared in AOTC as a Separatist general who Kenobi leaves for dead (maybe he gets crushed by one of those pillars in the Geonosian arena, leading to his cybernetic body and chronic cough in ROTS).
Ultimately, this is my larger issue. The films feel very disparate in their villains and their motivation towards the heroes. They show up, die, or escape with a very odd sense of their purpose. Grievous is probably the most stand out to me, since he is just a glorified distraction and that carries limited dramatic weight.
So, having them appear more could have helped.
more dangerous than Palpatine?
A different danger. A wild danger, without necessarily the same discipline like Palpatine.
Like I said though; that wasn't the story Lucas was telling.
Movies need to be a lot more focused that a 130+ episode TV show, and Maul would have been superfluous. It's also why Lucas skipped right over the actual war between movies; because in his words it was just a footnote in the story of Anakin Skywalker.
There's a reason why the only characters to have a substantial role in all three movies are Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme, Palpatine & Yoda. They're all vital to the story, Maul is not. Two dimensional henchmen aren't a last resort, they're a preference. They work very well for this kind of storytelling precisely because they don't need any character development.
This even extends into the animated show; indeed it was just a few weeks ago I think I pointed out that Lucas was careful not to give Anakin a nemesis on the show; the closest he got was Clovis, and it's no coincidence that he was a non-threat in physical terms, but a huge threat (in Anakin's mind at least) to his relationship with Padme. Noticing the pattern here?
Maul, Ventress, Grevious, Cad Bane; they were all regular foils for Obi-Wan and to a lesser extent Ahsoka, but Anakin was rarely in the mix. Anakin's story is not about how he defeated a great rival, but about how he was his own worst enemy.
Also worth keeping in mind that in ANH, Vader was conceived as just such a henchman. Think about it; how much development did he really get in that movie? Not a lot; aside from the brief mention of his history with Obi-Wan & Luke's father he mostly just stomped around looking menacing. Tarkin was clearly intended to be the main villain. Indeed Vader surviving was a decision make relatively late in production, so he could very easily have gone the way of Maul.
Didn't Rebels also use some of Ralph McQuarrie's original designs?
Yeah, tons: Pretty much all of the environmental design of Lothal as well as a lot of the costume design for the citizenry is all taken from various McQuarrie paintings; The former from a combination of his Cloud City building designs for tESB, and the landscape with the signature "beehive" rock spires from his unused Sicemon paintings for RotJ (though IIRC he credits Nilo Rodis-Jamero for the initial sketch idea.) Interestingly; a good portion of this artwork wasn't even produced for the movies, but specially commissioned for the 'Illustrated Star Wars Universe'.
On top of that of course their particular rendition of Vader was heavily inspired by Ralph's work, Zeb's design comes from his early Wookiee sketches, his early designs of R2 & 3PO directly inspired both Chopper & a protocol droid design that showed up a number of times (though the real credit there should go to Walter Schulze-Mittendorf of 'Metropolis' fame), and I think the Stormtrooper cadet helmet started off as one of Ralph's sketches for what became the Snowtrooper. Even Kanan's lightsaber hilt has certain elements from one of McQuarrie's pre-graflex sketches. That's all just off the top of my head, and of course is just the tip of the iceberg.
All that said; mostly what 'Rebels' took from McQuarrie was his overall style and aesthetic, which is a little bit softer in shape and colour pallet than how things ended up in the movies.
I will note however to be cautious about attributing certain designs to a specific artist. There was a lot of collaboration between them, including modifying and iterating each other's designs back and forth, from Cantwell to McQuarrie to Johnston, back to McQuarrie and then onto the team at the ILM model shop, John Mollo's costume department, Stuart Freeborn's make-up effects shop, Roger Christian's set builders, John Barry production design team, prop builders etc. etc.
Point being; some very iconic designs passed through a lot of hands before getting to their final form, and everyone there deserves credit. Trying to pin down "ownership" of a specific design can often be a futile endeavour.
Didn't Vader start off as a two dimensional henchman?
Pffft. Vader in the early drafts could only wish he had two whole dimensions to his character!
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