The Darth Maul Phenomenon

The moment the second laser blade came out of his Lightsaber hilt in The Phantom Menace trailer, Darth Maul became an icon in a saga filled with icons, yet in truth he had about 3 lines and died at the end of the movie, so why is he so popular?

There's certainly no doubting his popularity, if you check out the poster for The Phantom Menace 3D re-release he is front and center above everyone else, he's about to be resurrected in the Clone Wars series and Sideshow Collectibles just launched this new 40 inch statue worth an eye watering $2,000!

All this is 12 years after his small but exciting role in the first of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and his popularity and iconic status shows no sign of slowing down and to me it's really pretty simple, he's a visually cool, badass villain.

You see everyone loves to talk about the clever string pulling villains in these types of films and yes they can be cool too, but often they are not physically adept, which is why a cool killer villain will always catch the eye, it was a formula used in the Bond movies with henchmen like Oddjob and Jaws, and to non-fans the character that captured the interest when the trailers for Hellboy hit was Kroenen, because while everyone loves a cool badass hero, a hero is only as good as his villain and the intellectual mastrerminds usually don't provide the big fight we want to see our heroes in.

Darth Maul is the epitome of this type of character with his red and black tattooed face contrasting with his black robes; his duel bladed Lightsaber and feral snarl, he was like a Sith Ninja. Some initially thought he'd be the Vader of the new trilogy but that wasn't to be, he served the purpose of simply being the physical threat to the Jedi while his master pulled the strings, and he was promptly killed by Obi Wan Kenobi at the climax of the movie.

So Maul was not the new Vader but he did have something in common with another Star Wars icon, the bounty hunter Boba Fett!

He, like Maul, gained cult status in the original trilogy and is hugely popular to this day with books and merchandise still regularly produced. However like Maul he had a few lines and was merely a cool looking badass, but also like Maul his popularity was so strong that his uber lame death in Return of the Jedi has since been wiped and official canon says he escaped the sarlac pit.

Now you'd think Lucas would have learned his lesson after Fett, I mean he's allowing Maul back from the dead as well and subsequent prequel villains Count Dooku, Jango Fett and General Grievous don't have a quarter of his status, even though I'd argue Jango plays a more significant role as part of the bigger picture and one of the strongest story elements of the prequels.

So did he make a mistake in killing him off? I'd argue no, he served his purpose and it certainly hasn't prevented Lucas from making loads of money off the character, or allowing many other stories to be written about him, but Maul was what he was, a visually cool badass, but once you've seen him that's it, there's no more to the show, sure there could have been had this been an all new trilogy, but it wasn't and there was a bigger story to tell, and so he was exactly what he was meant to be and I for one miss that type of villain in a movie landscape obsessed with "realism", and at least he got a much better death than poor Boba.

Comments

[dark_b]

good article