Poll: Was Darth Maul a good character in a bad Starwars film? Or a mediocre character in a really bad film

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

I always thought his character design was bitching. Other than that, I found him kinda flat.

 

[ElPatron]

You don't need dialogue to create a character, but Darth Maul got almost no screen time. From the movie you can't tell nothing about his past and his personality. He's just evil, period.

I still find him better than Gen Grievous in terms of "skill". The film featured a great choreography.

 

[not_you]

I only wish Darth Maul lasted more than one movie.... I mean, as the ONLY character to use a double-bladed light-saber.... fkn win if you ask me....

OT: TBH, he wasn't REALLY a character to begin with... I mean, sure they introduced him and such, but, he did nothing more than get in the way by the end of the first movie... He added nothing besides a "GTFO Tatooine planet before he kills Qui-Gon!" (Can't remember spelling if wrong) and at the end "Holy shit he knows how to use a lightsaber!"

Personally, I'd rather they fought general Greievous first, then had Darth Maul survive 1+1/2 movies...
But I digress...

Either way, I don't think he was given enough buildup/backstory to be anything besides a sideshow in the first movie...

 

[natster43]

While I like his design, he doesn't have any actual characterization besides "he is badass and evil." So by that, he is just a mediocre character.

 

[RagTagBand]

He was a silent "character" that did nothing but fight.

You know in games/films/comics when "The big guy" turns up who is more difficult to beat than the regular guys? He was "The big guy" in this movie. In other words, he was a glorified goon.

 

[Mettking]

Let us go back and look at Plinkett's review. In there, he had a test to tell character strength. For those who never saw it and don't want to look it up, the test is to discribe a character without mentioning what they look like, what they wore, or their profession or role in the movie was as though you were telling a friend who's never seen the movies before. Now, tell me about Darth Maul based on what the movie tells us...that's what I thought.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

My problem with Darth Maul is that he didn't get much screen time or characterization. Sure, he looked cool, and had a cool lightsaber... but in the end, there wasn't much to him. He's sort of overrated, just like Boba Fett in the original trilogy.

>.>

<.<

(Ducks into a fallout shelter to prepare for the inevitable, well, fallout.)

 

[Lionsfan1986]

He wasn't a fully realized character! He was given in the movies all we knew about him was that he work Palpatine and beyond that nothing. I liked Count Doku because it show how powerful Palpatine was being to turn a Jedi to the dark side. I was almost a glimpse at what Anakin would later become.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Darth Maul, like a lot of characters in the Star Wars movies, was designed as an "obstacle" to the heroes without being a villain in his own right. 4-6 circumvented this problem by having Vader as an actual character, but in the prequels the focus shifted towards the heroes running an obstacle course without any real opposition. Why is Episode 3 generally considered better than the previous two? Because you have a bad guy (Palpatine) [and an anti-hero in Anakin] with some degree of character and motivation - the story he tells about "some sith and his master" is quite obviously about him (Expanded Universe agrees), and in general he shows some human traits.

That is something Sidious lacks in the first two movies, and so do his lackeys.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

I'm agreeing with some of the earlier sentiments and saying that Darth Maul is a flat and meaningless character in an equally flat and meaningless film. A little more characterization, beyond "standing there menacingly" would have been great.

 

[Wushu Panda]

I like Darth Maul. A drunken group of friends were talking (of course) about Starwars Episode 1-3, and I mentioned that Darth Maul was an exceptional character. Then it was pointed out to me that if everything else in the story was up to par, he wouldn't be considered so great. What do you think?

he was terrible. the emperor builds him up as his great new up-coming pupil, has one or two cool intro scenes when hes searching for anakin and attacks. but he never winds up saying ANYTHING, or contributing to the overall plot. all he does is dance around with a double-blade saber. he couldve been used to shed some light on the early Sith, but he doesnt even demonstrate much power beyond being able to twirl a baton.

he was a useless character, looks pretty but not worth much at all.

OT: your poll doesnt make any sense. you ask two questions and only ask "yes, no, meh". which question are people supposed to be answering? please dont be a numbnuts in the future, thank you.

 

[Angry_squirrel]

I liked him, but I don't really know why. He wasn't fleshed out enough in the film, however I remember reading a book written from his perspective ages back. Couldn't tell you if it was any good or not though, I was like five at the time.

 

[Quakester]

In the movie, he was barely a character. He was a walking action scene. He had no personality at all. He's been developed more in the comics, books, graphic novels, etc. but in the movie, he was meh as a character. The most they really did for him was to give him an air of superiority but that came from the dramatic solo entrances, the shift in music and other tricks they used. Boba Fett had that same attitude with none of the tricks and about as many lines.

 

[Woodsey]

Not exceptional, by any means. He's pretty cool, but besides that he's practically non-existent as an actual character (in the film, at any rate).

 

[Hiroshi Mishima]

I forget who said it, but if you have to figure everything out for a specific character by reading or watching something OTHER than the one movie/game he's in, then the writers failed to establish that person as a character and/or to make him a character at all.

Everyone trying to explain who or what he was is missing the point. Darth Maul is the equivalent of those two guys we see firing up the Death Star as it blows up Alderaan. The difference being that "Darth Time Filler", as Confused Matthew calls him, served no purpose other than to further lengthen a movie.

It's like when people try to tell me that Governor Phatt was a supporting villain, like Largo, in Monkey Island 2. It just doesn't hold up.

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

Darth Maul wasn't a character. He was an ambulatory prop. Exactly the same purpose would have been served by clipping his double-bladed saber to a hatstand with some horns glued on it.

 

[Xanadu84]

Maul was a well designed soulless piece of iconography. He was distinctive, used a very interesting and memorable weapon, and was generally memorable. But he was, honestly, not much more of a character then the couches they sat on. He had no real character, he was just eye catching.

Holy crap, I just realized that Maul is the Prequels Boba Fett!

 

[AgentLampshade]

I imagine he would've made a good character in the right hands. The right hands are not George Lucas.

EDIT: I vaguely recall reading that he had a backstory, which was told in the novels (correct me if I'm wrong)and that Sideous left him marooned on a barren planet of some sort. Maul seethed with rage and when Sideous returned, they fought. Sideous only barely managed to block Mauls ruthless attacks.

 

[Vigormortis]

He has TWO lines in the entire movie.

Haha, but maybe that's what's so good about him.

I don't understand this at all.

He said next-to-nothing, so he has no character.

The character design was pretty much a: "How can we make a guy look evil?" It wasn't good character design, it was generic. He looked like a devil. Hooray? If his lightsaber had been a trident it couldn't have been any more hamfisted. I get that most of the characters in Star Wars are stereotypes, but Han Solo didn't wear a pirate hat, and keep a spyglass by his side, and a parrot on his shoulder.

Darth Vader - that was good character design. General Grievous was at least interesting.

Not that I don't agree on Darth Maul being a terrible character (though one with a lot of potential. potential Lucas failed to capitalize on.), but just because a character has little or no dialog does NOT mean they have no character.

Take a look at most of Pixar's films, especially Wall-E. Wall-E, the character, had a lot of personality. Yet, his dialog for the entirety of the film was two words. "Wall-E" and "Eve-ah".

Lots of dialog =/= character just as a lack of dialog =/= a lack of character.

That said, Lucas still failed to do anything to make Maul more interesting, save for looking sinister.

His main weakness was a lack of screen time. If he was introduced earlier, and had more scenes showing him tracking the Jedi and the Queen, he would have been that much more intimidating.

However, if you want more Maul, he's apparently still alive.... somehow. In an upcoming Clone Wars TV arc, Darth Maul's body was attached to spider robot legs, and he is going to fight against the Jedi.

This was my line of thinking. If he had had more screen time (and Lucas hadn't lost his ability to write), he could have made for a classic film villain.