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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
lol george lucas , i really liked maul but for some reason i liked qui gon more!!!!!
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