Written by Mr. Mouseburger 28th Nov 2005
Kindly submitted by someguy999
The final battle in the first prequel lives up to expectations, when both our Jedi heroes square up to Sith apprentice Darth Maul; who has a two-handed light sabre. At first both Jedi are fighting Darth Maul, who is hard pressed to hold them back, until they are all separated by some sort of energy field, which serves no other purpose apart from to separate the Jedi and increase dramatic tension.
Qui-Gon Jinn is forced to fight Darth Maul mano a mano, but the Sith kills him with relative ease. We then have a tension building scene where the two enemies stand feet apart from each other, but unable to attack as the force field is blocking them. This eventually disappears, and Obi-Wan begins to fight Darth Maul but is knocked into a pit, which also serves no other purpose apart from to add dramatic tension to the scene.
Darth Maul teasingly stands over the pit waiting for Obi-Wan to make his move, knowing that he is completely unarmed. However, Obi-Wan notices Qui-Gon's light sabre, and he skilfully launches himself up using the force, grabs Qui-Gon's light sabre, somersaults over a leaden footed Darth Maul and slices the Sith in twain. Maul's face reflects that of the audience; one of disbelief, and as he falls into the pit, both halves of him separate on the descent.
this is definetly my favorite deth of all time
meh. A plastic cgi death in a plastic cgi movie.
I wished Darth Maul would have lasted longer. He is infinitely more of a threatening villain than any of the old dudes they have in the other two movies. Of course, even if he did last longer, he would have had an even more disappointing death, so I guess it was better to get it out of the way first.
I agree he deserved to be in it for longer. Considering the amount of time they spent pissing around and not really getting anything accomplished in the second movie, they could have definitely gotten rid of Dooku and replaced him with Maul and then had him team up with Greivous in the third film.
Just throwing my two cents in: although I liked Darth Maul, I disagree that Count Dooku should be done away with. General Grievous added almost nothing to Revenge of the Sith; he was just in it to sell more toys.
I'm aware that he was also in the much-ballyhooed Clone Wars cartoon series, but regardless, he's a totally pointless character within the confines of the film. It would've made infinitely more sense to keep Dooku alive a lot longer and do away with the Grievous character altogether.
I agree with Kooshmeister, i think General Grievous added very little to the final film, apart from to showcase how difficult an opponent he will be in the "revenge of the sith" computer game.
I would have like to have seen Dooku's role expanded, partly because i like Christopher Lee and also because more could have been made of the parallels between Dooku and Anakin (i.e. both betrayed the jedi for the sith).
That said i did enjoy Darth Maul's dancing fighting style, although his death was bordering on the ridiculous IMO. He could easily have chopped Obi Wan in two as Obi Wan performed that somersault manoeuvre, but instead we are led to believe Darth Maul watches passively until it is too late....
Would this fall under Hacked? Maul was, after all, HACKED in half.
Slashed through seems to make more sense.
p.s. It appears "Darth" is a legitimate word in the spell-check.
Bit of a typo - Ray Parks? Ewen McGregor?
"Ewan" is actually the correct spelling.
Lucas clearly doesn't know what he's doing,
He killed off Maul, an awesome villain, in a really bogus fight in the very first movie. Then he introduced Grievous and Dooku, both of whom accomplished very little as far as advancing the story line.
What he SHOULD have done is get rid of Dooku altogether. After Mauls seemingly pointless death in episode one, he should have introduced the character of Grievous in episode 2. Then, in episode three, he should have revealed (in a suitably climactic way) that Grievous was actually made from the barely surviving remains of Darth Maul.
Thus, both Maul and Grievous would actually function as viable characters whose existence actually advances the plot,
[quote Virgil]He killed off Maul, an awesome villain, in a really bogus fight in the very first movie.[/quote]Bogus? It was the best fight in the series.Dooku was the (ex-)Jedi who gave the order to prepare the clones. He was very significant.Right before I headed for the exit. Falling down a shaft that long would probably reduce everything to consistency of tomato ketchup upon impact.The fact of the matter is that Grevious was a pointless character in the film series (yes, let's have all his backstory in the Clone Wars, where the casual audience won't see it) and Dooku really should have lived a bit longer than the first 15 mins of Episode III.
[quote Mr Mouseburger]Comments for death : Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace: Darth Maul (Ray Parks).[/quote]The review forgot to mention Jedi Amnesia. Apparently Obi-Wan, apparently a slow learner and of dubious mental faculties, could not recall that earlier in the movie on the Trade Federation ship, he and Qui-Gon had used super speed to evade some Destroyer droids. Such speed would easily have allowed him to race to Qui-Gon's aid rather than finding himself cut off behind a force field barrier, leaving the long-haired Jedi renegade to be sawn in half by the Sith. ('At last, we will have our revenge!')
This, for me, made the duel a rather pathetic event. They had a great and acrobatic character in Maul and he could have battled Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon to a stand-still without Obi-Wan conveniently forgetting Jedi Powers he used earlier in the film. This cheapened Qui-Gon's death.
Of course, if you could actually grab a lightsaber blade, Qui-Gon would have trashed Maul. For those who don't believe me, see the final battle of Rob Roy...