Solo: A Star Wars Story featured a truly awesome surprise when Darth Maul was revealed to be the leader of Crimson Dawn. What, if any, future he now has on the big screen remains to be seen but a Solo sequel seems unlikely so we'll have to hope he shows up in either Boba Fett or Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The last time we saw Maul on the big screen was in The Phantom Menace but he's since shown up in both The Clone Wars and Rebels, two animated series which revealed how he came back to life.
Now, director Ron Howard has shed some light on what led to the villain showing up in his movie.
"I will say that was scripted and there was a lot of uncertainty as to who that character would be. So it was sort of initially written in a rather generic way. It just sort of said “Boss”. And I thought when I came in, I assumed they knew who it was and they were just keeping it under wraps. And they didn’t. But Maul was listed as one of the candidates. And I lobbied hard for that. I thought that made a lot of sense to me. I found that character to be really effective. And I knew for a fact, without asking directly and giving anything away, my son Reed who just turned 31, who’s a dedicated Star Wars fan, he’s a golfer. He’s not in the business. Dedicated Star Wars fan.
"I just whispered that possibility and he just thought that would be incredibly cool. And so for that generation, I thought, well that was gonna be a pretty interesting idea. And doing a little more research and understanding sort of how the character had worked elsewhere, I thought it was good. And the Kasdan’s were on board with that. And but then we actually shot it twice. Because we did it once. And then we realized we, it wasn’t quite Maul enough yet."
So, what about the scene needed to change in order to make it more Maul-ish? "[We] added the lightsaber. And intensified it. And definitely took a big jump," he reveals. It's kind of crazy to think that the scene didn't originally include the lightsaber and it's fair to say that altering it slightly was definitely the right move. What do you guys think? Let us know your thoughts in the usual place.
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