DARTH MAUL

Part monk, part nightmare, part clown, part heroin addict? How the Phantom Menace crew created a whole new kind of Sith

Iain Mccaig (concept artist): The original brief was brief indeed: “His name is Darth Maul; he’s a Sith Lord.” The only other Sith Lord I knew was Darth Vader, so at first I tried to out-helmet Ralph Mcquarrie’s amazing design. Which, of course, is quite impossible. Eventually I took the helmet off and began exploring what might lie underneath.

Nick Gillard (stunt coordinator/swordmaster): The casting director, Robin Gurland, came into my office the day after we first met, with this book called The Stunt Register, which has every stunt person in it. She said, “The brief is he should look like a heroin addict,” and bizarrely she had the book open on my page. So she’s showing me a picture of myself, saying I look like a heroin addict! [Laughs] When she realised, she said, “Oh, I’m so embarrassed.”

Mccaig: I never heard him described as a heroin addict. But when George [Lucas] finished the first draft of his script, there was another clue in the line, “Darth Maul, a vision from your worst nightmare.” My worst nightmare was very specific: a dead white face with glittering eyes and metal teeth. I drew this and passed it to George in a folder at the next art meeting. He opened the folder, yelped, and snapped it closed. “Give me your second-worst nightmare,” he said, handing it back to me. I puzzled over it for a while. Then I remembered Star Wars was mythology, not science-fiction. I had to give George my worst mythological nightmare. And that was easy, because I’ve always been scared of clowns. So I drew myself, then painted my face red and put black patterns on it, like a clown; red and black, because that’s a warning sign in nature.

Nick Dudman (creature design effects supervisor): Iain’s character sketch was very much a two-tone, heavily patterned character. Bald, but with sort of tufts or horns or something. I think Iain has said they were bird feathers, but I interpreted it as horns.

Mccaig: I wanted to give Maul a ritual, something painful, that would help him channel the dark side, so I bound the top of his head tightly in piano wire with little stiffened black feathers at specific points on his head. When Nick Dudman got the design, he interpreted the black feathers as horns,

and voilà — Darth Maul was born!

Dudman: Because he was doing so much martial arts, a bald cap would have been madness, so we sculpted a series of four-sided horns with different angles at the bases so they could be glued in a sort of crown on his skull. If they were knocked off they could be stuck back on again very quickly.

Gillard: At one point it was going to be Tricky [the Bristolian trip-hop artist] playing him. I obviously had some concerns about that, because the guy had so much fighting to do. So we started looking hard for people and a friend of mine who had done Mortal Kombat said, “I know this guy” — Ray Park. I got hold of Ray and he does this little dance routine with a paper sword, which is a beautiful thing to see, and straightaway

I knew he was right for it.

Paul Engelen (chief make-up artist): It was a great character to do. Nick Dudman said he’d sooner me look after it, because it was more a natural look than a compete prosthetics thing. Although I didn’t really quite know what I was going to do until we got Ray in the chair and I drew the whole thing out, loosely based on the artwork.

Gillard: The lightsaber was George’s stroke of genius. Although, if you think about it, it’s a quarterstaff.

Trisha Biggar (costume designer): I came across a photograph of a Tibetan monk taken in about 1910, and he had a really interestingly textured robe on, which looked as if it was heavily pleated. That gave me the idea of giving him the cloak with the sunray pleating. We also used a lot of samurai references, and Chinese martial arts gear. When we did the final fittings, we said to Ray, “What’s the biggest stunt move you’re going to be doing? Because we want to make sure you can manage it.” And he literally did a series of backflips up and down the costume workroom. We were stunned. I said, “Well, okay!”

Gillard: Why is Maul so popular? He is sexy. He moves like a demon, and fights like a bastard.

Mccaig: I was thrilled with how Darth Maul turned out. I remember Ray explaining to the audience at the first Star Wars Celebration that he wasn’t so much evil as cheeky. You can see that in his performance — how eager he is to kick some Jedi ass, so much so that he takes on two of them at once! It was a real pleasure to see him return in Clone Wars and Rebels. As for Solo, I was completely surprised to see Maul reappear at the end. I actually worked on Solo early in its development, but there was no hint of Maul’s reappearance then. Ron Howard (director, Solo: A Star Wars Story): In the script it just said, “The Big Boss, and we don’t dare put in print who it is.” I thought [previous Solo directors] Chris Lord and Phil Miller knew who this character was, but they had not decided. They just had a list of a few candidates, and I said, “Oh, Maul! What happened to him?” And they told me the story, and I said, “Wouldn’t that be cool?” So I admittedly lobbied. The first time I saw it with fans,

I saw that it was a good call.