Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord: Chapter 1: The Dark Revenge
What is it ? : On the city world of Janix there is a robbery of a transport for a bank, the raiders are Zabrak with Red and Black tattoos and Mandalorians, the police give chase but are defeated by Darth Maul.
We discover that Maul is trying to re-establish his criminal organisation, as he wants revenge on those that once served him, but abandoned him when he was captured and imprisoned by Sidious.
Meanwhile two Jedi fugitives are hiding out, one of them steals food but gets caught and imprisoned by the police. The police are investigating the robbery, and a recording of Maul tells them he is of interest to the Imperial Security Bureau, but the detective in charge, Brander Lawson, doesn't want to bring the Empire in as they will lock down the entire planet.
The Gran Crimelord who was robbed, Nico Deemis thinks it was a rival so arranges a meeting with that rival, Vario, to find out the truth, they meet up but Maul causes the meeting to go bad and a firefight breaks out, with Vario killing Deemis. But despite Mauls gangs best attempt to capture him, he is arrested by the Police instead. In jail he is in the next cell to the Jedi fugitive, Devon Izara.
Maul and his forces break into the police station, and as they free Vario, Maul notices Devon in the next cell, and she recognises him, saying his name, Maul.
High Points : It looks great, keeping the general style they've developed through Clone Wars and the Bad Batch, but adding a certain Anime styling to it, the Lightsabers blur as Maul fights, the city has a Cyberpunk style to it. It all looks fantastic.
And the story is pretty good, but not necessarily where they think it should. Maul is a boring protagonist, and I really don't need another Jedi, whether they're going to be corrupted into a knock off Darth Talon or not (it looks fairly obvious where this is going), but the Cop, Captain Brander Lawson, I find really interesting. I think I could watch the hell out of a Star Wars cop shop, Brander Lawson and his droid sidekick, Two Boots, are interesting and their low level in the hierarchy of the Star Wars universe makes them all the more interesting.
Low Points : While I complement the animation, there is one thing which annoys me about it, certain textures are designed to be low colour, so instead of having smooth gradients, there are obvious patches of colour as it moves from bright to dark, clear lines between the areas. This makes it look to me like an early 2000's video game, rather than 2026 animation, cheap and crude.
So we've got Maul with his Mandalorian sidekicks, I recognise Rook Kast for one, and they look worn, their armour scuffed and cracked in places, they're obviously on the run, which makes great sense. But who the hell are the other Zabrak who are with them, they're tattooed like Maul, so are they Nightbrothers? Or just a couple of fanboys? It just seems silly for Maul, and his Shadowy organisation, to go around with a couple of people who are the same race, with the same tattoos as their boss who is hiding out from Palpatine and his Inquistors. My only possible explanation is that they're decoys, and he hopes they'll get killed first.
So what do you really think ? : A really solid start, very enjoyable, looks great, although as the start of the story, there's not much to get into yet. But I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more. It's all one story, rather than separate adventures, which is definitely a better choice and I want to see where the story goes.
Final Words : So this was released alongside the second episode, so I'll be covering that one tomorrow, but a really good beginning to the show.
Oh, and "The Dark Revenge" is a terrible title for the episode, but since "The Phantom Menace" was the movie that contained Maul, it seems fitting.
Score : 9/10
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