Star Wars' Original Darth Vader Actor Had A Lot Of Issues With The Phantom Menace
George Lucas may have always planned (big asterisk here) a larger saga for his tale of the Skywalkers, but some things are easier said than done. The notion of being part of a surprisingly massive and game-changing movie like the original "Star Wars," and being there as it grew into a phenomenon, makes whatever happens next a daunting idea.
Just like fans had (very) mixed feelings when Lucas took the saga in a very different direction with "The Phantom Menace" and the prequel trilogy, it's hard not to imagine at least certain members of the original "Star Wars" cast looking at the prequel films with a magnifying glass to spot all the ways these new shiny movies are different than the ones they worked on. After all, the original trilogy had a perfect ending (after some changes), so it wasn't surprising when the films' stars were skeptical about their return in the sequel trilogy.
The same thing happened with the prequels, with at least one member of the original cast having a less-than-stellar reaction to the films. Once, during an interview with Rock Cellar, the late David Prowse (who played Darth Vader on-set in the original trilogy) talked about his disappointment with the prequels. "I personally didn't like them very much at all, to be honest. I didn't think they compared to the first three in any way, really," Prowe said. He wasn't entirely negative, though, and praised both the pod racing sequence – one of the best scenes in all of "Star Wars" – and Maul, yet thought the latter died too early. "They should have kept him until 'Episode III' and had Darth Vader kill him off," Prowse added. "Those new 'Star Wars' movies were a great example of Lucas' art and filmmaking, but they lost the plot as far as the story is concerned."
A complicated legacy
"The Phantom Menace" is riddled with issues, there is no hiding that. Not only does the film have stiff dialogue and a convoluted story, but it also suffered as many production issues as any of the previous "Star Wars" films. For one, the Tatooine set in the Tunisian desert was destroyed by storms yet again. Then there was the whole prequel part of the film, with the question of how young should Anakin be, exactly, causing many a headache, In the end, he became a nine-year-old boy in no small part due to his separation from his mother being more traumatic for a younger kid — even if everything about the character screamed prodigious pre-teen rather than young child.
The movie was destined to fail from the start, at least in terms of its critical reception and online chatter. Lucas knew this would happen, in part because the movie was not aimed at adults who grew up with the original trilogy, but new viewers for whom this would be their first exposure to "Star Wars." Still, those very younglings made it a commercial hit, so much so that the prequel era of the franchise continues to inform just about every aspect of "Star Wars" television today.
As for Maul, well, let's say George did kind of listen to Prowse — eventually.