Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord

Star Wars animation has come a long way.  In its earliest days, well in its earliest days it was a standard Saturday morning license arrangement producing innocuous cartoon commercials in the Transformers/GI Joe era.  And it could have easily remained that way.  Instead, after the conclusion of the Prequel Trilogy, George Lucas decided to turn to animation as means of continuing his story with a focus on quality and storytelling.  The result was … strange, a near anthology of the effects of the Clone Wars (and by extrapolation, war in general) on cast of dozens, bouncing across time and space to tell everything from war stories to thrillers to lore heavy mystic dives and esoteric comedy to economic focused dialectics on banking and war profiteering.  It was a little bit of everything.

What has come since then, and Lucas’ sale and retirement from the company, has been both more and less than that – skirting Clone Wars broad reach for more standardized storytelling while pushing the animation itself further and further from the original shows’ intentionally low detail look.  Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord is in many ways the peak of that decision making process, a leap over the franchises’ most recent animated efforts closing the visual gap in many ways to the live action series it lives alongside while also moving closer to that storytelling style with a less distinct personality as animation.

That means, despite the title, Maul -  Shadow Lord is only partially about the double-bladed lightsaber wielding former Sith Lord. Like many villains their power lies in their mystique tending to lead stories about them to focus on supporting characters rather than focus on the title characters’ inner life.  It’s hard to create an inner life for a monster; far easier the ones who are affected by him.  Much of Maul initially seems to make that same calculation, keeping him in the shadows to build up its bystanders: the police captain (Oscar nominee Moura) trying to hunt him down without alerting the Empire and the hidden Jedi (Adlon and Haysbert) just trying to survive even as Maul starts a gang war with his rival crimelords.

And if it had just stayed like that, Maul would have been one of the franchises more entertaining offerings with villainous villains and staunch heroes and thrilling chases and escapes.  Creator/producer Dave Filonie (Ahsoka) and his team refuse to rest on their laurels; instead of spending all of their time with their new characters responding to Maul the cross conflicts are used to ratchet up tension across the different stories until they have no choice but to intersect one another.  As Lawson’s investigations uncover the two Jedi,  the Empire sends its own Inquisitors to hunt them and Maul down, forcing the groups into alliances of convenience and questioning their own motivations and how true to them they are willing to be.  Moura and his rowdy cohort quickly become match for any band of heroes Star Wars has offered.

Nor is Maul immune to those effects, finally forced into some real introspection about his desire for revenge on his old master while still being blind to how similar they are in outlook and methods.  Witwer,  who has voiced the character for over decade now, gets a chance to do some of his best work as Maul and rises to the challenge.

Which doesn’t make Shadow Lord a character study by any stretch of the imagination.  Once the character intersections are set, particular by the time the Empire and its Inquisitors arrive, it is an exercise in pure adrenaline. With the  increased focus and budgets on the live action series’ it’s easy to wonder why push for animation but it becomes clear once the action beats heat up – none of the live action series could achieve the quality and complexity of action filmmaking Filoni and crew put on.

A fantastic piece of adventure filmmaking that just feels like Star Wars from beginning to end, Shadow Lord is one of the best pieces of animation Lucasfilm has put out since the original Clone Wars.

7.5 out of 10

Starring Sam Witwer, Gideon Adlon, Wagner Moura, Richard Ayoade, Dennis. Haysbert, Chris Diamantopoulos, Charlie Bushnell, Vanessa Marshall and A.J. LoCascio.