> What did Darth Maul actually do? Just looked spooky and had a double-bladed lightsaber. Okay, so he did manage to kill a jedi -- more than Boba Fett did. But really, he just stood around looking evil then gets chopped in half.
>

Well, he also hopped around a lot, used his lightsaber as a sort of pole-vault (how does one do that without the blade going right through the floor?), and came off as extremely athletic and talented in the martial arts. Lacking spoken lines, he communicated pretty effectively with his lightsaber skillz.

Since receiving the original trilogy Special Edition box set as a Christmas gift in 1997, I've watched Episodes 4, 5, and 6 several times, and last night I saw the original lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan and Vader on the Death Star. If the music for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon versus Darth Maul is called "Duel of the Fates", then the Obi-Wan vs. Vader match would have to be "Duel of the [Old] Farts". When Star Wars first came out, that duel seemed exciting and action-packed, but alas, the intense fight scenes in "Phantom Menace" have made a spoiled viewer out of me.

As old as his character is in Episode 4, Alec Guiness' Obi-Wan would understandably be somewhat less spry than he was as a young Jedi, flipping over the head of Darth Maul to slice the sucker in half from behind. But I expected more from Vader, whose movements in that fight could have been duplicated exactly by the plastic Vader figurine I had as a kid. Ah, well. That's the trouble with making prequels twenty years after the original trilogy, I guess.

Iss "wretched hive of scum and villany" achar