Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is a film that famously divides opinions and loyalties. But even the most contrarian Corellian has to admit that the film’s main villain, Darth Maul, was a highlight. (Empire certainly thinks so – he’s the highest-ranking prequel entry on our Greatest Star Wars Characters list.) Now, the devil-horned Sith Lord is the star of his very own fan-made short film.
Serving as a sort of mini-prequel to Episode I, Darth Maul: Apprentice is a 17-minute film written and directed by German film student Shawn Bu which sees the villain from Dathomir do battle with a clutch of Jedi Knights.
There’s not a great deal of story here – the basic plot could be summed up with the word “lightsabers”. But damn, if it isn’t pretty. Boasting the sort of production values that fan films rarely offer, we see Maul’s famous double-sided lightsaber slice its way through Jedi like a knife through Force-sensitive butter. There’s even a decent stab at a Palpatine impression.
As with any fan film, it is emphatically unofficial and non-canon; it remains to be seen whether the legal chin-scratchers at Disney and LucasFilm will let this one lie. But with nearly a million views on YouTube in its first three days, it may prove hard to ignore.