When you’re in Star Wars, you don’t always need so many lines or so much screen time to become a fan favorite. Just ask Ray Park, who quickly rose to fame among the fan community after playing Darth Maul in 1999’s The Phantom Menace. Park doesn’t speak a single word as a character, as Maul’s few lines were dubbed by Peter Serafinowicz. When the character was brought back to life for Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, he was instead voiced by veteran voice actor Sam Witzer. But Park’s version of Maul has remained close to fans’ hearts due to his unforgettable physical presence and martial arts skills. And yet he probably never would have been cast if there hadn’t been a truly terrible movie.
One of them gave us “Mortal Kombat” in 1995. the best video game movies we had seen this for decades. It’s silly and cheesy, sure, but it’s also fun and captures the spirit of the games well. It became all the more tragic when the 1997 sequel “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” turned out to be a burning garbage barrel full of bad decisions and terrible special effects. Luckily, it also gave Park his big break as a stuntman, which led directly to his eventual Star Wars audition.
“I did everything on this film,” Park said Star Wars Insiders in 2003 regarding his “Annihilation” work. “I didn’t know anyone in the film industry, but after ‘Mortal Kombat 2,’ everything started happening.”
The impressive work on Mortal Kombat: Annihilation led to an audition from Darth Maul
If Mortal Kombat: Annihilation only served to give Ray Park some attention, it was worth it. Without him under Maul’s red-and-black alien skin, it’s hard to imagine The Phantom Menace’s climactic lightsaber duel becoming the iconic sequence it is today. However, Park wasn’t even a union member when he worked on Mortal Kombat 2, and the gig wasn’t quite what you’d expect from a soon-to-be-famous stuntman.
“I put together boxes, was the crash pad man and advised the actors on their fight scenes,” Park told Star Wars Insider, describing the wide range of tasks he was given during the “Annihilation” production. “This film was my lesson.” Rick McCallum, George Lucas’ producer of the entire prequel trilogy, recognized Park’s potential when he heard about the young stunt star. “This person had to elevate the performances of Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor,” McCallum told Star Wars Insider in 2003. “Ray’s combination of physical agility and menace, that was it.”
The results speak for themselves. While George Lucas received a lot of criticism for “The Phantom Menace”. Darth Maul was the one thing that most moviegoers universally loved. His longevity in the canon is a testament to Park’s achievement, especially considering that Maul should have died at the end of the film.
Ray Park was so good as Maul that he kept coming back
While Sam Widower took on the role of Darth Maul in the animated Star Wars, Ray Park was destined to reprise the role, and in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story he finally got it (albeit briefly). time) his chance. The revelation at the end of the film that Maul was pulling many strings in the underworld caused mixed reactions at the time, largely because of Darth Maul’s complicated timeline. Fans who haven’t seen The Clone Wars may not even know that he survived his Phantom Menace fight, and unfortunately Park’s martial arts skills were lost in the film, as Maul only appears in a hologram, dubbed by widower.
However, in 2020, more than two decades after The Phantom Menace, fans finally got a new lightsaber fight with Park as Maul. When it came time to create the climactic “Siege of Mandalore” story arc for The Clone Wars Season 7, showrunner Dave Filoni wanted an all-out duel between Maul and Ahsoka Tano, so the team brought in Park and his stunt colleague Lauren added Mary Kim to take full advantage of motion capture for combat. The result is arguably the greatest lightsaber duel of any Star Wars animated series, and you can really see Park’s distinctive style in the finished product.
So next time you see one of Park’s excellent Maul performances, show “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” a little gratitude. Just don’t look at it.
