By George & Josh Bate
Lucasfilm Animation has long impressed for its ability to craft visually and thematically beautiful series. Last year alone saw Tales of the Underworld flesh out fan-favorites Asajj Ventress and Cad Bane in newfound depth and Visions Volume 3 push the boundaries of what Star Wars animation can entail. But this year, the creative team take on a different challenge as Maul – Shadow Lord brings Star Wars animation into darker and more noir-soaked territory than ever.
Maul – Shadow Lord takes place approximately one year after the events of The Clone Wars Season 7. Maul (Sam Witwer) found a way to escape the clutches of the Republic by taking advantage of the chaos of Order 66 and has since set his sights on exacting revenge against those who wronged him, beginning with the crime syndicates that abandoned him and his Shadow Collective on Mandalore. This pursuit takes him to Janix, a neon-colored metropolis and refuge for a young Jedi named Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon), who may be the key to Maul’s success.
The HoloFiles and Star Wars Holocron recently had the opportunity to speak with Athena Yvette Portillo (Executive Producer), Matt Michnovetz (Executive Producer/Writer), Brad Rau (Executive Producer/Supervising Director) about how they honored George Lucas’ legacy, unexpected parallels between the new show and The Bad Batch, embracing the horror genre, and more.
Having overseen the likes of The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels during her 30 years at Lucasfilm, Athena Yvette Portillo is no stranger to tackling the challenges of creating Star Wars animated shows. But Maul – Shadow Lord posed a decidedly different challenge to Portillo and her fellow creatives as series creator Dave Filoni urged them to push the limits of animation. “This was a very exciting project for us, because, to date, it’s one of the most challenging projects that came to us,” Portillo explained. “Of course, it came from Filoni. And what he had said to us prior to his departure to Ahsoka Season 2 was, ‘I want to elevate everything visually. I want to elevate the animation. I want to elevate the backgrounds, the cloth sim, the effect sim, body mechanics, all of that. That was a tall order and a challenge for all of us, but we felt like we needed something like that.”
Portillo and her team took Filoni’s request to heart as they embraced the imperfections, distortions, and rough edges of animation. Close-ups of Maul’s face look like they’re hand drawn, lightsaber duels lag and feature bursts of blinding white light, and environments creatively integrate computer animation with matte paintings. This approach results in a show that isn’t aspiring for photo-realism, but, rather, a more stylized, even anime-inspired aesthetic that feels more expressive and less mechanical than The Clone Wars or The Bad Batch.
“We incorporated old school ways of doing things and new school,” Portillo detailed in discussing how the team elevated traditional Star Wars animation. “What I mean by that is we actually went back to doing oil on canvas for matte paintings. Shooting those, compositing those. I think you may have noticed the brush stroke to get that noir-y, pulpy feel. Joel [Aron], our director of photography, would do paint brush strokes on glass panes, shoot those, composite those. We went back to doing practical model builds for some ships you’ll see in the show. We upgraded our body rigs to have more pivot points, to have more facial blend shapes. We spoke to Sam and we did video reference of his face to get those nuances and the emotions and the character animation. We did a lot of those things to elevate the cinematics and sophistication of the show.”
Supervising director Brad Rau discussed how the new approach to animation influenced his directing and framing. “The style of the painterly brush strokes was something Dave wanted us to explore and how that could be interpreted in frame was surprising in some cases,” Rau recounted. “So, early on, we’d be framing a certain way with a certain lens, but we couldn’t pick up the brush strokes. So we brought the camera a bit closer or played with the depth of field.”
The team’s approach to crafting Maul – Shadow Lord drew upon George Lucas’ ethos for creating Star Wars stories, which always balanced efficiency with meticulous attention to detail.
“In terms of the production, to get [Maul – Shadow Lord] to the level that would’ve honored George’s legacy, which is: it’s never finished til it’s finished,” Portillo described. “You keep it open. Make sure you have those discussions that it makes sense narratively. We kept a couple of episodes open until the very end to make sure that we can incorporate all those creative retakes. If it means pausing the production to rewrite it to get it right, that’s what you do. So you honor that legacy as well. Even into editorial, how it’s edited quick, quick, quick. Three things happening at once. Always making sure you’re going back to those other storylines in a very efficient, clear way. We honor that as well.”
Maul – Shadow Lord also honors George Lucas’ legacy by embracing the seedy criminal underbelly of a galaxy far, far away, something the iconic filmmaker showed an interest in dating all the way back to the Mos Eisley cantina scene in the original Star Wars.
This darker side of the Star Wars universe has been a long-standing interest of head writer and executive producer Matt Michnovetz, whose work in the world of Star Wars dates back 18 years to the canceled video game Star Wars: 1313. Michnovetz discussed how one of the key attributes distinguishing Maul – Shadow Lord from 1313 and Tales of the Underworld, which he also wrote, is the show’s breakneck pacing and noir aesthetic. “We were constantly challenged to figure this out and also create a rollercoaster ride unlike those other shows or other stories, where this thing is non-stop,” Michnovetz said. “It’s got that pulpy noir feel to it that is really unique I think.”
The series’ narrative finds Maul seeking revenge against those who wronged him and, in turn, targeting some of the galaxy’s most dangerous criminal syndicates. In crafting a sci-fi series immersed in a criminal underworld, Michnovetz referred to a range of stories while writing. “We have a number of touchstones that we used, all the way back to the original serials that inspired George,” he said. “Science-fiction classics and Saturday morning creature features up to modern gangster pictures like Heat, The Untouchables, and The Dark Knight.”
In leaning more heavily into the dark side, Maul – Shadow Lord also draws influence from the horror genre, perhaps more than any other Star Wars show to date. In a previous interview, Portillo likened Maul to a “seemingly eternal villain” akin to Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. Maul in the new series certainly evokes these icons of horror cinema, lurking in the shadows, appearing out of nowhere, and terrifying anyone who crosses his path.
“We’re all fans of genre, so horror is definitely something that continuously comes through,” Michnovetz explained, “Especially things like jump scares and creating tension in that whole rollercoaster ride of it, like a thriller to have the audience to lean in….We’re huge [John] Carpenter fans, by the way!”
For as frightening as Maul – Shadow Lord can be, the new Disney+ series also shares unexpected parallels with one of Star Wars’ most wholesome stories – The Bad Batch. Supervising Director Brad Rau also served as Supervising Director of The Bad Batch and pointed out how the new series resembles the beloved story of Omega and Clone Force 99. “I think the heart of a lot of our stories is family,” detailed Rau. “Sometimes it’s found family. Sometimes it’s literal family. And it can be complicated and mixed up. In The Bad Batch, we had so much fun with Crosshair. He’s so great and goes so dark and then Omega helps redeem him and then he comes back into the fold of the family. There’s a lot of those family-type themes that, if you look closely, are in Shadow Lord. It feels tonally a little darker for sure than The Bad Batch but also the pulpy noir tone felt right so that we don’t go too dark and that we can keep Maul authentically bad, because he’s a bad guy….So on the surface they feel different, but there are a lot of themes that run parallel to both shows.”
As has been the case at Lucasfilm for half a century, collaboration lies at the heart of every Star Wars project. “As a supervising director, I feel like it’s important that this is a collaboration, because it truly is,” Rau discussed. “We can talk about our team all day. Really everybody moving in the same direction to try to accomplish this style is the only way that we could do it.”
Lucasfilm Animation charts new territory with Maul – Shadow Lord, a show that couples elevations in animation style with a darker story that positions an iconic villain as the protagonist. While the excellent trailers and promotional material for the new series have left many Star Wars fans excited, the enthusiasm and attention to detail of the accomplished creative trio of Portillo, Rau, and Michnovetz should bring audience’s level of anticipation to new heights.
Watch the full interview with Athena Yvette Portillo, Brad Rau, and Matt Michnovetz below….
