Darth Maul Actor Thinks Star Wars Should Be More Like Star Trek

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 26 seconds ago

Right now, the state of Star Wars fandom can best be described by the opening crawl in The Empire Strikes Back: “It is a dark time for the Rebellion.” The Mandalorian and Grogu was the first franchise film in six years, one which features the most popular characters from the Star Wars shows on Disney+. Nonetheless, it really floundered at the box office, and this $165 million failure has currently grossed less than Obsession, a horror film made for $750,000. Between this, the poor performance of the sequels, and the awful fan reaction to shows like The Acolyte, things are looking bad for our favorite galaxy far, far away.

All of this is enough to make even the most diehard fans start asking a very sobering question: how do we fix Star Wars? Many ideas have been tossed around, including retconning the sequels, bringing back beloved EU characters, or just rebooting the universe altogether. Now, Darth Maul voice actor Sam Witwer has proposed a most unexpected proposal for saving his favorite franchise. According to him, Star Wars can save itself by becoming more like Star Trek!

A New Kind Of Star Wars

This came up during a recent interview that Sam Witwer gave to Naomi Kyle, someone gamers may remember from her time hosting IGN’s Daily Fix. She asked the Darth Maul voice actor if he had any ideas on how to “refresh” Star Wars and “help elevate it to a different level.” He responded that the franchise “needs to take creative risks” and compared this to the evolution of Maul. Star Wars has constantly taken this character in new directions, and Witwer sees this as a good thing and that writers “should leave him alone” if they can’t imagine how to take the character where he has never gone before.

He said that Star Wars should embrace this risk-taking philosophy, and then made a comparison to Star Trek. He said that he and other Trek fans were used to each new show being very different from what came before. This allowed the franchise to appeal to different audiences with different projects, but that “without that spirit of experimentation, you don’t get anywhere.” He then noted that Andor was a phenomenal success despite being such a departure from Star Wars and that he’s fine with the franchise taking big creative swings even if it meant that he wouldn’t connect with “everything” that comes out.

A Big Swing, And A Big Miss

To a large degree, Sam Witwer is absolutely right: from the prequels to the sequels to the Disney+ shows, the most common criticism of modern franchise entries is that they do not feel like Star Wars. With the notable exception of Andor, projects are greenlit largely on the basis of mass appeal. That’s why the prequels focused on existing characters and the sequels and shows brought many prominent characters back; the power of familiarity. Disney hopes that if a movie or show has enough familiar faces (like Boba Fett, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and Darth Maul), fans will be more likely to tune in. Unfortunately, this approach prematurely robs these projects of their individual identities. 

Part of the problem is that Star Wars has become a multimedia empire unto itself. While there is still a long wait between movies, Disney cranks out TV shows at a rapid-fire pace in an attempt to keep the brand alive. But as Witwer points out, this has largely led to risk-aversion. Why do something completely new if it’s not going to resonate with fans? Speaking of which, it doesn’t help that when Disney did take a big swing with The Acolyte, it became a huge flop that was canceled after only one season. But is making Star Wars more like Star Trek actually the answer?

Star Trek Racing Star Wars To The Bottom

Yes and no. Sam Witer is correct that Star Trek flourished when it embraced making very different shows like Deep Space Nine, and Star Wars could definitely flourish if we got more Andors and fewer Acolytes. But DS9 was actually the black sheep as far as Paramount was concerned, and the main reason that show was allowed to get so weird is that execs primarily cared about Voyager, which was designed to be more like The Original Series and The Next Generation. Sure, there were major differences in characters and story, but all Golden Age of Trek shows except DS9 followed the well-worn formula of starships boldly going where nobody had gone before.

To make matters worse, Star Trek has been experiencing a quiet implosion that mirrors Star Wars. Under Alex Kurtzman, NuTrek did take major creative risks: Discovery dipped into sex, nudity, and ultraviolence, while Starfleet Academy was designed as a new kind of show (less exploration, more introspection) with a new kind of crew (fewer trained officers and more rough-around-the-edges cadets). Lower Decks ribbed the franchise with gentle, animated humor, while Prodigy slowly morphed into a Voyager sequel. Even Strange New Worlds, deliberately modeled after The Original Series, took big risks, including a somewhat notorious musical episode.

Time For A New Direction

Unfortunately, NuTrek died because of a dwindling audience, proving that simply taking creative risks does not translate to pleasing fans. In its own way, Star Wars tried to do the same thing. Until it became bogged down in established lore, The Mandalorian was nothing more than a fun, no-frills space western like the franchise had never done before. The Book of Boba Fett was a very unconventional redemption story, and The Acolyte was an attempt to get away from tired franchise lore altogether. But it all comes down to the ability to tell a good, crowd-pleasing story, something both Star Wars and Star Trek have been struggling to do.

While it’s easier said than done, that’s the real way to fix Star Wars: by doing what George Lucas did so long ago and coming up with an original story. Sam Witwer is correct that Lucasfilm needs to take risks and tell new stories rather than being beholden to what comes before. If they take risks but tell a poor story, the franchise will fail; if they avoid risk altogether and serve up nothing but nostalgia slop, the franchise will fail. But with more visionary showrunners like Andor’s Tony Gilroy, Star Wars will have more showrunners who understand a crucial lesson: if you make big swings, you better be able to hit the ball!