When you're in Star Wars, you don't always need that many lines or that much screen time to become a fan favorite. Just ask Ray Park, who quickly rose to fandom fame after playing Darth Maul in 1999's The Phantom Menace. Park doesn't speak a single word as the character, as Moll's few lines were dubbed by Peter Serafinowicz. When the character was resurrected for Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, he was voiced by veteran voice actor Sam Witwer. But Park's version of Maul has remained near and dear to fans' hearts because of his unforgettable physical presence and martial arts prowess. And yet, he probably never would have gotten the part if it hadn't been for a truly awful movie.

In 1995, Mortal Kombat gave us one of the the best video game movies we have seen for decades. It's silly and bad, sure, but it's also fun and captures a good part of the spirit of the games. It made it all the more tragic when the sequel, 1997's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, turned out to be a cesspool that caught fire with bad decisions and lousy special effects. Fortunately, it also gave Park his big break working as a stuntman, which led directly to his later audition for Star Wars.

"I did everything on that film," Park said Star Wars Insider in 2003 in connection with his work "Annulment". "I didn't know anyone in the film industry, but after 'Mortal Kombat 2' everything started happening.

If "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" was good enough just to get attention for Ray Park, 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 legendary sequence it is today. So Park wasn't even a union member when he worked on Mortal Kombat 2, and the gig wasn't exactly what you might expect for a soon-to-be famous stuntman.

"I put together the boxes, was the drop 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 production of Annihilation. “That film was my apprenticeship. Rick McCallum, George Lucas' producer for the entire prequel trilogy, saw potential in Park when he started hearing 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 stood out as the one thing most moviegoers universally loved. Its longevity in the canon is a testament to Park's performance, especially given that Maul was supposed to die at the end of the film.

While Sam Witwer took on the role of Darth Maul in the Star Wars animated universe, Ray Park was destined to reprise the role, and he finally got his chance (albeit briefly) in Solo: A Star Wars Story " from 2018. The revelation at the end of the film that Maul is pulling many strings from the underworld received mixed reactions at the time, mainly because Darth Maul's Complicated Timeline. Fans who haven't seen The Clone Wars might not even know he survived the Phantom Menace fight, and unfortunately, Park's martial arts prowess goes to waste in the film, as Maul only appears in hologram, voiced by Witter.

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 climax of The Clone Wars Season 7's Siege of Mandalore, showrunner Dave Filoni wanted a big showdown between Maul and Ahsoka Tano, so the team brought in Park and fellow stuntwoman Lauren Mary Kim to handle it. completely. motion capture for the battle. The result is arguably the greatest lightsaber duel in any of the Star Wars animated shows, and you can really see Park's signature style in the finished product.

So the next time you watch one of Park on the Mall's great performances, show some appreciation to Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Just don't look at it.