After years of Star Wars focusing on the ever-popular city planet of Coruscant, Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord is finally taking us somewhere new: Janix.
Described as a planet that has “largely escaped the attention of the Empire,” on the surface, Janix is self-governed by its own democratic government, with the help of local law enforcement officers like Captain Brander Lawson. However, as established by the first two episodes of Maul: Shadow Lord, look closer, and Janix is in fact a hive of scum and villainy, with gangers and crime syndicates thriving under the cover of darkness. It’s the perfect place for Maul to rebuild his criminal empire.
For Shadow Lord’s executive producers Athena Yvette Portillo, Matt Michnovetz, and Brad Rau, one of their first instructions from Star Wars Lucasfilm’s president, Dave Filoni, was to ensure that Janix was its own character. To do this, the Shadow Lord team drew on several sources of inspiration, from Syd Mead to Blade Runner. However, one particular city stood out from the crowd.
“We looked at a lot of Gotham through various versions of Batman. Dark Knight was one of our touchstones,” Brad Rau, who also serves as Maul: Shadow Lord’s supervising director tells Polygon.”We wanted to do something that looked very different from Coruscant; that was one of the big things Dave put to us. And I think we did it.”
The comparison to Christopher Nolan’s Batman: The Dark Knight trilogy is quite fitting. Like Nolan’s Gotham, Janix manages to appear gray and industrial during the day while coming alive at night, further enhanced by the paint-like brushstroke aesthetic used to bring Maul: Shadow Lord to life.
Furthermore, each sector of Janix tells a story that reflects how Gotham is portrayed in Nolan’s trilogy. In earlier films like Batman Begins, some areas depict Gotham as narrow and filled with slums, featuring dark, industrial zones largely run by gangs. The same can be said for Janix, where Maul’s base of operations appears to be in the lower, most degraded part of the city planet, from which the only way out is to climb up into the light.
We’ve described Maul: Shadow Lord as a sci-fi noir crime-thriller, so for it to take inspiration from one of DC Universe’s most tragic cities, where crime is just an everyday part of life, makes a lot of sense.
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The first two episodes of Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord are available now on Disney Plus. New episodes will be released weekly on Mondays through May 4.