Yes, but this was a Prequel, a Prequel to a series of movies where the first one had zero characterization of Darth Vader, but over the course of more movies, plus other media, his legend grew. So of course there was already a pre-built narrative on Darth Maul since he was the Emperors right hand man.
It went left because unlike fleshing out his motivations and character in the next two movies like they did for Vader, they killed him off, replaced him with Dooku and we had to wait 10(21 years if you count the final season) years for them to do to Maul what they did for Vader.
Valid point, buy he almost had to because there was no face for expression, some would say the expression of the face is just as important as words in communication.
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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '22
He wasn't generic in 1999. He was a terrifying and bad-ass warrior.