NeverarGreat said:
I was never much a fan of either the fight or the music, since they both seemed to have little to do with the rest of the movie.
Most people say this fight was a highlight of the movie, and I accept I'm in a minority, but I never liked it either. There were some ideas in it that I liked - the calm Qui Gon versus the impatient Obi Wan - but it was less than the sum of its parts. Perhaps because, as you say, it didn't integrate with the movie. It was more or less "he's our enemy, let's have a fight then", "yes, OK, I agree."
I never got the love for Darth Maul either. I didn't like his "is it a tattoo, face paint or alien skin?" style, and he hardly said anything, plus he had a stock "gruff movie villain" voice. I mean, doesn't he just say "yes, my Lord", and about one other line? Maybe he could have had a "Boba Fett" type appeal, but to me, he doesn't - he just doesn't do (or represent) anything as interesting as Fett did in Empire.
It's also not helped by the rest of the film. On first watching, I didn't care about any of the characters, so dull were they, so I felt nothing when Qui Gon died. I know he's one of the less egregious characters in the movie, but it's hard to root for "the slightly less annoying one".
As for the martial arts - they're well and good, but a little too flashy for my taste, and a fore-warning of the empty twirling that was to come. The OT didn't need them to have amazing fight scenes.
The music for the fight is good though - it took me years to realise it, but it's one of the better PT musical pieces.