Warning: spoilers ahead.
If I’m going to nitpick about the otherwise thrilling “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” I'll say one thing: There isn’t enough Captain Phasma.
The flashy Stormtrooper with chrome armor and cape played by “Game of Thrones” star Gwendoline Christie has been all over the marketing of the film, but the captain of the First Order (what we're calling the Empire now) gets the least screen time out of the newest main cast members in the movie.
This could be for a lot of reasons, most likely the movie’s running time, which is already at two hours and 15 minutes. There are a lot of different storylines going on in “Awakens,” so perhaps Phasma’s arc had to get squeezed down to keep things relatively trim.
But it’s still a bummer that Phasma isn’t in the film more. (I sense a Twitter backlash coming because of it.) That's because you can instantly see the potential for her to be a great character in the saga.
In the original trilogy, there was never anyone under Darth Vader with any authority (and I don't mean the captains of the Star Destroyers; I mean scary authority). So it’s fascinating to have this person of power below new villain Kylo Ren in the film. Are they allies in the destruction of the Resistance? Or is Phasma as conflicted as Ren seems in his place in the First Order?
The way things are left in “Awakens,” it’s tough to tell how or even if those questions will be answered going forward, in regards to Phasma.
[Major spoilers coming!]
In the scene where we see her onscreen the longest, toward the end of the movie, Phasma is captured by Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Finn after they sneak onto Starkiller Base and force her to lower its shields so the X-wing fighters can try to destroy it. They then put her in the base’s trash compactor (an homage to “A New Hope”).
Starkiller Base is later destroyed. Did Phasma make it out alive?
She did. And I know that not because I have any inside information.
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told the LA Times before the movie opened that Phasma will be in the next sequel, “Episode VIII.”
"She's an important character," Kennedy told the paper, "a baddie in the best sense of the word."
So, thankfully, it looks like Captain Phasma will not be going the way of Darth Maul and Boba Fett — evil characters from the saga we wish could have stuck around longer.
It's just too bad we don’t get deeper into her storylines until 2017.
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