It seems that the big Star Wars news at the moment is that the character Captain Phasma, played by Gwendoline Christie, will be returning in the next episode.
People are excited about this, and I don’t know why.
Phasma made a splash when she first made an appearance before the release, where she was aggressively merchandised and promoted, leading us all to believe she had a bigger role. This character was one of the best sellers, everywhere that she appeared. This was the first female stormtrooper we had seen and she obviously had rank; of course she was going to make a splash.
According to the Star Wars Data Bank
Phasma served as one of the First Order’s commanding triumvirate, though she sometimes clashed with both the technocratic General Hux and the mysterious Kylo Ren. She worked tirelessly to make the First Order’s stormtroopers the galaxy’s finest soldiers, searching for any sign of weakness or disobedience in the ranks.
Really? Shouldn’t this mean that she is a kick-ass character that bends to no one? What happened?
This was a character with a lot of potential; you saw hope in her first few scenes as she follows orders and has her troopers decimate the place, then later in the movie those hopes were crushed.
When the good guys invade the base she is easily over powered because she puts up no resistance – there was no blaster shot, no thrown punches, not even much of a struggle. Phasma basically looked at the invaders and surrendered, then she easily walks with them to the control station and lowers the shields.
Where is this tough character she was supposed to be?
Why couldn’t she fight back? Why didn’t she punch in a wrong code on the computer?
I just hope that she was acting under orders. Maybe Snoke had an idea of what was going to happen and told her to cooperate with them because he has someone on the inside who leaked the plans? Maybe he was willing to sacrifice a lot of troops, an awesome offensive position, and an uber expensive weapon just to keep Kylo Ren under his thumb?
If so, then it seems like an awfully stupid waste of resources to me. If not, then she is just a weakly written character. If the character continues this way then we have a pretty good idea how she earned her rank… and it’s not exactly by fighting her way up the ranks.
If they continue using the character in the same way then she is nothing more than a marketing ploy, though at least she is a little more appealing than Jar Jar.
