Captain Phasma - Blog Posts

Cast of Star Wars The Last Jedi

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How I would have changed Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Before I begin this I want it on the record that I very much enjoyed The Last Jedi. It’s far from perfect but where TFA was a lot of fun but fairly uninspired, a new hope for a new generation, TLJ for all its flaws tried new things and dug in deep to big themes and a dissection of the franchise as a whole. I loved it. There’s no denying the film was far too long and the subplots were a mixed bag.  The Rey/Kylo/Luke stuff on a thematic level worked for me. Some minor details near the end perhaps could have been done differently but all in all I think it’s fairly  rock solid. Some rocks can be moved around though as the film very much confirms. I do this not to tell anyone how it should be done but just to give my two cents. I enjoy script writing and would love to be a script doctor/ consultant so I write this in that spirit.. I will try to keep it succinct.

Canto Bight

My brother made the canny suggestion that the Canto Bight story line should have been at the beginning of the film. Imagine panning over the crazy tables, spying all those diverse aliens, we reach a big table, where some ostentatious high roller is wowing a crowd but we can’t see his face. He turns around and it’s Finn! It would be a great surprise since  the last time we saw him was in a bio bed unconscious and now here he is in a totally different milieu and having fun. We could even throw in a shameless piece of exposition where Rose tells him to calm down since it’s not that long since he got the all clear. Finn could say how he’s still feeling a bit raw but that his luck is changing... That should be when he comes across someone from his past in the Casino...Phasma. But in a twist Phasma is sans mask and Finn doesn’t know who this is. This would give Gwendoline Christie an actual character to play. If the audience knows she’s Phasma then the tension comes from not knowing when Finn will figure it out. If you don’t know the actress is Phasma it would be a nice reveal. So Finn believe he has a rapport with this new person and finally feels like he is escaping his past (the film’s central theme) but  the reveal of her true identity would shatter that illusion and the ensuing battle would allow him to put the past to bed once and for all. I also think Phasma should have been evolved beyond the Boba Fett clone (not an actual in story clone!) she ended up being.

Poe is also on Canto Bight with Rose and Finn because they have discovered that the Casino is a front for a weapons facility in which the Empire are stocking up brand new ships such as Dreadnoughts. Their plans is to infiltrate and destroy this place before they can be added to the First Order’s fleet. They need to find a code breaker in the Casino who can be turned to their side. I would have just gone with Justin Theroux’s character here but it still could have been Benecio Del Toro’s DJ either way. Poe is not himself after a botched operation in which he got a number of the fleet killed, including someone important to Rose. I would have made this her lover instead of her sister, explicitly putting in more LGBTQ representation, (having a gay character be killed could be problematic, I admit, but when watching the film the first time and seeing the shared necklace, I honestly assumed this was Rose’s girlfriend/wife and found the sister thing a little meh).  There is understandable tension between Rose and Poe. These story points could be alluded to in PTSD type flashbacks that are interspersed and while Poe is to blame, which has shaken the character from the cocky pilot of the first film, we could see the operation from different Rashomon type flashbacks which would be a nice narrative parallel to the Luke/ Kylo Ren flashbacks.

Leia’s choice to allow Poe on this mission has not been popular and we see a holographic message from Admiral Holdo criticising the decision while still greatly respecting Leia (this is important to establish as their genuine friendship was great and a fantastic rebuke to the two strong women being at odds trope you find in a lot of fiction). Leia says she has faith in Poe and Holdo is forced to see if that faith is justified. Poe himself is conflicted about his future in the Resistance but helping Rose and Finn free those animals that cut a swath through Canto Bight is the metaphor for the Resistance Poe needs to reawaken his faith. He sees that the downtrodden must be free to make a difference.

Leia

The Leia force scene has been a big controversial moment for a lot of people and I would suggest a minor tweak of this could have been more effective. Leia is blasted out into space. We still have the same shots of her floating but we hear her breathing, her heart beating. But suddenly a calm falls over her. She is using the Force to slow down everything to give her a few more precious moments of life when suddenly a fighter appears and picks her up, being flown by Holdo. It would have been a great physical introduction for the character having previously been shown as just a hologram. You’d still have Leia saving herself with the Force but just not in so a cartoony or pronounced way. There could be some fun banter about how Holdo wasn’t meant to be there but she was just passing by the star system and knew Leia would be out for a walk, or something to that effect.

Here is where I will give an odd suggestion for how to deal with Leia in Episode 9. This could be controversial but I’d have it that the General gets sick or is injured and they know they can’t save her so she asks to be frozen in Carbonite but kept alive. She could be the leader who never died and is a living monument to how the Resistance should never die. It’s not perfect but its as elegant a solution to what cruel fate has provided us.

So a single Dreadnought survives the destruction of the weapons facility and this could give us the Holdo sacrifice (clearly Leia could have been the one to do this too, but I digress). Holdo contacts Poe and congratulates him on his successful mission, welcoming him back into the fold but says “As cocky as you are Poe...you missed one.”  And she hyperspaces into the Dreadnought to prevent it from destroying the fleet.

As you can see most of the film would be unaffected and I do believe the subplots would tie in more organically.  Throwing in a Casino jaunt into a ticking clock plot remains my biggest problem with the film and I think structuring it like this would solve a lot of problems.

Snoke

A brief final note on another issue fandom has with the film, the identity of Snoke. The decision to make Rey’s parents nobodies was inspired and I hope they don’t reverse that in future installments. As for Snoke, I have a theory that won’t satisfy everyone but is my take on the character. Although to be honest I don’t think we need to know where he came from. His dispatching was fantastic and allows the series to focus on the more nuanced and interesting antagonist in Kylo Ren but if people were so desperate for an answer here is one.

There should be a scene with Luke in the dark pit with the Infinite Recursion that we see Rey in half way through the film. This can be from a long time ago. Luke has gone their to face his demons. We see him force jump out of the pit and the delayed reflections all follow suit...except one. An obscured reflection in the distance remains down that pit. This is Snoke. He is a manifestation of Luke’s anger and bitterness and the darker thoughts inside of him. (It’s a bit Onslaught with Professor Xavier if I’m to be honest). Snoke didn’t want anyone to find Skywalker because he needs him alive to continue existing and Luke remaining in exile suited his plans perfectly. It even adds an irony to Kylo Ren who unknowingly is still an apprentice to a version of Luke Skywalker. In fact this revelation would have been a nice extra motivation for Kylo killing Snoke.  Fandom could have called this character Snoke Starkiller as a nod to the original name of Luke Skywalker! I very much believe in drawing thematic parallels and contrasts across different narrative threads. For example Kylo sheds his armour to move on but Phasma re-embraces her armour as a symbol of the past.  Both Finn and Rey do not know their parents and are in situations due to this abandonment. There’s definitely more of this stuff that could be teased out over the whole story. So there you go, suggestions for something that has already been made and for adventures that have already happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

You know what I want? I want a series centered around teenage Phasma and Armitage Hux flying around the galaxy, getting into stupid situations and trying not to die. I want a series wear they go into Phasmas backstory and her life with the Scyre Clan. I want a series that goes into the danger hux was constantly in as a kid and the suffering he endured at the hands of his father. I want a series that shows Rae Sloane doing her best to keep these kids alive. I want a series that truly shows how the First Order came to be. All I want is lil armie and lil phasma ok?