***WARNING SPOILERS BE THROUGHOUT THE ARTICLE***
In The Force Awakens, we are introduced early on in the film to the silver and stainless wonder-menace of Captain Phasma. While we hoping for a Stormtrooper, played by actress Gwendoline Christie, that was on the level of generals and dark lords, what we got was basically Fett-lite.
Looking at the character’s history we shouldn’t be so surprised. The armor was originally intended to be armor for Kylo Ren, was rejected by director JJ Abrams, ( which is a surprise because that armor is lens flare-o-rama), but was loved by producer Kathleen Kennedy.
The character was then quickly a new name and position and was changed from a male to a female character as a way to boundaries for our favorite armored marksman. Ms. Chrisite heard of the part and pushed heavily for the role.
Despite being the center of The Force Awakens merchandising and being highly sought as the best selling, shiniest toy from that line, Phasma only received one minute and forty-five seconds of screen time. With her return and the final battle with Finn in The Last Jedi, her time is cut short further with only one minute thirty second of silver armor on silver screen time. A shame for a character for whom so much hype and hoopla was built up over.
But, with the way this character was treated and used, it is easy to compare her to Boba Fett, in the sense, we have another cool looking bad guy, with little to no background in the films, that someone thought, “hey this would look cool on the film”. Shiny toy finishes aside, like Fett, this characters backstory and motivations had to be filled in by novels and comic books. Also, like Boba Fett, Phasma only gets two film appearances, then by luck of the character, and deadly aspects of their environment, they get killed off in an anticlimactic kind of way, with some yelling while they die.
Although fans may enjoy callbacks to their previous favorite characters in the new generation, this is one cycle of nothingness we could probably do without.
