MadLaughter
Member
Move over, Boba Fett. Take a seat, Mitth'raw'nuruodo.
So, the people that make Star Wars happen released a novel about Captain Phasma earlier this month. Here's the synopsis:
One of the most cunning and merciless officers of the First Order, Captain Phasma commands the favor of her superiors, the respect of her peers, and the terror of her enemies. But for all her renown, Phasma remains as virtually unknown as the impassive expression on her gleaming chrome helmet. Now, an adversary is bent on unearthing her mysterious originsand exposing a secret she guards as zealously and ruthlessly as she serves her masters.
Deep inside the Battlecruiser Absolution, a captured Resistance spy endures brutal interrogation at the hands of a crimson-armored stormtrooperCardinal. But the information he desires has nothing to do with the Resistance or its covert operations against the First Order.
What the mysterious stormtrooper wants is Phasmas pastand with it whatever long-buried scandal, treachery, or private demons he can wield against the hated rival who threatens his own power and privilege in the ranks of the First Order. His prisoner has what Cardinal so desperately seeks, but she wont surrender it easily. As she wages a painstaking war of wills with her captor, bargaining for her life in exchange for every precious revelation, the spellbinding chronicle of the inscrutable Phasma unfolds. But this knowledge may prove more than just dangerous once Cardinal possesses itand once his adversary unleashes the full measure of her fury.
From childhood through the end of high school, I read pretty much two things: Stephen King and Star Wars novels. I would go to the library and check out multiple novels at a time detailing the many adventures of Han Solo's kids or post-ROTJ Rogue Squadron, and I kept up with that canon in some form pretty much until the day they axed it.
I'm not the harshest critic in the world to begin with, but I really enjoyed Phasma. I was one of the people that bought into the chrome-stormtrooper-played-by-rad-actress hype before TFA, and was a bit let down by the small role in the movie. I listened to the audiobook for the novel, however, and that was a 13 hour concentrated dose of this generation's Boba Fett.
Without getting into spoilery specifics, Phasma might be the most violent piece of Star Wars media I've ever experienced. Torture and murder are the tip of the iceberg with this thing. After watching Rogue One I recalled feeling that it had gone a step further than a lot of Star Wars media, but Phasma is a running leap in comparison. Based on the novel, I'd take Phasma pretty much 1v1 against any non-force user in the series, and feel pretty good about it.
The book actually left me pre-emptively disappointed in Episodes 8 and 9 to some degree because they obviously can't become movies about her, and that there'd be no way to convey how she became what she is in the amount of script real estate one can realistically allocate to a tertiary antagonist. I think that they could do "Phasma: A Star Wars Story" if they were willing to go R, but that's pretty unlikely. Though, to be fair, This book feels like something they wouldn't have greenlit, either.
Anyway, the best way I can convey the craziness in the book without outright stating it is gifs from other movies that vaguely hint at what you can expect with Phasma's backstory: