THE FORCE AWAKENS' New Characters, Ranked
We do get to see Han, Luke, and Leia in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but the film really belongs to the new characters, and there are plenty of new faces in the galaxy far, far away. Some are so incredibly minor — examples: J.J. Abrams’ buddy Greg Grunberg plays a pilot named Snap Wexley, and the guys from The Raid pop up for all of two minutes — that they aren’t really worth diving into in any meaningful way, but I think the rest of the new additions are all worth discussing, so I decided to rank them in order of my least favorite to my favorite. Let’s see if you agree with my placement, but heads up — there will be SPOILERS ahead:
9. Captain Phasma
Like any Game of Thrones fan, I think Gwendoline Christie is phenomenal. I was so happy to hear she’d be playing a badass Chrome Trooper in this film, but I was really disappointed to see that Captain Phasma is essentially the Boba Fett of The Force Awakens: she stands there and looks cool for a minute…and that’s about it. She has a ton of potential, and hopefully that’s taken advantage of in future films.
8. Maz Kanata
A Yoda-esque figure who runs her own cantina, Maz doesn’t have a ton to do in this movie, but Lupita Nyong’o does what she can as the all-CG character. I’m intrigued with how she came about Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, but as she says in the film, that’s a story for another time…probably a comic tie-in or new in-canon novel.
7. Supreme Leader Snoke
Even after seeing the movie, we still know almost nothing about this character. Is he the Emperor, who somehow survived the events of Return of the Jedi? Is he actually 25 feet tall in person, or was the scale of his hologram just kicked up to 11 for some reason? There are more questions than answers when it comes to Andy Serkis’ villain, and I’m interested to see what Rian Johnson does with him in Episode VIII.
6. General Hux
I’m a big fan of Domhnall Gleeson, but his character here wasn’t much more than a mouthpiece for The First Order. But his furious speech to the troops, with spit flying and an insane look in his eyes, barely edged him above Snoke for me. The motivations of the film’s new evil empire aren’t really explained (or even hinted at, as far as I recall), but at least it looked like Gleeson was relishing the chance to play against type.
5. Poe Dameron
I loved this character. His sarcastic comments in the face of danger are endearing, he’s an excellent pilot, and you can feel a genuine sincerity in his friendship with Finn. Poe may seem like a roguish Han Solo type at first, but he’s actually much more of a pure hero than Han ever was; he’s all about completing the mission, and he never even considers doing anything other than “the right thing” at any given time. But after he starts out the film on such a great note, I think he’s sidelined for a little too long before he gets back in action. I would have liked to have seen more of him, because Oscar Isaac does a great job with the character.
4. Kylo Ren
Here’s one of the film’s most complex characters. He’s torn between the two sides of The Force, but his obsession with Darth Vader — his grandfather (!) — and the influence of Snoke leads him to kill his own father in one of the saga’s most heartbreaking moments. (It also reminded me a lot of scene in which Gandalf “dies” in The Fellowship of the Ring, on a bridge over a chasm with his younger friends looking on from afar.) He’s able to read minds using the Force (which I don’t think we’ve seen before in the live-action films), and his history rebelling against Luke’s training sounds like it could have been a movie all its own. He’s much more impetuous than Vader, and his temper makes him a wild card. While Vader might quietly Force choke someone, Kylo Ren seems more likely to hack someone to pieces with his lightsaber in a fit of rage, and Adam Driver gives him enough pathos that the character isn’t viewed as silly or childish.
3. BB-8
Move over, R2 — BB-8 just stole the show when it comes to the saga’s best droid. Its design is flat-out wonderful, and it’s still staggering to me that it’s a real thing that was actually rolling around on location with the actors. It’s able to get across so much personality in such small movements, and its “thumbs up” to Finn got one of my screening’s biggest laughs. Everyone who sees this film is going to want a BB-8 of their own.
2. Finn
Anyone who saw Attack the Block already knew John Boyega was awesome, but now the rest of the world will know just how great he is. Boyega has a magnetic personality, some of the movie’s best jokes, and palpable chemistry with all of his co-stars. Finn is instantly relatable, the kind of hero we hope we’d be in his situation. He’s also just the right amount of goofy, which we see as he’s constantly trying to impress Rey, and he has a haunted past as a child soldier separated from his family and trained to be a First Order Stormtrooper. The reasons he, and no other members of his Stormtrooper brethren, decided to defect aren’t explicitly clear, and though it didn’t bother me much when watching the movie, it’s one of those things that sort of becomes a problem when you’re looking back on it. I still really like the character, but a look into some of the other Stormtrooper’s lives in order to contextualize what made Finn make his decision would have been very welcome.
1. Rey
This is Daisy Ridley’s debut film performance, but she completely owns it and creates one of the best characters in Star Wars history. Rey is as talented a pilot as Han Solo (maybe even moreso), a hell of a mechanic, and completely capable of getting by on her own without ever needing to be rescued by any of the film’s male characters (that last part is especially refreshing). Oh, and she’s Force sensitive in a big way, showing more promise of being a Jedi by the end of one film than Luke Skywalker did after two. She’s untrained but extremely powerful, able to hold her own against Kylo Ren in both mind tricks and lightsaber battles, and she’s also coming to terms with her own past, which is full of abandonment issues. Ridley is alternately vulnerable and resilient, mastering the balance between being hesitant about her future and brave enough to embrace it. And considering the film’s provocative final images, I can’t wait to see how her storyline plays out.