Books Journey to the Last Jedi: Phasma

I think the thing is that they made Phasma out to be this glorious gleaming badass months before the release and when the movie came out it was a little... jarring. Especially with the aftertaste of so many years of Grievous kool-aid.

 

In hindsight I bet they would have hyped Hux up more seeing as he made more fans than she did. Kinda like how we should have had more Dooku than the more hyped but less interesting Grievous in ROTS, like you said.

 

This. The only "incompetent" things she did in the movie were get tackled by Chewie and thrown in a trash compactor. And that's not even "incompetent," it's just unlucky.

 

I think the idea is that "a real badass" would have died instead of doing what Han and Finn wanted

 

Which is ridiculous, TBH. I doubt even Hux or Ren would've been like "Nah, blow my head off, I ain't doin' it." And it doesn't seem like the First Order has cyanide pills, so suicide isn't exactly an option. Plus, Phasma said it herself: "You can't be so stupid as to think this will work." She thought that even if she disabled the shields, the Resistance still wouldn't stand a chance.

 

I don't think that there's any real evidence to suggest that Phasma is incompetent or competent, given how little screen time she gets. There isn't really any evidence to suggest that she's anything, except loyal to the First Order and attentive to her duties. That's why I'm pretty excited to see her finally getting fleshed out. That said, I wish they started doing it much sooner, either before or just after TFA was released. There was a lot of hype around her character at the time, which understandably led her to fizzle when her miniscule role in the films failed to meet those expectations. All of this scepticism about her amongst some fans is a problem they could have nipped in the bud earlier, but I think most people would have to admit that - as she currently stands - Phasma is a mostly blank slate with a lot of room for interesting development and cool moments. I'm definitely keeping an open mind about her and picking this up, especially since there are also two more movies for her to hopefully shine in as well.

 

Hux would have been a better choice, I think as he's Space Hitler.

Then again, I wanted Phasma to be the one who beat Finn.

Kylo Ren is a fanatic in the service of a cause hsi grandfather would have loathed, let alone his parents.

 

I'd always caution against saying a character "doesn't deserve a book" or "doesn't deserve a story". That leads to a very limited creative scope.

 

In my opinion, every Star Wars character deserves a book

 

Looks like we got a slight cover update. First is new, second is old. I always did think her helmet looked a bit squished in the original cover. The new one looks much better.

 

This will be worth it even if it's just the story of her tracking down Sheev's Naboo yacht and stripping the chrome.

 

*Squints* Is that actually different? *Ducks and hides from any Fleet Junkies who inadvertently clicked on the wrong link.*

EDIT: I actually double checked and the grey shadow across the letter A of "STAR" has shifted downwards from its original position, hinting at a broader image resize! While that may not strike most of you as a reason to bestow an exclamation mark, I wear glasses due to a degenerative eye condition and I (understandably, in that context) still need a shot-by-shot comparison of a bridge tower to tell the difference between an ISD-I and an ISD-II.

 

Here I was thinking she had been deliberately protecting Finn maybe because she knows his family and feels obliged to help him?

Would it stretch things that she wanted the Resistance to blow up Star Killer Base even more than they did?

 

I really hope so.

 

One word. One name.
Delilah S. Dawson’s new novel (out Sept. 1) will go beneath the chrome armor of The First Order’s most merciless Stormtrooper.
“You have a very mysterious character,” Siglain says. “You don’t know who this person is. You don’t know what her background is. All you see is that expressionless mask. And so the thought was, well, what if we could shed some light onto who she is. She does have a secret in her past that she guards. And when that secret is threatened to be revealed, what will she do to keep that secret hidden?
It’s a difficult thing to tell a whole story around a villain, but Phasma doesn’t hold back on the character’s cruelty. Think of it as a galactic House of Cards, where you’re simultaneously rooting for the main characters and despising them.

​

“She is a ruthless and a cunning character. This takes that to the next level,” Siglain says. “You will be afraid of this character. You will know why she is a captain in the First Order.”
Marvel is publishing a separate miniseries comic called Captain Phasma that will reveal how Gwendoline Christie’s character escaped the trash compactor on Starkiller Base before it was destroyed in The Force Awakens. But Dawson’s novel, like the Leia book, will go back much further to the character’s origin as a young girl.
This novel will “show how she got off the planet that she was on initially and came to the First Order and what did she have to do to get there and what will she do to protect her secrets,” Siglain says. “It cuts between the present and the past and shows her as this fearsome warrior on this brutal world that she was on. The resistance comes to that planet, and she sees a great opportunity when they arrive.”
Maybe we’ll finally learn her full name, too.

http://ew.com/books/2017/07/20/star...l&xid=entertainment-weekly_socialflow_twitter

 

Whether she thought it'd work or not is irrelevant.

From a First Order perspective, this is as if a Five Star General handed Osama the planes he used on 9/11, assuming they wouldn't manage to do anything bad with them. Under duress or not, the next step in that story shouldn't be anything but disgrace and court martial if he's found out. Which in the First Order would almost certainly mean death.

If Phasma's post-TFA story is anything but desperately trying to conceal her treasonous involvement in Starkiller's destruction, it'll be pretty disappointing. A once-proud warrior filled with self-loathing and fear of her shame being exposed (and the ignominious execution that would follow) could be a very interesting character to explore, but I worry they'd rather keep trying to push the 'cool badass' angle and think adding a touch of self-loathing and cowardice would detract from action figure sales.

Pre-TFA still has the problem that competent or not, the character got way overhyped despite having nearly 0 role and getting a comic relief 'death' in her very first appearance. Like I've said before, it's Boba Fett if ROTJ had been Fett's first showing and he'd been hyped to hell and back pre-release. No way he'd be so popular then, and Disney has to face the fact that they've made accepting Phasma as the 'cool' character they were pushing her as a much harder sell. Maybe they can pull it off, but claiming it hasn't been made way more difficult is extreme denial.

 

I take it back. Battlefront II was great. Long live Christie Golden

 

I agree, but I'd rather it be Kallus or Cylo

 

I'm not particularly excited about this book, it's just kind of one of those "why?" books imo. If anything it'll be a forgettable/passable story that has no consequence or weight on the rest of the universe (ala every other NUcanon novel thus far)

 

I wanna see if Phasma is worth it. To be honest, I can think of many other characters who should get a book before her, but its simple marketing. She's the Sequel Trilogies Boba Fett and Disney wants to expand on that.