Christie, Boyega tease their ‘Last Jedi’ battle
Fans have awaited the Finn, Captain Phasma grudge match for two years
It may not be the main event of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in theaters Thursday night) — in this franchise, that honor usually goes to the folks with lightsabers — but Finn vs. Captain Phasma is the grudge match that fans have been anticipating for two years.
The back story is pretty simple: In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Stormtrooper FN-2187 (John Boyega) goes AWOL from the First Order’s legion of nameless cannon fodder, earns the moniker Finn, becomes a part of the heroic Resistance and tosses Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) in the garbage during the good guys’ attack on Starkiller Base. (She’s also forced at gun- point to lower the space station’s shields, directly leading to it going boom shortly thereafter.)
When Finn dons First Order officer gear in Last Jedi to go undercover for a secret Resistance mission on a Star Destroyer, it’s an “awkward situation,” Boyega says. “You happen to go back home and go back to your old job in which you blew up a few of your brothers and sisters and put your boss in a trash compactor.”
She made it out, though, and to borrow a phrase: Hell hath no fury like a chrome-armored woman scorned.
“It just took so long to get rid of the smell. Like any garbage residue, it lingers, so she’s had to spend an awful lot
of time to eradicate that,” Christie quips. “She has been humiliated by someone who was her subordinate and has gone rogue, and someone who is at liberty and is a free spirit and has chosen another path. So, yeah, she’s annoyed.”
Writer/director Rian Johnson loved the idea of their heated throwdown. “What if these two came head to head? What would they say to each other?” he says. Finn has to tackle “this symbol of where he was coming from and what he was. And what does it mean to Phasma to have this symbol of a lack of order; coming face-to-face with her big failure?”
Audiences haven’t really seen Phasma’s fighting style in full since her Force Awakens appearance was brief, though she wields a “terrifying-looking” spear and “a malevolence coming from deep within her that seems to have no real logic attached to it,” Christie says. “With that emotion coupled with the physical strength and the vindictive strength of character, I would imagine things could get nasty quite quickly.”
At least Finn’s a little more ready now than he would have been. This is a guy who looked fearful when taking on Kylo
“She has been humiliated by someone who was her subordinate and has gone rogue. ... So, yeah, she’s annoyed.” Gwendoline Christie On her ‘Last Jedi’ character, Captain Phasma
Ren (Adam Driver) in Force Awakens, yet “he wants to get down and dirty” with his ex-supervisor, Boyega says. “Phasma trained Finn, so she knows him and he knows her. It’s almost like going up against your sensei, going up against the person who taught you everything you know. It’s much more brutal.”
Because the situation called for it, Christie brought in the big guns: She worked with her Game of Thrones stunt director/swordmaster C.C. Smiff to get Phasma’s moves down and “do things I’ve never imagined,” she says.
“I don’t think anyone will be disappointed by what they see. There’s something always thrilling about the story of a battle of wills, no matter how it manifests itself.”