Brienne and Phasma: Light vs. dark
Gwendoline Christie’s characters defined.
All hail Brienne of Tarth and the actress who plays her, Gwendoline Christie.
Christie’s Brienne stands out as a beloved beacon of nobility in an ugly, self-interested world in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” which has just two episodes (Sundays, 9 EDT/PDT) remaining as it reaches the end of its eight-season run.
Brienne, now Ser Brienne after a long-deserved knighting, is the best “Thrones” has to offer and a role model to many, especially in a moral sense. Yes, she has experienced failures of judgment and action in the field, but her values and commitment to service remain in pristine condition. (Arya Stark has lately proven herself the most heroic fighter on “Thrones,” but Brienne, powered by Christie’s projection of decency, remains the model of knightly duty and honor.)
By comparison, Christie’s “Star Wars” character, Captain Phasma, is the very worst of the warrior class in the saga’s two most recent sequel trilogy films, “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi.” She’s laughably bad in “Force,” the human equivalent of the fatal design flaw built into every planetsized Empire/First Order battle station.
How can that be? First, let’s not blame Christie for Phasma. The minds behind “Star Wars” poorly served the English actress with a character who’s equal parts mean-spirited, inept and dull. She’s the worst of the Stormtroopers, and that’s saying something, as they’re the ever-disposable Keystone Kops of intergalactic warfare.
It’s especially sad because so many fans were looking forward to Phasma, the first female villain in “Star Wars.” But the character ultimately was nothing more than a latein-the-game gender retrofitting that evolved into a minor and regrettable role.
Let’s compare the two characters:
Appearance
Six-foot-three Christie, 40, stands even taller as Brienne, ever of upright posture and a picture of military discipline with her armor and slickedback blonde hair.
Christie radiates dignity as Brienne, but that’s all blocked with Phasma, who is hidden behind a deadening mask. Take away an actor’s tools of expression, their face and eyes, and the character is diminished. Darth Vader is the exception that proves the rule, because of the one-of-a-kind voice of James Earl Jones, although another actor wears the costume.
Nobility
Brienne has long been a “Thrones” conundrum, the most Galahad-like Westeros warrior who was blocked from knighthood simply because she’s a woman. Finally, comrade-in-arms Jaime rectified that egregious wrong by knighting her in one of the series’ most touching moments.
As Brienne goes high, Phasma always goes low. As a “Star Wars” villain, she’s up to no good, of course, but the character is lowbrow even for a bad guy. She falls into the weak, just-following-orders camp when she passes along Kylo Ren’s instruction for the Stormtroopers to kill unarmed villagers and, overall, seems to just be punching the clock for Evil Inc.
Fighting prowess
Brienne, with or without knighthood, has always been highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat. She defeated Ser Loras Tyrell, earning the respect of (and a job from) King Renly Baratheon, and she bested formidable opponents in hand-tohand combat: Jaime, the renowned Kingslayer, and Sandor “The Hound” Clegane.
In “The Last Jedi,” Phasma, despite her superior armor, size and military training, gets sucker-sabered by Finn and falls into an inferno.
Service record
Brienne has some successes – she got prisoner Jaime back to King’s Landing, with his help – but she fails on several occasions. She can’t protect Renly, but how do you thwart a shadow demon? Her greatest sin is not responding to a signal for help from Sansa, who’s held hostage by Ramsay Bolton at Winterfell, because she’s off gaining personal revenge against Renly’s brother, Stannis. She partly redeems herself by killing Bolton soldiers pursuing Sansa after her escape.
While Brienne’s mistakes don’t diminish her dignity and are tempered by triumphs, Phasma is defined by failure: her inability to recondition Finn as a Stormtrooper or letting dangerous Resistance pilot Poe Dameron escape. She commits arguably the most cowardly act in “Star Wars,” too, by turning off Starkiller Base’s defensive shields under threat of death from Finn, Chewbacca and Han Solo, ensuring its destruction. In a world where so many sacrifice their lives for a cause – even a bad one – Phasma symbolizes cowardly capitulation. Fittingly, Phasma was thrown into a trash compactor at the end of “Force,” but (sadly) she was recycled in “Last Jedi.” (Her action in “Force” is so jaw-dropping that some fans surmised she was secretly part of the Resistance, a theory disproven in “Last Jedi.”)
Legacy
Brienne’s fate remains to be seen, but she will remain a lustrous entity whether she survives as a triumphant warrior or succumbs to glorious battlefield death.
The last time we saw Phasma, her malicious effort to kill Finn blew up in her face. With the help of an elevator lift, Finn surprised the inept captain, who appeared to plunge to her fiery death. Fans assumed Phasma was dead – which John Boyega (Finn) confirmed at last month’s Star Wars Celebration – but no one seemed to care all that much.
Odds in a battle between Brienne and Phasma? Forget it. Vegas wouldn’t touch that action with a 10-foot Valyriansteel sword.