Thursday, June 4, 2015

Top 10 Rejected Captain Phasma Concepts


Before the sleek and sexy Google Chrome Trooper, there were these guys! After the jump we will look into the top ten rejected Captain Phasma concepts!


The first concept for a shiny stormtrooper, Phasma originally had a cannon for an arm! The art department thought this was a great idea until actress Gwendoline Christie informed them they basically just drew up a white Samus Aran of the Nintendo videogame, Metroid.


This was actually going to be the design of the new stormtroopers with Phasma getting the blue highlights, reminiscent of Darth Vader's 501st Legion as seen in Revenge of the Sith. The idea was great until JJ informed the art team that he just played Halo 2 on his Xbox last night and he knew they just ripped off the Spartan armor from that game.


Before it was decided that Phasma would be a high ranking stormtrooper, she was planned on being a new alien with black skin wearing a red skintight suit and a green helmet and bodyarmor. This design was rejected before the resemblance to Looney Tunes's Marvin the Martian was noticed.


This next concept was also before it was decided that Phasma would be a stormtrooper. The idea was for Phasma to be a bounty hunter in green, gold, and white armor who would play a mechanical flute to summon a gargantuan droid that was shaped like a Godzilla... or Mecha-Godzilla... whatever. The point is the art department ripped off Green Ranger Tommy from the original incarnation of Saban's Mighty Morphine Power Rangers


Before Gwendoline Christie was cast, Sylvester Stallone was set to appear as Phasma. After seeing the design for his costume was literally the same one he wore in the original Judge Dredd film, he threw a fit and quit the film. Bob Iger wanted to Stallone to stay with Star Wars so they came up with the idea of having Stallone direct the second Star Wars Anthology film after firing Josh Trank and letting him star as his favorite character from the entire saga, Boba Fett.


Yet another design pre-trooper, Phasma was a Galactic outlaw who wore a helmet that would convert into a full face mask that resembled a droid to hide her face and brandished two handheld blasters. Once JJ saw the design, he knew it was a copy of Marvel's Star-Lord so he fired the artist who turned out to be a top designer for the Guardians of the Galaxy comic series that was there playing a prank on behalf of GotG film director, James Gunn.


This design was based on the idea that Phasma would be a regular stormtrooper who was injured in the line-of-duty. Kylo Ren saw Phasma as a great asset to the First Order, so they took the barely living Phasma, who was now only a head, heart, lungs, and left hand, and put her into a new cyborg body who was there to serve Ren's every order! While it seemed like a great idea on paper, Christie knew it was a knock off of her favorite sci-fi movie, Robocop.


This next design planned on Phasma being a droid built by Kylo Ren who ended up finding emotions and becoming more human-like as she aged. Baring too much resemblance to DC Comic's failed cartoon series The Zeta Project, the concept was quickly canned.


This concept went pretty far into development as far as having Christie "fly" using her jetpack in front of a blue-screen of death. It wasn't until Bob Iger visited the set early in filming did they discover Christie was wearing a chrome spray-painted leftover costume from Disney's The Rocketeer.


Based on an archived Ralph McQuarrie concept, this design was very well liked by both JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy to stick with the Original Trilogy aesthetic that the fans so much desired. As it turned out, this design was already reused by the cult sci-fi TV series, Battlestar Galactica in 1978. JJ proceeded to cry his four eyes out.

No comments:

Post a Comment