Star Wars Episode 7: Who Is Maz Kanata played by Lupita Nyong’o in The Force Awakens?
Mark Newbold for Metro.co.ukFriday 12 Jun 2015 9:18 am
She’s one of the hottest acting properties on the planet right now, winning a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance in 12 Years A Slave and setting up a career that is sure to dazzle.
Come December 18 she’ll also be a part of the Star Wars galaxy as actress Lupita Nyong’o joins the cast as pirate leader Maz Kanata.
But who is Maz? Is she friend or foe? Does she sell out the good guys to the minions of the First Order, or is she on the side of the Resistance? Perhaps she plays both sides to the middle? Let’s investigate.
Based on the many and numerous rumours doing the rounds right now, Maz Kanata is a pirate leader and an associate of legendary smuggler Han Solo. As the story progresses our heroes meet up with Solo and Chewbacca and after some close scrapes need somewhere to lay low and regroup.
Han suggests Kanata as someone who can help, and so the Millennium Falcon flies to a jungle planet (which may or may not be the moon of Yavin, location of the hidden Rebel base in 1977’s A New Hope) and our heroes enter a pirate hideout filled with distinctly unsavoury characters.
Nyong’o performs Kanata as a motion capture character, a decision which came under some scrutiny given that she had recently won an Academy Award and is a person of colour in a film series famously lacking in that regard. That said, she IS an Oscar winning actress and clearly the role and the challenge of working with this growing and emerging technology was attractive to her. In an age where the multiple dots and markers of a motion capture suit can replace the hours and hours of practical make-up application and removal, expect to see more and more quality actors take this approach.
After learning that the lightsaber our heroes possess is that of Luke Skywalker, Kanata offers to show them a vision and this leads to a potentially huge revelation – that Rey is Han Solo’s daughter. Remember, these are just rumours right now and NOTHING is confirmed.
The First Order find and attack our heroes and Kanata’s castle is destroyed, although Maz herself escapes.
It seems that Kanata is a trusted character. Her advice is given without request of reward and even Queen Leia takes Kanata’s advice and follows it. While she is a pirate leader, rumours suggest that she sides with the Resistance.
It could read that Kanata is the wise old elf character that Yoda first started out as, offering advice and guidance without an agenda. That said, this is Star Wars and the sequel trilogy is designed to be a lot more ‘grey’ – blurred lines between the forces of good and evil.
