4 New Things We Learned About 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'

In Entertainment Weekly’s latest Star Wars-themed issue, director J.J. Abrams revealed that the mysterious pirate Maz Kanata has been staring right at us for nearly a month.

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Turns out, Maz is the tiny, goggle-eyed alien standing next to R2-D2 on the Force Awakens poster. Here she is:

And that’s not all we learned about the new Star Wars characters.

Here are some revelations about Maz, Andy Serkis’ villain Supreme Leader Snoke, Gwendoline Christie’s chrome warrior Captain Phasma, and the new generation of Stormtroopers.

Maz Kanata sounds like the new Yoda.

Abrams gave some the magazine some backstory on Lupita Nyong’o’s character, saying, “She was a pirate for a long time. She’s lived over a thousand years. She’s had this watering hole for about a century, and it’s like another bar that you’d find in a corner of the Star Wars universe.”

And there’s more to Maz Kanata’s ancient wisdom than just longevity: Her eyes have some kind of special power. (Remember that line about eyes that she speaks in the last trailer?) “As an actor for films, your eyes are a lot of the way you communicate anyway,” Nyong’o told EW. “So it was definitely a gift to have that be the means to her magic as a motion-capture character.”

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Supreme Leader Snoke has a “very distinctive” look (that is still on lockdown).

One character who definitely has not been revealed to fans yet is Andy Serkis’ villain, the only other major character in the film created with motion-capture CGI. It turns out that, for a long time, not even Serkis knew what he looked like. But he assured EW that this character’s look simply couldn’t be achieved with practical effects.

"No, no. The scale of him, for instance, is one reason. He is large. He appears tall," said the actor. “Without giving too much away at this point, he has a very distinctive, idiosyncratic bone structure and facial structure. You could never have done it [in real life.]” Serkis wouldn’t say much more about Snoke - other than that he’s indeed a bad guy, who has “suffered a lot of damage” and “has a huge agenda.”

Captain Phasma wasn’t in the original story.

Actress Gwendoline Christie denied that her character’s distinctive silver armor was “designed specifically for me,” and J.J. Abrams said that was basically true. The chrome trooper was an early costume design for villain Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), but the director was inspired to use it for a new character - specifically, a female character.

As a Game of Thrones fan, he thought of Christie (who plays warrior Brienne of Tarth on the series), and fortuitously, the HBO show and The Force Awakens had the same casting director. “We were very lucky to get to have her in the movie,” said Abrams. “She’s not in many scenes, but her presence is powerfully felt when she’s there.”

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The First Order is indoctrinating children.

There’s a reason why Finn (John Boyega) looks so lost and confused after he stops being a Stormtrooper: He was raised from childhood to serve the Imperial army. According to EW, the First Order trains children to be soldiers, and to live in fear and hatred of the Rebels - particularly Luke Skywalker, whom they’re told was a villain who destroyed the peaceful Empire.

Gwynne Watkins writes for Yahoo Movies