If you haven’t seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens, or if you’d prefer not to know about any deleted scenes that might ruin plot points in future movies, then you may want to skip this one. If you’re dying to know more about Maz Kanata, however, then a recent interview with Star Wars: The Force Awakens special effects supervisor Chris Corbould might give away quite a bit.
Maz Kanata, the tiny orange alien played by Lupita Nyong’o, draws more than a couple of comparisons to Yoda. She’s basically a wise, old, height-challenged alien who sometimes seems to speak in riddles. One of the greatest riddles may actually lie in what could have easily appeared to some as a bit of a throwaway line.
“I am no Jedi, but I do know the Force.”
This line could easily be interpreted as Maz simply saying that she knows a lot about the Force. She certainly seems to be able to feel its presence, and the read people pretty well. But at no point does she suggest that she could actually wield the Force as a weapon in the manner of a Jedi or a Sith.
Speaking with Collider, Corbould outlined one deleted scene in particular which may speak against this.
“There was a particular part of a scene that never made it, where they go underneath the castle and they’re going into the underground passageways, and Stormtroopers are coming down the stairs and Maz uses her powers to collapse the ceiling. From my point of view, [that] worked absolutely brilliantly because you had all the main actors running up and then Maz does her bit and then the whole ceiling collapses in front of them, but that never made it. That was a shot I was quite proud of, actually, it worked really, really well.”
Corbould is pretty casual in revealing that Maz Kanata has these powers. But if she’s going to appear in future films, then the origins of her Force abilities may be revealed at some point. For a character who runs a pirate bar, she certainly seems to be aligned with the good guys; however, she also discusses having seen evil take numerous forms from the Sith to the First Order. If she’s strong enough to destroy ceilings yet considers herself to be “no Jedi,” she just may have learned about the Force while working under the banner of the dark side.
What do you think? Is Maz a former Jedi, a former Sith, or none of the above? Feel free to discuss your own thoughts and theories in the comments below.
Source: Collider
