Some of the movie’s most satisfying scenes center on the growing friendship between Harrison Ford’s Han Solo and Ridley’s Rey, who share a knack for the mechanical. As someone who has long wondered where women in space go to get great blowdries, I’m relieved to see a science fiction world where men finally enjoy such a service too. Typical gender roles are inverted in this “Star Wars” - in the one moment in the film when a character shakes silky tresses out of a helmet, it is long-haired “Girls” star Adam Driver as the mysteriously angry villain Kylo Ren. Women and people of color are well represented in background roles too - as pilots, medics and politicians who flash on-screen for glimpses but together paint a portrait of a world where those kinds of jobs are accessible to diverse groups of people. Phasma, played by 6-foot-3-inch “Game of Thrones” actress Gwendoline Christie. The breadth in casting extends beyond the leads to supporting roles, including gifted rebel pilot Poe Dameron, played by Guatemala-born actor Oscar Isaac Maz Kanata, a computer-generated, thousand-year-old female pirate with Yoda-like wisdom, played by Kenyan Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o and fearsome Stormtrooper commander Capt. In 2015 - spoiler alert - it is not only white males who get to harness the power of the Force. Part of the power of “Star Wars” movies has been how they have invited generations of audiences to imagine themselves as heroic characters in the fantastical, detailed world George Lucas conceived nearly 40 years ago. The second sign arrives when a Stormtrooper removes his helmet to reveal the face of a black man, English actor John Boyega, whose character, Finn, emerges as a conflicted combatant central to the action.įULL COVERAGE: ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Rey’s sensible wardrobe is the first indicator of a change in the galaxy, and the movie keeps them coming like X-wings on the horizon. Rey is costumed as a woman might dress herself, for herself. She wears no high-heeled shoes, no copper-plated bikini, no princess robes.

The first sign that “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is different from the six “Star Wars” films that came before it arrives when Rey, the protagonist played by 23-year-old English actress Daisy Ridley, appears on-screen in a weather-beaten tunic, slouchy pants and a pair of rugged boots perfectly suited to a hardscrabble life of scavenging on her desert planet.

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