As with the original Star Wars movies, The Force Awakens has a plethora of both protagonists and antagonists. Fighting the good fight are newcomers Finn, Poe Dameron, Rey along with old favorites Leia Organa, Han Solo and Chewbacca, while the movies villains would be Kylo Ren, Captain Phasma, General Hux and the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke.
Much fan speculation has surrounded the latter with the primary fan theory being that the evil mastermind behind the First Order is in actuality a character called Darth Plagueis the wise, previously mentioned in Revenge of the Sith. The flames of this fan theory have been fanned further from the characters few appearances in the movie revealed to having been "virtual"; through the use of a holographic communicator, as well as other elements such as the characters theme music being similar to that used when Palpatine relates to Anakin Skywalker the tale of Darth Plagueis in Revenge of the Sith, and when Kylo Ren refers to the his master as "wise".
Courtesy of EW and Lucasfilm the characters mysterious appearance has finally been revealed to fans, some of whom may not have seen the movie yet. Speaking to EW about the character Andy Serkis' comments do little to silence the Plagueis conspirators...
“It’s the first time I’ve been on set not yet knowing what the character’s gonna look like. I mean, talk about secrecy!”
“When we first started working on it, he had some rough notions of how Snoke was gonna look, but it really hadn’t been fully-formed and it almost came out of discussion and performance,”
“Supreme Leader Snoke is quite an enigmatic character, and strangely vulnerable at the same time as being quite powerful. Obviously he has a huge agenda. He has suffered a lot of damage. As I said, there is a strange vulnerability to him, which belies his true agenda, I suppose.”
“The scale of him, for instance, is one reason. He is large. He appears tall. And also just the facial design — you couldn’t have gotten there with prosthetics. It’s too extreme. 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.”
In addition to portraying Supereme Leader Snoke, British actor Andy Serkis also supported co-star Lupita Nyong'o with her performance capture portrayal of the movies all-seeing barkeep Maz Kanata...
“As an actor for films, your eyes are a lot of the way you communicate anyway. So it was definitely a gift to have that be the means to her magic as a motion-capture character.”
“The biggest advice [Andy Serkis] gave me, that was so important to hold on to, is a motion-capture character you develop the same way as any other. You have to understand who the character is and what makes them who they are.”
