The next time you want to complain about Rey and Jyn and women “taking over” Star Wars, please shut up and remember: in the first six Star Wars films combined, only 18 female characters had speaking roles. That’s total. In all six movies. By comparison, at least 18 men have speaking roles in each one of the three original trilogy films.
18 women in all of Star Wars from 1977 until 2015
18+ men in the first 2 hours of the first Star Wars film in 1977
Still want to complain? Still want to claim that the mere presence of TWO WOMEN is now somehow creating imbalance?
Also, here’s a few fun facts about those 18 female characters with speaking roles:
14 of them appear in only one film
13 of them appear/speak in only one scene
12 of them have 5 or fewer lines (most have only 1)
11 of them are never identified by name until the credits
9 of them appear in The Phantom Menace
7 of them speak to another female character*
6 of them either play the Queen of Naboo or one of her handmaidens
6 of them are shown to have died
3 of those who die are killed off within a few minutes of their first appearance
3 of them are played by a woman of color**
1 of them plays a villain
Note: these facts are not actually fun. They’re more… deflating and depressing. “18 characters” sounds like a lot until you realize just about all of them essentially played glorified single-scene extras. Fucking Salacious Crumb got more screen time than most of these women.
Other note: I did not count masked/heavily costumed aliens or droids in the “male speaking roles vs. female speaking roles” tally, for either group. Mainly because it was weird to think about some of them but also because it wouldn’t help the female count much, anyway – you basically only get Sy Snootles and Taun We, there. That’s compared to Chewie, Yoda, C-3PO, Jabba, Ackbar, Bib Fortuna, Jar-Jar, Boss Nass, Nute Gunray, Lott Dod, Watto, Dexter Jettster, Lama Su, and more on the “seemingly male-gendered alien/robot” side.
One more note: though each film in the original trilogy has 18 or more male speaking roles, I believe (based on my top-of-the-head tallying, which is admittedly not always flawless) that each of the Prequels fails to reach that mark. So, even though the disparity between male speaking roles vs. female speaking roles still exists in that trilogy, it is mildly less pronounced. Although I will say, one big strike against the Prequels on this subject is the fact that Revenge of the Sith only has one female character with a speaking role (Padme). Even the original films had two, per movie. Come on, 2005!
Okay, final note: The Phantom Menace has the most female characters with speaking roles AND it passes the Bechdel test (Shmi and Padme are both named characters who speak about galactic politics). NOT SO AWFUL NOW, IS IT? (No, you’re right; it’s a terribly flawed movie, regardless. But still.)
* Padme, Shmi, Sabé, Cordé, Dormé, Rabé, and Jamillia speak to another female character at some point (spoiler: it’s mostly just Padme talking to each of them). Technically, Beru says “hello” to both Anakin and Padme in Attack of the Clones. So if that counts, bump it up to 8.
** Rabé (one of Padme’s handmaidens in Phantom Menace) is Brazilian, Cordé (the Padmé decoy who gets killed in the first 20 seconds of Attack of the Clones) is Mexican, and Jamillia (the new queen of Naboo in Attack of the Clones) is Indian. In total, all three have about 5 lines of dialogue and 2 minutes of screen time but still, it seemed relevant to point out.
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