The stormtroopers were people with complex beliefs, intentions, and motivations, none of which a suit of armor can entirely erase away. Inherent lethality came with the look of efficiency.īut for all that uniforms removed the appearance of self from the battlefield, Lucas imagined real men and women putting on the uniforms. It’s not hard to see why: Their white armor, precise marching, and adherence to authority strips away any trace of individuality. In the ramp up to the 1977 release of A New Hope, early reports and newspaper captions mistook stormtroopers for robots.
When we first see them in action, kitted out in white armor for the Battle of Geonosis in the film’s climax, they’re ruthlessly efficient against their robotic enemies, taking out droids, and showing no remorse for their fallen clone brothers.įor all that Star Wars is about a titanic battle between good and evil, the introduction of the clone troopers injected a considerable dose of moral ambiguity into the franchise, and when Lucas launched The Clone Wars animated series in 2008, it did something interesting: it humanized the men under the masks and developing one of the franchise’s most complicated and compelling stories. Millions of men, cloned from a single bounty hunter, were bred for one purpose: war.
Years later, Lucas depicted that conflict, and unveiled its horrifying nature. A New Hope alluded to their industrial and uniform nature with a throwaway reference to “the Clone Wars.” The stormtrooper is one of the most iconic images from Star Wars, and subsequent sequels, prequels, side-quels, tie-in novels, video games, and comic books have reinforced the imagery and design language of that original suit of armor. Designed to look a bit like skeletons, the stormtroopers made a terrifying appearance in A New Hope, swarming into a captured Rebel ship, and stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades.
The Stormtrooper were to invoke specific imagery from real-world wars: the “Imperial people to look efficient, totalitarian, fascist” according to military historian and costume designer John Mollo in The Making of Star Wars. From the start, George Lucas had a specific idea in mind for the look and feel of the foot soldiers of his Galactic Empire.
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