The Hidden Genius of Stormtrooper Costume Design | Behind the Seams
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- čas přidán 24. 02. 2021
- Stormtroopers are the bad guys. They represent fascist ideals and military brutality. Their costumes are based on Nazi uniforms. So why do they cheer up kids in hospitals and dance at Comic-Con?
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"Until we met Fin, we never met a stormtrooper with a meaningful role or personality." Well sadly Fin has neither of those...
mayfeld is much better than Finn
Kyle Katarn and Madine have entered the chat
We have Rian Johnson to thank for that
So much potential
So much wasted potential
When I first saw "Star Wars" in the theater in 1977, I was convinced that both the stormtroopers and Vader were robots. In fact, when Luke and Han put on the stormtrooper armor on the Death Star, I was SURE that, somewhere off screen, they had waylaid 2 of these "robots", scooped out their mechanical guts, and used the shells to fake their way in without suspicion.
I remember thinking the same thing at the time, like stormtroopers came off an assembly line. Back then there was no expanded material to tell us what was really going on in the movie.
I assume that impression was deliberate. Lucas didn't want kids thinking about people being gunned down by the heroes.
I was going to comment the same thing. Except maybe not the mechanical guts part. lol I was seven when the first one came out and I don’t think any of the kids at school thought differently about it. Even after learning Vader was “human” on the inside, none of us put together that the stormtroopers were too.
I had the same feeling.
And Stormtrooper come from the word Strum Truppen which literally means Assault Troopers… they were around WAAYYY before Germany became Nazi.
I'm retired military and COMPLETELY agree with the militarized police parallel. I have a number of family members who are law enforcement and they would also agree that the average law enforcement in the US has turned from a 'protect and serve' (emphasis on the SERVE part here) to a 'warrior' culture. The military is far, far more accountable than the average law officer in everything but especially escalation of violence up to and including lethal force. My take on it is that if they wanted to be soldiers, they should have joined up just like the rest of my brothers and sisters in arms. As stated in your video, an armored officer can never, ever be a meaningful member of a community. That is clearly represented by the stormtroopers in the Star Wars universe.
Onetime MP reserve officer here. Couldn't agree more. Where I live, the police wear black uniforms with silver accessories that immediately remind me of Darth Vader and the Schutzstaffel. The simple change to a sky blue shirt and blue or tan trousers would remove that intimidating association with evil and oppression, and mark the return of the friendly neighborhood beat cop. The SWAT teams can keep their intimidation factor so long as their role is exclusively to respond to violence.
Part of the issue is that police aren't there to "protect and serve" and never have been. They are there purely to enforce the law. The idea that police are there to "protect and serve" comes from clever marketing and many police shows, but in reality they have no legal obligation to do either unless it's in the service of enforcing the law.
Actually, believe it or not, and I hope I'm not bursting anybody's bubble here (or at least I don't mean to), but the stormtrooper costume, along with Darth Vader, is actually based off Japanese samurai armor. George Lucas was quoted in Rolling Stone magazine saying that he was exposed to Japanese samurai films while in film school in the 1950's. So I really do not how you could say they're based off Nazi uniforms, they don't bear any resemblance. George Lucas just tweaked the samurai armor up a few notches 😊👍👍👍👍👍
We forgot to link to this in the show notes, but a lot of this video is sourced from a longer article I wrote about stormtrooper/Empire costume design in a more general sense. I'm definitely aware of the samurai influences! www.dailydot.com/parsec/stormtrooper-costume-uniform-design-politics/ While the helmets do draw from German military helmets, this video is more about how the Empire explicitly ties in with fascist imagery.
Nazi helmet and samurai are just Darth for Darth vader (he also has something else inspired by something but I can't remember what)
The word stormtrooper also came from a class of German soldier (or something like that) and the stormtrooper helmet is meant to resemble a skull (I haven't watched the full video yet so I might be pointing out the obvious)
The officers were also meant to look like Nazis with their big juicy thigh trousers
@@GlassShardsInMyFeet yea, but from ww1
edit: those pants are not excluive to nazis at all, it was a popular type of pants for many militaries around that time
@@GlassShardsInMyFeet Actually the officer uniform is taken from World War 1 Imperial German Air force / cavalry tunics. Ever see photos of the Red Baron in uniform, Looks pretty familiar doesn't it?
@@behindtheseams300 If you wanted to tie in autboritarianism to the Empire, why not talk about Japanese armor? Japan was fascist in WWII also, and while they didn't use samurai armor at the time, the shogunates were not exactly democracies.
The cool thing about the stormies are the variants like sandies, snowies, biker or TIE pilots.
and they all look super cool, the pilot will probably always be my favorite, even though they basically just bolted a xwing pilot helmet to a stormtrooper face mask
"Kidnapped as children, to be trained as soliders" like the Jannissries in Ottoman times.
You say Stormtroopers were named after Nazi shock troops, but Stormtroopers were WWI troops fighting for pre-Nazi Germany.
"Stormtrooper" was also the name for the rank-and-file members of the Waffen-SS. Calling them "Nazi shock troops" is an error, but it's the "shock troops" part that's wrong, not the "Nazi" part.
@@davydatwood3158 His point was that the term "stormtrooper" was first officially recorded for use by specific soldiers in Imperial Germany during WW1. Yes, the Waffen-SS did use the term as well, and that's likely what the Star Wars stormtrooper was based off given Lucas's affinity for WW2. After all, Star Wars is in many ways "WW2 in space."
@@davydatwood3158 The Stormtroopers of the Nazi German era were in fact the SA or "Brown shirts" of the twenties and thirties. The name "Stormtrooper" was taken directly from the name given to regular army assault troops of WWI. People today seem to have taken the name and thought it only applied to the SS which isn't in fact the case...
@@Rendell001 Yes, "Sturmtruppen" was a *job* in WW1, and yes, "Sturmtruppen" translates to "stormtrooper." So what? The SA was referencing that when they named themselves, then the Waffen-SS took the word and made it the rank of their basic soldier. You know, the ones the western allies call "private" and the Wehrmact just called "Soldat," meaning "soldier."
None of that changes the fact that the Galactic Empire is very, very clearly based on Nazi Germany, and the name "Imperial Stormtroopers" is a direct reference to the Waffen-SS.
@@davydatwood3158 Actually, if you listen to George Lucas in his interview with Jim Cameron, he lists a number of influences for the idea of the Empire that includes the British Empire, post war United states and possibly even a dash of Rome too.
It's interesting how in the last couple of decades, a lot of people just default to "Nazi Germany" as the choice for "the worst of the worst" / every villanious faction is an expy of Nazi Germany.
Who says Nuance is dead...
I hate the joke of “stormtroopers bad and incompetent” there are infinite videos debunking that and the people still believe it (I’m talking about the ot, there is nothing to say about the shit Disney did to them in the mandalorian, just poor writting and direction)
I wouldn't say it's just poor writing.
More like fandom memes and jokes that were taken as gospel by people who were ‘fans of the brand or franchise’ rather than fans who actually watched the movies and those people ended up writing and directing Star Wars.
@@Lobsterwithinternet indeed that’s true
The first 3 or 4 minutes of A New Hope put paid to the "bad and incompetent" Stormtrooper myth right away.
It's only in the middle of the movie on the Death Star that they are unable to hit a barn let alone the heroes. Heroes who are protected by either:
a) plot armour ?
b) the Force? (It's strong with the blonde one!)
c) orders to not kill them so they can escape with a tracking device to uncover the Rebel base?
d) Some or all of the above?
They weren't originally "incompetent" and the joke that they have become especially in the mandalorian. "These blast points too accurate for sand people. Only imperial Stormtroopers are so precise." The ewoks fought as an irregular force and tactics in a jungle environment that they were familiar with. Allot of rebels and ewoks throughout the movies got killed by Stormtroopers. They were not slapstick paper tigers in the original trilogies.
Dr. Sandhill has a really good video on just this topic.
@@KnjazNazrath First part of that video I agree with second part I don't. He claims it was all plot armour that made the stormtroopers miss in the death star escape. Plot armour is used regularly but not here. It was clearly stated by actual dialogue Vader's plan was to allow Leia to be rescued and then track the falcon. Shooting them with blaster shots doesn't accomplish that. Leia's dialogue about ease of escape and they let us go reinforces this. A movie isn't going to remove a reveal* or the high stakes of the action scenes (stormtroopers shooting, looking like they are trying to kill them, and the challenges of the escape). Note how after the dramatic escape is over Leia lets the audience know she wasn't fooled and the pursuit to stop them was all for show.
@Homer Funny I don't remember Obi-Wan saying that in the original trilogies.
@Homer Did he say "in comparison to savage sand people... no training"? He never said that. The word "so percise" does not in anyway imply being bad at something rather exactly the opposite.
@Homer Did he ever say sand people where bad shots? Yes or no? He said the blast shots were the exceptional level of being "precise". Stormtroopers or anyone who is said to make precise shots is not a bad aim. If that's your opinion so be it. It's not supported by the dialogue in my opinion.
Gosh, this was such a tight piece. Left me wanting more but it’s always better to do that than to wear people out.
I hadn’t even thought about how anonymising all that gear is. But you’re right, it’s like a SWAT team but with more of a biker helmet face visibility. I’d always kinda noticed the troopers are the beat cops but hadn’t thought about it as deeply - just surface level like “of course”! The part about how they are defanged in the story was pretty interesting too.
Definitely sending this to people!
The incompetence I think is a big part of why they became humorous and non-threatening, but I think it’s also kind of tragic.
Soldiers that unskilled are obviously seen by their superiors as disposable cannon fodder, never given sufficient training or a real purpose.
And as we saw several times, they’re mostly taken (or grown) as children.
It’s hard to hate someone who was never given a choice. Or a chance.
I think that technically, in-universe, stormtroopers are considered skilled, lethal, and overall feared, but we see them constantly screw up because they're facing off against the heroes of the story who have "plot armor." If you put stormtroopers up against your average rank-and-file Rebellion soldier or a civilian (neither of whom are "heroes") then you'll see a very different outcome than if they're facing off against Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, or even Lando.
It's a somewhat cheap writing tactic, but it's also often necessary because otherwise there'd be no way for our heroes to survive.
I think this video would pair well with Dan Olson's video about Triumph of the Will and Lindsay Ellis's video about the Ideology of the First Order. They all make me think about the way that Star Wars and other popular media used the Nazi's own iconography to portray cement What Fascism Looks Like in modern consciousness (absolute might, massive weaponry, high fashion, etc.) On top of that, it's all necessarily depoliticized because you don't want to bum out or bore your audience, and in the case of Disney properties, you have to sell toys of the villains.
But in actuality, the fascists I've seen in the modern day resemble the Stormtroopers a lot more. Goofy as hell, dress like garbage, not all that threatening on their own, but incredibly dangerous when they're in large groups and united by a target for their violence. It makes me sad the prequel trilogy suffered so much in the visual/plot/character/actual storytelling department, because the underlying politics of that trilogy feel so much more relevant and nuanced.
Yeah, the prequels are fun to discuss and think about the subtext, either in the world building, or just in the very specific ways, Palpatine is manipulative. But those ideas are glued together in such a clumsy way! They are much more fun to discuss than to watch!
@@kaitlyn__L frankly i don't think it's hard to appreciate the prequels so long as you can stomach the cringe. anyone who who's engaged meaningfully with most fandoms online or who consumes a lot of fan-made content for their favorite franchise shouldn't be so dissuaded from analysis by some awkward dialogue and poor acting.
A little correction. When you mention the "Nazi helmet" you showed a picture of a World War 1 "Pickelhaube" Helmet, therefore at a time when the Nazi movement did not exist yet.
The stormtrooper armour is actually incredibly gaudy (if you can see in the ultraviolet spectrum)
7:00 ...And then, Andor!
bro sounds like an older version of omega from the bad batch lol
Two elements I think you miss in the Stormtrooper. When I first saw them, I thought of animated skeletons from the Harryhausen features such as Seventh Voyage of Sinbad or Jason and the Argonauts. ( czcams.com/video/dqRjDGAJ5dc/video.html ) This gives the Empire a subtle dash of black magic and necromancy.
Secondly, the most notorious "bad guys" to wear white sheets were the Ku Klux Klan, who wore bedsheets in a crude attempt to invoke ghosts. For me an army in white immediately invokes them. ( czcams.com/video/D4ZF70ogq0I/video.html )
1:40 woah, that's really NOT episode VII ^^
Can anyone tell me what the use of the tube in the lowerback of the stormtroopers costume is for . because they cannot sit down ?
That is a grenade.
Stormtroopers are cool and impressive. Ewoks are just overpowered and the are really good at their jobs
Actually they are Elite soldiers
i think the red flags haven't gone up cause fascism is in fashion in north America.
that's the red flag if you ask me.
Then there's Space Marines from Warhammer 4K
Shock troops were introduced in WW1. Do your homework!
Anyone else gave the storm troopers names or was that just me?
2:43 Compelling? 🤔
you labelled episode 2 footage as episode 7...
Nao vejo finn como um stormtrooper com personalidade. Infelizmente é um stormtrooper jogado fora! Inclusive sua armadura que ele poderia te la modificado pra se diferenciar! Ou ele poderia ter sido o proximo jedi, enfim a disney estragou e aruinou completamente esse personagem. Meus pezames pro ator que aceitou esse trabalho
Coolness. It's nicely designed.
God bless, Rev. 21:4
Clicked on video to learn about stormtrooper costumes...got a video talking about police brutality in modern world....0/5
Copied from Asimov's trilogies first published in early 1940s "Astounding" since even Leia was from Arthur C. Clarke's 1957 "Cosmic Casanova' .
oh, stop. they were not copied from anything Asimov.
Executive Producer director to of Apple TV+ production of "Asimov's Foundation", online Winchel Dosuk Chung's "Atomic Rockets Project Rho", a film review in "Locus" a periodical for sci fi professionals published by Kirsten Gong Wong of Oakland CA., a Deviantart commentator, "Encyclopedia of Science Fiction", and online "SF Magazines" agree with me on how there are many Prior Art sources on "Star Wars".
Real issue is arts community is a Bell Curve of a few insanely rich authors who have center aisle space at a bookstore while other like me of unheard of.
I would like to abolish copyrights except I have had a few articles published by Dr. Mitchell Swartz affiliated with MIT of Cambridge MA. who says I should have a case against Jerome Drexler for a Patent plagiarized from my peer reviewed articles.
Other issue is "Star Wars" and "Jetsons" are only family kid friendly sci fi films since my mother freaked out at anime and cineplex films while my niece cringed from themes of "Trekkie episodes" while rejection letters from fiction periodical editors drove me to attempt suicide in a "Motel 6" along QEW of Burlington Ontario after being rejected for Canadian citizenship since bookstores are dominated by Canadian and British authors.
Thank you so much for the fascinating video! I always enjoy the details you point out, things that I'd never noticed.
This is my favorite show on CZcams!
Thank you!! :)
YES Finn's Backstory Needed MORE. Ahem. I appreciate the thoughtful commentary on police uniforms, as well. I've always wondered about the cosplayers, and have been side-eyeing the giant movie advertising pushes of Empire symbology. The fact that they're considered harmless is just, hmm. A symptom of a larger disease maybe. Saying "x is just play/fiction" is one thing, but when society parallels it so hard, is it helpful to have it classed this way...
A year ago I would have laughed, then I saw Biden's speech with the red lights and honor guard.
Holy shit Eli, you're right @-@
You wasted ten minutes of my life reciting all the facts that I'd always assumed to be true. Have you considered putting a little effort into research?
Militarized police, in fact, act WORSE than military. Most people in the military are shocked at the lack of discipline and any kind of 'rules of engagement' in over-militarized police forces. Compared to the military, over-militarized police are more like bully children that got hold of their daddy's gun. Police themselves often refer to non-police as 'civilians' - as if they are not civilians. This should be corrected. The special thing about our society is that we are policed by CIVILIAN peace officers - our neighbors. If you ever hear a cop use that word, remind them that police in America are civilians.
But yes, the point about stormtroopers in the public consciousness is true. While it is fun to dress up and 'play the bad guy' sometimes, too many kids and young adult fans today idolize the stormtroopers as some kind of romanticized model to aspire to. This NEVER happened in the 1970s. It happens today because our country (and much of the world) has been undergoing a dramatic rise in fascist thinking and influence. It has been so subtle that kids today who grew up in that fascistic society look at Star Wars have genuine questions about who the bad guys are, wondering if the rebels are 'terrorists' and other nonsense. It shows a great amount of confusion clouding people's understanding of the proper role of the military and the police in a democratic society.
Leave the punisher alone
Why are we bringing politics into a storm trooper design breakdown?
I don't even know where to start. This video was clearly made by someone who At Best was a casual fan of Star Wars and has only the barest surface understanding of the Star Wars universe. 1) There is absolutely a difference between the Imperial security forces and the Stormtroopers. The ISB (Imperial Security Bureau) keeps law and order on Imperial worlds & the Stormtroopers are special forces who (excluding the main characters) have a far higher kill rate than the rebels. 2) As far as doing nothing to help make the galaxy safer there are over a dozen stories in the novels and comics of them doing just that. Capt Phasma was rescued by the First Order from rape gangs and starvation. There are examples of the Empire hunting down and curbing smuggling and pirates in the space lanes. 3) There is no rise in real world police beatings except in the heads of leftists that need that to be true. And that's not just my opinion but DOJ &FBI data that proves it. Due to the official attention given to this issue, body cams and media attention police brutality claims have become statically irrelevant. Be careful- your politics is showing. Down vote.
That movie was made by typical disnep globalist "consoomer".
I Don't know why you are suprised it is entirely wrong.
@@Legio_Purpura_20_18 Actually I'm not That surprised. Just disappointed.
Was there backlash about using the name 'storm troopers' when the movie first came out?
i'm not sure, but it certainly seems likely.
I don't remember any, but then, I was just a teen watching a movie at the time.
no. not at all. back then, no one worried about offending nazis.
No, because in the 70s, everyone understood that 'having something in a thing' does not equal 'being FOR that thing'. Movies have bad guys. They do bad things.
I thought this video would give interesting insights into the "seams" of the costumes. Instead by three quarters of the way through it bizarrely devolved into a highly dated 2020s woke era political rant about defunding modern day police officers. Needless to say this video ends up missing the mark more than the average stormtrooper.
The First Order Stormtroopers are so fucking boring to look at tbh
9:46 wtf are you on about? This political take is very out of touch and cringy. Proud Boys are mostly exaggerated into boogeymen, and some people happening to wear his logos when police opened the capital doors to people are an extreme minority of people who like the character. Most people who have a Punisher sticker on their car/truck are like the chillest people
Thumbs down for police comments. 👎🏽
jesus, grow up
Way to dumb down a Star Wars video by bringing in irrelevant far-left propaganda. Thumb down.
Not having over-militarized police is not 'far left'. It's just normal American values.
@@Daniel-Strain Obviously not what I was referring to.
@@ChristopherGHope Then what??
Advice: stop using “fascist” when you mean “rigid, uniform, and authoritarian”.
I'm not sure how you could get any closer to fascist when your troops are literally called 'Sturmtruppler". She got it spot on.
Well, the usual definition of "fascist" is "a political movement noted for embracing uniform, authoritarian, xenophobic, and hyper-masculine ideals, while being aggressively opposed to innovation, urban lifestyle, and women's and queer rights." So it seems to fit. Not to mention that Lucas is on record saying the whole "Empire as Space Nazis" allegory is deliberate.
Weird… all the fascists I know in real life are super into psychedelic drugs and eastern mysticism.
@@shivuxdux7478 As were the Nazis...
@@ailo4x4 Exactly!
Why the FUCK did you HAVE to bring cops into a video about Star Wars' Stormtroopers? You start off by talking about Stormtroopers then go off talking about police. The fuck??
Because Storm Troopers by the time of the OT are an occupying police force.
One of the things SW stormtroopers represent is a police state. That's supposed to be a bad thing.
Did you not notice how they’re the only police force in all Empire-occupied territories?
@@kaitlyn__L Andor shows that it's not the case. Like in our world corporations own company towns and have autonomy to operate their own police forces.
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive that’s not mutually exclusive, company towns are in places of eg mining or manufacture, whereas the Stormtroopers are clearly the police around the moisture farms on Tattooine
What about the costumes of the violent, far left extremists?
I think people spend far too much time reading things into a movie. It's just a pretend thing.
Oh, behind the scenes. Not seams.