Every Stormtrooper in Star Wars Explained By Lucasfilm | WIRED

I'm Doug Chang I'm the vice president and executive creative director for Lucasfilm I'm Madeline Burkert I'm Lucas Films collections and exhibitions archivist and today we're going to talk about every clone trooper instructure birth as in the live-action Star Wars films and yes we do mean every choice [Music] Imperial strong trooper those are one of the most fascinating designs for me because that was the first image that I saw from Star Wars and the idea for that was that George wanted to create these sort of iconic imagery that looked like living skeletons and that's why you have the stark black and white and so when you see the white armor coming out of a black room you just see the armor and it's a great terrifying sort of moment for you especially when I was 15 years old when I first saw that and one of the iconic things was that the helmet is very specific looks like a skull it's a stylized skull and Ralph McQuarrie did a brilliant job to take all the key elements like the eye sockets in the mouth to make it just sort of a touch mechanical but yet still harken back to a living skull initially the original trilogy stormtroopers were made in such a way that they were sort of geared towards actors that were around five foot ten to six feet to be able to fit into the armor they were built out of vac form plastic when it came time to fit Han Solo and Luke Skywalker into their disguise stormtrooper armor it took a bit of magic from the costume department to make them fit but they were able to do it I can't think of a film Zann trooper they are the same design as a stormtrooper armor but they're modified to look a bit more suited for the environment in which we see them which is at first in a new hope back to me joy distinguishing parts of this costume are partly the backpack that they wear the backpack was created out of found objects from just like a local hardware store so fans have spent many a year trying to recreate those backpacks in order to figure out what exact parts of those components are made out of this and troopers also distinguished by a shoulder pauldron the shoulder Paul's room was originally a piece of motorcycle protective gear that were was worn for for youths in the 70s and so that piece actually very well suited this this costume and one of the things I love about the sand troopers is that you get to accessorize the classic stormtroopers and those little touches actually adds so much personality and character to a stormtrooper outfit space trooper well the majority of their armor is the exact same as a stormtrooper they are distinguished by breathing apparatus on their helmets so some of the some of the pieces on the helmet are slightly different to adapt for that they have a backpack that provides ammunition Joe Johnston who was a concept artist and very heavily involved in the design process for the original trilogy Star Wars films he actually played the two Space strippers that you see in a new hope they were able to use some photographic magic to make it look like there's two but really it's the same the same actor wearing the same suit TIE fighter pilots are it's just a slight variation on your classic stormtrooper pilot and the idea there was just to take the classic armor the white armor and turn it all black and give them a helmet and then we actually are utilizing the breather adapters in the front of the helmet those are always designed in there because these are supposed to be zero-g outfits so you can actually breathe in space and so we actually see those hose connections being used the apparatus that we see attached to the chest armor those are all also meant to evoke the same design that you would see in terms of like the Death Star bridge or the control panels they wanted to make it sort of emblematic of the Imperial ships at that pilot first time that we see the outer drivers in their vehicles is on the Battle of Hoth in the Empire Strikes Back the helmet is derived from an original stormtrooper helmet and a TIE fighter pilot helmet design as well as the chest armor pieces originally were TIE fighter pilot pieces that were then repainted and repurposed in order to accommodate this new vehicle the the 8080 or that snow troopers from Empire Strikes Back or one of the designs than the variants that I found really fascinating the snow troopers obviously are in a heavy snow environment so you have sort of this facial shroud and they have more padded clothing just you know for warmth but I think iconically it creates a very interesting silhouette the components that you're able to play with the backpack that implies that more gear and as well they they have a slightly different arrangement of components of hard armored pieces to accommodate the fact that it might be a bit more difficult to move in this environment the first time that we see the Imperial rail guard is in The Return of the Jedi they are the guards for the Emperor I mean pretty alright guards are a stunning statement in terms of you know who are these people and I think the idea of choosing to go with a bold red and kind of make them very mysterious so that their face looks kind of very exotic in that you don't know who's back there is that a droid or is it a person and I think the overall silhouette is very powerful as these mysterious guards for the Emperor bright red is meant to provide a stark contrast to the set design but it's also kind of an homage George Lucas was very much a fan of sort of classic hot rod cars so this cherry red is definitely a color that was influenced by his love of those cars biker Scouts are scout troopers are particularly suited for the forest environment in this case the woods of Endor their components are designed as such that they'll be a bit more comfortable suited sitting down as well the location of their pistol which is the first time we actually see a sort of small handheld sidearm pistol on a stormtrooper that pistols actually mounted in into their boot I love their helmet design because we were trying to lean in to sort of biker iconography and the idea that the mouth actually near the snow became an open mouth almost like an open scream kind of created sort of a an emotional look that's very terrifying the helmets designed for practical purposes was also designed to wear the face lifts up as they learned on set trying to situate a full stormtrooper helmet with seconds to go before the camera starts rolling this was a bit easier for the actors the clone troopers were first introduced in Episode two attack of the clones for the clone troopers none of them were actually built practically there were all CG characters that was a really fascinating design explosion because George wanted to connect bola fit with the classic stormtroopers and he was leading up to the fact that a stormtroopers were going to be clones in this time period we were keeping all the angles very sharp and very stylized to kind of evoke sort of a more romantic time and so in designing the helmet itself we leaned into designing a variant sort of a blend between the classic boba fett helmet and the stormtrooper helmet and that's why you see the strong tee visor we retain the mouth but we stylize that so the helmet itself of the clone trooper you'll see the evolution to the classic stormtrooper unlike the classic stormtrooper armor which is traditionally white for all the different stormtroopers the clone trooper armor is distinguished by rank based on different colors and color patterns and schemes that are implemented into the costume design red denotes captain yellow denotes pilot or commander green denotes sergeant and blue denotes lieutenant phase to clone troopers the style and the look of different stormtrooper helmets over time definitely evoke the societies in which those clone troopers in this instance come from we meet a lot of the clone troopers during order 66 order 66 is when Palpatine orders the disruption of the Jedi execute order 66 [Music] one thing that differentiates the clone troopers from Episode three form the ones in Episode two is the clone troopers are asserting their individuality their costumes have different colorations and patterns they are named characters which is not typically how we differentiate different stormtroopers from each other yes thank you for example commander cody was named after commando Cody as an old serial that George loved and I loved those all those little elements you know sort of bringing things from George's inspiration to sort of his films and so this is one of those highlights for me that makes me smile Pilate in looking at the clone trooper pilot we see some elements that definitely are going to slowly evolve into what we now know as our original trilogy by fighter pilots the advanced recon trooper is kind of an interesting look we're taking all the key elements of the stormtrooper helmet and now we're really stylizing and trying to create a very aggressive personality in the face a TRT driver his costume is suited for his environment is a sort of army green camouflaged look and base shield Elite core Clone Trooper and these were primarily seen during the Battle of Kashyyyk you're starting to see a blend of the classic stormtrooper with a scout trooper in terms of that open-face scream and they wear eight distinct camo look to fit the environment Galactic Marines the face mask on this one reminds us of the snow trooper from Hoth during order 66 this clone trooper is responsible for killing ki-adi-mundi beloved Jedi the five-o first Special Ops clone troopers fought alongside anakin skywalker as they attacked the jedi temple in episode 3 revenge the imperial shock troopers were part of Palpatine's guards and they were colored bred we first see them on Khorasan alongside Palpatine after order 66 Buda pal airborne Clone Trooper you can start to see further evolutions of the helmet now we're starting to blend a little bit more of the scout trooper along with the iconic shapes of the Vader mask the 327 star core clone troopers are distinguished by their their yellow elements in their uniforms they wear a skirt which we will see later on in future Star Wars stormtrooper designs the core cyclones troopers are denoted by their grey markings and they're primarily used the defend Coruscant first order stormtrooper the updated design is not only updated take on the stormtrooper armor that we know and love but the technology in which the costume effects Department enlisted in order to create these physical costumes was incredible achievements compared to the original trilogy the original trilogy while using back form methods to create plastic armor the first-order armor was primarily created using 3d printing methods and also molded polyurethane casting and molding to create incredibly valuable pieces of armor the first Nordic stormtrooper you'll notice we're actually taking the next evolution in terms of stormtrooper design really stylizing the black and white features of the down from mouth and also part of the personality design idea was to make these guys really kind of brutal very strong very powerful there are lot of many design considerations and challenges one of the first thoughts was how do we evolve the stormtrooper the classic stormtroopers into the next generation and we approached it by really thinking about new materials what would the new materials affect the design and that's where you start to see sort of the cleaner lines the cleaner edges and you start to really understand that okay this could be a next evolution of the classic stormtrooper partly based on design decisions and also based on advancing construction methods the helmets between the force awakens first order stormtroopers and the forced order stormtrooper helmets we see in the last job I have slight variations the bridge on the helmet nose is slightly narrower in the last Jedi versions of these helmets the first order stormtroopers were really evoking a lot of the historical elements from the classic stormtroopers and by that I mean we're actually kind of implying that these are kind of going back to the original genesis of the stormtroopers but yeah updating it with all new materials captain phasma we're trying to take the evolution of the first order stormtrooper and elevating to a higher rank and we did that by changing the material turning her into this amazing chrome look designed by Michael Kaplan JJ Abrams named Captain phasma after a phantasm that a horror film where there was a scroll ball that was very menacing initially this character was meant to be cast as a male character once they decided to have this be a female actor they didn't make any adjustments to the costumes the custom that Gwendoline Christie wears as Captain phasma it still has the same amount of strength evoked and wearing it however it's still clear that a woman is wearing the suit captain phasma's costume in the last Jedi is visually more chromed than the costume that we see in the force awakens and part of this is because her ability to be shot on camera in Episode seven through to be very challenging because often times lightning and cameras would be shown in the reflections of her costume and so to combat that it's a bit duller machine by episode 8 Industrial Light and Magic was full and ready for the challenge of handling that amount of Chrome on her costume and it was much more effective to have the costume visually appear to be much stronger in China the first time we see the first order flametrooper is on jakku when they are attacking the village the first order flametrooper is are distinguished by their backpacks that provide power for their flame rifles that they carry first-order riot control stormtrooper the first time that we see this riot trooper is in the force awakens where he is well known for being a stormtrooper that yells traitor this character carries I'm very menacing baton as well as a riot shield the first order stormtroopers were much more likely to have individuated skill sets and tasks so in this instance this particular stormtrooper is outfitted in this case weapons that most effectively help him to do his duties the first order mega blaster stormtrooper is distinguished by the ammunition packs that he wears over his chest armor as well as a very large heavy heavy blaster the first order snow troopers were a next evolution of the classic snow troopers that we saw in Empire Strikes Back you'll see that we preserve the veil that covers the mask and we kept the overall silhouette and the only thing we really updated was just to give them a little bit more mass to make them a little bit more powerful looking the first order of type pallets we kind of kept the same idea where we took the classic first order outfit and just made them black and then for the special ops version we gave them red stripes and that's the kind of mirror the red stripes that we see on the TIE fighters the Imperial assault tank pilot is one of those designs that's one of my favorite a sneeze sort of the stylized look at the stormtroopers and we kind of refine the lines and you'll see that all the elements are there but they're very clean many of the armor pieces on this costume are actually the same exact pieces as you see on the shore trooper this mask was designed by Glenn Dillon he and Coe costume designer David Crossman created this helmet design that sort of saw a bit like the death trooper has this mandible effect to it to give it a bit of a menacing look I mean Tyrael death troopers were a new class of stormtroopers and we first see the best troopers in road one alongside director chronic we want to design them so that they were sleek and powerful more like the SEAL Team six of stormtroopers and we distinctly made them larger than life so they were taller than six feet and we also decided to keep them brain narrow so they look like very athletic and that they could move very fast one of the singling factors of the death troopers is the mask and we spend a lot of time designing that and ultimately we ended up with this very aggressive look were the side cheeks actually almost became like mandibles so I gave it a very slight of menacing spider-like personality the Imperial shore trooper we first see these in row 1 their roles are very present in battle and Skara they are distinguished by three different looks that denote their ranking so there's the short trooper captain there's the short trooper squad leader and there's the soldier but the colors that they wear the blue definitely evokes the ocean and the water that they fight alongside in scare off' and then the beige color is sort of meant to match the beach fighting these costumes were designed to fit the environment very much like the scout troopers they have less armor and more soft fabrics and also you can see a little bit of scout trooper in the face mask the first time we see the executioner troopers is aboard the supremacy flanking captain phasma in the last Jedi the first order executioner is distinguished by black markings and he also carries an electoral laser axe the first time we meet the Praetorian guards is in stokes throne room in the last Jedi the elite Praetorian guards have three different helmet variations their helmets and their weapons are coordinated their costume design is meant to show that there are at the ready but that they are also able to move flexibly they're sort of evoking a bit of a samurai style actually my favorite scene in the last Jedi is when Rey and kylo Ren fight and defeat all of the Praetorian guards in snoke's throne room the MinMin stormtroopers the uniforms of the men men stormtroopers are meant to suit and and look and fit into the environment in which they fight which is the min bin battlefields but they also have a cape to help with that and then with their helmets has an added lip on top that distinguishes it from a regular classic in Korea my troopers we first see the stormtrooper in solo those were an interesting design where we were trying to go backwards and time a little bit from the classic stormtrooper and the idea was that these troopers were in a very dirty mud filled environment so we want to make them look very gritty costume designers Glen Dylan and Dave craftsman used elements of World War one soldiers that were fighting using trench warfare tactics to help design and inform the look of this costume and much like the trench warfare during World War one the these mud troopers were outfitted with similar types of combat gear that you would have seen in World War one for instance their gas mask evokes that as well we also see Han Solo wearing a version of this uniform while fighting in Minden and his is a bit different from others in that we actually see his face because we're meant to see Han Solo because we need to know that it's thick the soldier and kid you don't want any part of this Imperial Patrol trooper we perceive on Corellia in solo and you notice in the design we're actually starting to now blend even more scale trooper into the look so the whole outfit is a little bit more soft fabrics and then the face is a blend of the classic trooper with the sculptured Bergman range troopers is during the train heist in solo and what distinguishes them is the magnetic boots which allows them to actually clamp it to the exterior of the Train the actual practical build of the boots includes light up it has some hydraulic mechanisms in there that actually emit steam and this is to give that full effect so that as we see it practically shot the boots will definitely give you that illusion that they're magnetic first time we see the first order jet troopers are on pisano the jet troopers jet pack is actually part of his armor and we see other elements that are meant to evoke this sort of fast-moving jet propulsion characterization that this trooper armor has there's actually an O Maj to an original Ralph McQuarrie production painting on the insignia on the chest plate we first see that in the first order stupor but then costumed artist Glenn Dillon decided to add a version of that insignia into this jet trooper we also see the mandible design returning on the helmet now the first time we see the first order tread speeder driver is in the rise of Skywalker the first order tread speeder it combines elements of a first order stormtrooper armor pieces along with a sort of further evolution of the biker Scout there's a soft pant element as opposed to thigh armor to make it so that this stormtrooper is better suited to writing a new version of a sort of speeder bike this is a first-order electro prod stormtrooper we first see them in the rise of Skywalker fares are noted by the fact that they have a new weapon the electro prod the sister pert is a new trooper for the rise of Skywalker if we think about the white stormtrooper evoking a skeleton the Sith trooper is meant to evoke kind of the muscles kind of the internal strength that you might find in a soldier much like the death troopers if it's quite close to the body it's meant to evoke the fact that this is a stormtrooper that's you ready for any anything that comes at it one of the interesting aspects is that you'll notice in the helmet we're bringing back some of the elements of the Clone Trooper with that strong sort of nose tee visor look the six jet trooper it combines elements of the Sith stripper and the first-order jet trooper that we see in the rise of Skywalker there's a jet pack that's connected to the back armor of this trooper and as well as that sort of mandible effect on the helmet and that was every single clone trooper and stormtrooper in the live-action Star Wars films and that's it for now but we can't wait for you to see what's coming up next [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 4,004,976

Rating: 4.8470345 out of 5

Keywords: star wars, stormtroopers, each and every, wired each and every, star wars storm troopers, star wars clone troopers, star wars stormtroopers, stormtroopers star wars, stormtroopers wired, scout trooper, storm trooper types, stormtrooper types, every type of stormtrooper, every stormtrooper type, stormtrooper type, type of stormtrooper, star wars stormtroopers explained, stormtroopers explained, storm troopers explained, every storm trooper, star wars stormtrooper, wired

Id: m4LFX-RWfn4

Length: 22min 28sec (1348 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Need some more leaks before bed...

[u/FN-1701AgentGodzilla]

I love how comprehensive this video was

They mentioned literally all of them (live action-wise)

[u/JermaineFinnaNut]

Controversial opinion time...
I love Star Wars hides

[u/TK22580]

Going to say it now. Sith Troopers are clones. Doug made a point to mention they had drawn from the Clonetrooper design for the helmet.

[u/catcatdoggy]

Sith troopers don't look different enough.

I SAID IT.

[u/darthpoof]

Where did those sweet sweet VD leaks go 🤬🤬🤬

[u/tapwater_addict]

Why do the First order trooper variants seem so boring and uninspired? Meanwhile, you have cool stormtrooper variants in the anthology series like the shoretrooper or rangetrooper.

[u/Waveitup]

Electroprod Trooper - Just another trooper, but we've given him a big stick... Creative... creative...

[u/RainbowRav3n]

WIRED really thinks that The Royal Guards are stormtroopers. smh