The Hidden Genius of Stormtrooper Costume Design | Behind the Seams 

And Stormtrooper come from the word Strum Truppen which literally means Assault Troopers… they were around WAAYYY before Germany became Nazi.

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'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.

The cool thing about the stormies are the variants like sandies, snowies, biker or TIE pilots.

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 😊👍👍👍👍👍

"Until we met Fin, we never met a stormtrooper with a meaningful role or personality." Well sadly Fin has neither of those...

You say Stormtroopers were named after Nazi shock troops, but Stormtroopers were WWI troops fighting for pre-Nazi Germany.

"Kidnapped as children, to be trained as soliders" like the Jannissries in Ottoman times.

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)

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.

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!

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.

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.

5:02 angular as they show a video of the death star

Can anyone tell me what the use of the tube in the lowerback of the stormtroopers costume is for . because they cannot sit down ?

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.

bro sounds like an older version of omega from the bad batch lol

The stormtrooper armour is actually incredibly gaudy (if you can see in the ultraviolet spectrum)

7:00 ...And then, Andor!

Then there's Space Marines from Warhammer 4K

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.

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. ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dqRjDGAJ5dc.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. ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-D4ZF70ogq0I.html )

2:43 Compelling? 🤔

Stormtroopers are cool and impressive. Ewoks are just overpowered and the are really good at their jobs

1:40 woah, that's really NOT episode VII ^^

Shock troops were introduced in WW1. Do your homework!

Anyone else gave the storm troopers names or was that just me?

you labelled episode 2 footage as episode 7...

Coolness. It's nicely designed. God bless, Rev. 21:4

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

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 RU-vid!

Copied from Asimov's trilogies first published in early 1940s "Astounding" since even Leia was from Arthur C. Clarke's 1957 "Cosmic Casanova' .

Clicked on video to learn about stormtrooper costumes...got a video talking about police brutality in modern world....0/5

Leave the punisher alone

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...

Why are we bringing politics into a storm trooper design breakdown?

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.

Was there backlash about using the name 'storm troopers' when the movie first came out?

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.

The First Order Stormtroopers are so fucking boring to look at tbh

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?

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.

Thumbs down for police comments. 👎🏽

Advice: stop using “fascist” when you mean “rigid, uniform, and authoritarian”.

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??

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

Way to dumb down a Star Wars video by bringing in irrelevant far-left propaganda. Thumb down.

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.