[HYDRAULIC DOOR]
- You cannot make a Star Wars movie
and not have stormtroopers.
[ENERGY IGNITES]
- Assemble all squad.
[BLASTER FIRE]
- Stormtroopers.
They're just iconic.
[THUMPING]
[BLASTER FIRE]
I would argue it's one the most recognizable
designs in all of cinema.
[ELECTRICITY]
- On my command.
[TENSE MUSIC]
- They're the first bad guys you really meet in the entire saga,
starting with "A New Hope."
[RUMBLING]
The moment I remember most is them blasting on
to the Blockade Runner, just wiping out the rebel fleet
troopers that are there.
[BLASTER FIRE]
- They were terrifying, but also super cool, super clean.
- Ralph McQuarrie is the grandmaster of concept design.
I mean, he worked so closely with George.
And he distilled down the essence of what George wanted.
It was just to create an image that was frightening.
And I loved what he did with the helmet,
because he basically turned it into a very stylized skull.
- They looked like skeletons.
They looked like death.
[TIE FIGHTERS SOARING PAST]
- Here they come.
- When Ralph had designed the stormtrooper,
he was thinking that this would be a zero G outfit that you
could take out into space.
[LASER FIRE]
But we never really saw that until we saw the TIE pilot,
meaning that the front two hose connections were actually used.
[X-WING SOARS BY]
And so you actually started to connect all those design
elements to realize that, oh, the stormtroopers
actually had multiple purposes.
[LASER CANNON FIRE]
And the idea that stormtroopers would actually
custom fit their armor to the environment
was just a brilliant solution.
[VADER BREATHING]
- The scout troopers from "Return of the Jedi"
had to be more flexible and more mobile to climb
around these environments.
So it would make sense that there was more soft material.
[SPEEDER BIKE ENGINE]
- The biker scouts don't wear camouflage.
They should.
But they don't.
[SPEEDER BIKE ZOOMS PAST]
Cause the Empire doesn't even care if they get shot.
It's showing arrogance, which inspires fear.
- And what I liked is the new take on the helmet.
Cause it still kept the idea of a very terrifying mask.
But instead of a down frowned mouth,
it now became an open mouth screen.
[SPEEDERS ZOOMING]
[ENGINE REVS]
[DARK MUSIC]
[BLASTER FIRE]
"Rogue One" was unique in the sense
that it was going to interpret the imagery
of the original trilogy.
[ALARMS]
We wanted to create a new class of stormtrooper, which
were death troopers, the elite of the elite
of the stormtroopers.
Tall and lean, and powerful and fast.
And some of that power was in the proportions,
but was also in the details.
For instance, we took the cheekbones
and made them longer so they almost look like fangs.
[RIFLE FIRE]
[EXPLOSION]
[MARCHING]
And we were exploring some other ideas
for creating stormtroopers specific
to different environments.
[HYDRAULIC DOOR]
[DROID SQUAWKS]
When we were approaching the shoretrooper,
we thought, how about if we create
a very specific stormtrooper that fit on Scariff.
- Troopers!
- And at the end, the final design of the shoretrooper
was a blend.
- Just a little bit of scout trooper.
There was a little bit of classic stormtrooper in there.
And there was the little bit of color, which you
take from the clone troopers.
- Master Yoda, all forward positions are advancing.
[WISTFUL MUSIC]
- When I was working with George on designing "Episode II,"
George wanted to connect the Jengo
Fett Mandalorian helmet with the classic stormtrooper design.
The clone trooper was actually going to be
the bridge between the two.
[LASER FIRE]
- And what George and I tried to do with "Clone Wars"
was bring a sense of individuality
to these clone troopers.
They started painting their armor uniquely.
And they started to take on different attitudes
and personalities.
[SHIP SOARS OVERHEAD]
[DIGITAL STATIC]
When the Empire takes over then, you
take that wash of color, icons, and logos on their helmets,
and you completely strip it away to have
the classic stormtrooper.
Working on "Rebels," we had the classic stormtrooper.
We just tweaked the armor a tiny bit
to move it a little more back to Ralph McQuarrie's look.
[BLASTER FIRE]
Trying to honor it and tell the story in a classic sense.
[SHIPS SOAR PAST]
[ENGINE SOUNDS]
[FUTURISTIC MUSIC]
- The design for the First Order stormtrooper
was an interesting challenge.
- The idea was to ask, how do you take the spirit of what
the stormtrooper was and feel like there
was an evolution within the timeline of the world?
- And if you think about it, the clone troopers were,
let's say, in our timeline, 1920s and 1930s design.
The classic troopers were probably 1970s.
And so the First Order then perhaps could be contemporary.
The First Order troopers have new upgraded materials.
[LASER CANNON FIRE]
Aesthetically, we also wanted a little bit more streamlined.
- FN-2187, submit your blaster for inspection.
[HEAVY BREATHING]
- Yes, Captain.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- Captain Phasma is one of my favorite designs.
The only thing we did was just changed her surface material
and made it chrome.
- They put the helmet on me, and I looked in the mirror.
I think I just giggled quite a lot.
[LASER FIRE]
[SLAM]
It was great that they had not feminized the armor.
[ELECTRICITY]
She can be in this position and be female.
[BLASTER SHOT]
- In "Rise of Skywalker" we have new troopers that are
completely different in design.
The materials, the color, the lines,
there was something about the aesthetic of it
that just felt absolutely right.
I cannot wait for people to see the work that everyone's done.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[SHIP SPEEDS BY]
[BLASTER FIRE]
[SPEEDER BIKE ENGINE]
[BLASTER FIRE BARRAGE]
- Hey, stop right there.
[BOOM]
[DIGITAL STATIC]