Stormtrooper Locker Room Is Bizarrely Spotless

We’ve had many Star Wars: The Force Awakens behind the scenes photos from Wired in the last week or so, as the run up to the film continues apace. But none more bizarre than the one that the UK version of the website brings us today: the dressing room for the cavalcade of stormtrooper-playing extras. It looks not unlike a football locker room. Except I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a locker room this spotless. I suppose they must use the Force to clean it.

One can almost imagine Captain Phasma coming in and giving the boys a rousing talk, not unlike a football coach, a few hoo-rahs, some pumping up chants (“Empire Empire! We are! The First Order!”), before taking her team our to start flame throwing and killing all the civilians in sight.

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The picture is part of an interview with the costume designer of the new trilogy, Michael Kaplan, who discusses his choices for updating the old stormtrooper look from the original movies, including smoothing out the old “bumps and nodules.” “With time, I think, simplification occurs,” says Kaplan.”Because the stormtroopers are hard and white and plasticky, my thoughts did go to Apple.”

“The original stormtroopers were vacuum-formed,” says Kaplan. “That process required a much thinner plastic to be heated and molded. These are much harder [cast in polyurethane], so they don’t crack. They’re much tougher materials, plus they have more flexibility.”

He also discusses the design process that brought about Kylo Ren, including that the mask, which had to be an homage to Vader, also had to be something a child would want to wear for a costume. And then there’s Captain Phasma. Her design was an early rejected design for Kylo Ren, which came about from Kaplan’s idea to “tak[e] a stormtrooper into the world of armour.”

“It was just something I had in my head. The concept artist took my sketch and came up with a really beautiful illustration. I loved it and I hung it on the wall of our design room. One afternoon [producer] Kathy Kennedy came by and pointed at it and exclaimed, ‘That is fantastic.’ JJ loved it as well, so he created the role of Captain Phasma to wear it.”

Here are close ups for the new helmets:

Now let’s go out there and get those Resistance Fighters!

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Images via Wired.co.uk, Lucasfilm 2015