Star Wars' "Black Stormtrooper" to Critics: "Get Used to it"

[Ishal]

The original Lightsaber designs were obviously very Kendo inspired. But they have added some flair and differentiation with individual characters since. Count Dooku's Lightsaber in particular was a fencing blade and hilt, reflecting Christopher Lee's skill as a fencer. Darth Maul obviously pulled from a different weapon tradition. As did Ashoka Tano and Ventriss in the Clone Wars.

Let's be honest Lightsabers are inherently stupid weapons. Cool but stupid. They are just a means for visual story telling. Once you accept that they exist, the specifics are simply window dressing and allegory. The European style hilted long bladed Lightsaber probably tells us more about the weilder than the technical aspects of how it is used. It implies they are playing up the character as a Knight or a Crusader of some sort. Someone questing for some holy grail perhaps?

I've only heard rumors, but concerning your questing theory.

Spoiler

One of the Sith in this movie is supposedly interested in collecting ancient Sith artifacts. Possibly any old artifacts, which could mean Jedi as well. That lightsaber struck me as something more ancient, perhaps a refurbished version of something he found. If this is so, I tend to think it adds to the character.

 

[Something Amyss]

I base it on his complete destruction of the EU, actually, regardless of the merit of the work in question.

Abrams didn't make the decision and likely had nothing to do with it.

I take nothing of lore from this 88 seconds of material, largely because it was exactly what I expected from Abrams, Mistery Box BS that tell us nothing. What I did take from the 88 seconds was a somewhat off putting initial visual with the storm trooper (not sure why it looks strange), a large reliance on CGI (to be expected), a silly looking droid, a stupid looking lightsaber, and a pretty good shot of some X-wings and passable action scene of the falcon.

It's a teaser. There's no mystery box yet. I'm sure it's coming, but let's be honest here. It wasn't supposed to tell you anything. Teasers don't.

There was such an opportunity here. Yes there were some goofy and down right bad entries in both the EU and official canon. What SHOULD have been done is not a complete removal of very thing, but Counsel of Trent style sorting of things. By all means throw out the week, stupid, and contradictory lore, but for god's sake keep the good stuff. I understand the Vong and everything after would have to go because it would be near impossible to avoid having to explain why the post Vong galaxy is the way it is, but a lot of the pre-Vong stuff could stay and wouldn't need explaining.

And all the people complaining now about how they trashed it would be complaining that the parts they liked weren't in it.

 

[Yeager942]

Anyone mad about this needs to get over their politics. The whole "undermining Nazi allegory" is bunk, coming from nerds who can't project their fantasies on African American actors. It's Star Wars, it's fantasy.

 

[Signa]

My take on seeing a black stormtrooper? Well, I don't know. Logically speaking, because I do believe that the Empire was literally space Nazis, the Empire would only allow humans (not specifically white humans) into its military. However, as human viewers from another galaxy, far far away in their future, a multiethnic military would make them look accepting of all races, regardless of their discrimination of the other alien races. The only way to convey their racism to us human viewers is to conjurer up imagery from our past, and use that to explain who the Empire really is.

So yeah, while not wrong, it is conjuring up the wrong images that goes with Star Wars which makes this seem like Abrams isn't taking the lore seriously. He could make up for it in other ways, but I'm not left with that confidence. I will be happy if this is the worst I can complain about it once I see the movie, but it just doesn't bode well if this is what they chose to show us before anything else.

Speaking of which, the fact that this is what we are left discussing is just wrong. It's wrong that the trailer chose to show us this. It's wrong that it seems specifically crafted to make us react to it. It's wrong that there was nothing actually shown in the trailer so that we are left to talk about race issues. And it's wrong that we are making this about race as a fan community instead of just getting stoked for the film. We don't need to turn this into the next controversy guys!

 

[Lunar Templar]

what do I think?

I don't care what color they decide to make the guy in the 'cannon fodder armor'

The Light Saber with the cross guard is cool though.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Folks getting their knickers in a twist over this now obviously haven't been paying attention. The Star Wars: Rebels TV show pulled it off a month ago with the episode "Breaking Ranks."

So yes, the Empire has been utilizing conscripts/volunteers for quite some time (the show is officially part of the new canon). The old EU had examples of human diversity in the Imperial ranks as well, with Stormtroopers of various skin colors and a handful of women for good measure. Hell, even a few non-humans managed to claw their way past Imperial prejudice and xenophobia, such as fan-favorite Grand Admiral Thrawn.

 

[RavingSturm]

At this point the owners can do what they want with it. Different strains of cannon fodder as big bad/hero shields are good for a well-balanced diet of visual carnage.

 

[Dogstile]

The same reason why in that stupid Captain America movie there was a racially divergent squad during WW2 out of nowhere.

Hahaha what the fuck. Google "black american ww2 soldier".

 

[Ukomba]

I base it on his complete destruction of the EU, actually, regardless of the merit of the work in question.

Abrams didn't make the decision and likely had nothing to do with it.

I take nothing of lore from this 88 seconds of material, largely because it was exactly what I expected from Abrams, Mistery Box BS that tell us nothing. What I did take from the 88 seconds was a somewhat off putting initial visual with the storm trooper (not sure why it looks strange), a large reliance on CGI (to be expected), a silly looking droid, a stupid looking lightsaber, and a pretty good shot of some X-wings and passable action scene of the falcon.

It's a teaser. There's no mystery box yet. I'm sure it's coming, but let's be honest here. It wasn't supposed to tell you anything. Teasers don't.

There was such an opportunity here. Yes there were some goofy and down right bad entries in both the EU and official canon. What SHOULD have been done is not a complete removal of very thing, but Counsel of Trent style sorting of things. By all means throw out the week, stupid, and contradictory lore, but for god's sake keep the good stuff. I understand the Vong and everything after would have to go because it would be near impossible to avoid having to explain why the post Vong galaxy is the way it is, but a lot of the pre-Vong stuff could stay and wouldn't need explaining.

And all the people complaining now about how they trashed it would be complaining that the parts they liked weren't in it.

Sure, I'm leveling a lot of it on Abrams without knowing how much say he has over it. Not that transferring who's at fault changes the result. Perhaps I should change it to "I hate what they are doing".

I fail to see how a Teaser Trailer that does little more than raise a bunch of questions doesn't play into the Mystery Box. That it's something all teasers do is irrelevant. If you come away with more questions than answers then that's the Mystery Box. Anyways, as I said, I wasn't taking anything of substance away from the trailer, my issues with this existed before the teaser and the teaser just didn't do anything to allay them.

Possibly, probably not though. Even hard core fans who've read every books, like me, can be honest about what really just doesn't work. I think you misunderstand what I said though. I didn't say choose by fiat, I said Counsel of Trent. Have fans or just the important figures in the fandom choose what should and shouldn't stay. All I really want is the attempt to salvage what they can, even if it's just fragments of books. Explain what was kept, what was removed and why. Sure some people would still complain but there would be less of them and have less ground to stand on.

Side note: what's funny is one of the trilogies that really really doesn't work seems to be at least partly part of the plot of Ep 7. Only, instead of "The Glove of Darth Vader" it's "The Helmet of Darth Vader". I wonder if that Sith will have 3 eyes .

 

[O maestre]

I kind of feel like the black stormtrooper is just a diversion to keep us from complaining about the real controversy... that stupid ass lightsaber longsword... I have watched the trailer 3 times now, and it just keeps getting more ridiculous each time.

Ethnicall diversity for some random footsoldier is a non issue compared to the utter silliness of the thing, I though JJ burned away the EU to get rid of the silliness. Worst trailer ever /life_ruined #clickbait

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

Even assuming that they go with the Empire being racist in addition to nationalist, speciesist, sexist slavers - stormtroopers are cannon fodder, wouldn't you prefer it to be inferior races getting gunned down en masse?

It's pretty unnecessary ( and down right wrong ) to call his race inferior.

Clearly the people behind this movie know how to get others talking about it

But was he calling a race inferior or was he talking, and quite clearly so, from the perspective of a racist empire, which would indeed consider certain races "inferior"? There is a very big difference.

It is pretty unnecessary, and downright wrong, to imply somebody expressed a horrible sentiment that they clearly did not considering the context within which they spoke.

But yeah, in seriousness, I agree with that last part. After how hard people wiled out over casting in Thor movie companies have learned the formula: "black guy + role people will view as a white guy role = controversy + money". Funny, don't remember much controversy over white Green Lantern even though the Lantern that the movie's target audience mostly grew up with was black. Shows we have a good bit of progress to make in racial attitudes with how upset so many people get over white characters turning black compared to how few care when a black character is recast as white. Especially anybody upset about this character, which to my knowledge was made up for the movie and isn't from any extended universe fiction, being black truly demonstrate this baffling racial doublethink (if they consider themselves to be not racist. Openly racist people who complain about black characters in movies, well, they are terrible people but technically no doublethink there).

 

[jabrwock]

"Oh gawd, why does JJ have to appease the diversity crowd/push the diversity button?" (paraphrased)

Bitching about diversity in the US is "code" for "why is there a (non-white) person in the place of my pre-conceived notion that this character should be white for some reason".

From there it just gets silly (like pointing at the half-Maori actor and saying "See? HE was white! So are all his clones!")

That's not paraphrasing, that's saying something different and then arguing with what you just said. Otherwise known as a straw-man argument.

My point wasn't about how I'm uncomfortable with black people. And twisting my words to make it seem like it was is known as a "dick move". Especially since you didn't read my whole post because, for some reason, you think I was referencing the actor who played Jango Fett as "white" when I clearly said the opposite you prat.

I didn't notice any real "oh em gee he's black and that's bad because he's black" complaints. My actual point is that to just assume that any criticism about this outcome is based on racism is some knee-jerk "you just don't like it because he's black, right?" reaction. You know the whole "reading racism into criticism" thing... what I actually said and not your stupid straw-man.

You asked what kind of comments people were assuming were racist. I am paraphrasing the tone of comments I've seen across YouTube, Twitter, etc, which all seem to have the above common theme. Most of the negative comments complain about "diversity" (some even go so far as to whine about SJWs), and then try to justify the complaint through a twisted set of logic.

 

[Itchi_da_killa]

Holding on to the original analogies is a waste of time. Lucas screwed up most of his work with episodes 1-3. Everything is currently up in the air now that Disney has it. Disney doesn't really make great movies, and with Abrams; I have no hope.
On a positive note, it will be really good for a new generation of Star Wars fans.
Many older Star Wars fans, like myself are just yearning for the child-like magick we felt from episodes 4-6 when we were growing up, so we may never be happy.

I honestly believe people give the prequels too much flak. Sure they had terrible acting and scripts, but they added a shitload to the world, had decent plots even if the individual scenes were bad, and generally expanded on the universe just a tad. Plus, the various locations were just better then the originals.

I agree with you for the most part. The problem is, in my opinion, the focus became too big; when this happens I feel the investment in the story is lost. A movie or a set of movies has to stay focused on a particular part in a bigger story to maintain the focus on what the author is wanting to express. That is what makes a "good" movie so good. Guardians Of The Galaxy is a nice example. It's a big setting, a big story, but the "movie" really only focuses on the guardians and what "they" do in the story; in the setting. Same thing with Star Wars episodes 4-6, the movies focused on what the "main" characters did in the story; in the setting.

 

[Itchi_da_killa]

I kind of feel like the black stormtrooper is just a diversion to keep us from complaining about the real controversy... that stupid ass lightsaber longsword... I have watched the trailer 3 times now, and it just keeps getting more ridiculous each time.

Ethnicall diversity for some random footsoldier is a non issue compared to the utter silliness of the thing, I though JJ burned away the EU to get rid of the silliness. Worst trailer ever /life_ruined #clickbait

I agree. Even if the "laser" guard is to prevent (hypothetically speaking) the opposing saber beam from sliding down and cutting the hand, there are still shafts present on the guard that the beam will cut through anyway. So... it is just an excuse to do Disney stuff. It is in the same dumb catagory as Maul's double saber, or Dooku's curved saber, or Mace's fabulous purple saber.

 

[thanatos388]

This is so stupid. This is some EA level bullshit. I tried looking up all these criticisms that people are talking about and can only find articles about the actors response. Seriously the people complaining about that they are in a huge minority to the people complaining about the crossguard saber. I feel like this response is just to show how accepting and diverse Disney and this movie is. So what? Is it a good movie? I don't know we have literally seen nothing important yet. Its all just been stuff we've seen before but a little bit different.

Don't circle jerk about how accepting you are, in this day and age that is no longer impressive. Instead have a natural gay romance in which neither of the gay lovers are defined by their sexuality. That'll be some impressive shit right there. But no, pretend being ok with people not liking a black guy makes you special, thats much easier.

Oh, and to the people who genuinely care about that whole Nazi thing, Jango ain't white either so who cares?

 

[Sanderpower]

I've commented on this before, for the most part I don't give a crap, thematically The Empire and it's "Nazi analogy" was supposed to be about human supremacy, being anti-alien more than about anything ethnic within humanity. An Alien showing up in imperial uniform would be the big issue as opposed to a black guy. The EU defined things where The Empire went out conquering and subverting planets and then conscripting large portions of the inhabitants into the military and then sending them out to attack other planets (getting the dangerous guys away from home, and keeping them under control as they mix up the conscripts). The old "Tie Fighter" strategy guide (I think it was) had some short fiction explaining that the main character was supposed to be conscripted from one of the world's conquered by The Empire and one of his friends had become a Storm Trooper. Likewise while it was a matter of bad writing, Luke was both wondering in the first movie about fighting with the Rebellion, and wanting to head off to "The Academy" to train and get off Tatooine, which at least implies there is some recruitment going on, and as we've already seen The Empire has no problem dealing with people based on skin color as it was more than willing to subvert Lando as opposed to just flat out killing everyone and taking over Cloud City so I see no reason why if someone of color wanted to join their military there would be a remote issue... now if a Twi'lek wanted to do it, that might be a problem.

Of course the reason why I say "for the most part" is because one of the first things they did when announcing this new series as to toss literally everything outside of the movies into the rubbish bin, which means that by definition all Storm Troopers are going to be clones of Jango Fett, which of course means you can't have a black dude, or a white dude, or anyone who isn't specifically Jango Fett who is a Maori (as the article points out) inside one of these armor suits.

Now, common sense dictates that perhaps some things from the EU survived in some form, and that yeah, The Empire is recruiting humans. That would make sense on a lot of levels, including why the Storm Troopers in the original trilogy were incompetent compared to the clones from the prequel, not all of them had some of the skills of the universe's greatest mercenary and bounty hunter. Likewise as The Empire cements it's power and pursues an increasingly anti-alien agenda it's quite possible they might not want clone troopers to keep being manufactured as they are the result of alien science (created by "The Cloners"). The storm troopers in many cases being a bunch of conscripts with fancy armor and minimal training would explain a lot, while still acknowledging there is a core of very dangerous clones out there as well.

Of course I think this trailer was race baiting to get attention, which worked, as a huge song and dance was made about "abolishing everything not from the movies" which would imply all Storm Troopers being clones, and then the first thing they do is show a black dude in Storm Trooper armor which makes zero sense given previous statements. Sure with context and embellishment this could have been explained and worked around, but when people complain all they are getting is a "get used to it" which is kind of inflammatory, and is probably intended to be so it will generate more conversation.

I mean sure the guy could be disguised as a Storm Trooper, or even an actual Storm Trooper recruited from some planet or other The Empire conquered or opened a recruitment office on, which is something they could specify since they have certainly brought this on themselves by dogmatically claiming only the previous movies are canon, and it would probably actually help to smooth some things over above and beyond this issue itself.

Basically I think the idea was to start a race war for publicity, and it's being treated that way in response given that goal. In reality I think a lot of Star Wars fans see this as being similar to if we saw a zombie shambling along in Storm Trooper armor which for these purposes would be the same thing, as it would be implying something from the EU happened (Death Troopers series) which granted is more ridiculous than non-clone Storm Troopers due to recruitment and conscription, but the point is that both have been declared equally non-canon.

I agree with mostly everything you said, except the race bait part. Why is it race baiting? Is my race suddenly not allowed to exist in the Star Wars Universe without being a big deal or something? Like god it's freaking Star Wars they don't even have racism based on skin color. It seems to me that a recent trend is that whenever a minority is featured (whether it be based on gender, race, or sexual orientation) people immediately say it's just corporations/companies playing some sort of "bait card".

I just want to say "Hey Internet, minorities exist and it's not a big deal. Get over it."

 

[Kingjackl]

It feels to me like people saw the trailer and automatically assumed there's going to be a racist backlash against him. None of the articles I've seen have actually sourced any examples of racist comments, and Boyega's instagram post didn't suggest anything like that had happened either. It sounded more like he was boasting about being in the role, which is understandable; "yeah, I'm starring in the new release of the biggest movie series of all time, you wanna fight?"

There almost certainly are people complaining about there being a black Stormtrooper, but it won't be because of racism. It'll be because they're stupid, unimaginative fanboys. It was exactly the same when Idris Elba was cast as Heimdall.

 

[camazotz]

Many older Star Wars fans, like myself are just yearning for the child-like magick we felt from episodes 4-6 when we were growing up, so we may never be happy.

I figured out the stunning secret to recapturing that feeling: have a kid and take him to see Star Wars. It's actually an even better experience to be a dad and see the movie with your son or daughter than it is to try and "relive" the days of yore. My kid has made me play the trailer over and over again, and he's practically vibrating at the idea of waiting a whole year for the movie.

 

[kaizen2468]

im more concerned with why there are STILL stormtroopers. they're fucking useless.

 

[Razorback0z]

I must have genuinely transcended because I didn't even notice it, I feel pretty good about that. Weird that anyone wants to make a thing about it... Wonder why Darth Vader didn't wear white??