Origins of a sci-fi icon
Matthew Sweet reveals the unlikely beginnings of the Star Wars villains
Simon Vinall
- Matthew Sweet
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Star Wars is a fairy tale – the story of a farmer who seeks the aid of a wizard to rescue a princess from a black-cloaked villain. It was also the film George Lucas made because he failed to secure the rights to Flash Gordon, the 1930s comic strip in which Ming the Merciless conquers the universe dressed for a night at the Chinese opera. Neither fact explains why the world’s imagination is still commanded by a film that was widely expected to be a flop. But one of the strongest reasons might be staring at you from these pages.
The Imperial stormtrooper – the armour, the frown, the tubular beard – was conceived for the original 1977 Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – a New Hope) by concept artist Ralph McQuarrie. In his paintings, Darth Vader’s footsoldiers are angular, silvery figures who use lightsabers rather than rifles. Other designers involved included sculptor Liz Moore, but those charged with actually bringing them into physical being were Andrew Ainsworth and John Mollo. The first built sports car chassis and plastic kayaks in a former sweet shop in Twickenham, the second was a military history expert who had been responsible for getting the epaulettes correct on Charge of the Light Brigade. Neither man was the fairy-tale type.
He dressed a volunteer in a Nazi helmet and gas mask
Mollo was appointed costume designer on the UK-based production, despite having never previously seen a science-fiction film. When a friend asked him to describe the gig, he replied: “It’s sort of a space western and one of the heroes is a dustbin.” The notes in his sketchbook – which fetched £125,000 at auction in 2018 – suggest he never quite got to grips with the terminology: he seems to think he is creating costumes for “Martians” and “Plutonians”.
The budget was modest and time was short. The stormtroopers gained ears because Ainsworth made the helmets in two sections and needed to hide the screws (the thick black brow-line was rubber trim from his car workshop). Mollo organised his ideas for Darth Vader by dressing a volunteer in a motorcycle suit, a cloak, a Nazi steel helmet, a gas mask and a medieval breastplate. His knowledge of Samurai armour supplied the rest. It was, said Mollo, “a practical make do and mend”.
Luke Skywalker, C-3PO and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels and Alec Guinness) encounter stormtroopers in the original Star Wars film (1977). LUCASFILM
That phrase might explain the whole Star Wars universe and its appeal. Spaceships fly, but they are scuffed and unreliable. Robots are grimy and can be fixed like old cars. Henchmen wear gear as suitable for desert and snow as it is for the shiny floors of a slick space base. It’s an aesthetic brought back to life in projects like Andor, which painstakingly re-creates the battered, functional Star Wars look that was born in London workshops and on studio sets in the 1970s.
In fairy tales we never ask how a carpet soars through the air. In the Flash Gordon movie that eventually followed Star Wars, we did not question how Brian Blessed flew on wings created by Fellini’s regular costume designer, Danilo Donati. We suspended our disbelief. Star Wars doesn’t ask us to do this: everything we see on screen looks like it actually works. And perhaps that’s why it lasts.
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Broadcaster and cultural historian Dr Matthew Sweet is author of Shepperton Babylon: the Lost Worlds of British Cinema. He presented Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema: Star Wars, which is available on BBC Sounds
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Matthew Sweet
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