Don’t recall if they were all about the same height-weight or not, per the later plot device that they were all clones of Boba Fett. Anyone remember?
Although I can’t say with 100% certainty, I seem to remember that all of the stormtroopers seemed to be about the same size.
There’s also the line in Episode IV where Luke opens the door to Leia’s prison cell, and her first words are “Are you a little short for a stormtrooper?” To me, that implies that they were all of almost identical size.
Or maybe they just had minimum height requirements.
In the original Star Wars, Stormtroopers were recruited through the Imperial Academy.
Luke’s ambition, before he had his quest dropped in his lap and the Lars’ were slaughtered by Stormtroopers, was to join the academy as a way to get off Tattooine and break up the monotony. Luke’s idol Biggs had already joined up, but on the day that Leia’s Blockade Runner was captured, Luke learned that he had gone AWOL and hooked up with the rebellion.
Leia’s comment about Luke’s height was just an averages thing, and a way to deprecate someone that she considered the enemy at that point. If Stormtroopers were all supposed to be the same size, then Luke’s ruse to get into the cell-block area wouldn’t have worked, since it was clear at a glance that he was a little guy.
And a young Han Solo was also a member of the academy. If memory serves, he quit/was kicked out when he saved Chewbacca from being a slave. Which is what caused Chewie to pal around with him.
The books go on to explain that the Empire has a training planet called Cardia(I think its been a while) where they do they’re military training. So in the original trilogy stormtroopers are not clones. But you have to wonder what happened to all of the clones. Maybe they are mixed in with recruited stormtroopers.
Now that the Republic has an army, they’re bound to get volunteers. If I was an admiral in charge of the military force, I’d keep the volunteer units separate from the clones. Mixing them could only lead to trouble.
If they are all in the stormtrooper/clonetrooper armor how could you tell the clones from the recruits? I don’t think that it would lead to any trouble.
You don’t think they’d wear all that armor around the barracks, do you?
I thought the Imperial Academy was the route to the Imperial Navy, not stormtrooperdom. But, regardless, there was some confusion in the old days about whether they were clones or not. I remember reading in Starlog magazine that they were clones, but in the very non-canon Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, it was stated very clearly that they were recruited from all over the galaxy.
WAG: Maybe that’s what the “Clone Wars” are about.
In one book(I forgot the title. It’s part of the series with kyp durron and the sun crusher ship. It used to be one of my favorites back in the nerd days.) there is a line about a stormtrooper taking off his helmet for the first time since he was recruited. So I guess they always wear the armor.
Don’t put too much stock in the books. They’re non-canon, or at best semi-canon. I read another book where a few Stromtroopers try to rape a girl, and they get undressed to do so. (Something interrupts them, I forget what, and the Troopers end up getting killed.) I really can’t imagine that the Stormtroopers would stay in those uniforms 24/7. They have to eat, sleep, bath, and go to the bathroom just like we do, and presumably the volunteer forces get occasional shore leave or something of the sort.
It’s the evil empire, they don’t let you take off the armor, thats why they’re evil.
Granted, I’m a Trekkie and not an SW fan at all but I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about this. My best friend in high school was as big a Wars nerd as I was a Trek geek and he said the Extended Universe found in the comics and novels is all canon unless there is some glaring contradiction in which case, I don’t remember what happens. Someone’s head implodes?
In our debates on which universe would kick the other’s ass (Trek, by the way), I was always hampered by not being able to use the fanwank stuff from Trek’s novels but he was free to use all the deus ex machina tech and characters he wanted from Star Wars because of that damnable rule.
If I find out he was lying to me after all these years, I’m going to have to hunt him down and force him to watch a marathon session of Episode I in retribution.
Not a chance in hell. How many planet destroying super weapons do they have in trek? Not many.
The ones who weren’t clones wouldn’t sound like Tem Morrison {unless they changed the clone donor, which Lucas will probably claim} - I figured they couldn’t be clones in the original Star Wars after AOC came out because they all spoke with different voices, however no doubt Lucas will rectify this in the next final definitive DVD release.
He agreed to leave the planet busters out and I agreed to not use the Q, Organians, Douwd, Prophets, et al.
Judging from just the movie and not any of the extra crap, I doubt there would be any way to tell. They all look the same with the armor on. I don’t think the clone thing was thought up until later.
I don’t know much about the extended universe stuff either, but waaaay back in the early eighties it was established “fanlore” that Boba Fett’s uniform was an early version of stormtrooper armor, and that he was an uber-stormtrooper during the Clone Wars who got tired of taking orders and went the mercenary route.
It’s neat that the Clonetrooper uniforms ended up being clearly modeled off Fett’s “uniform” – sort of midway between Fett and the original trilogy stormtrooper look. (Leaving Fett out of it, there was Lucasfilm-sanctioned nerd-fodder that came out around the same time as The Empire Strikes Back that specifically said that the Stormtroopers were clone, grown in vats, like Edgar Rice Burroughs Synthetic Men of Mars.)
Of course, equally established “fanlore” was that Obi Wan was the “prototype” for the initial line of the clone armies, since he had a phonetically-rendered serial-number like name like Artoo Deetoo and See Threepio, with “OB” standing for “Original Body” in the same way that the “PO” in “C3-PO” stands for Protocol Officer.
At some point George had to pick which fans to validate. 