This December, costume designer Michael Kaplan is set to add b to an impressive CV that includes the likes of Blade Runner, Se7en, Fight Club, Star Trek and Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and during an in depth interview with Vanity Fair, the BAFTA Award winner has spoken about his work on December’s hugely-anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
“I went up to George Lucas’s archives—huge building—and just spent a day going through sketches and looking just to get the tone of the movie, you know, in my guts and veins so that when I went to London I felt equipped and inspired, which I certainly did,” states Kaplan when asked how he went about updating the look of the Original Trilogy costumes. “The old stormtroopers uniforms would not be usable. Audiences of today have become so sophisticated that a lot of things you could get away with in the past, you can’t anymore. So the new uniforms are much heavier. Also, the action in the film required them to not be “VacuFormed” [like the old uniforms] as those all broke and cracked. These new ones are much more heavy-duty, but they are redesigned, too, they’re not the same stormtroopers.”
“Everything was a conversation with J.J., of course,” he continues. “He wanted to hold on to the uniqueness and not get too far away from the stormtroopers, keep that iconic look, but still have 30 years of difference. I mean, it would be a little odd to have the same stormtroopers this much later when Leia and Han are so much older. Wth the stormtroopers it was more of a simplification, almost like, ‘What would Apple do?’ J.J. wanted them to look like stormtroopers at a glance but also be different enough to kind of wow people and get them excited about the new design.”
Of course it wasn’t just the new-look Stormtroopers that Kaplan was responsible for redesigning: “I remembered when I saw the original movie I was a little bit confused by the warring factions, because the uniform colors kind of overlapped—both [the Rebels and the Empire] had some khakis and olive, and I kind of thought, ‘Now I’m in a position to do something about this.’ So I made two very, very clean-cut palettes. The Empire is in very cold blacks and grays and metallics and teal blues. The Rebels are in khakis and olives and some oranges—warmer colors. So there are very clear separations and you know who you’re looking at when you see them. Also, the lines of the costumes. The Rebels are kind of wools and natural fibers, cottons, and the Empire is very hard-lined, almost like Thierry Mugler. Very kind of edgy. The haircuts are these three-quarter parts, which were big in the 1930s, so that’s kind of recalling something from the past.”
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is set for release on December 18th and sees J.J. Abrams directing returning stars Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Harrison Ford (Han Solo), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Kenny Baker (R2-D2) and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) in addition to Adam Driver (Girls), Oscar Isaac (A Most Violent Year), Andy Serkis (Avengers: Age of Ultron), Domhnall Gleeson (Ex Machina), John Boyega (Attack the Block), Daisy Ridley (Silent Witness), Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones), Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave), Miltos Yerolemou (Game of Thrones), Max von Sydow (The Exorcist), Jessica Henwick (Spirit Warriors), Christina Chong (24: Live Another Day) and newcomers Crystal Clarke and Pip Andersen.
https://youtu.be/8HTiU_hrLms?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published May 21, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
