Beneath the White Helmet

SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE VII YET!

People poking fun at Star Wars have asked for decades: Why can’t the Empire’s elite crack troops seem to ever hit what they’re shooting at, when a hillbilly kid who’s never shot a man in his life can just pick up a blaster and kill half a dozen Stormtroopers at the same distance?

And people being slightly more serious point out that the Stormtroopers make ideal bad guys because their uniforms hide their humanity. No faces. They might as well be soulless robots, as far as the good guys are concerned, and no one need have any qualms about blowing up a moon-sized space station full of them. You’ll notice that the only time a Stormtrooper removes his helmet is if he’s a good guy – Han, Luke, Finn. And Kylo Ren removes his helmet at moments when he needs to be humanized.

I’ve wondered for years now: What if the story of the original trilogy was told from a Stormtrooper’s perspective? A guy who joins for the same reason that many Germans joined the Nazi Stormtroopers – to make sure he and his family aren’t among the ones who are wiped out? A basically decent guy who doesn’t want to be there, who sympathizes with the Rebels but can’t join them without jeopardizing his family. A guy who misses ON PURPOSE, lets the Rebels infiltrate the station ON PURPOSE, even lets himself be killed by the Rebels ON PURPOSE, in order to save his family and give the Rebels a chance to make it a better galaxy for his family.

What if he finds himself feeling an ambivalent camaraderie with his platoon? What if he finds that most of the other Stormtroopers are just like him? What if he and the others work out a way between themselves to ensure that the Rebels win? What if, through his efforts, various Imperial soldiers and other employees “accidentally” slowed down progress on the Death Star’s construction, “accidentally” failed to notice that the Rebels were on Hoth till they’d had time to work out an exit strategy, “accidentally” failed to put a grate over that one spot where the torpedoes could destroy the Death Star, and so on? What if he gives some assistance to the Empire’s equivalent of Oskar Schindler, and how would that play out?

What if Obi-Wan’s Jedi mind trick at Mos Eisley in Episode IV (“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for”) was not to overrule the will of the Stormtrooper, but to read his mind and place into it the knowledge that helping these droids would mean helping the Rebels? What if Rey did the same to the Stormtrooper guarding her?

What if the Empire fell, and the First Order will fall, not because of the Force or a few desperate Rebels having an insane amount of luck, but because the true Rebellion was happening inside the forces of the Empire itself? What if the same internal struggle that caused Vader to finally turn on the Emperor was happening in EVERY Imperial soldier?

Finn would fit beautifully into that narrative – he’s a Stormtrooper who decided he wouldn’t kill for the cause of empire. Who’s to say he’s the only one? Why was the planet-sized Starkiller Base so easy to infiltrate and take down – AGAIN? Why did the Stormtroopers not kill off the tiny half-cocked invading force – AGAIN? Why did the good guys escape so easily – AGAIN? Why was the heavily armed and armored, battle-hardened Captain Phasma so quick to comply with these barely armed, unarmored civilians who’d infiltrated a base filled with troops she could easily summon? Why didn't she at least try to shoot them when Han started talking about putting her into a trash compactor?

Maybe there was a vast network of uneasy co-conspirators that lived on after the Emperor’s death. Maybe the children of those Stormtroopers were among the ones drafted to be the current generation of Stormtroopers, and their parents’ rebellious tendencies were passed on. Maybe Finn was one of those kids. Maybe he even had trainers who subtly planted doubts in his mind about whether he ought to conform to the expectations of the First Order. And Captain Phasma, who caved so easily when confronted by a couple scared kids and an old man… maybe she was the one who planted those doubts. Maybe she will turn out to be an unsung hero, a martyr who allowed herself to be tossed into a trash compactor for the sake of the galaxy.

I’m glad that the new movie made a hero out of a Stormtrooper, and humanized Kylo Ren in ways that Vader wasn’t until his death scene. I’d be pleased to see something like my idea show up in Episodes VIII and IX. But even if it doesn’t, I like the moral ambiguity being introduced in the “bad guys”, and wouldn’t be surprised to see some of that come up in the “good guys” too, as the trilogy progresses.

Midway on Saturday

You can tell, if you have the time and inclination to watch, you can tell just about everything that everyone’s feeling in an airport.

The ones ambling along, smiling, window-shopping the crappy stores with obscenely priced tchotchkes they have no intention to buy – these are the ones who are getting a welcome break, probably seeing someone they love when they arrive.

The speed-walking, harried, hungry yuppies, sprinting with fashionably long coats flapping behind – they don’t travel for pleasure, even during vacations. They RUN from plane to plane, RUN to the hotel, RUN to the tourist traps, RUN to check their e-mail and make sure they haven’t been laid off in the last hour, RUN back to the hotel, RUN to the planes again – and in their running, never escaped their pursuing worries for a moment.

Some neither sprint nor stroll, but slump. Are they simply jet-lagged? Are they traveling to leave some dreadful burden behind, or to take one on? Has there been a funeral, a break-up, a layoff, some crushing news? Or are they former runners, now too tired to run anymore?

Flight! The dream of humanity for as long as there have been humans. To arise like the gods, rise above the hard, gritty, unforgiving earth and miraculously be elsewhere, someplace warmer or cooler or brighter or bigger or greener or safer or just plain new. To have adventures (but no real dangers), taste the food and breathe the air of elsewhere, to stay as long as it suits us, then leave to carry the tale back, or onward. To mingle, at Midway on Saturday, with a sea of strangers, gaze on the infinite variety that is us, consider new possibilities, feel the exhilarating power of knowing I can go anywhere, and pretend that means I can do anything.

Flight! Whether we fly from something, or fly to something, we are forever longing to fly. Our simian ancestors could tell us why – they knew that the higher you go, the fewer predators can reach you, and the more unspoiled food you can find. But for us, there’s something else, something uniquely human – nothing pragmatic like the apes’ drive to be higher up, but simply wanting to experience something new, to add to ourselves a little bit.

Perhaps that’s what worries me most about those traveling business people. They’re partaking in a miracle, and they don’t even know it. All the kids know it – their faces are plastered against the window, wonder and joy and terror all blended in what our wiser ancestors called holy fear. But when the wondrous becomes commonplace, even burdensome – what then? A piece of our humanity is dulled, when we fly too often. And so many other things in the life of a business traveler can dull his humanity, that it’s profoundly sad to see this, too, fall away.

 

© John M. Munzer