Calrissian's Father

A loyal member of the Overwatch has got my attention. Sarah Jones, posting under the Twitter handle @onesarahjones, has had a tweet favorited almost six hundred times. It has been retweeted four hundred and twenty four times.

On November 30, she tweeted, "pretty sure a Venn diagram of Gamergate and the men upset over a black stormtrooper in Star Wars would just be one circle." It's a cute comment, but is anybody upset over a "black stormtrooper in Star Wars?" I would chalk this up to simple psychological projection and move on, but I thought the idea deserved some deconstruction.

I would be willing to bet cash money that the black stormtrooper is a red herring. The new Star Wars movie won't be released for another year. Until then, all us fanbois can do is speculate. What can we infer from the trailer? We observe a black man in a storm trooper uniform, without his helmet. He is apparently on Tatooine, because we see undulating desert sand in the background. There is a voiceover who intones about an "awakening," just as the man appears from the bottom of the screen, perhaps aroused from a sweaty, nightmarish slumber.

The expression on his face is fear.

The only time anyone in a stormtrooper uniform ever appeared without his helmet, was when Luke took his off to introduce himself to Leia at the threshold of her prison cell. Even when stormtroopers get raked with blaster fire, killing them, their uniforms stay intact. Real stormtroopers are never seen out of uniform.

Considering that Lando Calrissian and Mace Windu are the only black males to appear in the franchise, and both played valiants, there is little chance that this black man is a villain. That wouldn't comport with the social justice template at work in cinema today. The main villain in any movie must be a white cissexual male, and so it will be in Episode 7. Watch this space.