Recently I got to see the Star Wars and the Power of Costumes exhibit at the EMP Museum. It started out as kind of a “ooo Star Wars!” followed by “oh, look at all those Queen Amidala dresses…” and finally led to that deeper thought and understanding: that costumes really matter a lot for a science fiction (or fantasy, or a lot of other genre) movie. Costumes that look different from what we are used to create the sense of a whole new world.
One of my favorite examples is still the Dune mini-series, for which someone decided that clearly, what all the different groups in the galaxy did was just wear really big hats to show who they were:
We don’t know what you mean…
I could gush about this, or I could mainly share some pictures and a couple of thoughts. Let’s let the pictures speak for themselves!
This is only some of the many costumes of Queen Amidala!
One of the things that the exhibit pointed out was just how much more costumes and the pomp and circumstance mattered in the prequels. This was the more civilized age, the bygone era that Obi Wan lamented being gone. This was an era of the Senate, of different cultures all having a voice. Before the Emperor took over, and all the soldiers looked the same…
More photos and thoughts below!
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