DN:SHORT The Empire Strikes Door
Jamie Stangroom’s super niche and utterly charming nerdfest doc is a 40-minute exercise in Star Wars marginalia: In an infamous scene from the original 1977 film, a group of Imperial Stormtroopers walks through a doorway and one of them hits his head. As it turns out, the identity of the actor in the suit in this iconic blooper is a point of some dispute among observers of the franchise. YouTuber Stangroom decides to get to the bottom of the mystery, tracking down various English gentlemen of a certain age (the age you’d be if you’d been an extra in a long-shot, sci-fi Western in London in 1976) who each claim that he is the one who bonked his head.
Stangroom approaches the project with cheerful faux earnestness. He gets quite a few chuckles out of winking meta-moments—i.e. “In what could be unfairly dismissed as a series of establishing shots, I left the city behind,” he narrates, over a quick series of establishing shots as he leave London behind. Along with cheeky, hokey jokes, the fast-moving doc offers a steady supply of absurdist observation and the occasional discount special-effects homage to the Star Wars oeuvre. Blink-and-you’ll-miss-'em talking heads include voice-of-Yoda Frank Oz; Benicio Del Toro; Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, Ahmed Best—credited as motion-capture pioneer to sidestep his true identity as fan-unfavorite Jar Jar Binks; and current Star Wars trilogy star John Boyega. Stangroom knows his way around the expected investigative-doc tropes, and utilizes these observers to good effect.
Imagine the surprise, though, when this lightweight conceit ends up carrying the viewer to some fascinating reflections about the inconsistency of memory, as well as a genuinely emotional, perhaps life-changing reveal, even as it ekes out a real bit of mystery. In the end, Stangroom manages to offer up a piece of fan service that also makes us a fan of his. Good stuff.
Available on YouTube