"TROOPS is filmed on-location with the men of the Imperial forces. All suspects are guilty, period — otherwise, they wouldn't be suspects, would they?"
TROOPS is a 1997 Star Wars Fan Film by Kevin Rubio, considered the Trope Codifier — if not the Trope Maker — of the genre.
A dual parody of Star Wars and the reality show COPS, the short film follows a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers as they patrol on the desert planet Tatooine. It boasts professional quality costumes and special effects, and hilariously puts a couple of major incidents from A New Hope in a whole new light.
Some of the cast and crew followed it up with a sequel series, I.M.P.S.: The Relentless, released in 2005.
This short film contains examples of:
- Adaptational Heroism: The Stormtroopers, to an extent. It would seem they were not responsible for the massacre of the Lars family.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Owen and Beru are portrayed as being a lot more dysfunctional than A New Hope suggested.
- Awful Wedded Life: Owen and Beru Lars apparently never got along.
- Black Comedy: This film basically turns two horrific massacres from A New Hope into simple law enforcement jobs gone wrong.
- The Cameo:
- Boba Fett is seen, during the opening titles; however, he does not appear in the actual episode.
- When Captain Bach stops to question some Jawas, the droid the Jawas have is Tom Servo, from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Averted, hilariously enough. The Stormtroopers surely don't miss the fleeing Jawas.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: At one point, one of the Stormtroopers, exasperated by the bickering between Owen and Beru, grumbles that "I could just shoot these people."
- Minnesota Nice: Captain Jyanix Bach, who speaks with a thick Minnesotan accent in an apparent parody of Fargo. He becomes an Affably Evil subversion of the trope when he guns down the Jawas.
- Not What It Looks Like: The short humorously puts two horrible massacres from A New Hope in a new light.
- The Jawas weren't massacred on purpose by Stormtroopers on their hunt for C-3PO and R2-D2, they were shot at when attempting to flee law enforcement, since they stole Imperial droids and supplies. The sandcrawler was also destroyed for that reason.
- Stormtroopers didn't kill Owen and Beru. Beru went crazy, took a crate full of thermal detonators from one of the Stormtroopers and detonated it, and Owen attempted to stop her. It didn't end well.
