[Anhil8tor]

While serving in the U.S. Navy in Iraq, Nakia Warren saw too many of his fellow soldiers come back battered and broken.
The Carencro native couldn't help but think how much safer they'd be, how much better they could serve, if only they wore the white Storm Trooper armor from Star Wars

"We have the technology today," he said. "It's just real expensive to do because all the technology bits are spread across various mediums."

Warren, 29, can't help but juxtapose daily life with examples from the Star Wars trilogy, movies that molded him at age 5 into the man he is today.
"The first one I saw was Return of the Jedi (1983), and I just remember being wowed by all the guys in armor. They had the big giant walkers," he said. "I thought, 'Wow, it's jet bikes, giant robots, guys in armor, Cool!' I still have that sense of awesome times when I grab a bag of popcorn and pop in those DVDs."

Theaters and fan groups celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars theatrical release today. Though no big parties have been announced in Lafayette, local fans say the movie franchise has influenced their lives, and pop culture in general, in ways they'd never imagined.

Warren is a Storm Trooper himself, or as close as possible. A member of the 501st Stormtrooper Legion and the Star Garrison (which covers Louisiana and Texas), he's in on a worldwide network of uberfans who focus on a particular niche of this fantasy universe - Storm Troopers - and dress up like it.

The 29-year-old Warren is now a fuel dispatcher for Central Control Systems, Inc. He lives with his mom and owns two suits of trooper armor, a rarity. One of them is black - even rarer.

At And Books Too, a comic book store on Johnston Street, manager Jeff Lajaunie remembers that special Saturday in the summer of 1977, when his mom took him to see Star Wars as a reward for good grades.

"It was something completely different to me. I hadn't had any references in science fiction up to that point," he said. "The characters, all the ships, all things my little brain couldn't imagine. But it made me want to imagine more."

Lajaunie became "completely obsessed" with villains from that day on, thank you Darth Vader.

But the movies also drew him into a comic book shop, and ultimately into a passion for art that shapes his career today.

"I picked up on the art of the books, comics and became a fan of the artists I saw through those Star Wars books," he said. "I went into a comic book store for the first time looking for Star Wars comics, and it literally led me straight into this entire world now."