You Don't Know These Facts About Darth Vader's Suit
Darth Vader’s silhouette is one of the most recognizable ones in cinema history. Even people who have never seen a Star Wars film and know nothing about the saga will most likely say something like, “Yes, this is the bad guy from Star Wars, the one with the breathing problems.”
Both the iconic silhouette with the samurai-like helmet and the breathing problems are linked with the armor that Vader had to wear almost constantly, although the term “armor” may be a bit misleading, as the purpose of the all-black outfit was not primarily to protect the Sith Lord from outside attacks, but to simply keep his fragile body alive.
After his battle with Obi-Wan on Mustafar at the end of Revenge of the Sith, the former Jedi Anakin Skywalker was left for death on the shore of a lava river, with all four limps cut off, the remainder of his body completely burned, and many inner organs seriously and irretrievable damaged. If it wasn’t for his new master, Darth Sidious, to basically reconstruct his limbs and build a mobile life support system around him, there would have been no Darth Vader.
Vader’s suit with all the various inner and outer components is a complex structure, as it not only had to keep him alive as well as support and protect him in battles, but also had to provide for very basic corporal functions, like eating, drinking, absorbing sweat and, yes, defecating.
The former Expanded Universe provided detailed descriptions on how the black suit supported all of these functions – the solution for the last one was a series of “catheters, collection pouches, and recyclers” so that he can pass waste – at least according to James Luceno in his novel Dark Lord – The Rise of Darth Vader (2005). Every button and every switch had a well-documented purpose. Current canon offers much less information, but there are still a number of things that hold up to this day.
Vader’s suit basically consists of major four major parts (five if you include his cape): the helmet, the garments (including the chest-piece, the girdle and the boots), the chest-plate, and the belt.
The most important part is the helmet, that itself is put together from three pieces: a neck gaiter, the primary mask, and the outer shell.
The main purpose of the gaiter is to protect the neck, but it also includes a feeding tube, as Vader is unable to eat and drink normally. The gaiter also includes a voice modulator, creating the booming voice of the Sith Lord, as his natural vocal cords are too damaged from the heat and the smoke.
The primary mask covers Vader’s face und includes the red lenses, that are able to adapt to different lighting conditions, thus not only protecting his limited eyesight, but also enhancing his vision, so he could see in darkness. Part of the mask is the respiratory system, helping his damaged lungs to take in oxygen and to exhale again, creating the iconic breathing sound in the process. Furthermore, it enables him to breath even in outer space. Finally, the mask also helps regulating Vader’s body temperature. Neural needles inside the mask poke painfully into his skull and his spine, but enable him to move his artificial limbs.
The main purpose of the other shell was to lock the mask in place magnetically, to protect Vader’s head and neck and last but not least to give him a menacing look.
The chest-piece below his neck, as the name suggests, protects Vader’s fragile chest, while the plastoid girdle offers protection for his abdominal organs. The garments itself are made from ten protective layers, and the boots could be magnetized to ensure a grip on metallic surfaces.
Legends publications provide quite detailed descriptions of the various functionalities of the buttons and switches on Vader’s chest-plate and belt, from a manual override of the control system of the body functions, to a kind of reset-button that would leave Vader more or less unprotected until the “reboot” is complete. Sidious has this “kill switch” integrated into the suit in order to keep Vader alert at all times, as a Force user could easily have him deactivated from afar.
In modern canon, the functionalities of these buttons and switches are simply described as a means to control and to monitor the status of the armor and the life functions of the man inside. Several times since the reboot of the Expanded Universe, Vader’s suit and helmet have been seriously damaged in books, comics, and also in Star Wars Rebels, proving that the armor is not impenetrable and Vader usually has a spare suit in his quarters for such situations. Overall, he finds it “acceptable,” but more and more dislikes it over time, which is the reason he tries to live at least short periods of time without it, in order to feel more like a human being again.
There is one interesting out-of-universe tidbit concerning the black suit: Vader’s chest-plate in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi include three lines of text under the vertical slots. The letters are, however, not in Aurebesh as one would expect, but in Hebrew, and translates to something like this: “His deeds will not be forgiven, until he merits.” But the letters vary in different iterations of the armor, and so there is no definitive answer (and probably never will be).
George Lucas never gave an explanation of why the letters are there, who created this, why they are in Hebrew, and what the words actually mean, but the sentence is somehow fitting for a man like Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker.
Source(s): StarWars.com, TheForce.net