People thinking stormtroopers are inaccurate entirely missed the point in A New Hope.
We are told near the beginning of the movie, when Luke and Obi-Wan find the Jawa’s sand crawler which appears to have been attacked by Sand People, that stormtroopers are deadly accurate. This makes sense, they are trained soldiers.
Obi-Wan says, “These blast points, too accurate for Sand People. Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.”
We, the audience, are supposed to remember this point when later the stormtroopers are firing at Luke and friends and missing every single shot. It is supposed to make us suspicious. It should make us say, “Something isn’t right here.”
Eventually we get the prestige: those stormtroopers were ORDERED not to hit them. The Falcon had been fitted with a tracking beacon, and the Imperial forces wanted them to escape and run to their hidden base.
But no, everyone came away thinking, “It’s really stupid that the stormtroopers fired that many times and never hit the good guys just standing in the open. Stormtroopers can’t hit the broad side of a space barn!”
You’re not wrong but the movies did a crap job of it. It’s always better to show us something than tell us, and it told us they are good shots but showed us they suck. For basically all 3 movies.
They did show them sweeping through a horrificly deadly funnel defended by relatively well covered rebels and toasting them with no issues is the very first scene of the movie. The assault on the Tantove IV was basically suicide, and they still mopped up like it was Tuesday. The double reveal, by both Leia and Tarkin, is more than sufficient to make the point, instead of a hamfisted scene earlier of Vader giving them orders not to kill and eliminating all the tension from the escape.
That’s partly true, but I wouldn’t say the assault was “basically suicide” when they had an entire Star Destroyer full of storm troopers boarding a ship that fits in the docking bay. Even if they went 2 for 1 on losses, the Empire still wins with “minimal losses” comparatively. There just isn’t much screen time of them being exceptionally good soldiers.
I wasn’t suggesting we should see Vader telling them to miss, just thinking it would be nice to see more storm troopers being bad-asses throughout the films. It felt like most of the time the Empire won a fight throughout the entire original trilogy was by bringing overwhelming numbers and firepower more than the troops being especially good. The opening scenes even felt like to me.
They just threw bodies at it. Also, it’s not hard to hit somebody when they’re standing in a straight hallway grouped up like a bunch of morons caught out of cover. Absolutely idiotic that nobody tossed a grenade in.
Storm troopers aren’t clones at all. They’re recruited. (Rebels, you see some of that process, with Ezra and a few others. Basically, most are barely competent. The 501st is supposed to be an exception.)
There’s also plenty of examples outside this moment of storm troopers sucking- battle at cloud city, Hoth. Virtually every major engagement… even when they were supposed to be on their a-game, they suck.
Full pedantic mode:
People thinking stormtroopers are inaccurate entirely missed the point in A New Hope.
We are told near the beginning of the movie, when Luke and Obi-Wan find the Jawa’s sand crawler which appears to have been attacked by Sand People, that stormtroopers are deadly accurate. This makes sense, they are trained soldiers.
Obi-Wan says, “These blast points, too accurate for Sand People. Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.”
We, the audience, are supposed to remember this point when later the stormtroopers are firing at Luke and friends and missing every single shot. It is supposed to make us suspicious. It should make us say, “Something isn’t right here.”
Eventually we get the prestige: those stormtroopers were ORDERED not to hit them. The Falcon had been fitted with a tracking beacon, and the Imperial forces wanted them to escape and run to their hidden base.
But no, everyone came away thinking, “It’s really stupid that the stormtroopers fired that many times and never hit the good guys just standing in the open. Stormtroopers can’t hit the broad side of a space barn!”
You’re not wrong but the movies did a crap job of it. It’s always better to show us something than tell us, and it told us they are good shots but showed us they suck. For basically all 3 movies.
They did show them sweeping through a horrificly deadly funnel defended by relatively well covered rebels and toasting them with no issues is the very first scene of the movie. The assault on the Tantove IV was basically suicide, and they still mopped up like it was Tuesday. The double reveal, by both Leia and Tarkin, is more than sufficient to make the point, instead of a hamfisted scene earlier of Vader giving them orders not to kill and eliminating all the tension from the escape.
That’s partly true, but I wouldn’t say the assault was “basically suicide” when they had an entire Star Destroyer full of storm troopers boarding a ship that fits in the docking bay. Even if they went 2 for 1 on losses, the Empire still wins with “minimal losses” comparatively. There just isn’t much screen time of them being exceptionally good soldiers.
I wasn’t suggesting we should see Vader telling them to miss, just thinking it would be nice to see more storm troopers being bad-asses throughout the films. It felt like most of the time the Empire won a fight throughout the entire original trilogy was by bringing overwhelming numbers and firepower more than the troops being especially good. The opening scenes even felt like to me.
Did you see all the troopers on the ground again?
They just threw bodies at it. Also, it’s not hard to hit somebody when they’re standing in a straight hallway grouped up like a bunch of morons caught out of cover. Absolutely idiotic that nobody tossed a grenade in.
Then clearly told us why.
We’ve also seen the drastic difference in training and skill between Kamino clones and the newer spartii clones.
Storm troopers aren’t clones at all. They’re recruited. (Rebels, you see some of that process, with Ezra and a few others. Basically, most are barely competent. The 501st is supposed to be an exception.)
There’s also plenty of examples outside this moment of storm troopers sucking- battle at cloud city, Hoth. Virtually every major engagement… even when they were supposed to be on their a-game, they suck.