Over the last 3 nights, I've re-watched the original three Star Wars movies in order. While there are many important and recurring themes throughout the movies, one seems to have been very understated over the years.
Stormtroopers have incredibly poor aim. It's really no wonder the empire eventually lost. The only reason I can see that they survived as long as they did was their sheer number.
On a related note, it might be amusing to write my weblog entries in Yoda-speak for a while. Amusing that would be.
On an unrelated note, my cold seems to be going away at a faster rate than I expected. That's a good thing, considering how much work I ended up doing today anyway.
Posted by jzawodn at May 05, 2004 07:54 PM
Could their poor aim be explained by the deteriorative effects of repeated cloning? :)
This is especially amusing since, IIRC, in the first movie when Obi-Wan deduces who was responsible for attacking the giant Jawa vehicle-thing, he says "Only Imperial Stormtroopers could be so precise"
Ryan:
Yeah, I remember watching that the other night and thinking "of course they hit it... it's the size of a house!"
Bad guys always do.
Same as the horse of the bad guy is always slower (works also in LOTR)
That stormtrooper body armor doesn't seem to do much for them either. It apparently doesn't protect them from blasters. They might as well remove those clunky helmets, which might help them see to aim.
It was well known that, despite incredible and expensive training back in the camps of the Empire, lack of proper armor played a significant role in the defeats suffered by the elite Stormtroopers back in the desert world of Tatooine and the jungles of the other planet, the one with jungles, to the hands of the resistance.
Furthermore, the Empire was crippled by the continuous expense on increasingly complex Death Stars and buggy software: The emperor demanded a new appropriation every few months.
At the end, that promising warrior gone to the dark side, voiced by that well known black actor, is betrayed by the emperor - but we all knew that was coming.
Those helmets seem to be the problem. Think about it, they have pretty small windows, like an inch far away from the wearer's face. How well do you suppose you would be able to aim if you had such a restricted tunnel vision?
I had a chemistry teacher in high school, he was one of those teachers that change your life. Anyways, we got to talking about Star Wars one day and he says, "Is that the movie with the enemies that can't shoot?"
Years ago at work I once posed the question
"Who would last longer in a fight between Star Wars
Imperial Storm Troopers or Star Trek Red Shirted Security Officers"
In Ebert's movie answerman column has named for this: "Imperial Stormtrooper marksmanship academy" and I paraphrase here: The Imperial Stormtrooper markmanship academy is where movie bad guys go to learn how to stand five abreast in a 10x10 room firing automatic weapons yet missing everyone in the room.
As mentioned before, the stormtroopers are far from the the only movie bad guys to suffer from this problem!
Ah but see, it takes skill and talent to do that. Don't forget that the storm toopers were originally Jedi warrior clones (in other words, good guys) plus, they were cloned from the most famous marksman of the day, so they have the steely eye and calm nerve to put the shot exactly where they want it.
Unfortunately, being cloned from good guys they're used to having unlimited ammunition and being able to drop the bad guy with a single shot. Having to fire more than one shot means actually running the risk of hurting someone, so they use their careful, precision tuned targeting skills to fire a flurry of warning shots, in hopes that their advesary will see the error of their way, lay down their gun and they can all go get cookies.
Hmm.. come to think of it, that same half assed explanation might work for all those Bond movies where he swings on a predictable rope path through a room filled with hundreds of oddly uniformed, rapid firing, villainous henchbeings.
So it's probably a union thing.
I think that they sould be hitting every time , and also that they sould never lose to a bunch of under trained and under equipped rebals when they are the best solider in the galaxy . They training sould give them an age in every time .
Well, I read in the third movie guide that the way that the gun is constructed, the plasma bolts can't hit their target. They just move off to the side like an idiodic curveball.
When episode III came out, my wife and I watch all 6 episodes in order. I also noticed that the stormtroopers in the later episodes were very sluggish.
There aim is as good as Cobra soldiers, members of the Legion of Doom.
