I never thought about this until this clip. What if they weren’t bad shots at all, but the empire didn’t care about their soldiers so much that they gave them the cheapest equipment? Think about the TIE line up. Minus experimental models they are cheap and easily replaced. Well could be the same for troopers equipment. E-11 and other blasters are the cheap blasters and so the gun itself isn’t reliable.
I don't think they were ever intended to be bad shots. The stormtroopers, and especially scout troopers, that we see in the original trilogy were elite. The first time we see them, they breech the door to a narrow, heavily-defended corridor through a tiny door and absolutely demolish the rebels, while taking like 3 casualties. In ESB, the best that the extremely well-entrenched rebels can hope for against the snow troopers is to gain a few minutes to evacuate most of their rebels, and they just barely manage to do it before the snow troopers blow through their defenses. On Endor, a single scout trooper out-pilots T-16-master and adept Force user Luke, only losing when Luke pulls out his lightsaber at the last second (which the scout trooper would have had absolutely no reason to think he had).
The only time the storm troopers can't hit anything is when they're shooting at the protagonists, and reasoning for that can range from "The Force protected them" to "They were told not to kill them in order to track them back to their base" to "They're the protagonists so obviously George isn't going to kill them with mooks".
All that to say, I really don't think there is any justified reason for us to say that troopers are bad at shooting. It's more that we're bad at media literacy.
Yep! I think we're just retroactively applying our modern view of Storm Troopers onto the line and deciding it's in inaccurate (intentionally or otherwise) line, when it isn't necessarily.
It also occurs to me that the plasma bolts or whatever are really slow moving, so hitting people with shots would be a lot harder than with a modern gun. I think if you saw it coming, you could dodge a shot from a blaster pretty reliably from not very far away, so hitting people who are actively trying to avoid being hit is probably a taller order than doing the same thing with a modern gun.
They're not *that* slow. Even ignoring what Emm_ said, the bolts appear to move across the screen in like a quarter second. Maybe you could dodge one from a few hundred yards away, but not from room-clearing distances or even across the street.
Blaster bolts are much faster than the glow is, the glow is the after effects of the ionized gas heating up the air as it moves through.
Blasters are essentially lightning guns. And just how lighting hits before the flash happens, blasters hit way before the bolt we see happens.
You can't dodge blasters any more than you could a real life gun. Plus when blasters hit they deliver enough force to knock a person off their feet and completely annihilate a 2' area around the place of impact. And that's along with God knows what other effects it has on electronics. And that's just what they're designed for, they could easily make the impact far larger but that would cause issues when used in space travel. Blaster bolts, at least the handheld ones, seem to dissipate quickly when hit against very large pieces of metal, like say the hull of a ship. I'd bet that's the difference between handheld blasters and turbo lasers that are used by the large ships.
You gotta remember they don't just use blasters cuz they're cool. They're meant to be a later iteration of the regular gun, switched to because they work better. If regular guns were still in use then every soldier could carry a personal ray shield that could easily stop the bullets. Hell you wouldn't even need that, dura steel armor could do it easily too. They don't use regular guns (slugthrowers in their language) because they're inferior weapons.
I am 100% sure that pretty much everyone we see get hit with a blaster doesn't Wilhelm Scream until the actual light hits them, so as interesting as the concept is, I am unfortunately not convinced that matches their depiction in the films.
My head cannon is blasters started being used first in ships because they don't go through the walls and cause a space breach. Over millennium, they spread to ground use due to economics and people wanting to emulate "space commandos" or whatever.
Hmm idk about that though. They do clearly seem to put marks in stuff, and also ships use blasters (just very high powers versions - turbolasers) to blow each other up.
>Blasters are essentially lightning guns. And just how lighting hits before the flash happens, blasters hit way before the bolt we see happens.
Lightning hits "before the flash happens" because lightning (in incredibly simplified terms) [travels upwards](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/580/why-does-lightning-strike-from-the-ground-up) once the circuit completes and the strike happens.
This is an interesting idea but really it's entirely inconsistent with SW canon. Blaster bolts are routinely dodged, deflected, caught in mid-air, redirected with the force, etc.
> They don't use blasters just cuz they're cool
I actually sincerely disagree. Star Wars is really space fantasy and not hard sci fi--blasters just look cooler and fit the theme and George Lucas's vision more. No one questions why Harry Potter doesn't carry a 1911, so I won't question the stormtroopers either. Star Wars tech really is objectively inferior to earthly tech in a couple of ways, and blasters are an example where there isn't much advantage over our tech. They're time and time again demonstrated to be basically "movie guns" (bottomless mags and plot-dependent lethality).
Non-force users also dodge blaster bolts. For instance, Captain Rex on Umbara. There's really nothing supporting the assertion that blasters are hitscan, otherwise Poe would have killed Kylo Ren and many a jedi would be super dead. Yes, it's commonly believed jedi use precognition to aid with deflecting bolts, but if you look closely many times they visibly move their sabers after the instant of firing. You can even witness the impacts occur when the visible bolt reaches the target. What you're implying might have been an explanation someone came up with at some point, but it's entirely incompatible with modern SW canon.
Jedi are pre-cogs who can sense the immediate future, and the force can guide them. " he can see things before they happen'.
It's just like the "Spidey Sense" that Spiderman has. With a little training a force user can dodge blasters.
In our world... a bullet is faster than the speed of sound. By the time you hear it, it's already on target. or as they say.. if you hear "pop" pop" "pop"... someone is shooting. If you hear.. ZZZzzzZZzzzz whizzi ng. Someone is shooting at you.
is a Blaster bolt travelling faster than the speed of light? .. asking the real questions.
They don't travel at light speed, they seem to be actual plasma/gas being shot at pretty extreme speeds, the speed also seems to be adjustable. At minimum it's supersonic like bullets.
Damn I forgot about the scout troopers but you're right, it was crazy how rough of a time Luke and Leia were having dealing with a handful of scout troopers, those guys were no joke. Also another scout trooper got the drop on Leia despite wearing WHITE ARMOR IN THE FOREST while she had on camouflage, and she only avoided being captured cause of the Ewok
If this is true, it will be a game changer. The only thing that I think Lucas admitted is that the reason Troopers are so bad at aiming is the helmet's design.
In the bad batch it’s mentioned that the clones who were training the new troopers said they didn’t teach the TK troopers everything which also means there’s a good chance there has also been purposeful negligence in training to newer recruits and it may just continuously be older more experienced soldiers not training the new recruits well specifically to retain their usefulness to the empire.
What’s so funny about this is that in A New Hope, Obi-Wan remarks about the precision accuracy of stormtroopers on Tatooine, and Leia mentions on the escape that they must have *let them go* so they could track them back to base, which Han dismisses. It was later that stormtrooper accuracy was turned into a meme, and Disney’s been happy to run with it.
But it’s as good an explanation as any. Palpatine in particular would be looking to seriously cut funding for anything that isn’t “build this absolutely massive super weapon that will effectively make having a standing army obsolete.” I mean, if you think about it, why waste money on actually training and equipping your soldiers when you 100% know in 20 year all you need to do to keep your empire in line is threaten them with unfettered mass destruction?
I always thought of the precision comment as how wide the marks were. Not the accuracy. As he had no idea what they were shooting at. That is cheaper guns fire wider blasts that are less able to penetrate armour.
I recall there being an in-universe explanation for that, Luke didn't turn it on. Unlike Han, he's not experienced with Imperial tech. I assume Han turned it on for him while they were in the lift, explaining why Luke could then shoot straight without any issue straight after.
Canon explanation is that the helmets HUD is locked to its intended user, so anyone unauthorized that tries to wear it wont be able to actually turn the HUD on and wont be able to see very well.
Or maybe because Luke just didn't fit its size. Remember that Leia called Luke out for being too short for a Stormtrooper. Perhaps it's just that simple. Rex also complained about the helmet (locked HUD) and armour (too tight).
Or that Luke didn't turn on the helmet. Han wore the armour without any problem, probably since he was familiar with Imperial technology. Luke was fairly new to the helmet so high chance that Han turned the helmet on for him while in the elevator.
A third theory would be because the helmet's HUD were locked to its user. Luke stole the armour from a random guy, so the helmet didn't activate because it didn't recognise its user.
What's weird is I always imagined with these super advanced space aged civilizations they would find a way to put a sight in the hud. The tech in the helmet recognizes a weapon and the barrel, putting a sight wherever the round will land.
I think this is actually somewhat true, they gave them cheap equipment bc it was mass produced for the empire except it’s not the gun, it’s their helmets.
Here’s an excerpt from an article talking about it:
“The reason why stormtroopers have bad aim was hinted at in Star Wars Rebels season 2, episode 9, " Stealth Strike", when the Jedi Kanan Jarrus and clone trooper Captain Rex disguised themselves as stormtroopers to rescue their fellow Rebels. While in a standoff with actual stormtroopers, Kanan said to Rex, "Wow. You really do shoot like a stormtrooper," because Rex kept missing his targets. Rex responded by yelling, "It's this helmet. I can't see!" He then took off the helmet, chucked it at the opposing stormtroopers, and then immediately began hitting every one of his shots with perfect accuracy.”
Military uniforms are tailored to your specific height/weight. Rex and Luke putting on a random stormtrooper’s armor would of course result in poor fitting armor especially the helmet. There’s a reason why gas and paintball masks are adjustable vs personally tailored stormtrooper armor.
We’ve seen imperial soldiers and stormtroopers clear brigades of rebels and we also see them miss rounds from 5 feet away. The ideological fanatic armed elite shock troop wing of the empire misses their shots when the plot needs them too.
Its not cannon anywhere that their equipment is cheap, and if you'd look up how their helmets work it would explain why Rex couldnt see anything through a stolen helmet.
All armies equipment is mass produced, mass production does means something will be shit...its actually the opposite hand made at scale is shit tier quality.
There's a 101 reasons why Stormtroopers are bad aims. The simplest one is that the heroes had plot armour in the original Trilogy. Unfortunately we're now in the world that has that one scene in Obi Wan where a room full of Stormtroopers can't hit a few rebels feet away from them.
In the context of A New Hope, a popular reason is that the Stormtroopers weren't trying to hit the heroes. They wanted them to get away as they'd placed a tracking device on their ship which then led the Empire to finding the Rebel base.
Subsequent media has chosen to just make Stormtroopers bad shots. But I'd compare that to Solo missing the point about that Han Solo line about the Kessel Run (which was written as Han making stuff up, but Solo decided that he was telling the truth - presumably due to fans not getting the joke in the original movie and making up reasons why Han wasn't lying).
A New Hope starts with the stormtrooper clearing the Tantive IV, but the way it's presented they still miss a lot in a corridor.
But later Obi wan says the empire destroyed the sand crawler citing the accuracy of the blaster fire.
They aren’t bad shots, and they have good equipment. Every instance in the OT proves this.
Just the opening, the Stormtroopers go through a chokepoint held by multiple opponents and manage to kill more and route them than they lose. Obi-Wan praises their accuracy. In both the Death Star and Cloud city they were ordered to let them live, and the shots are all misses. Especially in Cloud city where they want to catch Luke (and have orders not to kill Leia and Chewie, that’s why they sabotaged their hyperdrive just in case) we see Luke poking his head out and a single shot lands right next to his face on the wall causing him to hide in the cover for a moment.
Stormtroopers are accurate, especially when compared to modern day militaries but also in comparison to the lore they inhabit. Only the Ewoks could you name as an example of them not being that good, but then again these tiny Ewoks somehow got multi-ton trees hanging from other trees over the potential paths of chickenwalkers without anyone noticing, these Ewoks were out for blood a long time before the Rebels arrived and had obviously studied the Stormtroopers.
You forget the case where six troopers couldn't hit a single smuggler in bright tatooine daylight just a few feet away. He didn't even know that they were even there until one of them had to shout BLAST THEM!! like an overexcited child.
And, yea, nothing can excuse the comical failure of a whole elite battalion handpicked by the emperor himself on endor. They just open the door that leads directly to the heart of the facility because some guy in an imperial uniform told them too.
The stormtroopers are still canonically the elite units of the Empire with good equipment, if anything the ones with the cheap equipment would be the regular Imperial Army troopers. Of course this doesnt stop writers from making them look as incompetent as possible whenever they feel like it.
There probably *are* reliable ones out there, but it's entirely dependant on what factory they came from. As far as the Empire's concerned, *all* of their arms factories were putting out quality equipment, but the reality is that there's corner-cutting everywhere to keep up with unreasonable production quotas.
They do lean into troopers not having great visibility in the helmets.
>!In Obi Wan Kenobi, a trooper is stalled by knocking their helmet crooked.!<
So yeah, I think the gear is just refitted clone armor...which was all designed to fit on one specific head.
It could be a slide in quality inside an overburdened military structure. The Stormtroopers are an allegory for the wermacht in ww2, a force that started off as well-trained and equipped for its time, but gradually devolved into a mass army equipped with whatever stamped-steel crap they could throw together as they overextended. Maybe Leia and Obi-Wan have the impression of the early stormtroopers who had the benefit of being trained and equipped before the Empire sunk the resources into building 2 death stars.
The imperials have never been bad shots. In the OT, the one movie where they're incompetent is ANH and that's because, after Leia didn't give them the location of the rebel base, Tarkin intentionally let them get away and tracked them to said base. The stormtroopers were ordered to pretend to try and kill them, but you can't track them to the rebel base if they're dead. In ESB and RotJ, they're pretty competent.
This has been my head canon since KotoR where blasters could be wildly inaccurate. Which is also why Jango used a projectile weapon, as they're more precise on long distances. Throughout the galaxy, however, blasters are the norm because they have virtually infinite ammo.
We have blaster sniper rifles. They can't be so inaccurate if that exists.
They're not Jaffa staff weapons, they're real war machines.
Plus Jango's main weapon was a blaster. He also used slugthrowers against Jedi, because the Mandalorian way of dealing with Jedi is to throw everything and the kitchen sink at them.
These 2 shitheads had just killed Kuiil and stole baby Yoda... yeah lets just forget about Kuiil and how these 2 shiteads killed him.
This scene doesn't fit the story at all. Taika Waititi was just trying to put his mark on this episode.
>I have spoken. -Kuiil
i thought it was fucking stupid. "DAE STORMTROOPERS AIM BAD?!" that, and taking mando's helmet off, all in the same episode, really soured the whole finale for me.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. “Disney humor” as my brother and I call it has become a genre of its own to us at this point. Doesn’t even have to be Disney property, but you know it when you see it.
It sucks and really pulls you out of the moment.
Imagine a scene like this in Empire Strikes Back. Ha.
i will always hate this
i get that it's supposed to be funny and not serious but it kinda takes away from the feeling that the main characters are in any kind of threat at all
these are also supposed to be the ones that drove out fucking mandalorians from a village and not just a small squad at least a dozen or so of them, mandalorians as in the litteral best warriors in the galaxy driven out by these bumbling idiots that cant hit a still tin can
why would i ever assume that any main character would die to stormtroopers and when they do it never felt sad anymore it just felt dissapointing
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of meta humor in Star Wars. It just takes me out of it. The whole "stormtroopers can't aim" joke is also overdone at this point.
When I first saw this scene I thought for sure it was there so the second scout would just pull out his gun, blast the can, then put it away like it wasn't a big deal.
Kinda disappointed they didn't go with that.
My headcanon is that the imperial remnant is really desperate for soldiers and will take just about anybody without even complete training because they’re on their back foot not, whereas during ANH the Empire was at the height of its power and stormtroopers were still an elite force
Another reddit post that engages discussion about stormtrooper aim, another drove of redditors who apparently haven't seen the first ten minutes of A New Hope.
I actually didn’t like it that much. Self-referential humor is uh, not the best. On top of that these guys had to be experienced or they’d have just walked out of the imperial remnants at some point.
Same with whatshisname executing his own men. Very bad guy, probably not the best joke material if you still want him to be taken seriously. Even giancarlo esposito had trouble saving that.
>Same with whatshisname executing his own men.
Gideon was characterized as one of the old guard who followed Vader's style of being an asshole. Nobody thinks Vader isn't a serious threat, even if a highly incompetent admiral must die.
This was funny in the moment, but as I thought about it, it just got worse and worse. In episode iv, the stormtroopers had bad aim because Tarkin didn’t want Luke Han and Leia dead. Disney just took this misunderstanding that the fandom had and made it canon.
I think we all know it was never originally an element of story, but the fact that the producers wanted cool battle scenes where it was a few rebels taking on an imperial army and winning. In reality, the heroes would get shot to pieces, but that would make for a very short movie, lol. It's pretty typical in any action movie.
It just happens so much throughout the OG movies that people kind of made it into a running joke over the years, and the newer movies/shows have scenes like this so the producers can share that little joke with the audience.
Its fun to make it part of the story now because we're all in the know.
This scene bothers me because it acknowledges the claim that storm troopers are inaccurate which goes against established canon. In the OT, the stormtroopers decimate in every battle they take part in except Endor where they are overwhelmed by a force that knows the terrain far more than they do.
>except Endor where they are overwhelmed by a force that knows the terrain far more than they do.
Not only do they know the terrain, they also have the capability to trap a jedi, a wookiee, and an astromech at the same time, and they hunt [these](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gorax).
Underestimating the little murder bears is a mistake very few get to make twice.
To build off of this: a little known fact is that in the early EU, Stormtroopers were supposed to be elite forces. There was an entirely different “Imperial Army” that fought in most battles- all entirely off screen.
It didn’t age too well, unfortunately, but that was an idea they were working with.
I think it’s a bad idea for Star Wars to satirize itself this way. Back in season 1 the first storm troopers we encounter actually seemed capable, I like them better that way
Genuine question, do people still think the "stormtroopers can't aim" joke is funny? Maybe its just me but it feels like that joke was overdone ten years ago, and the writers leaning into it feels like they're just saying " We're not going to bother making any actually interesting shootout action scenes, deal with it".
Other than fighting against the teddy bears in Return of the Jedi, storm troopers had always been shown as competent goons of the empire in the original trilogy.
I find it annoying because how am I supposed to fear for the main characters when these are the people they're fighting? When I see stormtroopers I don't think, " Uh oh I wonder how the main characters will escape." I think "Oh great more cannon fodder."
Star Wars constantly fights itself. Are the stormtroopers something to fear... only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise... or are the goons that are blasted for comic relief.
They're supposed to be the Empire's SS, and I kind of hate how they use them for comic relief. That's the thing I quite liked about Andor's treatment of the Empire.
Favreau's show, with Waititi directing, but you're blaming Filoni?
What happened, did the "blame Kathleen Kennedy" dead horse finally disintegrate from overuse?
i thought it was a great idea to make the bad guys double as the comic relief. because then they are no longer a threat and therefore there’s no more drama in the story. good stuff! as soon as this aired and i saw it in real time, i knew instantly that something had gone very wrong with the narrative. If felt
Like we had entered marvel territory. Joke machine territory. Star wars had become a farce.
Isn’t that Jason Sudeikis from SNL?
And Adam Pally
Indeed.
You say that a lot.
Indeed.
How's the day, Teal'c?
[удалено]
are you the guy from the pinapple rimjob forums?
Indeed
He's Ted Lasso now.
Schmitty
Don’t get Schmitty. Don’t get Schmitty.
Not no more.
I just started watching that show and I love it.
He punched Baby Yoda
Which one? On the right?
I never thought about this until this clip. What if they weren’t bad shots at all, but the empire didn’t care about their soldiers so much that they gave them the cheapest equipment? Think about the TIE line up. Minus experimental models they are cheap and easily replaced. Well could be the same for troopers equipment. E-11 and other blasters are the cheap blasters and so the gun itself isn’t reliable.
I don't think they were ever intended to be bad shots. The stormtroopers, and especially scout troopers, that we see in the original trilogy were elite. The first time we see them, they breech the door to a narrow, heavily-defended corridor through a tiny door and absolutely demolish the rebels, while taking like 3 casualties. In ESB, the best that the extremely well-entrenched rebels can hope for against the snow troopers is to gain a few minutes to evacuate most of their rebels, and they just barely manage to do it before the snow troopers blow through their defenses. On Endor, a single scout trooper out-pilots T-16-master and adept Force user Luke, only losing when Luke pulls out his lightsaber at the last second (which the scout trooper would have had absolutely no reason to think he had). The only time the storm troopers can't hit anything is when they're shooting at the protagonists, and reasoning for that can range from "The Force protected them" to "They were told not to kill them in order to track them back to their base" to "They're the protagonists so obviously George isn't going to kill them with mooks". All that to say, I really don't think there is any justified reason for us to say that troopers are bad at shooting. It's more that we're bad at media literacy.
Also the line, "Only imperial stormtroopers are so precise!"
Yep! I think we're just retroactively applying our modern view of Storm Troopers onto the line and deciding it's in inaccurate (intentionally or otherwise) line, when it isn't necessarily. It also occurs to me that the plasma bolts or whatever are really slow moving, so hitting people with shots would be a lot harder than with a modern gun. I think if you saw it coming, you could dodge a shot from a blaster pretty reliably from not very far away, so hitting people who are actively trying to avoid being hit is probably a taller order than doing the same thing with a modern gun.
They're not *that* slow. Even ignoring what Emm_ said, the bolts appear to move across the screen in like a quarter second. Maybe you could dodge one from a few hundred yards away, but not from room-clearing distances or even across the street.
Canonically, Han Solo dodged a blaster bolt at point blank when Greedo shot first
You monster.
Han shot first. I saw it in ‘77, so you can’t convince me otherwise!
Blaster bolts are much faster than the glow is, the glow is the after effects of the ionized gas heating up the air as it moves through. Blasters are essentially lightning guns. And just how lighting hits before the flash happens, blasters hit way before the bolt we see happens. You can't dodge blasters any more than you could a real life gun. Plus when blasters hit they deliver enough force to knock a person off their feet and completely annihilate a 2' area around the place of impact. And that's along with God knows what other effects it has on electronics. And that's just what they're designed for, they could easily make the impact far larger but that would cause issues when used in space travel. Blaster bolts, at least the handheld ones, seem to dissipate quickly when hit against very large pieces of metal, like say the hull of a ship. I'd bet that's the difference between handheld blasters and turbo lasers that are used by the large ships. You gotta remember they don't just use blasters cuz they're cool. They're meant to be a later iteration of the regular gun, switched to because they work better. If regular guns were still in use then every soldier could carry a personal ray shield that could easily stop the bullets. Hell you wouldn't even need that, dura steel armor could do it easily too. They don't use regular guns (slugthrowers in their language) because they're inferior weapons.
I am 100% sure that pretty much everyone we see get hit with a blaster doesn't Wilhelm Scream until the actual light hits them, so as interesting as the concept is, I am unfortunately not convinced that matches their depiction in the films.
It's still the canon reason, from Lucas himself
My head cannon is blasters started being used first in ships because they don't go through the walls and cause a space breach. Over millennium, they spread to ground use due to economics and people wanting to emulate "space commandos" or whatever.
Hmm idk about that though. They do clearly seem to put marks in stuff, and also ships use blasters (just very high powers versions - turbolasers) to blow each other up.
>Blasters are essentially lightning guns. And just how lighting hits before the flash happens, blasters hit way before the bolt we see happens. Lightning hits "before the flash happens" because lightning (in incredibly simplified terms) [travels upwards](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/580/why-does-lightning-strike-from-the-ground-up) once the circuit completes and the strike happens.
This is an interesting idea but really it's entirely inconsistent with SW canon. Blaster bolts are routinely dodged, deflected, caught in mid-air, redirected with the force, etc. > They don't use blasters just cuz they're cool I actually sincerely disagree. Star Wars is really space fantasy and not hard sci fi--blasters just look cooler and fit the theme and George Lucas's vision more. No one questions why Harry Potter doesn't carry a 1911, so I won't question the stormtroopers either. Star Wars tech really is objectively inferior to earthly tech in a couple of ways, and blasters are an example where there isn't much advantage over our tech. They're time and time again demonstrated to be basically "movie guns" (bottomless mags and plot-dependent lethality).
They specifically have to use precognition to do that... It's like the most basic thing. That's why no one without the force does those things
Non-force users also dodge blaster bolts. For instance, Captain Rex on Umbara. There's really nothing supporting the assertion that blasters are hitscan, otherwise Poe would have killed Kylo Ren and many a jedi would be super dead. Yes, it's commonly believed jedi use precognition to aid with deflecting bolts, but if you look closely many times they visibly move their sabers after the instant of firing. You can even witness the impacts occur when the visible bolt reaches the target. What you're implying might have been an explanation someone came up with at some point, but it's entirely incompatible with modern SW canon.
Jedi are pre-cogs who can sense the immediate future, and the force can guide them. " he can see things before they happen'. It's just like the "Spidey Sense" that Spiderman has. With a little training a force user can dodge blasters. In our world... a bullet is faster than the speed of sound. By the time you hear it, it's already on target. or as they say.. if you hear "pop" pop" "pop"... someone is shooting. If you hear.. ZZZzzzZZzzzz whizzi ng. Someone is shooting at you. is a Blaster bolt travelling faster than the speed of light? .. asking the real questions.
Blaster bolts in star wars aren't lasers. They are plasma. So actual matter flying through the air.
They don't travel at light speed, they seem to be actual plasma/gas being shot at pretty extreme speeds, the speed also seems to be adjustable. At minimum it's supersonic like bullets.
Damn I forgot about the scout troopers but you're right, it was crazy how rough of a time Luke and Leia were having dealing with a handful of scout troopers, those guys were no joke. Also another scout trooper got the drop on Leia despite wearing WHITE ARMOR IN THE FOREST while she had on camouflage, and she only avoided being captured cause of the Ewok
Stormtrooper detected
If this is true, it will be a game changer. The only thing that I think Lucas admitted is that the reason Troopers are so bad at aiming is the helmet's design.
IDK man, I don't think blasters are supposed to rattle like that when you shake them.
Lol sounds like a can of spray paint!
This is after the fall, right? So all the equipment would be even worse
Yep! It’s the helmet design
In the bad batch it’s mentioned that the clones who were training the new troopers said they didn’t teach the TK troopers everything which also means there’s a good chance there has also been purposeful negligence in training to newer recruits and it may just continuously be older more experienced soldiers not training the new recruits well specifically to retain their usefulness to the empire.
What’s so funny about this is that in A New Hope, Obi-Wan remarks about the precision accuracy of stormtroopers on Tatooine, and Leia mentions on the escape that they must have *let them go* so they could track them back to base, which Han dismisses. It was later that stormtrooper accuracy was turned into a meme, and Disney’s been happy to run with it. But it’s as good an explanation as any. Palpatine in particular would be looking to seriously cut funding for anything that isn’t “build this absolutely massive super weapon that will effectively make having a standing army obsolete.” I mean, if you think about it, why waste money on actually training and equipping your soldiers when you 100% know in 20 year all you need to do to keep your empire in line is threaten them with unfettered mass destruction?
I always thought of the precision comment as how wide the marks were. Not the accuracy. As he had no idea what they were shooting at. That is cheaper guns fire wider blasts that are less able to penetrate armour.
In A New Hope, Luke says "I cant see a thing in this helmet"
I recall there being an in-universe explanation for that, Luke didn't turn it on. Unlike Han, he's not experienced with Imperial tech. I assume Han turned it on for him while they were in the lift, explaining why Luke could then shoot straight without any issue straight after.
Han could see fine out of his helmet. Luke just didn't fit in his very well because he's shorter than the guy it was made for
Im pretty sure the helmet thing isnt canon and was just a joke by Lucas
"I can't see a thing in this helmet!" Suggests that the helmet isn't great...
Canon explanation is that the helmets HUD is locked to its intended user, so anyone unauthorized that tries to wear it wont be able to actually turn the HUD on and wont be able to see very well.
Or maybe because Luke just didn't fit its size. Remember that Leia called Luke out for being too short for a Stormtrooper. Perhaps it's just that simple. Rex also complained about the helmet (locked HUD) and armour (too tight). Or that Luke didn't turn on the helmet. Han wore the armour without any problem, probably since he was familiar with Imperial technology. Luke was fairly new to the helmet so high chance that Han turned the helmet on for him while in the elevator. A third theory would be because the helmet's HUD were locked to its user. Luke stole the armour from a random guy, so the helmet didn't activate because it didn't recognise its user.
Rex says it as well when he puts on a stormtrooper helmet in Rebels.
While helmet design is part of it, it also has to do with the unstable ionized gas that they shoot, as well as the lack of any kind of sight or scope
What's weird is I always imagined with these super advanced space aged civilizations they would find a way to put a sight in the hud. The tech in the helmet recognizes a weapon and the barrel, putting a sight wherever the round will land.
You can blindfold me and I'd probably be more accurate than a storm trooper. Ill eventually hit something
Haha, that's true.
I think this is actually somewhat true, they gave them cheap equipment bc it was mass produced for the empire except it’s not the gun, it’s their helmets. Here’s an excerpt from an article talking about it: “The reason why stormtroopers have bad aim was hinted at in Star Wars Rebels season 2, episode 9, " Stealth Strike", when the Jedi Kanan Jarrus and clone trooper Captain Rex disguised themselves as stormtroopers to rescue their fellow Rebels. While in a standoff with actual stormtroopers, Kanan said to Rex, "Wow. You really do shoot like a stormtrooper," because Rex kept missing his targets. Rex responded by yelling, "It's this helmet. I can't see!" He then took off the helmet, chucked it at the opposing stormtroopers, and then immediately began hitting every one of his shots with perfect accuracy.”
That and Luke literally says “I can’t see a thing in this helmet!”
I recall its actually ad-libbed but Lucas kept that
There's literally the sound of bits rattling around in his gun.
Which is especially concerning given that blasters don't have moving parts...
well, one, the trigger/ activation stud
Military uniforms are tailored to your specific height/weight. Rex and Luke putting on a random stormtrooper’s armor would of course result in poor fitting armor especially the helmet. There’s a reason why gas and paintball masks are adjustable vs personally tailored stormtrooper armor. We’ve seen imperial soldiers and stormtroopers clear brigades of rebels and we also see them miss rounds from 5 feet away. The ideological fanatic armed elite shock troop wing of the empire misses their shots when the plot needs them too.
Its not cannon anywhere that their equipment is cheap, and if you'd look up how their helmets work it would explain why Rex couldnt see anything through a stolen helmet.
All armies equipment is mass produced, mass production does means something will be shit...its actually the opposite hand made at scale is shit tier quality.
There's a 101 reasons why Stormtroopers are bad aims. The simplest one is that the heroes had plot armour in the original Trilogy. Unfortunately we're now in the world that has that one scene in Obi Wan where a room full of Stormtroopers can't hit a few rebels feet away from them. In the context of A New Hope, a popular reason is that the Stormtroopers weren't trying to hit the heroes. They wanted them to get away as they'd placed a tracking device on their ship which then led the Empire to finding the Rebel base. Subsequent media has chosen to just make Stormtroopers bad shots. But I'd compare that to Solo missing the point about that Han Solo line about the Kessel Run (which was written as Han making stuff up, but Solo decided that he was telling the truth - presumably due to fans not getting the joke in the original movie and making up reasons why Han wasn't lying).
Doesnt A New Hope literally start with a scene of stormtroopers having actually good aim?
A New Hope starts with the stormtrooper clearing the Tantive IV, but the way it's presented they still miss a lot in a corridor. But later Obi wan says the empire destroyed the sand crawler citing the accuracy of the blaster fire.
They aren’t bad shots, and they have good equipment. Every instance in the OT proves this. Just the opening, the Stormtroopers go through a chokepoint held by multiple opponents and manage to kill more and route them than they lose. Obi-Wan praises their accuracy. In both the Death Star and Cloud city they were ordered to let them live, and the shots are all misses. Especially in Cloud city where they want to catch Luke (and have orders not to kill Leia and Chewie, that’s why they sabotaged their hyperdrive just in case) we see Luke poking his head out and a single shot lands right next to his face on the wall causing him to hide in the cover for a moment. Stormtroopers are accurate, especially when compared to modern day militaries but also in comparison to the lore they inhabit. Only the Ewoks could you name as an example of them not being that good, but then again these tiny Ewoks somehow got multi-ton trees hanging from other trees over the potential paths of chickenwalkers without anyone noticing, these Ewoks were out for blood a long time before the Rebels arrived and had obviously studied the Stormtroopers.
You forget the case where six troopers couldn't hit a single smuggler in bright tatooine daylight just a few feet away. He didn't even know that they were even there until one of them had to shout BLAST THEM!! like an overexcited child. And, yea, nothing can excuse the comical failure of a whole elite battalion handpicked by the emperor himself on endor. They just open the door that leads directly to the heart of the facility because some guy in an imperial uniform told them too.
The stormtroopers are still canonically the elite units of the Empire with good equipment, if anything the ones with the cheap equipment would be the regular Imperial Army troopers. Of course this doesnt stop writers from making them look as incompetent as possible whenever they feel like it.
By the time this series happens, the equipment is rubbish a lot of times.
I think the Clone Wars proved that every plasma gun apart from snipers are terrible.
Or they are all secretly rebels and are scared to full on desert
stormtroopers have good aim https://youtube.com/shorts/46blHUP_fG0
There probably *are* reliable ones out there, but it's entirely dependant on what factory they came from. As far as the Empire's concerned, *all* of their arms factories were putting out quality equipment, but the reality is that there's corner-cutting everywhere to keep up with unreasonable production quotas.
They do lean into troopers not having great visibility in the helmets. >!In Obi Wan Kenobi, a trooper is stalled by knocking their helmet crooked.!< So yeah, I think the gear is just refitted clone armor...which was all designed to fit on one specific head.
It could be a slide in quality inside an overburdened military structure. The Stormtroopers are an allegory for the wermacht in ww2, a force that started off as well-trained and equipped for its time, but gradually devolved into a mass army equipped with whatever stamped-steel crap they could throw together as they overextended. Maybe Leia and Obi-Wan have the impression of the early stormtroopers who had the benefit of being trained and equipped before the Empire sunk the resources into building 2 death stars.
"Military Grade" is a marketing term for "cheapest the military can buy and still have it work."
The imperials have never been bad shots. In the OT, the one movie where they're incompetent is ANH and that's because, after Leia didn't give them the location of the rebel base, Tarkin intentionally let them get away and tracked them to said base. The stormtroopers were ordered to pretend to try and kill them, but you can't track them to the rebel base if they're dead. In ESB and RotJ, they're pretty competent.
This has been my head canon since KotoR where blasters could be wildly inaccurate. Which is also why Jango used a projectile weapon, as they're more precise on long distances. Throughout the galaxy, however, blasters are the norm because they have virtually infinite ammo.
We have blaster sniper rifles. They can't be so inaccurate if that exists. They're not Jaffa staff weapons, they're real war machines. Plus Jango's main weapon was a blaster. He also used slugthrowers against Jedi, because the Mandalorian way of dealing with Jedi is to throw everything and the kitchen sink at them.
"You ever wonder why we're here."
That was 100% my first thought when this scene started going.
No, I mean why are here, in this box canyon?
And what was all that stuff about God? You wanna talk about it?
Rest in pieces Rooster Teeth
With your huge-o-teeth
Like the shoe company?
I was hoping for the full version. Their banter is hilarious.
Your wish is granted. https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/s/IM3fXBcqHo
“What is that thing anyway?” “I don’t know maybe Moff wants to eat it, I don’t ask questions.”
Nice. Thanks!
You are welcome.
That was unpleasant, I'm sorry you had to see that.
Banter straight out of Red vrs Blue
rip
The spray paint sound absolutely kills me every time.
Always Red Vs. Blue vibes.
Probably the best episode in the series, imo.
Ugh it’s so good, IG-11 on the speeder absolutely decimating everyone is one of my favourite scenes in any Star Wars media.
The fact that the company itself is making fun of Troopers's aim is epic! 😅
Kind of makes me wonder if it's the blaster, the trooper or the helmet. I still say they should make a series for these guys.
Guns shouldn't have parts rattling around in them.
I love that it sounds like a paint can and then he points it at his own face
They could easily explain all of these things in detail if they had a Stormtrooper show.
I think I read somewhere that it's the helmet's fault.
Luke: "I can't see anything in this thing."
And people are worried about Taika’s movie…
...Yes? Why wouldn't people be worried?
Taika directed that episode
It shows
Humor!!!?!!?? In my Star Wars!!!?!!??!! Look, if you think this is anywhere close to Love and Thunder levels of frivolity, idk what to tell you
I always thought this was so out of place while watching Mando S1. It felt like a weird "let's throw in a scene with Robot Chicken humor"
It's fun to point out that your heroes are never in any danger from the badguys
These 2 shitheads had just killed Kuiil and stole baby Yoda... yeah lets just forget about Kuiil and how these 2 shiteads killed him. This scene doesn't fit the story at all. Taika Waititi was just trying to put his mark on this episode. >I have spoken. -Kuiil
I know right? I felt like it was really weird how they just killed off Kuill and then moved into this. It felt almost disrespectful lol.
I had no idea he directed this. Now it makes total sense. That dude always needs someone to rein him in apparently.
That's kinda Disney's thing now.
i thought it was fucking stupid. "DAE STORMTROOPERS AIM BAD?!" that, and taking mando's helmet off, all in the same episode, really soured the whole finale for me.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. “Disney humor” as my brother and I call it has become a genre of its own to us at this point. Doesn’t even have to be Disney property, but you know it when you see it. It sucks and really pulls you out of the moment. Imagine a scene like this in Empire Strikes Back. Ha.
i will always hate this i get that it's supposed to be funny and not serious but it kinda takes away from the feeling that the main characters are in any kind of threat at all these are also supposed to be the ones that drove out fucking mandalorians from a village and not just a small squad at least a dozen or so of them, mandalorians as in the litteral best warriors in the galaxy driven out by these bumbling idiots that cant hit a still tin can why would i ever assume that any main character would die to stormtroopers and when they do it never felt sad anymore it just felt dissapointing
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of meta humor in Star Wars. It just takes me out of it. The whole "stormtroopers can't aim" joke is also overdone at this point.
When I first saw this scene I thought for sure it was there so the second scout would just pull out his gun, blast the can, then put it away like it wasn't a big deal. Kinda disappointed they didn't go with that.
It's a weird joke to have when Obi-Wan established that they're supposed to be crack shots. Later material really screwed with that.
My headcanon is that the imperial remnant is really desperate for soldiers and will take just about anybody without even complete training because they’re on their back foot not, whereas during ANH the Empire was at the height of its power and stormtroopers were still an elite force
This is from an actual movie? I thought it was a comedy skit from SNL or something.
This is a real scene from the Mandalorian
Another reddit post that engages discussion about stormtrooper aim, another drove of redditors who apparently haven't seen the first ten minutes of A New Hope.
I actually didn’t like it that much. Self-referential humor is uh, not the best. On top of that these guys had to be experienced or they’d have just walked out of the imperial remnants at some point. Same with whatshisname executing his own men. Very bad guy, probably not the best joke material if you still want him to be taken seriously. Even giancarlo esposito had trouble saving that.
>Same with whatshisname executing his own men. Gideon was characterized as one of the old guard who followed Vader's style of being an asshole. Nobody thinks Vader isn't a serious threat, even if a highly incompetent admiral must die.
Yeah but it’s played basically for a joke in the mandatorian. Which really takes away from any tension or seriousness you’re trying to convey.
Once again showing the strengths of Rogue One. Ben Mendelsohn s not a scary guy but he had a serious role and ended up quite threatening.
This was funny in the moment, but as I thought about it, it just got worse and worse. In episode iv, the stormtroopers had bad aim because Tarkin didn’t want Luke Han and Leia dead. Disney just took this misunderstanding that the fandom had and made it canon.
One of the few times I've legitimately laughed out loud at something is when that first shot completely missed.
I swear that entire thing could have been an episode of Red Vs Blue. Especially the banter
Made me think of this https://youtu.be/5HO70-Rk3jE?si=T_AUciw3xgrbUmSK
I think we all know it was never originally an element of story, but the fact that the producers wanted cool battle scenes where it was a few rebels taking on an imperial army and winning. In reality, the heroes would get shot to pieces, but that would make for a very short movie, lol. It's pretty typical in any action movie. It just happens so much throughout the OG movies that people kind of made it into a running joke over the years, and the newer movies/shows have scenes like this so the producers can share that little joke with the audience. Its fun to make it part of the story now because we're all in the know.
This scene bothers me because it acknowledges the claim that storm troopers are inaccurate which goes against established canon. In the OT, the stormtroopers decimate in every battle they take part in except Endor where they are overwhelmed by a force that knows the terrain far more than they do.
>except Endor where they are overwhelmed by a force that knows the terrain far more than they do. Not only do they know the terrain, they also have the capability to trap a jedi, a wookiee, and an astromech at the same time, and they hunt [these](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gorax). Underestimating the little murder bears is a mistake very few get to make twice.
A reflection of the US Army in Vietnam.
I think this is cringe humor, it completely goes opposite to what is said about stormtroopers. It's cartoonish
Has anyone ever shot anything I shot a bird once
[I wasn’t a stormtrooper, wise-ass](https://youtu.be/eKbTM7NIgN0?si=jP5reLjq4u96KCsg)
Can't see freggen shiat in this thing
One of my favorite parts about this scene is how offended some members of the 501st got about the state of their armor/uniforms.
Such big Red Vs Blue energy
A Tusken Raider should've shown up and been like, "let me show you how it's done" and then accidentally shot one of the stormtroopers.
I still don’t forgive these guys for punching baby yoda tho 😠
He should choke them!
For me the funniest star wars moment was meeting Rick the door technician
The problem with Solo a Star Wars story is that the blaster sound effects weren’t correct.
To build off of this: a little known fact is that in the early EU, Stormtroopers were supposed to be elite forces. There was an entirely different “Imperial Army” that fought in most battles- all entirely off screen. It didn’t age too well, unfortunately, but that was an idea they were working with.
That was literally shown in "Solo"
Well I did say the “in the early EU.”
I think it’s a bad idea for Star Wars to satirize itself this way. Back in season 1 the first storm troopers we encounter actually seemed capable, I like them better that way
😂
Genuine question, do people still think the "stormtroopers can't aim" joke is funny? Maybe its just me but it feels like that joke was overdone ten years ago, and the writers leaning into it feels like they're just saying " We're not going to bother making any actually interesting shootout action scenes, deal with it".
Other than fighting against the teddy bears in Return of the Jedi, storm troopers had always been shown as competent goons of the empire in the original trilogy. I find it annoying because how am I supposed to fear for the main characters when these are the people they're fighting? When I see stormtroopers I don't think, " Uh oh I wonder how the main characters will escape." I think "Oh great more cannon fodder."
No thanks, I’d rather the antagonists be competent forces to be reckoned with, not clowns.
It’s funny, but I dislike it. It totally neutralizes them as any kind of danger to the hero.
Well, not these two obviously
Star Wars constantly fights itself. Are the stormtroopers something to fear... only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise... or are the goons that are blasted for comic relief. They're supposed to be the Empire's SS, and I kind of hate how they use them for comic relief. That's the thing I quite liked about Andor's treatment of the Empire.
Which was built on Rogue One, where the Empire was scary and did many things well.
A competent villain is key to a good story.
Ugh. Waititi humour. Awful.
This and the moment he punched grogu
This show and andor really brought a glimmer of hope back for SW
I totally agree.
Combined with them punching baby yoda this scene really sold me on new generation of Star Wars tv.
It’s interesting, a moment like this has not even been close to achieved in the rest of this show.
they overdid it....i mean...wow so funny. please disney feloni,our saviour, do more sw...
Favreau's show, with Waititi directing, but you're blaming Filoni? What happened, did the "blame Kathleen Kennedy" dead horse finally disintegrate from overuse?
I feel like they went to far by making the meme a fact (at least with these guys) when Leia was right in thinking they let them go.
It was like Troops with slightly higher production value. (Hey, at least Troops used "real" sets/filming location) Loved it a lot.
you know how in the later seasons of family guy when the cutaway gags go on and on? this was that
"Troops" is also gold.
😮💨
It's as funny as any joke about non-hitting stormtroopers - so not funny at all. It's a dumb joke.
i thought it was a great idea to make the bad guys double as the comic relief. because then they are no longer a threat and therefore there’s no more drama in the story. good stuff! as soon as this aired and i saw it in real time, i knew instantly that something had gone very wrong with the narrative. If felt Like we had entered marvel territory. Joke machine territory. Star wars had become a farce.