The case of stormtrooper marksmanship and second-hand moviegoing
You know the drill, stormtroopers can’t shoot for shit.
Or can they? Now that I think of it, their first appearance on the Tantive IV is pretty much a one-sided fight. A full ship of rebel fighters are waiting for them gun in hand, taking cover. The door asplode, a handful stormtroopers barges in and they lose one or two of their own while they proceed to absolutely wipe the floor with rebel troops.
Ben’s remark about their marksmanship when they explore the camp full of dead jawas? Yeah, those jawas seems pretty dead to me. I don’t think Ben is being sarcastic.
The battle of Hoth! Despite having been warned, packing up early and coming up with some clever if desperate tactics, you can’t say rebels have the upper hand here. The Empire, as they say, definitely struck back.
Also: dead ewoks.
In fact, the only moment they really seem to suck at shooting straight — more than your average henchman, I mean: you know they won’t one-shot-kill any protagonist before the 3rd act, but do they hit at least the good guys’ henchmen? — the only moment they seem to suck at shooting straight is on the Death Star.
To be fair they sure suck at it a lot. Enough to lower their average stat from “decent shooter” to “fucking nimrod”. They’re running after five people and a pair of droids — amongst which a giant furry thing, an old man and a wanted criminal — in tight corridors, thousands against one, and they can’t hit one goddamn thing. It’s positively headscratching for “stormtroopers” to suck that much at killing people. It’s, like, their main professionnal skill.
Maybe it’s on purpose? Maybe it’s a plot point. Maybe there’s
Leia: They let us go. It was the only reason for the ease of our escape.
Solo: Easy? You call that easy?
Leia: They’re tracking us.
a point in the story that explain why
Governor Tarkin: You’re sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I’m taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.
those killing machines suddenly miss the broad side of a spacebarn.
Ahem.
Now, I haven’t been the first alpha nerd to parrot the whole “aha stormtroopers can’t shoot for shit” gag in its endless permutations, one of my favorite being the whole red shirts vs stormtrooper strip by Shoeboxblog :
…but I’ve recently been paying double attention to movies I’m watching for the second (third, fourth…) time, because reasons, and stormtroopers aren’t bad shots for movie cannonfodder. I’d rank them a few notches above SPECTRE henchmen. Their first appearance is exactly what their name implies: a handful storms in, kills everybody, storms out. Job done with terrifying efficiency.
There are countless reasons why we parrot that talking point: nerd credentials, shared culture reinforcement, clique signaling, etc. It’s not what I’m after here: what I’m after is, the whole “stormtrooper can’t shoot” is a thing, right? A cliché, a trope, a lieu commun. It’s something we nerds associate with Star Wars lore so much, some official games use that as canon. That’s why stormtroopers’ blaster rifles can’t shoot straight in Dark Forces, the very first Star Wars FPS!
And yet it’s not true in the actual movies. It’s just something we nerds say about the movies. It’s so strong it’s a nerd-shared mental association. Stormtroopers? Can’t shoot for shit. But it’s just something people say about the movie. It’s not even said or shown in it. It’s just critical discourse. It’s not text.
And yet, the idea influences us Star Wars fans so fucking much we adhere to it despite the fact the movies themselves show us wrong. And tell us why. Explicitely.
A movie we know from front to back and have seen thousands times, and we still confuse what’s in the movie with what’s said about it.
Imagine how much we get wrong about movies we’ve only seen once, just because something people said about them.
