Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2024 23:48:41 GMT -6
The inept imperial troopers as marksmen in the original really ruined it for me. It felt like I was being asked to compromise needlessly to take in the story. This feeling then followed into the other films.
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Post by Finarvyn on Apr 14, 2024 4:49:22 GMT -6
Apparently, the volcano duel planet was assigned the name Sullust at some point, and this stuck throughout the 90s. I’ll have to track down those references. As to looking up early references, I'm guessing you have seen The Secret History of Star Wars which talks about Lucas' original concept and how it evolved into the Saga version of Star Wars. It's been a long time since I read it, but it seems pretty well researched. I thought we had a thread about that book, but I don't see one in a quick search.
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Post by Falconer on Apr 14, 2024 8:21:38 GMT -6
The inept imperial troopers as marksmen in the original really ruined it for me. “And these blast points, too accurate for Sand People. Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.” “You’re sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I’m taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.” “They let us go. It’s the only explanation for the ease of our escape.”
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Parzival
Level 6 Magician
Is a little Stir Crazy this year...
Posts: 392
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Post by Parzival on Apr 14, 2024 10:07:35 GMT -6
Meh. In any firefight, there are more misses than hits, even by trained soldiers. Everything goes haywire when the Wookie starts to swing. Also, Luke and Leia were both Force sensitives, meaning that they were likely unconsciously more accurate than one might assume.
Scenes with actual Stormtrooper combat: 1.) The fight on Princess Leia’s ship. The stormtroopers win this fight handily, with few casualties.
2.) Blasting out of Mos Eisley. This one happens fast, the troopers are entering against unknown opposition, and only Han is a viable target, and he leaps into the Falcon quickly. I can’t recall if any trooper is struck by his fire.
3.) Luke, Han and Chewie infiltrate and surprise the very few troopers in the detention center. The latter are not expecting a fight, and are mostly functionaries, not frontline battle troops. Plus, they don’t know who to shoot, other than maybe the Wookie, and suddenly are taking “friendly” fire. Even veteran troops can get caught flat-footed. 4.) The chase through the Death Star. Again, the troopers have limited intelligence as to what is going on, and aren’t initially expecting a fight. When charged, lacking orders, they run (probably conscripts). Han chases down a curving corridor, yelling; the stormtroopers suddenly connect with a larger body (and apparently an officer/non-com). Han gets a lucky shot and runs away back down same curving corridor, yelling. Whole thing is less than 15 seconds, if that, with little opportunity for an aimed shot by anybody.
5.) Luke and Leia at the “drawbridge.” Lots of misses here, but it’s at an awkward angle and elevation for the attackers, shooting into cover, while they have a lot less.. Nobody’s really getting off a good shot here. The swing across is unexpected, and a moving target. (In post-trilogy retrospect, this is a fight involving two Force sensitives, even if they don’t know it yet. They might be expected to be more “situationally accurate/harder to hit” than normal people. But that’s a retcon.)
6.) Escaping to the Falcon. Again, the Troopers don’t know L, H, C, and PL are in the hangar; they only first see them when Luke foolishly yells “NO!” at the apparent death of Ben. Very little time here, and the group escapes… but as Falconer points out, the escape is already planned. The troopers aren’t expected to take out the escapees, just give effective-looking pursuits.
After that, the first movie shows no more Stormtrooper action. In the final spacefighter assault on the Death Star, the TIEs perform well, giving as good as they get, until Luke and the Falcon enter the scene— at which point it all goes KABLOOEY.
Even in ESB, the Stormtroopers are not ineffective troops. They dominate in the Battle for Hoth, defeating the Rebel defenses handily, albeit delayed enough for the escape to happen.
Only in RotJ do they really become inept, being slaughtered by teddy bears armed with sticks and stones. But even then, they wind up winning… until Chewie shows up in the captured “chicken leg” walker, and opens fire— again, a moment of complete surprise from an apparent “friendly.”
Jokes of the last five decades aside, really the Stormtroopers are perfectly adequate (or better) troops. They just can’t act against “plot armor.” And I would point out, neither could any Indians when facing John Wayne.
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Post by geoffrey on Apr 14, 2024 19:23:52 GMT -6
In the original Star Wars movie, stormtroopers are stone-cold killers:
1. They easily win in a matter of, what, two minutes? aboard Leia's ship. 2. The TIE pilots blow-up 27 out of the 30 X-wings and Y-wings in something like 7 minutes.
Everything that the stormtroopers do on the Death Star was under the order to let Luke and company escape. This includes the four TIE pilots of the sentry ships. All those guys allowed themselves to be killed rather than disobey orders. And they were a 100% success. The Millennium Falcon led the Empire right to the Rebel base.
The only failure of the stormtroopers was missing Han in Mos Eisley when he was basically already walking up the ramp to his ship. That's it.
Think about it: The only reason that the Empire did not score a decisive victory in the 1977 Star Wars movie is because Luke used the Force. Nobody could have foreseen that or defended against it. Luke took everything to an entirely different level. Absent that, Luke would have missed, and within 3 minutes the TIE fighters would have destroyed the few remaining craft, and the Empire would have destroyed the moon with the Rebel base.
I give the stormtroopers a score of 99% in the original movie.
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Post by Falconer on Apr 14, 2024 19:39:34 GMT -6
Great thoughts. Is there any hint that Force sensitivity exists as a concept in SW77 ? It seems like maybe Luke was “meant” for greatness in some way, certainly for adventure rather than farming, and this was at least partially due to his paternity. It seems like Ben’s “powerful” ghost helped with that one-in-a-million shot. And I like this bit in the SW Radio Drama after the destruction of Alderaan: “You’re at war with life itself. You are enemies of the universe! Your Empire is doomed!” In other words, all the Fate Points are with the good guys after that. But the main factor just seems to be training. The reason most people don’t train in it is because it’s a dead religion. (“You, my friend, are all that’s left of their religion.” “I’ve never seen anything to make me believe that there’s one all-powerful Force controlling everything.”)
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