Stormtrooper Small Arms Accuracy: A Narrative Analysis

I’m consistently behind the times on anything going on in pop culture. I never saw Firefly until it was already cancelled, I still haven’t seen the last season of Game of Thrones, and to the best of my knowledge I have never done anything “before it was cool”. So it should come as no surprise that I only recently got around to watching The Mandalorian. I give it my strong recommendation, but there were a couple of moments (no spoilers) that poked fun at stormtroopers being terrible marksmen. I’m not sure those were smart gags to make.

Even ignoring that it reduces the perceived threat of key antagonists, self-referential humor is always a two-edged sword. It often gives good fan service, but it feels lazy. If a creative team, trying to build a consistent and credible fiction, becomes aware of foibles in their universe that have become a running gag to fans, I’d prefer to see them fix those issues than simply lean into them. I understand that can be risky in an established setting, but if ever there was a place to start righting the ship, The Mandalorian was definitely it, with its unique tone and focus.

That’s all fine as far as it goes, but there is an even more scandalous reason I was bothered by the stormtroopers-can’t-shoot jokes. I hope you’re sitting down…because I argue that stormtroopers…can shoot just fine. Others have delved into this with frame-by-frame analysis of stormtrooper shots and hits (and produced some interesting results), but I think the real proof lies in a simpler, more narrative approach. It should go without saying the narrative in question is the original trilogy only, as these films are of unassailable reputation and first established (in the minds of fans) the myth of stormtrooper inaccuracy. Without further ado, let us review the engagements in which their marksmanship might be broadly assessed, either through observation or inference.

A New Hope

• As the film opens, stormtroopers raid Princess Leia’s ship. The defending crew make use of the limited available cover and take advantage of the enemy being forced through a choke point, but are nevertheless dispatched in short order.

• Off camera, stormtroopers immobilize a jawa sandcrawler, killing its occupants. Obi-Wan later comments on the precision of the attack as evidenced by the blaster damage. Given that no heavy artillery is ever shown being operated by the stormtroopers on Tatooine, it is safe to assume the enormous sandcrawler was disabled with small arms fire alone. To achieve such a feat in a finite amount of time would have required reasonable accuracy (not to mention technical savvy).

• Stormtroopers also raid the Lars homestead, but due to the destruction of the scene through explosion, fire, or both, it is impossible to learn anything.

• The next onscreen battle with the boys in white occurs as the Millennium Falcon leaves Mos Eisley. Now, conversely, they cannot hit the broad side of a barn…or large starship, if you prefer.

• Throughout the running gun battle on the Death Star, the stormtroopers are similarly unable to score a hit to save their lives, literally in many cases. (Others have posited these soldiers were missing on purpose to facilitate tracking the heroes back to the rebel base later on. I don’t subscribe to this theory, but to delve further would go beyond the scope of this report.)

The Empire Strikes Back

• Though heavy artillery in the form of Imperial walkers seems to have been the deciding factor in the Hoth battle at the beginning of Epiosde V, infantry in the form of stormtroopers are also seen in the battle, and we know the rebel defenses fell very quickly.

• Moving into Echo Base itself, little action is shown onscreen of the installation’s fall, but the ominous warning of, “Imperial troops have entered the base! Imperial troops have entered the- *static*,” gives the impression that the remaining rebel defenses were neutralized with efficiency.

• Moments later, we once again see the imperials attempting to prevent the takeoff of the Falcon, but once again they are woefully unable to do so.

• On Cloud City, the stormtroopers make a mess of the walls but are unable to tag Luke or the rest of the heroes even once as they run amok in the city.

Return of the Jedi

• The first blaster fire from stormtroopers in Episode VI occurs in the speeder bike chase with Luke and Leia. In this engagement a stormtrooper misses Leia with a small handgun but does manage to hit her speeder bike, resulting in her falling off. Another stormtrooper certainly would have hit Luke thrice with his bike’s cannon, despite firing from a weapons platform moving at a zillion miles per hour, but Luke had activated his lightsaber and blocks the shots.

• The Ewok battle (controversial, I know) offers a surprising dearth of stormtrooper blaster shooting. While a lot of blasts are shown, almost all come from AT-STs, whose pilots are not stormtroopers. Some small arms fire is traded between stormtroopers and the rebel strike force, but only Han and Leia are shown hitting anything. Still, only two of the rebel strike team members can be definitively seen in later shots, suggesting the stormtroopers inflicted casualties. Two dramatic hits are also shown, one on R2-D2 as he attempts to open the bunker door and a second to Leia’s arm (though it proves to be only a flesh wound).

The emergent trend should not be at all shocking to anyone who has seen, well, basically any movie ever. When stormtroopers shoot at nameless extras, they miss only enough for plausibility. When they shoot at the protagonists, they can rarely hit at all, and then only when it’s good for the story. The stormtroopers’ problem isn’t inaccuracy, it’s plot armor, as worn by the heroes, meaning they are no less accurate than the nameless minions in any other action film. Indiana Jones never gets shot either, but there are no running jokes about how Nazis don’t know how to shoot.

It stands to reason, then, that filmmakers in the Star Wars universe shouldn’t be particularly amused by cracks about stormtrooper accuracy, much less venture to make such jokes themselves. After all, this hasn’t been an expectation of any other action franchise, and nothing is gained by adding credence to so baseless an in-joke. Worse still, it’s inherently meta, and that’s not something I want from my Star Wars, any more than I want fourth-wall breaks or mock product placement where Luke’s X-wing parks itself. The real genius of Star Wars (and largely the core distinction between good and bad films in the franchise) is its internal consistency, its lived-in atmosphere, and anything else that helps it transport me into that world and live there for a couple of hours. This kind of humor takes me out of that world and slams be back on my sofa as surely as somebody saying Anakin “has been under a lot of stress”.

Even for the audience, making fun of stormtroopers for missing the heroes only makes sense if the same heckles are aimed at basically every action film ever made. And really…why would you want to? Who wants to see a version of Die Hard in which John McClane bleeds out from repeated submachinegun wounds by the end of the first reel? You want those faceless grunts to miss. You want the hero to survive the insurmountable odds and beat the bad guys with just duct tape and his wits. Realistic? No. But damned entertaining. So leave the anonymous mooks in the shiny white armor alone ‘cause it’s the story that matters, and within the frame of their story, they’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to.

So what do you think? Have I convinced you? Have I created a tiny dent in the juggernaut of this ongoing myth that stormtrooper accuracy is poor enough to deserve ridicule? Or have I lost my ever-loving mind? Comment below!