One thing that’s obvious that was mentioned in this video is that stormtroopers in Star Wars are constantly disrespected since they tend to goofed on constantly since they can’t hit anything, they go down so easily that it’s hard to think of them as dangerous, and they tend to be big pushovers that only get lucky now and again. But this kind of shows that everyone from George Lucas to J.J. Abrams made it clear that they either didn’t understand how to use their characters or they weren’t intent on telling a story that made sense with every scene. Ragging on Star Wars really isn’t my thing since I’m a fan, but at the same time, there are moments when the comics and the novels are a little more impressive since they allow the troopers to shine a little more. The animated series that have come out allow this as well, but even they go a bit over the top at times when it comes to giving the troopers the respect that their training deserves. If you’re thinking that the Empire loses because they’re the bad guys then you might need to read the books and see just how things go throughout the Legends canon and even in the current canon since the Empire and the First Order don’t train their troopers to be weak or inefficient.
On the contrary, stormtroopers are grilled relentlessly and are seen, at the most basic level, to be entirely replaceable. If one of them dies, one hundred more will take their place. If they fail in training then they weren’t good enough for the Empire. Their training is absolutely brutal since the Empire has the advantage of not caring whether they live or die, only if they do the job that they’ve been trained to do. With that being said it’s hard to think of why anyone would want to join the Empire if they felt that they weren’t being cared for, but then again, people join the military in the real world all the time and they have their reasons as well. The regular stormtroopers have it the worst since, despite the fact that their armor is supposed to disperse blasterfire and their helmets are supposed to grant them superior vision, they’re typically taken out quite easily in the movies, as even the Ewoks were able to take out the scout troopers, who are supposedly quite deadly since they have a greater range of movement and are trained as snipers as well. Imagine how the battle of Endor might have gone if the scout trooper had eliminated Leia from a distance instead of announcing his presence and then getting taken by surprise. That would have changed the story quite a bit.
Then think if flame troopers had been let loose on Hoth and roasted the Rebels within their base. Instead, they sent snow troopers since they were equipped to deal with the cold and thus served as the shock troopers at Vader’s command. The actual shock troopers, those that were able to make their own decisions on the fly, would have devastated the Rebels had they been allowed to engage more often, and it’s fair to say that death troopers amassed in numbers would have dampened the effect the Rebels might have had too. Each different trooper was trained for a different purpose, but one can only think of what might have occurred if some of them had been let off the chain in certain engagements. Of course, as the franchise has evolved so too have the troopers, meaning that back in the day when the movies were being made there were still only a few types of troopers and the others hadn’t been let loose on the big screen yet. As the franchise has continued to grow we’ve seen more and more developments come through, as the stormtroopers have changed just enough to receive several updates so that they can keep up with the current way of things. But in movies and even in the animated series they still haven’t gained the kind of reputation they really deserve.
The running joke for the longest time has been that a stormtrooper couldn’t hit a target if they were standing right in front of it, but the stories that feature them tell a different narrative entirely since the clones in the Clone Wars were supposedly great shots, and the stormtroopers that came after were trained to shoot to kill or at least hit their target when using the stun function. This whole idea of them missing so horribly is kind of hard to fathom after reading the stories since in the books they’re designed to be little more than killing machines that are supposedly crack shots in some cases and capable of handling themselves in a fight.
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