#stormtrooper marksmanship

I’m going to make the argument that Star Wars’s Imperial stormtroopers, who most regard as notorious for their poor accuracy are actually reasonably good at shooting. The problem lies not in the accuracy of the stormtroopers rather in that the people they usually are seen shooting at are main characters who by the laws of fiction and cinema are not allowed to get hit. 

Ever heard of the concept of plot armor? It’s a term used to describe the phenomenon of a character who is relevant to the main plot (for example, a protagonist or important supporting character) being able to dodge or shrug off any attack thrown at them. There are cases of characters being hit or injured even with plot armor, but in these cases it’s usually not fatal. For example, in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker gets shot in his prosthetic hand in Return of the Jedi and keeps going, and Princess Leia gets shot in the arm in the same movie and is hardly worse off for it. There are also cases of characters with plot armor losing said plot armor when the plot deems them no longer necessary. In Star Wars, this is apparent when a character who has fought legions of enemy droids or stormtroopers suddenly gets impaled or shot dead. It does happen. 

Now, back to the stormtroopers. Think about this for a moment. How many times does a stormtrooper shoot at a main character versus a plot-irrelevant character like a generic rebel soldier? Notice any difference? To break it down, whenever the stormtroopers shoot at a main character (like Luke, Han and Leia) they almost always miss. However, when they’re shooting at rebel soldiers or other generic characters, they are frighteningly accurate. More accurate than real-life modern soldiers perhaps. Rogue One is a prime example. Apart from the main characters who usually dodge everything, everyone else takes plenty of shots from the stormtroopers and most don’t even survive to tell the tale. The same thing with the stormtroopers raiding the Tantive IV in A New Hope. The stormtroopers take down rebel after rebel with ease.