Full Series Will the stormtroopers be the new battle droids?

BAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Well okay the EU thing might be true.

...But seriously, while the stormtroopers in the OT might not have been played for laughs the way the battle droids increasingly were - and that might indeed be a legitimate concern to worry about - they were still just a standard bunch of expendable faceless goons. I can understand arguments about how the Imperials need to present a legitimate threat, but please don't start them off by talking about how tough stormtroopers have traditionally been.

 

Yep. I confessed in one of my comments on the various character intro vids that probably my foremost issue with what we've seen so far is this: Whenever the heroes are engaging the Imperials, they look and act as though they simply haven't a care in the world!

I mean, honestly, Sabine is laughing, openly mocking the Stormtroopers and literally dancing around blaster fire (which, cartoon, or not, I can barely stomach). She's acting as if she's having the time of her life. Zeb was no different. Bashing around the Stormtroopers with an utter sense of ease and cracking more jokes about their ineptitude. And guess what? Ezra's clip was exactly more of the same.

Not once - not even for a single, fleeting moment - did I ever fear for the safety of the heroes.

And as I say, to me, it's not really a poor reflection on the merits of the hero characters, so much as it's an issue with how lightly, how... completely non-threatening the show's producers are treating the Imperials.

It's as if the Stormtroopers are a complete non-issue for the crew of the Ghost. Put there simply for the amusement of the heroes.

I want to love this show. I really, honestly do. But these character vids? To me, it's all terrifically difficult to watch. There's no sense of conflict or drama. Just a bunch of foolish, hokey silliness acting as background, while the heroes make jokey quips and laugh it up.


I agree with you, TG - the Stormtroopers should be able to be taken out, and I don't think anyone is saying that they should be some kind of an unstoppable fighting force (okay, maybe the 501st).

But there should absolutely be a sense of foreboding, a sense of danger and threat in the hearts of the good guys whenever Stormtroopers, or any other agents of the Empire, enter the picture.

Not a sense of, "here come the follies!"

Otherwise, what do we care if the heroes are victorious? It was all just a game, anyway, right?

 

^ That.

 

As I said elsewhere, I feel that the flippant way the crew seems to approach their wanton slaughter actually makes them anti-heroes to some degree. When I see people approach killing that way it doesn't make me think the show is childish, it makes me think they are cold-blooded killers.

 

I'm not sure they are cold blooded killers, just because it doesn't seem like many of the stormtroopers actually die, even when they by all accounts should. A TIE pilot gets hit with Ezra's slingshot and it just seems to knock him out. Bashing stormtrooper heads together seems to be Zeb's thing and those individuals could all still be alive. Sabine blows up a TIE Fighter in very close proximity to some stormtroopers and iirc, they are seen stirring a bit after the explosion and weren't killed. Now obviously those stormtroopers that are shot or are in an exploding TIE Fighter in space are likely dead, but all the stormtroopers that the heroes go out of their way to confront seem to conveniently survive things such as huge explosions at close proximity. TIE Fighter shrapnel is apparently Styrofoam.

 

I remember someone - I guess it was you - saying that, and I think it's an interesting take. Certainly more... constructive than my own, I admit.

I don't know that I buy into it - not from anything we've seen yet (okay, maybe Kanan's tossing the grenade into the lap of the biker) - but I'm not about to denounce it, out-of-hand, either.

Time will tell.

 

The stormtroopers were tough they completely destroyed the rebels on the tantive iv, and blasted threepio to smytherines.

 

Ooh, yeah, blowing up an unarmed noncombatant protocol droid. That'll put the fear of Force into everyone.

 

But they killed all the rebels on the tantive iv and hoth, and the rebels suffered extremely heavy casualties on endor and yavin.

 

Most of the Rebels fled Hoth in time due to Ozzel coming out've light speed too close to the system and the Hoth ion canon was taking down Star Destroyers and blowing a gap through the Imperial blockade so the near entire Rebel fleet escaped the planet and system unscathed. The AT-AT's were going down pretty fast and appeared to lacked aerial support, you had no Tie Fighters protecting the AT-AT, the AT-ST's were mostly cut otve the movie and disappear after one shot, no Tie Bombers softening up the Rebel defenses and not even the AT-AT's had adequate infantry support nor did have anti-aircraft canons(the Hasbro newer AT-AT toy actually adds something nice in that regard as they added hidden roof mounted anti-aircraft defensiveness canons ) all of which I have yet to ever understand why. I do not think the Empire was tactically minded and were filled with complete blundering and largely incompetent cardboard villainous idiots which was why Spaceballs really mocked them badly but also truthfully. Lucas really wasnt going for a the Empire being a legit threat more Saturday morning cartoon good vs evil and was imitating the WWII war movies where the German forces are largely filled with megalomaniac leaders and a largely oversized but ill trained fighting men where often just there to get killed or captured by the GI or allied agent. Even General Veers was to have died in some cut scene so we're lucky with the end cut we got I think.

Lucas's Special Editions shouldve inserted more and longer warfare action sequences instead of mostly nonsense scenes or changes.

 

I meant the unseen firefight in echo base, the 501st completely annihilated them

 

Isn't it only the two AT-ATs that go down? It's been a long time since I've seen ESB, but I thought it was only the one that Wes and Wedge take down, and then the one that Luke takes out with a grenade.

Ozzel was "clumsy" and he jeopardized the plan to catch the Rebels off guard and take Luke alive. But other than that, only two AT-ATs went down, both of which seemed like they were due to Luke's quick thinking. That the AT-ATs armor was too strong for blasters didn't seem like common knowledge, since Luke seemed to just come to that realization and inform the other pilots. And the decision to trip them using the tow cables just seemed like a plan improvised on the spot.

Two heavy vehicles get dropped by the Rebels, but in return we see the Rebels in full retreat, at least three snowspeeders are taken out (including Luke's), the Rebel's shield generator is taken out, and Echo Base is overrun by the Empire. Ozzel messed up and cost Vader his goal of capturing Luke, and perhaps putting the fleet too close to the range of the ion cannon, but the battle on the planet's surface went pretty efficiently IMO.

I think the stormtroopers/Imperial armor units, etc. need to be treated collectively, not individually. Yes, stormtroopers die. But more keep coming. As a force, they pretty much always push the heroes back. Two AT-ATs went down on Endor via unexpected means (I don't think the Imperials anticipated tow cable trip wires or a lightsaber that could cut through an AT-ATs armor), but the turrets were useless, the snowspeeders were going down, the Rebel infantry were useless and in full retreat, and Echo Base was overrun.

We never really see the Rebels take the stormtroopers head on and come out the other side still alive. They might be forced into a fight with the Imperials, they might take out some stormtroopers, but virtually always they are forced to retreat. The Battle of Endor is the only exception, but the Rebels also had the unexpected help of the locals, which I doubt Palpatine or any of the officers on Endor foresaw joining the conflict.

But in Rebels, we see Zeb do the exact opposite of what we see in the OT. We do see him go looking for a fight, we do see him take the stormtroopers head on, and we see him come out the other side still alive.

 

Not many clones died (assuming they are clones since they are the 501st) maybe 1 or 2 like the tantive iv but that's probably it.

 

Doesnt look like anymore than 4 AT-AT's were deployed in the movie. The movie shows 2 destroyed, 3 if counting the General Veers cut scene , quite a devastating loss as two important Rebel transports and the bulk of the Rebel space vehicles and remaining fighting force successfully escaped they lost some men on the ground a few speeders but nothing substanial during that scene . Empire really sucked awfully bad, and if Veers did die really a crippling loss on the Imperial side as no one important died on the Rebels side and they escaped.

http://www.starwarz.com/tbone/echo-base-the-battle-of-hoth/

 

Holy crap, that website just gets more and more amazing.

 

We can all agree here that imperial infantry is far greater then the rebel infantry. Also, in an ESB scene a rebel signaled to one of the main characters (haven't seen the movie in a while) that the imperials have broken throughand then most of the rebels died.