Remember, in A New Hope the stormtroopers on the Death Star are missing on purpose. They want to put up a token resistance to let the gang escape with the tracker onboard.
I’m well aware that across most of the rest of the franchise Stormtroopers generally are bad shots.
However I argue that it is easy to view the entire original trilogy as Stormtroopers being competent. A New Hope is easy as you already pointed out that they were supposed to let them go. Plus the off screen extremely effective results against the Lars homestead and the Jawas which is both combat and effectively following the droids.
Empire Strikes Back they are extremely effective with invading the Hoth base. Luke is supposed to get to Vader so that part can be ignored. Then for the rest escaping Lando arranges a lot of surprise trouble for the troops as well as R2D2.
Then for the Ewoks I think almost everyone has it backwards. They all look at how tiny and low tech they are and draw conclusions from that. The more important thing to look at is their results. Not just the main battle but look before that.
A scout (Wickket) is smart enough to make a reasonable level of basic communication with absolutely zero starting point with Leia.
They successfully trap/ambush a Jedi and a Wookie and a droid with sensors. Ok yea required some stupidity on Chewies part but still incredibly impressive on the Ewoks part.
They were literally planning to eat several of the heroes.
The traps everywhere. They clearly didn’t make the big traps just in the day or two when the heroes showed up. That forest is an absolute death trap and miracle that the trap the heroes triggered didn’t kill them.
Battle morale at large not breaking under attack from mechanized and ranged weapons.
Immediate willingness to ride a speeder and a successful dismount in spite of zero clue how they work.
That is just what I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure there is more. Honestly they are closer to facing an army of fantasy dwarfs than what people say they are like.
Plus the Empire is pretty fascist, and they would definitely look at the Ewok’s and their low tech society in an especially dismissive way. Then when the Ewoks start winning, this would hit Stormtrooper morale pretty hard.
Remember, in A New Hope the stormtroopers on the Death Star are missing on purpose. They want to put up a token resistance to let the gang escape with the tracker onboard.
I’m well aware that across most of the rest of the franchise Stormtroopers generally are bad shots.
However I argue that it is easy to view the entire original trilogy as Stormtroopers being competent. A New Hope is easy as you already pointed out that they were supposed to let them go. Plus the off screen extremely effective results against the Lars homestead and the Jawas which is both combat and effectively following the droids.
Empire Strikes Back they are extremely effective with invading the Hoth base. Luke is supposed to get to Vader so that part can be ignored. Then for the rest escaping Lando arranges a lot of surprise trouble for the troops as well as R2D2.
Then for the Ewoks I think almost everyone has it backwards. They all look at how tiny and low tech they are and draw conclusions from that. The more important thing to look at is their results. Not just the main battle but look before that.
That is just what I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure there is more. Honestly they are closer to facing an army of fantasy dwarfs than what people say they are like.
Plus the Empire is pretty fascist, and they would definitely look at the Ewok’s and their low tech society in an especially dismissive way. Then when the Ewoks start winning, this would hit Stormtrooper morale pretty hard.
Also, misrepresenting the capabilities of indigenous people isn’t exactly unheard of in this universe or others.
What do you mean other universes? This happened in a galaxy far far away.
after all, the ultimate downfall of the imperium is underestimating the tactical prowess of fuzzy teddy bears with rocks