10 Star Wars "Plot-Holes" That Really Aren't

The Plot-Hole:

Han and company escape from the Death Star, a battle station station swarming with thousands of trained Stormtroopers.

But...

The widely-accepted response is that the Stormtroopers were ordered to allow the intruders to escape, part of which was to deliberately fudge their aim.

Neat, but nonsense.

Apart form being catastrophic for morale, no such order was ever seen to be given nor implied by any line of dialogue. More saliently, according to Stormtrooper radio chatter the majority of the Death Star’s security forces were uncertain of the Rebels’ location, with some completely unaware of what was happening. Hardly the hallmark of a planned tactic.

The true explanation for the Stormtrooper’s abysmal marksmanship is a mite more prosaic.

As stated by Luke the standard issue Stormtrooper helmet is difficult to see out of, and obviously enough, if you can’t see, you can’t aim. More crippling than sloppy ergonomic design is the standard of training on display. Near all of the Stormtroopers, in all three original trilogy films, shoot from the hip. While perfect technique for the average 80’s action hero, attempting the same stunt on a real battlefield will leave you, at best, putting holes in everything but your target, and at worst, dead.

That such poor training is universal among Stormtroopers proves that far from being the galaxy’s elite soldiers they are in fact little more than a uniformed militia. Han and company did not escape because of a clever plan: they escaped because of incompetence.