Actually in A New Hope what the trench run targeted was the smaller emergency exhaust port, not the main one. It was ray shielded, just not matter shielded because that would defeat its purpose: to vent the reactor during a superlaser firing if for any reason whatsoever the main exhaust port should be blocked. And for that matter it was probably only vulnerable for the few seconds a firing sequence was in progress; although if that were the case then it was treasonously negligent of Tarkin not to delay firing on Yavin 4 until the rebel attack was beaten off.
In addition to making enemy fire miss, the Force also provides plot armor by making the bad guys unfathomably stupid at just the wrong moments.
There is a canon answer why stormtroopers can’t hit anything.
Luke: I can’t see a thing in this helmet.
I always assumed the stormtropper suits were pressure suits. They are all standing in the landing bay when the Falcon was brought in. At least they make more sense than the fantasy that X-wing suits are pressurized!
As for Leia’s “they let us go”, please tell me: exactly when did the empire decide this? Because at no time in the deathstar running around do any of the forces look like they are not trying to capture/kill them. That includes “close the blast doors” and “I think we took a wrong turn..turn..turn..” Vader seems hellbent on defeating Obi Wan and would have got our heroes if Luke hadn’t blasted the door.
After they left? Did someone tell the four TIE pilots to “make it look good, but die like you were really trying. Do it for us.”?
Well, I think it is was Tarkin’s decision at Vader’s behest, not The Empire collectively, but they must have decided it at some point prior to the escape because they did get a secure tracking device on the Falcon. Yes, for the sake of the movie, they needed both a narrow escape and a way to set up a final conflict, and those didn’t exactly jibe with each other. I thought it was, you know, near enough. Eat your popcorn and don’t think so hard.
So it’s a bit of a sidetrack as I understand the OP (which is about things that people claim happen in a specific movie universe that never did, not things movies claim are true that aren’t IRL)
But I’m pretty dubious about this, even if someone did see what mice prefer in laboratory conditions, in the wild mice (who are close to starving to death at any time) are gonna go for the most energy dense food in the larder. Prior to cheese being routinely kept refrigerated (when this idea originated, presumably) that would be cheese, as long as sugar is kept in a jar.
There’s a common trope that bows are a weapon that requires dexterity rather than strength to use, and as a result their use in fiction has become associated with women and less-muscular men (such as many portrayals of elves).
In reality, bows required a lot of upper body strength to use; more so than a typical sword. To the point that archaeologists can identify the skeletons of long-bowmen by the distortions imposed on their skeletal structure. It not only took a lot of strength to pull, the bowmen had to hold it drawn long enough to aim and fire. Bowmen aren’t going to be skinny waifish guys, they’ll be musclebound.
I always assumed it was meant to protect against blaster fire and maybe bullets. Armor is generally optimized against the threat it’s expected to face; real world bullet resistant armor tends to be not that good against sharp objects, either.
A lot of people think that because Sean Connery took the Holy Grail drink in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it should make him immortal and thus him being dead in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a plot hole.
In fact that’s not what the Holy Grail does at all, it doesn’t make you immortal it just seems to heal all your wounds immediately. In the actual movie it’s said two of the grail knights who left the temple actually did die of old age, it just took them another 100 years. Also the fact the Grail Knight we see looks both incredibly old and very weak, making it seem like if he were to stop drinking the Holy Grail water he’d probably fall over dead within the year. So Jones Sr. dying within the next 20 years doesn’t seem that farfetched, especially if he got hit by a car or something.
Right after they capture the Falcon, and determine that it had come from Tatooine, where Vader suspected the Death Star plans had been sent. Remember Vader’s next line?
“They must be trying to return the stolen plans to the Princess. She may yet be of some use to us.”
What use could that be, except as a means of leading them to the Rebel base? At least, that’s when Vader comes up with the idea. At this point, Leia has already resisted the mind probing, and lied to them about Dantooine even in the face of Alderaan’s destruction. Vader clearly sees the opportunity to track the Rebels down the old-fashioned way, by following someone who knows where they are.
It may have taken some time to convince Tarkin, which for purposes of suspense we don’t see happening. But he obviously is convinced, because by the time Luke & co. reach the Falcon, “the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship.”
You don’t put a homing beacon on a ship just on the off-chance that your quarry will elude your troops and manage to get aboard. If you plan to track their ship, you have to let them get to their ship. So it’s obvious that at some point, the Stormtroopers have been ordered to allow the Rebels to reach the Falcon, showing just enough resistance that they won’t get suspicious. Note that Leia, the experienced Rebel leader, is the only one who does have any suspicions, so it clearly worked on the rubes.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. How did they tell every stormtroopers this plan? All the 100K or whatever (especially the additional cgi troopers in the blast door sequence that weren’t there in 1977 ) that are on the deathstar. And how did they get them to die for this plan? “Please fall to your death, and oh by the way use the Willhelm scream to make it more believable? KTHX.”
Remember they were literally seconds from dying in the trash masher, and that “would end your plan real quick.”
eta: ok if stormtroopers are all clones and maybe raised from birth to be totally subservient maybe. But we see no evidence of that, in fact we see normal guys doing a job.
Maybe Vader was using the Force the whole time to allow the escape. He didn’t need to inform anybody except Tarkin and the guys installing the tracker. The rest were cannon fodder shooting at people protected by the (dark) Force. If Artoo hadn’t stopped the compactor in time, Vader would have. I suspect those four tie fighters were piloted by the biggest screwups in the squadron and their craft were the Edsels of the fleet.
But in the end it didn’t matter if they had escaped on their own, or been allowed to escape, if Leia hadn’t been such a stoop and went anywhere but the super secret rebel base (now with validated parking). Go anywhere else, send the Falcon to any other anywhere, and never been tracked.
Instead of you know, her masterful gambit of leading a planet killing machine with no (yet) know weaknesses into a confrontation that they almost lost. If Obi Wan couldn’t coach Luke, if the Deathstar navigator had come out of hyperspace on the other side of Yavin, if if if a hundred things could have been different and we’d be watching “Thrilling Tales of The Empire! Episode 4 Where We Deal With Traitors and Rebel Scum”
The OP’s TVTropes page links to this video making the case that the Stormtroopers were, in fact, very accurate, as long as they weren’t shooting at our heroes.
) that are on the deathstar. And how did they get them to die for this plan? “Please fall to your death, and oh by the way use the Willhelm scream to make it more believable? KTHX.”