Ever since Star Wars: A New Hope first hit theaters in the summer of 1977, Star Wars fans have accepted an unchangeable fact about the stormtroopers in service of the evil Empire — they can’t shoot a damn thing. Whether they were chasing Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa through the bowels of the first Death Star, or confronting Han Solo en masse just outside the hangar bay, these foot soldiers were never able to land a single blaster shot on their intended targets. And thanks to a new recruitment video for the Fort Worth Police Department, it seems this tradition will continue in the upcoming Rogue One standalone film.
The viral video, which the Hollywood Reporter first noticed after its posting on Friday, depicts a shooting range instructor and his student demonstrating how — and how not — to fire their chosen weapons. The stormtrooper predictably misses all of his shots in the opening seconds of the one minute and a half-long recruitment video, then mouths off to his instructor when he berates him: “Stop jerking the trigger. You’re still jerking the trigger!” “Hey, it’s not as easy as it looks.” This prompts the FWPD instructor to pull out his firearm quickly and shoot the target in rapid succession, hitting the bulls-eye with every single shot.
Obviously, the instructor didn’t really hit the target every single time — just as the stormtrooper’s blaster doesn’t actually shoot laser blasts when fired. Yet the hugely popular video, which has nearly reached one million views as of this writing, succeeds in offering potential police recruits an alternative, if not entertaining, form of entry into the city’s next police academy training class. Plus, there’s a brief cameo by a disappointed Darth Vader.
It’s still no TROOPS, though.
(Via the Hollywood Reporter)