#going from that Imperial percussion to a progressing desperate rise of strings that only got worse

[shinobicyrus]

I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the Empire’s assault on the Path in Obi-Wan, harping about everything from how inaccurate the stormtroopers were, how stupid their formation was, how “hysterical” (🙄)Third Sister sounded yelling at them to keep moving forward. You know, the kind of insightful criticism one expects from a Youtube comment section.

Because all those comments completely miss the entire point of this scene.

Maybe I’m just weird, but was anyone else as shook watching this as I was? When a stormtrooper went down, the camera focused on that stormtrooper, just for a second or two. That’s never happened before. One of a dozen identical troopers is shot, falls hard the the ground, and we get a close-up on the blank Imperial mask while his comrades just walk over him without even slowing.

I actually pitied the stormtroopers, watching this.

Because that‘s the Empire. No clever tactics, no military strategy beyond brute force. Just a wall of white armor and red blasters steadily advancing, slowly overwhelming the desperate, outnumbered, terrified people trying and failing to hold back the tide.

Why waste time with subtlety when you can just crush everything in your path? Why bother trying to minimize casualties when you can easily replace your losses? It’s such an effective terror tactic, because if you shoot one, there’s another half-dozen identical, disposable soldiers to take their place. And the stormtroopers are just as unaffected by one of their own going down, because in the chaos of battle they’d have no idea who just got blasted in front of them; they’re as faceless and anonymous to each other as they are to the rebels.

With just a few clever cuts and camera angles, Obi-Wan made me terrified of the Empire.