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The Real Reason Why Stormtroopers Always Miss in STAR WARS

Anyone who has ever seen a Star Wars movie knows one thing to be true: sand is coarse and it gets everywhere. They also know that in spite of being the Galactic Empire’s elite soldiers, stormtroopers seemingly couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a Death Star superlaser. But it’s not there fault. We have a brand new Star Wars fan theory that will explain why the finest soldiers the Empire has to offer are so chronically and woefully inaccurate. As it turns out, it’s not their fault at all–not even the one(s) who smack their head on low-hanging doors. It’s because of the Force.

via Giphy

This theory, crafted by our senior news producer Jesse Gill, posits that stormtroopers are so bad at their job because, as Chirrut Îmwe puts it, “All is as the Force wills it.” Think back to Chirrut’s repeated mantra from Rogue One: “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.” It’s difficult to explain how Chirrut could walk through a non-stop barrage of blaster fire unscathed in order to help transmit the Death Star plans to the Rebellion, but the Force seems like the most reasonable explanation. While skeptics–including Baze Malbus and Han Solo–may mock this type of blind faith in an all-powerful Force controlling everything, it is difficult to fathom any other canonical answer.

via Giphy

After all, the stormtroopers have every incentive in the world to be top-tier marksmen. In the new Star Wars short story anthology From a Certain Point of View, it is revealed that all Imperial military personnel–including stormtroopers–had their pay adjusted to correspond with their firing accuracy. This effort was intended to dispel the myth that stormtroopers couldn’t shoot straight. On top of that, failure in the Galactic Empire is often met with a Force-fueled throat-throttling at the hands of Darth Vader. If screwing up at work meant that your future included having your larynx crushed by a moody asthmatic cyborg, then you would likely take your job more seriously than Cassian Andor takes this outerwear.

If nothing else, remember Old Ben Kenobi’s words: “Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.”

via Giphy

So in spite of the financial incentive and the fear of imminent death, stormtroopers can never seem to land a shot when they’re shooting at someone crucial to the goals of the Rebel Alliance. The results are always the same: miss, miss, miss. After all, if even a single stormtrooper managed to land one of their shots on our heroes, we would be cutting to credits, set against a John Williams funeral dirge with a quickness. But that’s not what happens. Chirrut Îmwe manages to get the signal out to transmit the Death Star’s plans, and Luke Skywalker destroys the superweapon, saving billions of lives in the process. (Just not the lives of anyone on Alderaan.)

On the flip side, there are countless examples of Rebel operatives–K2-SO, Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, Luke Skywalker, the list goes on–pulling off seemingly impossible shots all the time. And if the Force can be responsible for directing a proton torpedo into a thermal exhaust port to destroy the Death Star, then it can easily be the reason behind the stormtroopers’ infamous inaccuracy.

via Giphy

What do you think of this Star Wars fan theory? Let us know in the comments below.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens on December 15.

Image: Disney/Lucasfilm

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Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@DanCasey).

Bird’s Song Sounds Like R2-D2, Lasers, and Other Sci-Fi Noises

Few films have ever created more memorable sound effects than Star Wars. The franchise didn’t just need to invent a plethora of space noises, it also needed to give voice to untold alien species and droids. It’s such a massive undertaking that Lucasfilm has their own sound design studio…but we think there might be a way for the studio to maintain the quality of their sound effects without busting their budget. They can just hire this bird that sounds exactly like R2-D2, laser blasts, and other sci-fi noises.

We only just came across this video posted a couple of years ago by the YouTube channel Howudoin, but we don’t know how we lived without it before. This fantastic little Australian lyrebird, who possesses an “otherworldly ability to mimic sounds from its environment” including man-made noises, is basically a real life recording studio for the animal kingdom. And clearly someone was fond of showing this bird the Star Wars movies, because he runs through a wide spectrum of sci-fi sounds that should get him a job with Skywalker Sound.

If you play that for someone without letting them watch the video, how long would it take them to figure out it was a bird making those noises?

But a better question is whether anyone has shown that bird The Force Awakens, because we’d love to hear him do BB-8 next. What other movie would you love to have the lyrebird watch so he could recreate the sounds? Sing your favorite suggestion in our comments section below.

Featured Image: Lucasfilm

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STAR WARS Pop Icon Posters Spotlight Droids, Tech, and Porgs

The Star Wars saga has always had the coolest posters of any movie series, going back to the iconic original theatrical one-sheet in 1977 from the brothers Hildebrandt. Now, just in time for the release of The Last Jedi in theaters, StarWars.com has released images of a whole new set of posters that they’re labeling the “Pop Icon” series. Instead of focusing on any of the actors, these streamlined and colorful illustrations showcase the gear, tech, droids, creatures and ships of the upcoming film.

The poster series is split into light side and dark side, in classic Star Wars tradition. On the light side of things, we have our classic droid duo C-3PO and R2-D2, along with newcomer BB-8. There’s Rey’s lightsaber (a.k.a. Luke and Anakin Skywalker’s old lightsaber), the Millennium Falcon, a Resistance pilot’s helmet, an X-wing fighter, and from Luke’s refuge planet of Ahch-To, one of the so-called alien caretakers. And yes, worry not porg fanatics, there is indeed a porg poster.

Over on the dark side, we have BB-8’s First Oder counterpart BB-9E, along with a First Order Dreadnought, a TIE fighter, Kylo Ren’s lightsaber and his TIE Silencer, a Praetorian guard helmet, along with a more classic stormtrooper helmet, and a First Order shuttle pilot helmet. If anything, this set of posters reminds us that no matter how much we may be rooting for the good guys in Star Wars, the bad guys always have the cooler looking gear.

You can check out the entire new poster series below in our gallery.

What do you make of these latest posters from the galaxy far, far away? Be sure to let us know what you think in the comments.

Images: Lucasfilm/Disney

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MISERY Shows Stephen King’s Brilliant Gallows Humor (Blu-ray Review)

This has been a particularly great year for fans of Stephen King (and probably for King himself too) with a number of adaptations, both great (It and Gerald’s Game) and not so great (The Dark Tower and 1922) and it’s gotten a lot of people (us included) talking about our favorite Stephen King movies. It’s also gotten me specifically interested in watching the ones I hadn’t yet seen. This year afforded me (thanks to Blu-ray releases) the opportunity to watch Firestarter and Children of the Corn, and now, thanks to Scream Factory, I’ve gotten to check a big one off my list: Rob Reiner’s 1990 movie, Misery.

Now, I say I hadn’t seen Misery until this, and that’s technically true, but it’s a film I feel like I’d seen because of how pervasive its influence was when I was growing up. Misery was a HUGE movie in 1990, and everybody saw it and talked about it. And because I was only six at the time, I was particularly absorbent when it came to adults talking about scary things. My parents would talk about how Kathy Bates was terrifying, made even more so by the fact that she uses little kid swear words instead of real ones, and the infamous “hobbling” scene remains one of the most memorable horror film moments of all time. And yet, upon actually watching, I was struck by how funny the movie is, and how curiously imperfect it is as well.

James Caan plays Paul Sheldon, a famous novelist who is in the mountains of Colorado in the dead of winter to finish his latest manuscript. We learn through flashbacks with his agent (played by Lauren Bacall) that he’s gained fame by writing a series of 1800s-set romance novels about a heroine named Misery Chastain, and he’s eager to shed that series and do something new, even going so far as to kill the character off. As he drives away from his cabin, in the middle of a blizzard, he skids off the road and crashes, busting himself up greatly, and he’s saved from hypothermia by recluse Annie Wilkes (Bates), a former nurse who brings Sheldon back from the brink of death.

Now, Annie is not your average lady in any sense. She’s almost comically nice and is Sheldon’s self-professed biggest fan, devoting much of her life to Misery Chastain’s adventures. Sheldon is at first grateful, then embarrassed by the flattery, and then he starts to sense a darkness in Annie. As his legs heal, he wants to call his agent and his daughter, but Annie says the phones are out, though the roads have been clear for over a week. She goes and buys Sheldon’s newest (and last) Misery novel and devours it. When she gets to the ending, she snaps. “You murdered her!” She reveals she’s never attempted to call anyone, nobody knows Sheldon is in her house, and she’s never going to let him out. It then becomes a fight for Sheldon to regain his strength and overcome his biggest fan.

Obviously, there’s some parallels in the story to King’s own life. Evidently, he wrote the 1987 novel–initially intending it to be credited to his pen name Richard Bachman–directly as a response to the public reaction to his 1984 novel, The Eyes of the Dragon, an epic-fantasy novel that fans rejected because it wasn’t the horror they were used to. And Misery benefits from this mixture of disdain and fear from the rabid portion of the fanbase, something any creative type can relate to.

There’s a degree of humor in the movie I certainly wasn’t expecting. Caan’s reaction to almost everything Bates says is a big, over-the-top placation but whenever she turns her back or leaves the room, he has some snide comment that always made me laugh. There’s also a lot of humor to be mined from the B-plot of the film, in which local sheriff Buster (Richard Farnsworth) and his wife/deputy Virginia (Frances Sternhagen) have banter while attempting to search for Sheldon. It’s their investigation that creates a lot of the tension in the movie, since we know the writer’s salvation is tantalizingly close, but may as well be a thousand miles away.

Bates’ performance was rightfully lauded at the time–she won an Oscar and everything–and it should be remembered now. It’s astonishingly good, threading the needle between charmingly quirky and dangerously unhinged. Her rant about old movie serials cheating the audience with their cliffhangers remains a bonkers piece of acting. “He didn’t get out of the cock-a-doodie car!” will haunt my dreams. Caan’s performance is also quite good, and he has the thankless task of being the “victim” in the movie and writhing around in agony a lot. For the most part, this movie works the best when it’s just long scenes between these two.

Ultimately, though, there were moments in the movie that, like Annie’s dismay at writerly cheats, I can’t help but think were screenwriter William Goldman and director Rob Reiner trying to get away with something. Pieces of information that create great suspense are dropped for long stretches of time and then brought back seemingly in the wrong place. The hobbling scene is brilliant in isolation but it doesn’t seem to have any effect going forward; Sheldon never makes mention of his legs getting better, to the point of him starting to walk, and the very next scene after it, he’s just in the wheelchair with his feet perfectly straight. And don’t get me started on Buster. King was annoyed at Stanley Kubrick’s treatment of Dick Halloran in The Shining movie, and Buster (a character not really in the novel) gets much the same treatment.

Those odd quibbles aside, Misery is highly entertaining, and very funny despite the macabre atmosphere. The special edition Blu-ray from Scream Factory makes the movie look and sound phenomenal, and gives us a bevy of features from old editions, as well as new interviews with director Reiner and special effects supervisor Greg Nicotero. This is a must-buy for King fanatics, and really fans of amazing performances.

Images: Castle Rock Entertainment/Scream Factory

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

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THE SHAPE OF WATER Cast on Modern Fairy Tales, and Amphibian Man Butts

Guillermo del Toro is a filmmaker who spends a great deal of time on the details within the world of his movies. He’s meticulous about everything from the color of costumes to the number of rivets on Hellboy’s gun. Do you think he wouldn’t therefore have a very specific reason for setting a movie in 1962? That movie is The Shape of Water and our own Hector Navarro caught up with del Toro and cast members Octavia Spencer, Doug Jones, and Richard Jenkins to discuss everything from social changes in the early ’60s to bracing yourself to see an amphibian man’s butt for the first time.

1962, as del Toro puts it, was a year of both great progress and great division in the United States, and the discrepancy transfers to all the characters in The Shape of Water. Spencer told Hector about how her character and Sally Hawkins’ characters are essentially invisible, being the night janitorial staff of a research facility, and “othered” by race and disability, respectively.

Obviously the suit and makeup/prosthetics for the Amphibian Man worn by Jones is getting a lot of attention, and rightfully so, as well as his physical shift into character once “action” was called. But Spencer was most in awe of the character’s amphibious backside, which she declared was absolutely perfect. Hector also especially wanted to know about another bit of movie magic on the set… Jenkins’ hairpiece, which may get its own fan club out of this movie.

The Shape of Water opens in New York on December 1, LA on December 8, and elsewhere next year.

Images: Fox Searchlight

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

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Official GAME OF THRONES’ Fine Art Prints Available for First Time Ever

Game of Thrones has given us so many iconic images it’s impossible to choose our favorite without overlooking dozens of worthy candidates. That’s while we’re excited to finally be getting officially licensed fine-art stills from the show, and we’re relieved they’re giving us 20 options so we don’t have to pick just one.

HBO has teamed up with Classic Stills of L.A. and London for a first-ever collection of fine print photos from the show. However this is a limited run, with only 150 of them for sale in the three different available sizes. That’s why “each archival-quality print is hand-framed, individually numbered, and presented with a unique Certificate of Authenticity.”

The 20 images included are stills of Daenerys and the Unsullied, Tyrion holding the crossbow he used to kill Tywin, the undead Viserion the first time he opened his blue wight eye, the season one logo of Ned on the Iron Throne, two images of Jon fighting the Battle of the Bastards as well as him emerging from the mass of bodies, the Night King, Daenerys talking to the Dothraki from the back of Drogon, Jon holding Ygritte as she died, King’s Landing, Sansa at the Eyrie, Daenerys at Dragonestone, Jaime next to Cersei on the Iron Throne, the Frozen Lake, Arya dueling Brienne, Daenerys on Drogon at the Loot Train attack, Tommen at the window in his room, the Unsullies, and Arya in the Hall of Faces. You can see the rest of the images in the collection at Classic Stills.

Framed fine prints come with a Lannister price tag though. The smallest size of 16″ x 20” costs $295, the middle 20″ x 24” is $395, and the largest 24” x 30” has a price tag of $495. They are available for purchase in the U.S., Canada, and the UK.

Think the Iron Bank of Braavos would give us a loan so we don’t have to choose only one?

Which of these images would you most want to hang in your home? What other stills from the show would you love to be included in a future collection? Tell us in the comments below.

Images: HBO/Classic Stills

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Do We Really Need 4 Harley Quinn Movies?

Margot Robbie‘s Harley Quinn was more popular than Suicide Squad, but do we need four more movies about her? We answered how much Harley Quinn is too much on today’s loaded Nerdist News Talks Back, along with the latest on a Masters of the Universe live-action film, Stranger Things renewal, the comic value of porgs, and the latest on the Riverdale spin-off Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Host Jessica Chobot was joined by her Bizarre States partner Andrew Bowser along with producers Kate Meyers and Jason Nguyen today. They started with Margot Robbie’s comments she’s developing a fourth, standalone Harley Quinn movie. We already know about Gotham City Sirens, the Joker and Harley film, and Suicide Squad 2, so is this too much of a good thing? If we’re getting all of them what do we hope to see from each? And what does this mean for Jared Leto’s Joker? Could this be a way to give us even more versions of the character like in the current comics?

There’s also word the live-action Masters of the Universe reboot is back on, with Man of Steel writer and Blade: Trinity director David S. Goyer taking over. Is he a good choice? Do we want a straight live-action He-Man or a campy one? How much should the film lean into fan’s nostalgia for the show? And how successful can something based on a cartoon designed to sell toys really be?

In the least surprising news of the day, Stranger Things has officially been renewed for a third season? Why the wait? What do we want from the third installment? Would a dramatic time jump help? Can the show really sustain its momentum for five seasons? And should shows like this and Big Little Lies that were supposed to only be one season stick to their plans?

With only two weeks to go before we head back to the galaxy far, far away, we also got a new commercial for The Last Jedi featuring a certain little creature going for a ride. It’s funny, but are we worried porgs could go down the Jar Jar comic relief path? How does this influence the great porg/vulptex debate?

#TheLastJedi TV SPOT "Flying Porg" (:15) pic.twitter.com/528Ip5piYq

— Star Wars Legacy (@theswlegacy) December 1, 2017

Finally, the Riverdale spin-off Sabrina the Teenage Witch is heading to Netflix with a two season order and will be based on the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comics. Is this the right home and story for the show? And who do we hope to see play Sabrina?

Remember Nerdist News Talks Back airs live weekdays at 1:00 p.m. PT on our YouTube and Alpha channels, so tune in and be a part of the conversation with us. With so much to discuss today, we really could have used your help during this show. But we still want to here from you, so talk back to us in the comments below.

Images: Warner Bros., Netflix

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First Look At Brenton Thwaites as Robin in TITANS TV Series

The last time the Dark Knight’s famous sidekick Robin appeared in a live-action property was twenty years ago — Chris O’Donnell‘s Robin in Batman & Robin. Next year though, Robin is finally making his return to the non-animated world in the new Titans original series for DC’s upcoming streaming service. And now we have a better idea of what to expect from the Boy Wonder’s latest incarnation.

DC and Warner Bros. TV just released the first official image of Titans star Brenton Thwaites as Robin, and his costume is definitely closer to the comics than his previous incarnation on the big screen. No bat-nipples to be found.

It’s not a full-body image, but we can see Robin’s signature green gloves and red costume, with the iconic “R” on his left breast. Laura Jean Shannon designed the new Robin costume — she’s previously created costumes for Iron Man and the upcoming Black Lightning TV series.

This isn’t the same as seeing the suit in action, but it is nice to know that most of the classic design elements are intact. At 28 years old, Thwaites is a bit old to be playing Robin, but we suspect that the Titans TV series will follow a trajectory similar to the path Dick Grayson took in the comics. During the “Judas Contract” storyline, Grayson realized that he was ready to leave the Robin identity behind and become Nightwing. Even with the Nightwing DCEU movie in development, that still seems like it would be an important part of this series as well.

The Titans live-action series will debut next year on DC’s currently untitled streaming service. But now that the show is nearing production, we should soon see the other cast members in costume as well.

What do you think about the new Robin suit? Let us know in the comment section below!

Images: DC Comics/Warner Bros. TV

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Jonah Raydio #101: New Studio, Same Old Sh_t

The below were submitted as notes by Neil Mahoney on the recording of Jonah Raydio episode 101

…a drawing of a penis and balls made up of the word 4x the word penis and 1 use of the word balls like one of those old rock and roll posters from the 60s. it takes up the top half of the page’…

“Vortex” by John Carpenter off of Lost Themes

“Kate” by Charlotte Gainsbourg

“Don’t Have Another One” by FYP

“Belittle My Brain” by FYP

“Death Dreams” by The Shes

“Satellite” by Kicking Giant

“Only the Good Die Young” The Pettyfords

“Letterman” by Grapefruit

“Thinning” by Snail Mail

music bed by Thom Sunny Green

Will Loki Betray Thor in AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR?

We have not been able to stop watching the Avengers: Infinity War trailer since it dropped earlier this week, and apparently we’re not alone. The trailer has been viewed over 61 million times over the past two days, and there’s still more to unpack. Aside from Captain America‘s beard and Iron Man’s potentially dark fate, one of the most striking moments features Loki, and it seems to walk back his character development from Thor: Ragnarok. Today’s Nerdist News is consulting the Norn Stones to discover if Loki has once again betrayed his brother, Thor.

There are spoilers ahead for Thor: Ragnarok and potential spoilers for Infinity War. You’ve been warned, true believers!

Join host and our resident Lokiologist, Jessica Chobot, as she examines the latest actions of the God of Mischief. Not gonna lie, it looks pretty bad to see Loki apparently turning over the Tesseract to Thanos’ forces while stepping over the bodies of his own people. We’ve come to expect cunning and betrayal from Loki, and it’s part of what we love about him. At the same time, Loki kind of turned a corner in Ragnarok and he stood by his brother’s side in the final battle with Hela. It was also heartwarming when Loki returned to Thor at the end and acknowledged his rule without malice.

That’s why some fans are venting their anger about Loki’s apparent betrayal in the trailer. The bond between the brothers matters to them, and it makes Loki seem more one-dimensional to simply backslide into his old behavior. Some fans have even argued that Loki is saving the rest of the Asgardians after facing a losing fight against a force that has probably already taken out the Hulk and Thor.

Is Loki a hero or a villain? As much as some fans want to embrace Tom Hiddleston‘s iconic take on the character, neither of those descriptions fit him. Loki is simply Loki, no matter the circumstances. To a certain extent, he just can’t help himself. He will always lie, cheat, steal, and even kill, if it furthers his interests at the moment. That’s what we think he’s doing here. Giving up the Tesseract is probably less about saving the Asgardians and more about saving himself.

Although, who is to say that Loki has actually given up the Tesseract? He is a trickster god, after all. We can definitely see Loki pulling a fast one by swapping the Tesseract with an illusion. But even then, a re-empowered Loki is probably not good news for the Avengers.

Do you think that Loki will once again betray Thor in Avengers: Infinity War? Share your theories below!

Images: Marvel Studios

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Not to mention our full  Talks Back discussion !