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In quite a few movies, the hero has to fight the forces of some mighty and merciless empire, yet in actual battle these so called elite forces are so useless, you wonder how they ever got an empire together in the first place. What is according to you the most useless army in the universe? I give you, in no particular order:

Imperial Stormtroopers: all that armour and they get beaten by Ewoks. Need I say more
Cylons (in the original series) Perhaps they could develop a manoevrable single seater to take on Colonial Vipers
Generic Nazi infantry. The ones who shoot MP40s from the hip and are then felled by a single shot from the good guys

The Russians in Rambo II

I'd say the worst troops ever to grace an action film are those south-american soldiers that guard the hideout of the villain in "Commando". Just imagine: A foreign actor in steroids manages to waste them all in just a few minutes.

I thought the same about the imperial stormtroopers when they were overrun by the ewoks (you see only one of the ewoks get shot!!!)
and the best is
- the imperator says:"I have send my best Legion to Endor." (or something like that)
I often thought about that and found it unwillingly funny

What's up with the Imperial Storm Troopers wearing armor that doesn't do a damn thing to prevent them from getting blown away  with little or no effort?

Actually I think it was a ploy to de-humanize them so no one would complain about the body count the good guys rack up.

my favorite of this genre is the chuck norris, 80's flicks, in which the good guy has a friend or loved one hurt by the bad guys in latin america (prefarably).  so instead of following any logic the shadowy hero throws on some ninja gear to go kill mercenaries in the jungle (i.e. 9 Deaths of a Ninja and A Force of One).

???

For I am a Starcrash/Female Space Invaders-Fan I have to mention the troops of that movie - surely one of the most embarassing army in the Sci-Fi-Universe!

Wether good or bad guys - all of the troops in Starcrash wear gay leather-costumes, so they look like catamite-guards or something that way...

At the end of Starcrash, when there is the obligatory showdown between the good and evil forces, the good troops start their attack with torpedos containing two stormtroopers.
Anyone who remembers this scene? It´s fabulous.

Let us not forget that Count Zarth Arn has a big, and rather thin, glass window on the control room of his impenetrable space fortress. Two other things puzzled me about that scene. Why doesn't the air rush in after the glass breaks, and why the hell don't the good guys just put explosives in the damn rockets? They're launching them right into the villain's control room!

Aww....Neville took mine!

Hmmm....I'd say that Ming the Merciless's forces were pretty inept in Flash Gordon.
Some job they did in protecting their emperor...especially the ones with the red cloaks and snouts...they scream like b***hes when they go.



Post Edited (12-19-04 19:26)

the japanese forces that fought godzilla. they never have a plan and do the same thing to fight him. You would think they were learn after fighting him for million times.

"I know I know ive been exposed permeant psychoses..
at least the colors are nice"- Aeon Flux



Post Edited (12-19-04 20:08)

A very stupid troop is acting in Dungeons&Dragons.

D&D/AD&D were games we played as 10-14year old boys (not on PC but with dices!) - therefore it was a must for me to go in Dungeons&Dragons...

I am sure that this movie was a bad disappointment for most of the D&D-fans
(me I was entertainent in an other form - the bad one).

Many things in this film were ridiculous, for example: a white castle that absolutely did not fit in the movie simply because it looked like a ruin in the year 2001

but the most stupid appearence was the "PURPLE GUARD" with it´s unimaginative and idiotic outfits  - pure badmovie-style...

In Westerns:
The huge force of villians that the evil cattle baron has hired to run off the noble farmers will -- after shooting a farmer for demonstration purposes -- drop like flies & be unable to hit the broad side of a barn upon being confronted with the singular hero & his wacky sidekick.
Tribes of American Indians ditto -- As MAD Magazine said, "A settler's wife can shoot an Indian off a fast horse by pointing a shotgun in the air & firing with eyes closed".
peter johnson/denny crane

I heard diehard "Star Wars" fans speculate that the Stormtrooper armor is more for psychological warfare and intimidation purposes in noncombat situations. Since there are so many of them (clones and recruits) they are expendable and can be used as cannon fodder in real combat.

Cannon fodder is the word. What gets me, is that all these troops apparently have lots of firepower, but no idea of fire preparation or covering fire. Their idea of an attack is run forward with guns held high, until someone shoots at them and then go 'aargh!'.

I forgot about Starcrash. Is that the one where they have crested helmets and shiny copper tubes for blasters?

the troops in equalibrium sucked it pretty badly at the end. think about it they came out in waves with automatic rifles and all managed to get gunned down pretty quickly by a bunch of rag tag resistence fighters

No, there are no copper tubes or crested helmets in Starcrash.
- A reason to watch that movie next time!

The bad guys in Starcrash juse lasers looking like rifles with bat-wings.

Ninja armys are deffinately the suckiest military forces in bad film. Even worse then the horribly inept storm troopers.

Don't forget the other Spawns in "Spawn". Spawn was suppossed to command an army of similarly equipped and trained soldiers, but got rid of them in 30 seconds with the only help of some CGI shots. No wonder the movie sucked.

The commie forces in Red Dawn were pretty useless. A multinational force that invades and occupies a big chunk of the US is terrorized by half a dozen self-taught high school kids who have been partisans for all of a couple of months.

The South American forces at the beginning of What Waits Below (As this was Nicaragua/1983 I assumed they were govt. troops. Odd that they were commanded a German officer, and seemed to resemble the Contras more than Sandinistas'army).
There are thick dozens of soldiers pursuing our heroes through the jungle on foot and in jeep, even shooting at point-blank range with heavy caliber machine guns to no effect. At one point, around fifty ambush the jeep as it leaves a cave AND ALL MISS!

The NVA troops in "Rambo - First Blood Part II". The film is so poorly directed that (I'm told) at some points of it you can see the soldiers firing their weapons while other soldiers stand in front of them. Tell me if that one is not a winner, because not even the stormtroopers did ever act so dumb (with maybe the exception of the one who hits the door in Episode IV).

Something I love about the three good SW movies is that something about them makes me willing to make up explanations of my own that seem plausible to me. So by "send my best legion to Endor", the emperor means "a legion equiped with the kind of robotic type stuff that kicked ass at Hoth, but in the jungle, will tend to trip". I'm told this is not an uncommon military folly.

I gather that the fact that they're clones is supposed to explain some of the ineptness of the Storm Troopers, like by Episode four they're copies of copies of copies, so it's like being inbred or something.

The light sabre is something I've seen ripped off tons of times, and oddly enough, in anything except SW it seems inexplicable to me that they would use anything sword like in the future. But in SW, for some reason it seems perfectly obvious to me that the Jedi arts developed at a time when spacecraft where smaller and flimsier, piracy was the main threat to the Republic, and things like blasters and turbolasers hadn't been invented yet. The light sabers originally must have been an alternative to conventional firearms, for use on ships that were being boarded by hijackers without depressurizing the whole thing.

More nerdery here:
http://davemunger.blogspot.com

Actually. one of the better westerns out there, but with so many men,  you would have thought that Michael Gambon's hired guns, would have at the beginning, put up a better show, considering they were only facing two men, even if those two men were Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall.

And I was also impressed by the ineptness of the villains on the island in "The Incredibles." Even if your opponents had super powers, they must have been fairly inept not to be able to take down a woman, her teenage daughter, and her pre-teen son.

I'm told this is not an uncommon military folly.

Well, the bottom lne is that the troops went in expectring one type of enemy and were unprepared for a local insurgency.  It's happened before...

But in SW, for some reason it seems perfectly obvious to me that the Jedi arts...

Actually, the lightsaber makes a lot of sense if you consider it as a defensive weapon with only short-range offensive capabilites (which, given the philosophy of the Jedi in applying the Force, makes a lot of sense).  As Obi-Wan said, "not as clumsy or random as a blaster".  One thing about guns is they tend to be fairly indescriminant and if you miss...  Unlike swords vs guns today, Jedi force training with lightsabers allowed for parrying blaster shots so the range capbilities of a blaster against a Jedi were pretty negated ( a Jedi can run across a room with someone shooting at him to get in close enough for a precision strike in a way not possible today with guns and swords)   Think os situations today where having a gun is ineffectual or dangerous because of how a gun works (hostage situation: hard to shot without hitting a bystander or hostage, home defense: watch as your handgun misses the badguy in low light and goes through the apartment wall into someone sleeping next door)  Given the Jedi mission, training, and philosophy, a lightsaber makes a really wise weapon

Fearless Freep wrote:

> Unlike swords vs guns today, Jedi force training with
> lightsabers allowed for parrying blaster shots so the range
> capbilities of a blaster against a Jedi were pretty negated ( a
> Jedi can run across a room with someone shooting at him to get
> in close enough for a precision strike in a way not possible
> today with guns and swords)  

Perhaps, but then, these blaster rays move very slowly and have a rate of fire comparable to a self loading rifle. If you are up against, say, an AK47 at 15m, it might get messy. Mind you, Darth Vader had this neat trick of stopping a blast with his hand.

That, and a way to save money on actors/extras; if you don't show their faces, you can 'reuse' them in later scenes.

Not a military force, but a group of such incredible ineptness as to challenge those in COMMANDO: the bad guys at the end of BEVERY HILLS COP.  I mean, Eddie Murphy running around shooting single hand with a snubby against multiple dudes with full auto's??

Of course, you could substitute just about any 'Hero Cop' movie.

Speaking of Stormtrooper armor...

Ever noticed the letters Oll on the back of their armor? (at least that's what it looks like to me)
Anyone know?



Post Edited (12-24-04 16:43)

I actually buy Daleks as a universal menace, but the do have that stairs problem. The there are the dreaded "single file ninjas" who suround the hero, then attack one at a time. There was an SNL about that. Here's a Star Wars game I thought you guys might like:

http://www.2flashgames.com/f/f-1132.htm

Aha, but in one later episode, I think it was with Sylvester McCoy, I saw a dalek actually climbing some stairs! They got round that somehow!

The 'Shoot the Ewanks' is great fun!