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The Stormtrooper effect

The Stormtrooper effect, also called Stormtrooper syndrome, is a cliché in works of fiction where minor characters are unrealistically ineffective in combat against more important characters. The name originated with the Imperial Stormtroopers in the original Star Wars trilogy, who, despite their considerable advantages of close range, overwhelming numbers, professional military training, full armor, military-grade firepower, and noticeable combat effectiveness against non-speaking characters, were incapable of seriously harming or indeed even hitting the films' protagonists.

The Stormtrooper effect is, in fact, much older than the Star Wars trilogy, and is common in cowboy films, action movies, martial arts films, and comics. It is often a source of mockery by critics, satirists and fandom, but it is generally recognized as quickly and effectively heightening the dramatic tension of a story.




The Inverse Ninja Law
The Inverse Ninja Law is a similar phenomenon that occurs frequently in martial arts movies, and role playing games. It is also sometimes called the Anime Ninja Effect, the Rule of One, or less frequently the Inverse Ninja Effectiveness Principle.

The Inverse Ninja Law states that the effectiveness of a group of villains is inversely proportional to the number of villains in the group. While a single enemy is often portrayed as a significant threat to the protagonists, a large group of enemies are significantly less of a threat, and as such are easily defeated.

Some shows tend to explicitly illustrate the Inverse Ninja Law. Often the heroes' first battle is against a small group or even a single member of the villains' basic foot soldiers, who will often give the entire group problems, often to the point that they have to use their signature finishing move to defeat them. In most of their subsequent appearances, however, the heroes will usually easily defeat a large group of the enemy, who are typically all wearing the same outfit. Sometimes this is inexplicable; other times, however, the heroes receive a power-up, or simply find the opponent's Achilles' heel. A noteworthy example is Power Rangers, which played out that scenario for nearly every revamp of the series.

The film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" shows both effects of this law: multiple times in the film, the turtles defeat dozens of Foot Ninja, but are defeated at the end of the film by the lone Shredder, even when they assault him together. As well, one Foot Ninja is able to track the turtles to their lair and spy on them undetected, despite the ninjitsu skills of the turtles and their master, proving this lone ninja was more effective on his own than in a group.

In the Naruto series, where all the main characters are ninja, they are usually in groups of only three. However, they have stated that a larger group generally has a genuine tactical disadvantage to having so many people in one place.


[edit] Manifestations
The Stormtrooper effect may manifest in several different forms.

When combined with the Inverse Ninja Law, the Stormtrooper effect takes on the meaning of "The accuracy of the attacker is inversely proportional to the number of attackers". While two or three attackers pose a serious threat, a room full of them all firing at once is almost never a serious threat. An example is found in Star Wars: A New Hope where the protagonists take great pains to avoid small patrols of only two to three Stormtroopers, yet rounding a corner and finding a room filled with them is used more for comedic effect than it is a threat.
Cannon fodder are extremely poor combatants who, regardless of their supposed training or weapons, cannot inflict harm upon the protagonists. They are extremely easy to defeat despite any armor or protective cover, each one typically requiring only a single shot or blow to defeat. This is used in the official Star Wars D20 RPG, and the Mutants and Masterminds RPG, where Stormtroopers and other thugs do not possess "Vitality Points", which mimics the "character shield". As in M&M, they die in one hit, as well as the Foot Soldiers from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Cannon fodder can only be effective when the plot requires it, such as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when they are unable to hit Indy while he runs vulnerably on elevated scaffolding with no cover, but are able to hit a rail switch from a fast-moving minecart.
Cannon fodder can sometimes be defeated by simply knocking them down, or throwing them to the ground. This will render them unconscious or dazed, unable to get up for the remainder of that scene. This is for example seen in the Power Rangers series.
When an important character is injured, the wound is usually trivial and not life-threatening; as seen in Predator, where the predator's plasma caster kills Blaine (Jesse Ventura) but, glancing off his rifle, merely injures Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Common locations for injury are the shoulder and upper arm, thigh, and the lower side torso, where the risks of paralysis and damage to vital organs are minimized.
Even if an important character's wound is severe, it only enhances the dramatic effect of the scene and is rarely incapacitating. If it is incapacitating, he or she can still get CPR and survive, in the style of Jack Bauer from 24. Maybe the best parody is in the final scenes of the The Last Action Hero where Jack Slater is mortally wounded in the real world, but when he's brought back into his movie, the fatal injury becomes just a flesh wound.
Cannon fodder can accomplish something against comparable numbers of other cannon fodder to demonstrate their combat prowess, but not against the underwhelmingly smaller numbers of main characters. This has given rise to the notion that when protagonists are present, the fodders' combat skills degrade. An example would be the destruction of the Jawa Sandcrawler (where the blaster hits were described by Obi-Wan Kenobi as being "too precise" for Sandpeople and thus must be from stormtroopers) and subsequent death of Luke's family.
Cannon fodder can sometimes be seen "waiting their turns" when fighting protagonists. A closer look some scenes of a fighting sequence may show parts of the group of cannon fodder doing nothing while waiting for their comrades to be defeated first (Although, such as in the ninja attack in Kill Bill, this may be attributed to a fear of "going first").
This concept is notably seen in certain episodes of Walker: Texas Ranger, when Walker (Chuck Norris) stands in the middle of a ring of thugs, who run at Walker, one at a time and are each soundly defeated in turn.
The Stormtrooper effect also applies in many video games, in which most enemies only pose a threat to inexperienced players, or when the player already has some factors going against them (such as difficult terrain). An example is in games like Knights of the Old Republic; although the assassins and thugs have advantages like double-bladed swords and active camouflage, they are easily killed by the protagonist.
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series the effect is known as "the Lore". It is one of the laws of physics on the fictional world, that the smaller the number of heroes and the larger the number of fodder, the more likely the heroes are to win. In The Last Hero, the handful of heroes, who were normally the outnumbered ones, realize that they are up against a single man — Carrot Ironfoundersson — and therefore are wary of attacking him.
In the martial arts movie The One, a form of the Inverse Ninja Law is an actual law of nature and a critical plot point. In it, the villain attempts to eliminate the alternate-universe versions of himself, thus redistributing their combined strength, speed, and durability among the ones that remain. By the time there are only two left, they are both superhuman.
In the original cartoon version of Aeon Flux, the Stormtrooper effect is actually exaggerated, when the main character runs between two walls with enemy soldiers on top firing at her, and manages to hit every last one of them without herself being hit."