Gah I looked it up on that Wookiepedia site. Apparently somebody told the other guys to run and they did. Makes a whole lot of sense. Not really actually. At the very least that is unrealistic (but better than Palpatine as some overmind thing that made the Imperials fight… Or Luke crashing a moon into the fleet…). And I suppose you can come up with any excuses given enough fan fic… And as for dealing with the people celebrating… apparently there was a failed uprising on Coruscant. Probably the stupidest population of a city(planet) in history then. Ah well.

Lucas has so many plot hole issues that it isn’t funny… no, it is funny. And how did the stormtroopers go from being a relatively decent fighting force (clones) to the unable to aim plastic boys known as stormtroopers?

And Lucas, far from explaining this problem when he had the chance (the remastered extra scene versions, you know the one where they replaced the ghost thing of the guy who actually played Darth Vader with that pipsqueak from Episodes 2 and 3), in fact he made it worse. He clearly shows people celebrating the demise of the Emperor on Tatooine (or whatever), Naboo, and, get this, Coruscant. Yes, given the way the the scenes were compiled it made it seem like it was around the same time. So they start celebrating the death of the Emperor on Coruscant. The freaking capitol! Where there would almost certainly be an imperial presence! Not only does this make no sense, but it spits at the whole expanded universe, which made the whole thing continue on for some time (I didn’t read a whole lot of the expanded universe myself). So Lucas manages to make things even more unrealistic, and shoot down all that fan fiction that happened. Oh and get rid of the only scene where you actually see the poor fellow who was stuck in that overheated suit while playing Vader. Way to go.

Not a storytelling genius might be being generous. I’d credit him with a great imagination, but tons of plot holes too!

The very first book written in the Expanded Universe series (Zahn’s Dark Force trilogy) comes up with two excuses — one believable, that Vader had all of the top command on his personal Star Destroyer (the one that plowed into the Death Star); and one a little less so, that the Emperor, in his capacity as a dark Jedi, was augmenting the minds and cooperation of all the local Imperial forces, and when he died, their training became almost useless.

Actually, the latter rationalization might also explain stormtroopers’ incredible aim.