SOLO movie new Stormtrooper rifle

They seem to adopt a really half hearted effort to props and weapons on the new movies. I am tired of seeing the "exhaust bluing" effect on stuff. Maybe they should adopt the "necessity is the mother of invention" approach rather than "big budget achieves mediocrity".

Photos of this at Toy Fare labeled it a stormtrooper sniper.

In one of the Thrawn books a sniper uses very expensive gas to power his blaster which makes the laser bolt invisible.
That in-universe explanation told us that red and green blaster bolts were made from cheap and easy to acquire gas,
but invisible bolts are very expensive and not used, hence everyone knows your position and can fire back quite easily.

TazMan2000 said:

Even that weapon is cool looking. I can understand some weapons of that are not key to the plot and are either holstered or seen on the screen for a second or two need not be outlandishly decorated to make it look futuristic, but the Enfiled conversion is a lame effort. They should have went with this.
View attachment 797407
If they did, it could possibly explain the excessive filth over this trooper's armor. Sewer Trooper.

TazMan2000

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The Jawa "ion gun" was a an unmodified No. 1 Mk III that had been converted fro use as a smoke grenade launcher. The T-21 was a Lewis gun without a magazine. DL-19
was a barely-modified MG34. DL-44 is OBVIOUSLY a Mauser Broomhandle.

Looks great! The cape is hilarious though. They should give the troops hats next, or maybe a bowtie.

Hovito loincloth said:

They seem to adopt a really half hearted effort to props and weapons on the new movies.

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That was my point exactly, and I'm not buying the "they tried to stick to the OT feel" argument. Hogwash, that's a sorry excuse. Many of the prominent weapons in Rogue One were also based on real weapons but heavily modified and look very sci-fi and out of this world: Jyn's blaster was a WWI Luger, Cassian's blaster was a modified AR-15, Baze's was a shotgun, not sure what Cherrut's was based on but it was cool, Director Krenic's blaster was based on an MP40, and the Shoretrooper blaster was awesome and took the Sterling look a lot farther. It's OK to use real weapons as a base, but c'mon, get creative!

Like I said before, hoping the real thing once we see a picture is a little more imaginative, as with the many other weapons we have not seen yet for this film, and what's pictured above is the product of scaling down for a toy.

Strongbow said:

The Jawa "ion gun" was a an unmodified No. 1 Mk III that had been converted fro use as a smoke grenade launcher. The T-21 was a Lewis gun without a magazine. DL-19
was a barely-modified MG34. DL-44 is OBVIOUSLY a Mauser Broomhandle.

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Yes, but to the average moviegoer at that time, those were probably not the most easily identified weapons. Perhaps someone who watched a lot of WW1 or 2 movies made in the UK or the US could readily identify the weapons. However, if you ask anybody, even a child, to draw a rifle, they would draw something that would closely resemble an Enfiled. A design that really hasn't changed much in its history (excluding recent history with bullpup designs/plastics).

The Stormtrropers weapon in TFA was based on the Sterling, but heavily modified. It might not be the most popular design, but you could tell effort was put into it to make it look like an upgrade to the E-11. You can't take an easily identifiable design, slap a couple of small greeblies on it and expect it not to be easily recognized as to what it was. That design in the picture would be like taking a 1969 Ford Mustang, glueing a couple of jet engines to it and calling it a Landspeeder.

TazMan2000