ST Any chance we could get a fourth Death Star in Episode VIII?

The next superweapon will probably be force based and I am not exactly looking forward to it.

 

LastJediKnight: I hope that she won't be very powerful, it is enough the way it is now. Her being relatively strong in the force without any training is just dumb. She could become a bit stronger than she is now but not much. To make her a super force user just because she is a woman and young is just dumb the way I look at it. Luke should be the strongest Jedi the way I look at it.

 

ESB has always been my favourite SW movie primarily because of its prominent use of a superweap... oh wait.

Maybe starting with a superweapon in ANH that can destroy entire planets wasn't the wisest creative decision; yes heresy I know... because then if there are further superweapons, then they have to top that somehow.

I'm looking forward to VIII, as it is as likely to use psychological weapons as much as actual ones; and as GRR Martin once said, nothing gives him greater pleasure than to write about "the human heart in conflict with itself", which for me is the primary reason A Song of Ice and Fire is so damn good; that despite that there are (relatively speaking) superweapons in those books as well.

SW could do with taking a leaf or two out of his book IMHO.

 

ANH was the one that started it all. At the time they didn't know there would be any more Star Wars movies. So I wouldn't say it wasn't a wise decision, at the time it was a very good decision that paid off in the end.

I disagree with the concept that you always have to "top" the previous film by going bigger. I think this is a mistake Hollywood often makes that they think bigger is better, when it's often better to follow up with a deeper, more personal movie. Empire is a good example how that can work.

 

I'm not sure whom 'they' refers to, but every time I've read anything that GL said at the time, his intent was to always make the three films with the longer term aim of doing more.

On this we can agree. ESB remains my favourite film of the lot as it is more psychological in flavour and primarily focuses on Luke's internal conflicts. Of course, a nice dose of action and a love story in a SW movie that actually worked, helped contribute to its brilliance.

 

Maybe he wanted to do more movies, but there was no guarantee at the time. There was a huge risk that ANH would remain the only SW movie.

 

There's never any guarantee a movie will get made at any one time, however 20th Century Fox didn't write the story, George did, with quite a bit of input from various bods including Francis Ford Coppola and Marcia Lucas. He wrote it in such a way with the intention of making more films as he knew from the outset that he couldn't tell his story with just one. He was as acutely aware as anyone that ANH might bomb, making it harder to make the others, and then his story might have remained unfinished and may have ended up only existing in the form of other media such as novels. As fate would have it, this isn't how things turned out... to the benefit and gratitude of millions of fans.

But we digress; let's get back to talking about superweapons.

 

He simply put all of his best ideas into STAR WARS in the hope of success and thus the ability to continue and finance sequels. Lucas and Spielberg did the same with Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Trench Run was one of two constants in the earliest drafts, the other the Cantina. The Death Star is a huge component in the narrative and its repurposing more of a device to achieve certain narrative goals thereafter. The concept has such potency that it's difficult to overcome, or top. I suspect this is why many tire of it. I suppose it can be seen as a weakness in Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace and now The Force Awakens, but it's also part of the fundamental nature of these stories, which I find difficult to categorically dismiss at this point. Besides, each example is slightly different from the last, avoiding a straight duplicate, and each compliment the other thematically and objectively. I have little qualms with Starkiller Base, but I do think it carries the unfortunate effect of easy criticism.

The idea is expressed throughout the series in both subtle and overt images.