ST Starkiller Base Discussion Thread

Help me out here :

Death Star - Not a star, but a space station that's the size of a small moon and destroys planets.

Star Destroyer - Doesn't destroy stars. Can't even destroy planets and Is only about a tiny fraction of the size of the Death "Star".

Starkiller - Bigger than the Death Star because it's a decent sized planet. Kills several planets at once. Its weapon may or may not have "killed" stars, but it certainly eats stars up when charging itself. And then turned into a star itself when it backfired.

What's next? A light-saber that you can't see?

 

How about a light side that you can't see?

 

Then it would be kinda dark don't you think?

 

"I'll show you the dark side. ..... Wait. Where is it? Hold on. I'll just turn its lights on."

 

Absolutely hated it....

It is the typical Hollywood Franchise Sequel problem they do every single time....

Executive 1: "First one made a lot of money, lets do a sequel!"

Executive 2: "We need to do it BIGGER AND BETTER!!"

No you dont Hollywood !!!!! This is the major mistake of many sequels out there. They have this idea that they must make a film that is bigger and better than the original. How about just continue the story arc of the characters ??

Look at the greatest sequel of all time - Empire Strikes Back. Its a smaller more personal film that continues the journey of Luke toward being a Jedi Knight. The climax of the first one was an epic big battle against the death star. The sequel was about the heroes escaping a small city. So glad Empire Strikes Back wasn't made today - Disney would have had three death stars, CGI 9 foot Yoda, and other silly lame franchise things.

The better sequels out there are the ones that make a more personal smaller story rather than another bigger / better rehash. The biggest culprit of this was the awful Independence Day Resurgance - another typical 'we need a BIGGER alien ship and MORE destruction'. It sucks they introduced this into Star Wars, but then again Lucas did this with TPM.

 

You make some great points, especially about Empire too. One of the best films ever made IMO and for me thats down to them progressing the story and the characters.

I really enjoyed TFA, but I felt Starkiller was the weakest aspect of the film. It was almost treated as an aside and as a result the impact of the destruction of the Republic was something that had no impact for me. It just happened. I would have preferred it if the Rebels had to attack the base to rescue Rey or Leia or to retrieve BB8 even. The whole countdown thing which obviously aped the Death Star on Yavin just comes off as a lame copy with no tension, but no tension because its already been done.

 

Empire Strikes Back was the very next movie both produced and in chronological order of the saga. I don't think there was any chance Lucas would repeat the same opening and climax as Star Wars in 1980 (although with the novelty of sequels in that time period, it appears that audiences had to be prewarned that they weren't going to do that, or that there was any scope for anything else, judging by the promotional material at the time, ).

The Hoth battle is actually just as epic as the Death Star Battle and is placed at the beginning so that the climax of the movie would be a personal, emotional climax. But the whole movie is not defined as a personal one form beginning to end. The intent and the outcome of the bulk of the Empire Strokes Back is a much grander, more complex and sophisticated adventure spread out over a far vaster "location" than the relative confines of A New Hope's.

Some of Empire's promotion almost seems at pains to tell the audience "Hey! The blew up the ultimate power in the universe and restored peace and freedom to the galaxy, as celebrated in the triumphant curtain call that bookends the movie along with that sentiment in the opening crawl. BUT IT DOESN'T END THERE. There's actually a much bigger story to come. Loads more star destroyers, aliens and planets. HONEST . Roll up Roll up.!!!"

It's as if they needed to reassure audiences that it was worth coming to see Empire BECAUSE it wasn't going to be the same as Star Wars, not in spite of it. If it was a no brainer to make money by just doing the Death Star again in 1980, then there was no need to reassure audiences it was worth paying to see Star Wars : Part II.

George Lucas said to Kershner of Empire Strikes Back - "...the movie needs to be bigger, more complex and better than Star Wars. And if it doesn't succeed then it's the end of Star Wars" .

I don't think that SKB is the defining aspect of the TFA story, so the fact it resembles THE definiung problem of ANH (and ROTJ) is fine with me. I don't believe that any Star Wars film has been dominated by the search for a errant "mythical" hero by both hero and enemy, for good purposes and ill. How the heroes emerge in that story and how the villain is personally affected by it an the circumstances surrounding that quest is the defining problem of this movie.

I think that the fact that SKB has smote a complacent Republic will inevitably have massive consequences for the backdrop for the continuation of the personal stories in the following episodes though.

 

Did you think the droid control ship was bigger than the Death Star?

 

Well actually, what's to stop his Spidey sense from going off when Starkiller is fired? He could just be like "oh, I've got a bad feeling about this", and yeah, off he goes.

 

What is in the story:

- Snoke is mad the map isn't there yet, "their strategy must now change" as in they were going to fire on wherever Luke was.

Because they didn't have the map to Luke, we don't know if Luke could have thwarted their little ray gun with psychic powers or not.

All we know was "Plan A" was "Kill Luke Skywalker".

Plan B was "Kill Republic Capitol."

 

Plan C - ?
Plan D - Profit!

 

The Underpant Gnomes and the First Order have a lot in common actually.

1. Build giant ray gun.

2. Map to Luke?

3. Kill Luke Skywalker and now the Jedi are no more.

Profit!!

 

This is where you are making an assumption that isn't substantiated by anything that has been said or seen.

 

This is called trusting the audience to fill in a couple of easily assumable blanks.

 

I'm not sure Snoke actually gives a damn about Starkiller Base. He never seems terribly thrilled about it (Hux is the one who is all gung-ho for blowing things up) and when it gets exploded he doesn't seem to be very sad or angry about it. Mildly peeved, is what I'd say.

My pet theory is that Snoke is using Starkiller Base as a way to teach Hux that simply having the big gun is not the way you win, aka the Tarkin Lesson. (I think he uses Rey to teach Kylo Ren that simply having a lightsaber and a cool helmet doesn't make you Darth Vader.)

 

Well they did a very poor job of hinting at it, probably because they were not, because you are literally the only person I know who ever even considered that possibility.

 

Technological Terrors < The Power of the Force.

With his main objective losing ground by the moment of destroying the very last Jedi, Snoke didn't care about the weapon anymore as the only use for it he cared about was now a missed opportunity.

Now Skywalker will return, and the new Jedi will rise.

If you go through the scene beat by beat the information is all there. It just needs to be thought of in terms of motivation.

Snoke only raised his voice when the importance of the Jedi returning was not being taken seriously by his underlings.

Then Hux suggested they use it on a different target and Snoke accepted that suggestion with disappointment.

 

If his ultimate goal was to kill Luke with Starkiller, why go to Plan B at all? Firing the weapon at the Republic capital might just alert Luke to the fact that there's a new superweapon in town. There's no reason I can see why failure to find the map means he has to reveal his hand prematurely.

 

They had two great targets: Luke and the Republic.

First come first served. Luke was too difficult to find, and they cannot delay their hand too much and lose the surprise factor.

 

Don't forget what Hux tells Kylo about not letting his desires get in the way of Snoke's orders when he insists on capturing BB8 unharmed. Either that is inconsistent writing, or Snoke's orders were not simply to find Luke. I could speculate what those orders were (such as prevent the resistance from finding Luke at any cost), but that is just speculation on my part.

 

It's in there, it just happens fast, from Hux to Ren: "Supreme Leader Snoke was explicit. Capture the droid if we can, but destroy it if we must."

This reads as "Find the droid so we can get rid of Luke, but we also don't want the resistance to find him either.

from Snoke in a later scene after realizing the map was going to the Resistance: "Then the Resistance must be destroyed before they get to Skywalker."

 

I have fallen out of love with SKB. It was too much of the same ol same ol. Still love the movie though! They just needed a new weapon…or maybe not one at all.

 

Hopefully Rogue One can mix it up a bit with some originality in the big bad weapon area.

Oh wait that's right...

 

The difference between ROTJ and TFA for me is that I think the former reintroducing a super weapon simplifies the plot and the latter complicates it.

You go back and look at the earlier versions of the ROTJ script before the DS II became the focus there actually much more complex plot wise. The DS II represents such a known quantity that it actually takes very little time to build up and naturally serves as a replacement for the Emperors palace. The end result is I think that Luke's story is clearly allowed to become the most important thread of ROTJ, the battle of Endor is not a battle of "specifics" outside of Lando but rather a larger conflict that naturally ebbs and flows.

With TFA on the other hand I think SKB ends up creating the need for a more complex plot that's naturally less focused on the lead characters. The same character story could have been served by removing SKB entirely and just having Rey and Luke's location become the focus with some FO base as the setting. SKB itself as well obviously differs significantly from the DS II as well leading to a lot more distracting exposition, in ROTJ its basically, "take down the shield, destroy the reactor" where as were talking all kinds of technicalities with SKB and even then it seems to leave a much of logical flaws, most obviously how easily Han/Finn/Rey are able to achieve there objectives.

In terms of how the audience is treated I don't think TFA treats them as more intelligent than the OT did(the PT being something else entirely as there fundamentally different more political films). Both ask the audience to make leaps but in the OT those leaps are I think much more logical, it gives us a more realistically unfolding political scene that we see a few parts of and asks us to fill in the generalised details that really don't need to be that specific. TFA on the other hand omits a lot of specific details about its plot including details that relate to characters dramatic arcs leaving them "mysterious" but when it comes to politics I think it asks a lot less needing to show us the rise of the FO on screen via SKB. Its like having Tarkin destroy the senate with the DS in ANH rather than imply its disbanding has been a slow inevitable process.