ST Starkiller Base Discussion Thread

The scenes on it were phenomenal.
Wish that the final battles could have taken place on Luke's planet.

 

Where does Ren kill Han? Where does Ren fight Rey? How does that fight end in a stalemate? Where does Ren kick Finn's arse? Do they all take a ticket and wait in a corridor on Finalizer? How does Poe swashbuckle his way through the final act?

I would rather that the Starkiller Base plot device was done differently, but it doesn't bother me that it was used. The Nazis were obsessed about super-weapons as well. It did allow the New Republic and navy to be crippled without taking the focus off developing the new characters. I was much more bothered that Phasma simply switched off the shield. It was almost like, "But you didn't say please!" "Please?" "Damn, okay". Unforgivable.

 

I don't think it supposed to move. It was built to destroy the New Republic. Note how Snoke did not give a second thought to its destruction - its job was done.

 

But they were firing it up at the end to destroy the Resistance base...

 

You know that the starkiller weapon felt like some hybrid of Dark Empire's II Galaxy Gun. Did anybody get the feel for that? I mean minus the planet draining energy , but the hyperspace travel and simultaneously at that.

 

Plot-wise, I understand why they came up with it. What could be a weapon whose threat of destruction is as big as the Death Star? And yes, although I thought it was ridiculous that they've built it for a third time (with a flaw to say the least), but what other kind of weapon could give the First Order this much power?

For the next few films, I just hope the writers are able to come up with a weapon that equates the threat of Death Star/Starkiller Base that don't resemble them by definition? I just can't think of anything exactly at the moment.

 

I'm writing this having not looked at all the pages on this thread :

Where or when in the movie did they say Star Killer base is a Death Star ? it seems they modified a planet however there is only a small section of the planet used as a base & the weapon was built into the planet because General Hux said to Snoke the Planet was imploding & they needed to get out ???

 

Anyway you guys can hate Star killer base all you want but man that was an awesome X- wing vs Tie Fighter battle & a light saber battle in the snow gee that was some awesome stuff......

 

Didn't hate it, but it is one of the few things I really dislike. It's one of the things I hated with the old EU, it's the idea of "Like in the movies, BUT BIGGER!"
There was no reason to have that base, they could have easily annihilated the republic with an epic spaceship battle against the republic convoy or something like that. There was very little use for it, if any at all. everything that happened on the base could have happened on a star destroyer and "the planet below"

 

It's funny because the rebels (I mean who are we kidding) are forced to destroy a planet. But I agree that it was very lazy

Verstuurd vanaf mijn HUAWEI GRA-L09 met Tapatalk

 

Probably that's why we only saw The Finalizer at the early parts of TFA - they are reserving usage of the awesome Star Destroyers for Episode 8, where a potentially epic space battle will take place between the FO and the New Republic (using what's left of their fleet as well as the Milli Falcon and her fighters)...

Let's not forget that in the Unknown Regions (where the former SKB was also located) is the illegal shipbuilding operations of the First Order, which means the Finalizer is definitely not alone - albeit possibly functioning as the flagship destroyer instead!

 

Didn't I read somewhere that Finalizer was the only ship? If there are other capital ships where were they? Why didn't they join in a blockade of Jakku to make sure that nothing (that might have the map) got off the planet?

 

Centerpoint is even closer - a spherical (with a couple of towers on each end) space station that can cause stars to go nova by shooting a beam through hyperspace at them.

 

BAD IDEA. I think if they would it put more effort on that part of the plot the movie would it be 100% perfect. How can you destroy a base that is 20 times bigger that the Death star with only 12 X wing and a dosen of thermal detonators.
BTW here is some awesome behind the scene footage fo the force awakens:
http://jbwebtv.com/vfx-before-and-after-star-wars-the-force-awakens/

 

We see other ships:

 

I saw the Force Awakens for the first time on the morning of Friday, December 18th. The audience was terrific, cheering and laughing at all the right moments, clapping at the end. Except for one part: when the image of the "bigger and badder" Starkiller/Death Star III came on the screen, I could actually hear laughter. It is ridiculous.

I love the movie. There's so much creativity put into the new characters. I don't understand why they felt they needed to create another Death Star.

 

Personally, I now like the progression of super weapons from Episodes I, VI and now VII. It does illustrate the difficulty in pursing the development of this element beyond IX. If there were an Episode X I cannot foresee any new power level, unless it's molecular or something.

 

While i certainly don't mind the very concept of Starkiller Base, i must admit it was handled very poorly by this film. Many elements could have been better :

_ we don't get to see it that much, and we barely have a sense of its gigantic proporsions (outside of the breefing shot) : more shot demonstrating that would have been welcomed. (ex : a shot featuring it coming out of Hyperspace could have been really great).

_ it's firepower was unimpressive : you could have it fire at a star and causing a Supernova, or have SKB rotate and the beam take out several planets in one sweep ... and all they could come up with was that weird ray splitting into five smaller rays ? Come on !

_ we don't really measure the consequence of its shot : in our world, it would be the equivalent of blowing up Washington DC and half the East coast with it : i'm sure you could make it more dramatic.

_ while it was supposed to be bigger and better than a Deathstar, even the movie character aren't impressed by it ! It's a shame, and even more so since this scene is also a lost opportunity to promote our new character.

Spoiler: Example of alternative scene : Show, Hide

Instead of Han blabbering about how he can handle yet another Deathstar, you could have a scene where all pilots look grave and uneasy. Then, Poe steps up with an Inspiring but funny comment, and see the other Pilots' morale rise after his intervention.

_ the Space battle was a bit rushed and could have benefited from having a friggin' Second Objective !! How come FO engineers haven't learned a thing or two about failsafe protocols and redundancy...

Spoiler: Example of enhanced Space Battle : Show, Hide

The Space battle would be more exciting if :
_ the rebels take out the first oscillator, thanks to the surprise factor, and the support of some heavier ship(s) to penetrate its shielding.
_ then the Rebels start getting overwhelmed, as they lose the element of surprise, Tie Fighters gets more & more numerous, and the support ship(s) gets destroyed/badly damaged.
_ then they explosion set up by Solo &Co comes into play, and give Poe an opening for shouting down the second oscillator.

So, basically SKB didn't get half the screentime it deserved. So, if JJ wasn't willing to commit that much, then he should have discarded it altogether, instead of giving us this half-assed treatment. That's a shame, as the movie would be nearly perfect without the SKB issue..

 

So even the parked MF was CG? I am disappoint. This means ESB was the last time we saw the full-sized bird.

 

They're not going to build a flipping full size prop for a medium and long shot. If they had scenes requiring them to crawl over the surface of it then it would necessitate it. No need with what amounts to an establishing shot.

 

Not always. There were a number of places where it was practical (at the Resistance Base, and on Takodana, for example).

 

SKB doesn't resemble the DS by definition. It is very similar but it is a base and gun on a real planet, not an man made space station.

JabbatheHumanBeing, I think MeBe means full size and complete, not a side or a portion but the whole thing.

 

The SKB was also probably a more practical construction, using an already made galactic object and converting it as opposed to constructing something out of nothing where you need supplies on demand. With Starkiller its possible the FO had all the materials they needed right on the planet.

 

It would have been cool if "Starkiller" was Rey's last name.

 

My reaction to the SKB in real time while watching the movie.

"They're not really going to do ANOTHER Death Star are they? No one would be silly, lame, and unoriginal enough to do THAT, right?"

Unfortunately they did. I still can't really believe they had all of the creative powers that they had, and all they could come up with was,"uh, how about an even BIGGER Death Star?"

In the scene where the Rebels, uh, Resistance plan to destroy it, they practically descend into parody. Dameron essentially has a line that goes "Hey, we do this EVERY movie--blow up the shield generator, hit the weak spot, thing goes BOOM, why are we sitting around here planning, lets GO!"

It almost felt like a line out of Robot Chicken or Spaceballs 2 or something.

I think if you could just pull SKB entirely out of the movie, I would enjoy it significantly more.