ST Starkiller Base Discussion Thread

I get that they needed something to destroy the Republic government, show the galaxy that general Organa wasn't being paranoid about the first order by creating the resistance, and some that to drive the third act action. So they created star killer base and they made it similar to the death star IMO so they wouldn't have to dedicate much screen time to explaining the threat. Was it a bit lazy? Maybe. It wasn't my favorite thing about the movie.
I'm VIII & IX I hope to see more originality in the threats. I wouldn't mind seeing something along the lines of those world Eater weapons from Dark Empire. Can't kill a fleet of those with an ace shot...

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Upon seeing TFA for the first time, I, like many others, thought that Starkiller Base was actually destroying Coruscant and its neighboring planets, not Hosnian Prime. In retrospect, I wonder if destroying Coruscant might have actually been a better idea. Yes, perhaps it would have been interpreted as a big middle finger to the prequel trilogy (of which I am a big fan), but it also would have made the stakes of the narrative much more palpable. The need to destroy Starkiller Base would be all the more urgent.

 

They said to Lawrence Kasdan " you've got TWO weeks to write the script so get going now cuz we go into production in exactly a fortnights time. Remember, just two weeks. No longer.' So he gave them what he gave them and then they went up to Scotland to shoot the movie. That's exactly what happened.

 

It felt really shoehorned in to me. It would be like if at the end f Empire Strikes Back another death star randomly appeared to destroy Bespin. There's no buildup to it and it doesn't really raise the stakes anyway. It also makes no sense from an in universe perspective. There is absolutely no way a project the size of the SKB could be completed without at least some knowledge of its construction leaking out. We're talking a massive project that surely has taken at least a decade and a significant amount of FO resources to complete. All it would take is a single defector or rebel spy to discover its existence.

 

I had no problem with Starkiller Base, seemed a logical progression of technology. Look at humankind, did we stop making bigger guns/bombs? No.

 

I'm torn on it. If you forget what came before it was great. Loved the design, the look, the way it has an atmosphere. I imagine as it moves through space the weather & seasons would change on the planet. Very cool concept. Unfortunately it has to lose points for unoriginality. On the other hand its crucial job in the story was to destroy the Republic capital & fleet. Therefore it will have important & hopefully valuable story ramifications for the rest of the trilogy. Overall I give it a pass. Just.

 

I've had a hard time admitting my own feelings at that moment, but when I'm honest with myself, this was exactly how I felt as well.

As has been mentioned, if this was someone's introduction to Star Wars, it's probably sweet as hell; and maybe that's the "gamble" that was played by the powers-that-be: "Look, this is a proven plot device, the newbies are going to love it, and at the very worst, the die-hards will just see it as a lame homage. They'll get over it. Small price to pay".

I haven't given it a tremendous amount of thought plot-wise, but it seems if you took out SKB's weapon (and the hokey name), and are left to view the FO in its relative infancy, with home base being a freaking abandoned warehouse on a remote planet, the movie would have been fine and could have had a darker tone of a battle amongst equals. Gotta be honest, I'm getting a little tired of the theme of "a small band of nobodies doing the impossible" (please don't tell me that's what Star Wars is all about). It was made all the worse this time because they diagnosed SKB's design flaw on the fly by some Mensa member that got his doctorate in Thermal Oscillation. It was pretty insulting, even within the realm of SW's "faux-science".

I don't want to think that it's assumed that audiences need flash and good-guy victories for their own sake. Just tell me a good story with authentic characters, and have faith in my being able to stomach whatever you have to tell me.

 

Starkiller Base is unforgiveably bad for repeating the same concept a third time.

 

They could have had the First Order Fleet "show itself" to the Galaxy and attack Hosnian Prime; all the events that took place on Starkiller Base could have occurred on the Finalizer.

I LOVE TFA, but Starkiller Base was 100% unnecessary.

 

... Which is why it had to be destroyed.

 

The point is, it should have been destroyed on paper before it ever went to shooting the movie.

 

Too late now...

 

It could of "worked" if the Resistance damaged SB instead of it being outright destroyed. Something different, the Superweapon survives. At least Tarkin 2.0 didn't stay on it til the end. That was different.

Long story short what a bad idea.

 

To me, Starkilller Base is a rehash of the Death Star. The weapon being inside of a planet which cannot move or be mobile, especially after draining the power of its star and losing its gravity. There's no way for the weapon to be able to turn and fire like the Death Star did, especially on a large portion of the galaxy and Republic. It seems like it's only useful for few attempts. There also isn't much believability to the fact of the First Order being able to build a weapon of this scale, especially when the Empire took so long just to construct the first Death Star. Complaining has existed for years over the one in Return of the Jedi taking so short to build. This is even worse to me for Starkiller Base. It only makes sense if the Empire was quietly working on this during the first years of the Galactic Civil War.

It makes more sense to have some sort of rearmament in secret by the First Order. They are perhaps creating a new fleet, clone army, mobile super weapon, or something else which could threaten the Republic. The Republic will be the force to strike the First Orders target, not the Resistance.

 

Ya; I think it would have made for an interesting twist if only the weapon had been damaged/destroyed as opposed to the planet. I always thought IF they were going the super weapon route in this installment, it would be kind of neat for this trilogy to focus on an "arms race" of the Resistance/Republic having to build their own Death Star in order to destroy Starkiller base, specifically on the ethical struggle of whether the ends always justifies the means; especially insofar as the Jedi are concerned.

 

Ya; I think it would have made for an interesting twist if only the weapon had been damaged/destroyed as opposed to the planet. I always thought IF they were going the super weapon route in this installment, it would be kind of neat for this trilogy to focus on an "arms race" of the Resistance/Republic having to build their own Death Star in order to destroy Starkiller base, specifically on the ethical struggle of whether the ends always justifies the means; especially insofar as the Jedi are concerned.[/quote]


Speaking of an arms race wasn't the NR/Resistance building a superweapon called the Sledgehammer in an early draft?

 

The whole scene where they compared the Death Star and Starkiller base was just so silly.It felt like a saturday night live sketch.

 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Starkiller Base was SUPPOSED to function like this... | She Said:She Said

 

Powered by dark matter? I'm surprised JJ didn't go with red matter.

Anyway, everything related to SKB was a horrible idea, and horribly implemented.. IMO. I don't expect hard science to be employed, but if a 3rd grader can roll their eyes at the science, that's not a good sign.

Where to begin.

* Concept. It's supposed to be huge, built into a real planet. First of all, it's not really that huge at all. If the holograms of the size comparison between DS -vs SKB are accurate, that would make SKB roughly 6 times the diameter of the Death Star. Sources say that the DS was around 100 miles in diameter, making SKB around 600 miles in diameter... or about 1/4 the diameter of our own moon. That's no planet, that's a space station.

* It's mobile? Care to explain how to move a small moon planet that seemingly has no propulsion system, JJ? Besides that, without a host star, something that small would freeze very quickly, including the atmosphere. It would become uninhabitable shortly after being devoid of a host star.

* Science 100% ignored.
- A hyper lightspeed energy weapon that can splinter off and turn into hyper lightspeed cruise missile energy weapons?
- The Hosnian system is 5 clustered-together planets apparently orbiting each other?
- The beam passes by Kylo's ship, allegedly traveling at hyper lightspeed, but he watches it casually drift on by like it was waiting for the Fonz to jump over it. Ayyyyyyyyy.
- The Takodana folks start freaking out when they see (what looks like a meteor) way up in the sky. Why panic?
- The Resistance sees 5 new points of lights in the sky. For starters, they wouldn't have been able to see the beam, nor the planets explode halfway across the galaxy.
- How did Finn even infer that SKB blew up the Hosnian system to begin with? He never saw it fire, so he didn't know what it would look like. He didn't know where it was, when they'd use it, or what their target would be if they did.

* Related to the SKB
- During the Nazi speech, there are like thousands of storm troopers and rows upon rows of TIEs lined up in formation to witness the firing of the weapon. Did they all leave after that? Because the base looked deserted, and they couldn't fend off 10 X-wings.
- Nobody seemed to care that the Republic got destroyed... if you can take Finn's word that it actually did get destroyed.
- Many viewers thought that it was Coruscant that got destroyed, so the writers didn't care much either.
- How did Finn know that Rey was taken to the SKB? All he saw was Kylo flying away in his transport. He's have no clue where they were going.
- How did the small Resistance know where in the galaxy the SKB was to send a recon team to, when 5 minutes before then, they didn't even know there even was a SKB?
- When they got word that the Resistance planet was the next target (how could they even know what they were targeting), why didn't they just... evacuate the planet and live to fight another day?? They're a small mobile force that had plenty of time to do that. Hoth was evacuated when the Empire found them, so what's different here?

Incredibly lazy writing. Nothing related to SKB makes any sense.

 

This is what i didnt understand about SKB. If it is powered by the sun and the sun is gone afterwards (as seen and described by Poe in the final assault), then how did it blow up the Republic planets and still have a sun afterwards?

I didnt see two suns. Does the planet move to another star system and kill that sun too? Because if it does that, than thats just plain stupid.

-C

 

I think it's less of a thing of the filmmakers being unoriginal but the Empire/First Order being unoriginal. That's their flaw, their overconfidence. They keep doing the same thing over and over and convinced it'll work this time. Like Han said "So, it's big. How do we blow it up?"

 

I hated the whole concept of Starkiller Base. I was bored by the whole thing, especially considering I knew exactly how every scenario would play out in the third act of TFA. And know, I did not read any spoilers. TFA was just one of the most predictable movies I've seen.

To be fair to TFA, I didn't like the addition of a Death Star II in ROTJ either.

 

Source?

 

Yeah but star killa base is simply situated on a planet, just because the planet is round is why people have taken issue, but in the environment of space everything is round if it's inhabited unless it's a spaceship..

So really it's not a problem, I mean technically it's actually a huge rectangular base on the equator of a snow planet...

Had they ONLY filmed from the base, then you think it's a flat ice planet and not from space and people would be seeing it as different and innovative, but because you see a planet from space then conceptually you just think it's copying the old films without looking at what the environment of outer space actually is...

Had they only filmed from flat ground then people would be thinking its sImilar to ESB snow planet perspective..

My humble opinion is that the base is not the problem..

The problem was that the resistance send a group of X wings out to fly through a trench which is exactly like A New Hope, that seemed lazy to me...that whole section of the film felt like satire to me..like they were taking the mickey (no pun intended) ...this is what stops the movie from getting five stars, I took a star off because of it was clearly satirical ..

I would have preferred a ground battle in the snow just to make things different ...

I still think it's a great film though, weirdly..just because the rest of the film was great to me..