ST Starkiller Base Discussion Thread

Wait..wait..wait..a film with a huge budget like Star Wars..

You're telling me they paid a writing wage for two weeks work..

Wouldn't it be more likely that he had already started writing for a while and then was asked to finish it up within two weeks??

 

I still can't get over SKB.

In fact, I can't get over it so damn much, that talking about it makes me angry. When I say NOTHING makes sense about it, that is not an exaggeration. Literally NOTHING at all makes sense. Nothing.

- the economics of building it don't make sense.

- the science doesn't make sense.

- the light speed laserbeam which is witnessed by Kylo Ren travelling through space make no sense. What happened to hyperspace?

- the witnessing of the destruction from Takodana from a different solar system makes no sense. At all.

- the laserbeam splitting off into five makes no sense.

- the idea that the sun can be drained makes no sense

- the idea of the sun disappearing makes no sense since it would kill everyone on the planet.

- the idea that the Sun can be drained and can therefore only be fired once make no sense.

- the fact that the weapon fired on the Hosnian System make no sense, because the Sun was still there. How did it charge the first time?

- The fact that it can aim it's payload make no sense, because it is a planet stuck in orbit, and therefore cannot "aim" the main weapon.

- The idea that it can move is stupid. It's a planet. It can't move, because, you know.... it's a planet.

- The size of it makes no sense. The original Death Star was supposed to have a diameter of 160 KM. When shown as a hologram, SKB is bigger, but even on that scale it is still only about 1/20th the size of Earth. Too small for a planet. Almost too small for a moon.

- The fact that it is too close it's own Sun make no sense. If the Sun were a basketball, it is about one foot away. It should be 100 feet away.

The whole thing is a giant facepalm

 

Well I don't think it's meant to be scientifically accurate ...many aspects of Star Wars aren't realistic, I don't think the base itself is a big deal..nor using the sun...so what...hyper speed isn't factual either..

for me it was just that the X wing saviour scene was a direct copy of a new hope...

 

Oh, and the fact that an entire planet was blown up by 10 X-Wings makes no sense, either.

 

Han and chewie helped achieve that as well...

Yeah you're right, but again, it's Star Wars, it's sci fi fantasy and pop corn, always has been....

 

I've never said Star Wars has to be 100% scientifically accurate. But it DOES have to be plausible.

Nothing about SKB is plausible.

 

People forget that Kylo Ren worships Vader like a god, and is desperate to emulate and even surpass him, so of course he would copy what Vader did, as "Lord" of the empire, and creating a giant destructive space station is definitely a realistic in-universe feat he would attempt, and by that time technology would have improved (hence the superior fire power), two or more death stars have already been tried and tested, and probably had their designs theoretically improved upon through patents and such, while his wealth and resources would be far lower, hence building the superior fire power into a planet rather than into an entire independent battle station. It just makes logical (contextual) sense.

 

except that Vader was no fan of the Death Star , next to the power of the Force it was "insignificant"

.

 

Which both got blown up quite easily by small fighters.

Kylo should have known that building a bigger, better, one was probably not the way to "finish what he started".

EDIT: I can't place a vote. I didn't like SKB, but I can't say I "hated" it either. It was just meh.

 

How else would he have copied DV than making an even more powerful space station than DV worked on, regardless of how he (DV) compared it to the force? If I wanted to copy Hitler, I would do everything he was known to have done, but with the technology and resources available today, and DV was definitely the Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Paul of Tarsus, Gedaffi, of his day/universe (sure the Emperor technically was, but Vader was the one seen publicly choking people or cutting them down with a red laser blade, so he would be the one with the reputation).

 

but in that analogy it would make more sense to copy Palpatine . He was Emperor/ Dictator like the figures you mention , Vader wasn't really a public figure , he was more of a cult figure .

 

Palpatine hid himself away, Vader was the one out killing the remaining Jedi, hunting down the stolen Deathstar plans, force-choking his own men, running through the Hoth base, taking over the Bespin city, threatening the staff into working harder and faster, etc etc. The emperor was elusive, and enigmatic leader, one whom probably still had a great many loyal supporters, while Vader was a tyrant who killed or brutally attacked anyone who ticked him off.

I'd be prepared to bet that VERY FEW people even know that the emperor had any kind of "unnatural" or force-related power, while everyone had witnessed Vader use the force as a destructive weapon during the period between his conversion and death. The emperor doesn't need to do anything that exposes his power or places himself in danger because he has his mechanical minion to do it all for him.

 

Palpatine was a very famous leader of the Republic and then Emperor , Vader wasn't a tyrant , he wasn't political , he was a warrior involved in select military operations I don't think the general public had much idea of him , they didn't even know who he was .

 

Same way he knows everything else about Vader.

 

The problem I would say is that the Star Killer base broke with previous SW tech in that it did actually try and offer some explanation to its workings. That I think makes the clear leaps of logic involved much harder to ignore. It seemed a bit ironic after all the talk about Abrams being better suited to Starwars than Star Trek that he brought a very Trek like weapon into the film.

Honestly for me I think that they missed quite a lot of opportunities with the SKB base as well. I would say for example it could have been a great way to explain the FO getting the better of the republic by having it as more of a "spit and sawdust" kind of weapon made with more limited resources rather than a "new bigger better death star". That would have made the star draining make more sense as well as it could always have been designed to be a weapon with limited use intended to destroy key republic/resistance worlds not a long term one. It also would have made its ineffective defence easier to understand.

I would say as well I think the wasted an opportunity in terms of the location as well as if each use of the weapon was draining the star it would have been great to have the world it was based on as somewhere tropical that was now dying/freezing, a jungle with snow/ice.

 

Regardless of it being a good or bad idea, Starkiller Base served its purpose, and now its gone. Anything bad about the idea is now gone, as well as anything good.

Moving forward, I would hope that they move away a bit more from things that are so obviously just the bigger/badder version of previous SW things.

 

You asked how Kylo would know that Vader didn't care for the Death Star. I'm saying that Kylo is clearly familiar with Vader and therefore would know.

 

I put this on my blog, but thought I'd share my wacky SKB theory. I was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark today and listened to the explanation of why the Nazis would want the Ark...suddenly my theory didn't seem so crazy...

In the TFA novelization, the Restistance leaders are chatting about how Starkiller Base works. Admiral Ackbar says something interesting things about there being more dark energy in the universe than anything else. I'm sure this is more scientific than Star Wars light side vs. dark side. But then Admiral Statura makes this very cryptic statement:

“If the engineering could be worked out, one would have access to an almost literally infinite source of energy.”

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Someone once said, regarding the ST, we're going to see the force in a different way. Well, what if the whole Starkiller Base was a red herring? I'm sure there's thousands of deceased First Order officers and troopers who would beg to differ. But what if Starkiller Base had a dual purpose? The first, obviously, to have the ability to wipe out entire systems, strike fear into the galaxy, destroy potential enemies and establish a new Empire-like regime. Yada yada. So imagine a second purpose was to find a way to harness energy in order to create a limitless power source. Imagine if that could be channeled into some kind of force power... Somewhere I can hear Palpatine yelling "Uuuuuuuuunlimited Poooooooooower!

 

Starkiller Base is completely ridiculous but that's part of why I really liked it. A sun being drained of it's energy and used to fire a beam across the galaxy... that's pretty wacky. But in this story it just fits. For me anyway.

 

I've come to accept that planet-destroying weapons are just as much of a thing in Star Wars movies as lightsabers or droids. I thought I would have a problem with it, but I didn't. I liked it.

 

The only way Star Killer Bases sense as something feasible for the First Order to be creating is that the Empire started this weapon alongside the Death Star decades ago and only now is it being completed by what remains of Imperial forces.

 

I think he meant Snoke. You have to wonder why they did not just build another death star. [I mean the FO, not the writers] I mean surely moving a planet must be impossible. Even if it is surely it would go a lot slower than a death star.

 

Starkiller Base is a stain on an otherwise excellent film.