Starkiller base - the super weapon - was the thing I was somehow most worried about before seeing this film,and it was the thing I still didn't like when it was over. To be that powerful, I like how it used the energy from the sun to get that energy. What confounded me though is that it would seemingly absorb all that energy from the sun, and everything looks dark and..
wait.. the sun does more than provide light. It makes a planet habitable. If you extinguish the sun, ... the planet won't just go dark.. all life will die. When Soran in Star Trek Generations launched the probe into the Veridian Star and that sun went dark.. I'm sorry everyone would have died instantly.
Aside from that, I didn't like Starkiller base for another reason: The Death Star was perfect. Certainly, with how cool the SW galaxy was even when it was created in the 70's, a superweapon wasn't the coolest thing about tat galaxy. Just having Empire vs Rebels was a good enough story on it's own, and as ESB proved, as long as the characters were affected by the story, no super weapons were needed, and that would be that. Just watch ANH's opening shot.. small rebel ship being overtaken by the iconic STar Destroyer.
Yet, ANH was bolder than that.. it needed more than just a good underdog story about a bunch of rebels fighting the good fight. The movie opens with the bold words "Star Wars and a bold yellow drawl text. People had never seen this before. In that crawl text a very specific threat was mentioned.. a battle station that could destroy an entire planet. If Star Wars is similar to those pulp magazines and adventure serials, than a base like that fits right in. Just telling us in the opening crawl that there's a conflict between the rebels and the Empire wouldn't be sufficiently bold enough to be worthy of having that bombastic music and those large yellow letters.. so they mention the battle station adn what it can do right in the crawl. For audiences who, at the time, had no idea what they were in for with Star Wars, this automatically set the stakes and gave the audience who wouldn't know anything something to go on. In the film itself, the idea of this battle station was a bold enough threat to pull Obi-Wan out of his hermitage, and to give Han a reason to care, give Leia a reason to risk her own safety, and give Luke, the hero, that good fight and first adventure. The Death Star was the perfect threat.
Also, it doesn't seem overpowered to me. It would seem that destroying a terrestrial planet is a lot like shattering an egg. If your laser drill is powerful enough to cut through less than thirty miles of rock to reach the mantle, the entire rest of the planet would just shatter. Powerful, sure, yet somehow it's grounded.
My point: make something more powerful in the new film didn't make me care that much more
wait.. the sun does more than provide light. It makes a planet habitable. If you extinguish the sun, ... the planet won't just go dark.. all life will die. When Soran in Star Trek Generations launched the probe into the Veridian Star and that sun went dark.. I'm sorry everyone would have died instantly.
Aside from that, I didn't like Starkiller base for another reason: The Death Star was perfect. Certainly, with how cool the SW galaxy was even when it was created in the 70's, a superweapon wasn't the coolest thing about tat galaxy. Just having Empire vs Rebels was a good enough story on it's own, and as ESB proved, as long as the characters were affected by the story, no super weapons were needed, and that would be that. Just watch ANH's opening shot.. small rebel ship being overtaken by the iconic STar Destroyer.
Yet, ANH was bolder than that.. it needed more than just a good underdog story about a bunch of rebels fighting the good fight. The movie opens with the bold words "Star Wars and a bold yellow drawl text. People had never seen this before. In that crawl text a very specific threat was mentioned.. a battle station that could destroy an entire planet. If Star Wars is similar to those pulp magazines and adventure serials, than a base like that fits right in. Just telling us in the opening crawl that there's a conflict between the rebels and the Empire wouldn't be sufficiently bold enough to be worthy of having that bombastic music and those large yellow letters.. so they mention the battle station adn what it can do right in the crawl. For audiences who, at the time, had no idea what they were in for with Star Wars, this automatically set the stakes and gave the audience who wouldn't know anything something to go on. In the film itself, the idea of this battle station was a bold enough threat to pull Obi-Wan out of his hermitage, and to give Han a reason to care, give Leia a reason to risk her own safety, and give Luke, the hero, that good fight and first adventure. The Death Star was the perfect threat.
Also, it doesn't seem overpowered to me. It would seem that destroying a terrestrial planet is a lot like shattering an egg. If your laser drill is powerful enough to cut through less than thirty miles of rock to reach the mantle, the entire rest of the planet would just shatter. Powerful, sure, yet somehow it's grounded.
My point: make something more powerful in the new film didn't make me care that much more
