In defense of Starkiller Base

Star Wars is space fantasy not science fiction, It doesnt need to be scientifically acurate. Although I agree that the base was pushing it a little, If you let yourself get hung up on these things itll ruin a otherwise amazing movie.

 

Like really. The first and second Death Star were powered by kyber crystals, beyond that how much do people really look for how they work.. This is a story good vs evil, of space warriors who use laser swords and magic, starfighter battles etc.
Last time we got "scientific" explanation we got midichlorians...

 

Still don't get why hyperdrives and antigravity everywhere ( including the most backwater of environments ) are okay but using those technologies to propel the mass or the fraction of the mass of a star through hyperspace is not.

 

That's why I don't really have a problem with Starkiller base... it's the Starkiller weapon that could have been handled differently....
Problem is, if you take the weapon away, you need to give Han a better reason to go there. I don't see him rushing off into First Order space to rescue a girl he barely knows.

That's basically it.
Abrams sacrificed the character of Starkiller itself, to better serve the development of Rey.
In the end, you get a superweapon which doesn't feel quite as threatening in the story as the original Death Star, but you get better a better human story with Rey.

Had they made enough changes to the plot, I think they could have got a similar effect.... but you have to just about start from scratch to figure out anything better.

Mostly because it makes it too easy to wreck planets if you can just hyperspace an object into a planet.

Perhaps impacting something at Hyperspace has a different effect than Newton's laws would suggest? It is hyperspace afterall, I don't think Newtonian physics really apply there.

 

Yeah thats my point to begin with kinda.
It seems arbitrary to draw the line there randomly when everything else in the universe is alot closer to magic than science ( science fantasy indeed ).

If we're going to play the game of "what technological level exits in the SW universe if their laws of nature are the same as ours" take a quick peak at the numbers:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Beam/Beam2.html
Just a random tidbit:

"It is often stated that the Death Star takes one full day to charge its main weapon for a planet-destroying blast, although this is actually over-conservative since the original Death Star destroyed Alderaan and was already charged and ready to destroy the rebel base on Yavin's moon later that day. Nevertheless, we can use the 1-day figure to determine that it must generate at least 1.2E33 watts on a steady-state basis to charge the weapon, plus whatever it needs to power the station's systems and propel the station through space. This amount of energy is enormously large- equivalent to 3 million times the power output of our sun! Neither nuclear fusion or matter/antimatter reaction would be sufficient to produce this much power, which is why the Death Star requires a hypermatter reactor, as mentioned in Star Wars Cross Sections."

Starkiller might seem OTT but really it sits quite comfortably within the realm of plausible SW tech.

 

Information for those interested in how Starkiller Base works:

*not intended as a criticism or endorsement of it being in the movie

 

Starkiller Base is not a Death Star. it is so different, the concept of a planet being a superweapon is original. Can we stop complaining about Starkiller?

 

This is exactly how I feel about Starkiller base. Super-weapons shouldn't be minor subplots. ANH works because the entirety of the story is driven by the Rebels' desire to destroy the Death Star, and the third act is the payoff for that central storyline.

The Death Star in RotJ doesn't work quite as well, for me, partially because the first act has nothing to do with the rest of the film. It's like a "Save Han Solo" short film. Then almost nothing interesting happens in the second act -- except for a speeder bike chase -- before the bloated third act arrives. But at least all the action in the final two acts is driven by the desire to blow up the Death Star (perhaps intertwined with Luke's desire to save his father). So the super-weapon feels important, both as a threat and as a set piece.

TFA, to me, begins with a central storyline reminiscent of ESB: find Luke Skywalker. I love ESB because ALL of the action is driven by Vader's relentless search for Luke. I've always viewed this as Vader's story, which is why I feel (unlike a lot of people) that it has a proper ending. The heroes weren't victorious at the end of this film, Vader was. He accomplished his primary goal: find and confront his son. And just like ANH, the third act has a big payoff for its central storyline.

TFA is awkward to me because it's a find-Luke-Skywalker story for two acts, becomes a destroy-the-super-weapon story in the third act, and concludes with a resolution of the find-Luke-Skywalker storyline in the epilogue when Artoo wakes up to reveal that he's had everything he's needed to find Luke since the end of the second act. It's a little unsatisfying.

So, basically, I just typed a bunch of words to say I agree with you. The end of this film feels a bit detached from the beginning. Which is a shame, because I do really like it overall.

 

Too much science , but at least it's not stupid .