Let me make one thing clear before this rant begins: Starkiller Base looks amazing. The First Order standing out there on the plain, fucking space Nazis – that was a great shot. The Force Awakens, too, is a welcome return to form for a cherished franchise still stinging from the abuse of the prequels.
The whole idea of Starkiller Base – putting aside the fact it’s really just a bigger Death Star, and my
god shouldn’t the Empire have stopped pouring all their resources into white elephants by now – is pretty cool. I mean, it’s a fucking planet slash spaceship with a big fucking gun, with some added ski slopes for the holidays. Sweet.
But there are a few problems (spoilers to follow):
One: so here we have Rey, walking around a space station the size of the Earth (or Mars, whatever, the motherfucking thing is big), and here we have Han, Finn, and Chewbacca walking around the same station. Now how the bloody hell do they run into each other? I mean, really.
Let’s pretend Han and co. are in the ‘thermal oscillator’, in the equivalent location of Australia. Wouldn’t it be far more likely Rey was walking around in the equivalent area of Asia, or the US, or the Ocean? Even if she was roughly in the same continent as the others, why not Melbourne to their Sydney? The fuck she end up on the same street in the same town?
Now, if you’re preparing to argue only part of the planet was liveable then okay, I’ll go with it. But that small liveable part will still be a large city. A super star destroyer has a crew of 280,000, the Death Star over 350,000. Internet geeks have yet to provide such detail for the Starkiller Base, but its population could be anything from 1 to 10 million.
Here’s the thing: 1.3 million people is Adelaide, 1.2 million is Dallas, and 800,000 is Glasgow. So at minimum, Rey is walking around a complex as big as Adelaide, or Dallas or Glasgow, and she’s just Yo boys fancy running into you here.
Two: There are a million blokes out there on the plain; you can’t have, say, a thousand of them guarding that oh-so-important ‘thermal oscillator’? The fuck else are they doing there? The only point of being on the planet is presumably to protect it against ground assault, plus as a launching point for an armada of ships (and a suitably massive system of hangers for all of those ships, and quarters for those hundreds of thousands-if-not-millions of storm troopers). So why not put a thousand storm troopers on guard duty in the only weakness of this planet-sized super weapon, and stick in a credible air defence system while you’re at it?
Three: If the base does kill stars (this seems to be the case), why the need for the superweapon? Why not just trundle up to a star and suck out all the energy? Speaking of which, the Resistance planet (D’Qar) – the one where Maz Kanata lived, which everyone was in a race-against-time to save as the superweapon recharged – is presumably dead anyway as its star was drained by the Starkiller.
Four: If, as a bunch of geeks on the Internet have suggested, Starkiller shoots and blows up a bunch of planets in another solar system, what fucking laws of physics is JJ Abrams looking at? Kylo Ren is
standing there watching the red space lasers crawl across the sky from the bridge of the Base. At that pace it’d be decades – more – before the shot hit the New Republic planets. Even if the Starkiller fired its beams at the speed of light, the next system will still be years away. (Another question: why are the good guys called ‘the resistance’? The Empire was been defeated in Return of the Jedi and the New Republic is in control. Technically, the First Order is now the resistance).
These are just the basic logic problems. I’m not even starting on the broader strategic flaws of a Starkiller Base, the least of which is this: it wouldn’t work. As my fellow Star Wars fan Auston Habershaw explains, all a Death Star (and Starkiller) base will do is crystallise the rebellion, or resistance, against you. They represent a massive waste of resources that will only make the galaxy less governable.
I can only imagine the conversation among First Order project managers before building another giant super-weapon. And imagine it I will: here is the First Order Chief Superweapon Architect, an Assistant Architect, and the First Order Economist, discussing the Starkiller:
First Order Chief Superweapon Architect: “Okay, we’re building a secret weapon. You’ll never guess what it is.”
Assistant architect: “Is it a giant moon that blows up planets?”
Chief Architect: “No.”
Assistant architect: (sits up) “Oh. Wow. That’s a relief.”
Chief Architect: “It’s a PLANET that blows up other planets.”
Assistant architect: sigh.
First Order Accountant: “That’s going to be pretty expensive.”
Chief Architect: (not listening) “BOOM. Planet goes boom.”
Accountant: “I mean. We could build like twenty super star destroyers, ten thousand TIE fighters. Train another million troops.”
Assistant Architect: “Yes, perhaps our leaders should try some tactical flexibility? Rather than putting all their eggs in one basket, you know?”
Chief Architect: “You know what else I’m thinking about?”
Assistant Architect: “Trenches”.
Accountant: “He’s thinking about trenches.”
Chief Architect: (still not listening) “Trenches. Big, X-Wing Fighter-sized trenches that lead all the way to the one vulnerability of the super weapon.”
Assistant Architect: “Motherfucker.”
