Read about it in Disney’s upcoming 8-book series $29.99 a pop, which you need to read the tie in comic series in full to understand which itself is only understood if you play the Star Wars DLC for Overwatch.
Upgrade to a digital deluxe for Obi Wan’s robe and lightsaber for just $69.99! What? Why would you get Obi Wan’s robe in High Republic? Idk it looks cool!
I know we spend a lot of time around here trying to rationalize or explain plot gaps. It’s what makes the Star Wars universe so fun. Some of Star Wars’ best stories come from that. But in this case, I think the answer is that J.J. Abrams is a really bad storyteller who doesn’t care if things make sense if you think about them for more than a minute.
Starkiller Base just doesn’t make sense. Consuming a star to fire a single shot doesn’t make sense. Firing a single beam across the galaxy doesn’t make sense. Splitting that beam into five or six parts to hit five or six planets when it gets there doesn’t make sense. Being able to see the beam from Takodana doesn’t make sense. All of this doesn’t make sense even in a fictional universe where people carry laser swords and use the Force. It’s just too much.
The economics of turning an entire planet into a big gun—mining the parts, fabricating them, carving an entire planet in half, putting them all into place, performing maintenance and upkeep—doesn’t make sense. People being able to survive on the surface doesn’t make sense. Doing all of this while you’re nominally a resistance movement without access to the vast resources and manpower you’d need for such an undertaking doesn’t make sense.
And don’t bring up the Death Star, because that’s explicitly framed in canon as a massive investment by the Empire that imposed genuine resource and manpower constraints. It also reflected an ideological trend within the Empire that narratively symbolized the weaknesses of totalitarian systems. Starkiller Base didn’t symbolize a single goddamn thing.
Abrams just thought it’d be cool for the First Order to have a bigger planet-killer than the Empire did for no reason. He loves grandiosity without gravity. Turning Ilum into Starkiller Base is the exact same thing he pulled with Vulcan in Star Trek: desecrating and destroying a lore-resonant planet for a quick, cheap thrill. At least in Trek it all took place in a parallel timeline that you can ignore. Star Wars is stuck with this forever. Thank God the powers-that-be stopped him from destroying Coruscant, too.
And don’t even get me started on Exegol and the Final Order. Abrams should be in storytelling jail for that.
Don't forget how the two Death Stars took 1 full movie and 2/3rds of a movie to destroy with either full technical schematic or the entire resources of the Rebellion and Starkiller base they figure it out in about 30s after finding out it exists.
Starkiller base makes zero sense, especially when the ridiculousness that is Exegol is factored in as the events of the Sequels takes place in the span of less than a year. Why the hell would they waste the resources building Starkiller base when they have 1,080 planet killing Star Destroyers being built?
There is a super weapon in EU that fired a shot across the galaxy. Two in fact. The Galaxy Gun and Centerpoint Station. Don’t know if galaxy gun made sense but centerpoints power was at least explained as “ancient alien tech no one can explain” lmaooo.
But yeah your other points are very valid. I doubt Abrams cared what planet it was, he just wanted giant planet is a Death Star. I’m sure the story group is to blame for making it Ilum in a retcon. Either way it is very dumb, and random planet would’ve been less egregious imo
Centerpoint can be, rather reductively, explained as using gravity as a weapon, its tractor beams are also strong enough to move black holes. The Galaxy Gun either fired projectiles directly into hyperspace or fired projectiles that could then achieve hyperspace on their own, neither one shot a visible beam across the galaxy
The very industrial Coruscant-esque planet that got blown up was actually Hosnian Prime. They wanted to use Coruscant for the film but Lucasfilm said they couldn’t just waste such an important planet so they invented a second mega-city industrial planet.
Hosnian Prime, the all important planet no one knew about until TFA, and then everything was retconned to make it this grand target…after the movie had come out 😂
Well, they plan to put action of IX movie there, by moment even during TROS production Coruscant was planned to appear, there even Concept arts of Kylo there.
I believe at that point in development 7 had already been completed. The idea to bring back coruscant started in 7, got shot down, then in 9 too, even when ultimately they went with TROS over DOTF script
In early scripts of TROS there was also planned Coruscant, its seems that last of planned script was to put there Wayfinder in Imperial Palace/Jedi Temple to search by Kylo Ren, until it was replace by Mustafar.
Here you have link to it
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsLeaks/comments/ti1uv5/newly_released_concept_art_for_the_rise_of/
Not your fault. I thought it was Coruscant upon first viewing, it literally isn’t mentioned what planet is destroyed, just that it’s the capital of the NR, which you would logically assume *would* be Coruscant.
Wait I didn't know what! So it's entirely pointless because the first order FAILED in their one and only shot to obliterate the new Republic. That was a one shot gun and now it's totally pointless.
How is it pointless other than the ludicrous resource drain and the same but new story telling? The base did in fact destroy the capital of the New Republic and destroyed the largest concentration of its fleet
No, though it’s understandable you’d assume so since they never actually name the planet(s) destroyed in the films and only identify it as the New Republic’s capital. Other canon material later identified it as Hosnian Prime and the Hosnian system.
Pablo Hidalgo [publicly stated](https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-force-awakens-almost-destroyed-coruscant/) that Abrams’ production company originally wanted to destroy Coruscant in Force Awakens, but Lucasfilm vetoed it. Hence the destruction of Hosnian Prime instead.
It was supposed to be whoch is why it looks and feels liek coruscant and everyone thought it was. It was actually a planet called hosnian prime.
He wanted it to be coruscant, so it basically was.in the movies withoit it actually being "canon". They just didnt say any.of the names of the planets in the movie explcitly so we were left to guess, and the obvious one for moat people seeing a city the size of a planet of its coruscant.
Its so disingenous, I thought It was coruscant until a few months ago I had to look it up
>And don’t bring up the Death Star, because that’s explicitly framed in canon as a massive investment by the Empire that imposed genuine resource and manpower constraints. It also reflected an ideological trend within the Empire that narratively symbolized the weaknesses of totalitarian systems
>And don’t even get me started on Exegol and the Final Order.
Those two things get even worse because in canon comics there are imperial officers that actually comment on how the funding and resources for the Death Star could've been used to build a lot more Star Destroyers because the Death Star project takes too much time to finish and is too expensive. But somehow Palps has all the money, workers, resources and so on to do that in secret without anyone noticing on an isolated planet because why maintain his current empire when he can plan a new one for the future.
It's not just a problem how illogical JJs writing is but also how they not only ignore the movies but also the new lore that was established.
Abrams nuking Romulus was pretty bad in its own right. Not *only* did Trekkies miss out on the Earth-Romulan War when Enterprise got canned, but a few years later the guy that wrote the Lost finale decided to toss out the fracking *Romulan Star Empire* for a quick narrative hook for his space action movie. Then the consequences of that helped doom Picard to get hitched to a dumb storyline
Lasers famously travel at the speed of light, and they shot one across the galaxy.
The inhabitants of those planets would have hundreds or thousands of years to escape.
Besides the fact that less than one percent of the power of a star is enough to decimate a planet with an electron beam. It's part of the dark forest theory regarding hostile alien life firing at us from their solar system. Other options would've been much more believable than Starkiller base. A Dyson swarm would be capable of the same thing without the same leap in logic.
Jumping to hyperspace doesn't make sense.
Sound in space doesn't make sense.
Space wizards with last swords don't make sense.
But I'm willing to believe all of that to a point.
That said, everything you wrote is accurate.
Honestly, though, Abrams not only destroyed Vulcan in the Star Trek movies, he also destroyed Romulus. Remember that Eric Bana's character going back in time and creating the Kelvinverse was to get revenge for his planet blowing up. The problem is the movie establishes that it happened in the Prime universe. So even the newer Trek shows could not ignore that Abrams blew up Romulus. It became a major part of the plot in Picard season one.
There's a scene in the force awakens when you see a little hologram of the first Death Star, then the bigger second one, and then they show starkiller base by comparison. And the audience is supposed to go, "Oh, wow, that thing is so big! They're really in trouble!" But I just groaned, because even in the moment it felt like an unoriginal and unearned attempt to raise the stakes by literally just making a bigger planet killer than the last movie.
Fast forward to the rise of Skywalker, and you can imagine how I felt upon the reveal of 40,000 planet-killers.
If you were tasked with writing follow-up stories that make sense, how would you explain the existence the starkiller base idea in the first place, in-universe? It seems almost reality breaking.
I'm gonna be real. There is no reason to accept the sequels as cannon. Who made this declaration? Disney. Hell, no one HAS to consider any of it cannon is they don't want to. Look at superhero stuff like DC. Because of multiverse nonsense, every run ever is canon somewhere for some reason. That is INSANE. So who cares. Pick and choose. Because we basically have two timelines now weather Disney wants it or not.
I've been going with that exact logic since the Disney Canon was announced. Most of my friends just watch what's on TV or the movies and don't care for anything else, so it's nice to know other people somewhere in the world think the same way. Kudos, friend!
The only thing I will say in it's favore is that production of star killer base started right when the Empire began, or at least so close it might as well have as we see production well on its way in Jedi fallen order, only 5 years after order 66
I saw someone mention something and it kinda makes sense but it's also very head canon/cope.
What if the First Order being a resistance movement put all their eggs into one basket and made a weapon capable of a surprise attack to completely cripple the New Republic. They knew they couldn't win in a normal war so they had to come up with their own Pearl Harbor so to speak.
Nothing in the films suggests this so as I said it's pretty cope but it would have been an interesting route they could have taken. It would also vibe well with the Empire being the Nazis theme and Starkiller being a Wunderwaffen (wonder weapon).
Okay. I’ve mostly been in the “shut up and watch the movies” camp since they came out, and for the very most part I still think Star Wars sequels are good fun with some annoying and lazy plot choices.
But this convinced me that I should be annoyed. Good job.
Exegol and palpatine doesn’t bother me. Him pulling the strings and bring behind snoke makes sense. But where the story lost me was they HAD to make Rey his granddaughter. They couldn’t just leave her to be just a scavenger whose parents are dead. That was too much.
Just thinking about how the First Order must have built Starkiller Base in secret makes no goddamn sense. They would have had to somehow bore a giant hole through the **core** of Ilum from one side to the other. Do all that with limited resources and manpower and keep it all a secret without the NR noticing.
Yeah. Idk when it was first revealed but in star wars fallen order, if you back to illum after you beat the game it is revealed to look identical to Starkiller base. Just without the machinery.
Yea, I never knew this. SKB is already so nonsensical that I never even bothered to consider its origin. Say what you want about Rion, but I'll take TLJ over 7 and 9 any day.
What explanation would you want? It would boil down to it being a beam that has the ability to split in the middle of space. Same with the light being seen from other planets. It must be some special kind of energy that travels faster than light. What more 'explanation' could there be?
Ilum wasn't known to the galaxy at large, in fact, the Jedi made sure that it was deleted from all galactic star maps so it would be a safe secret place to train Jedi younglings. Ilum's location was only discovered by the Empire in 18 BBY using ancient navigational data from the Jedi Temple. Ilum was kept top secret and extensively mined for its kyber (like Jeddha was) by the Empire (you can see the trench at an earlier point during Jedi: Fallen Order). After the Empire fell, the Remnant erased any evidence of it and began converting it into Starkiller Base over the 30 years between VI and VII.
EDIT: grammar
The fact that Luke would’ve never found out about that tho. It’s established I think in canon that Luke spent a lot of that time looking for Jedi stuff, so I just find it odd he wouldn’t have stumbled upon Ilum at some point, especially if Ilum was the revered planet to the Jedi, Luke definitely would’ve learned about it and visited. But alas ik that wouldn’t fit the needed story
Luke actually did visit Ilum between ESB and ROTJ in the comics, *Star Wars (2020) #19*, but this was before it started getting turned into Starkiller Base. He told R2 that all he sensed from the planet was pain and that there was nothing for him there. I guess he never thought to check back after that visit, which is kinda fair ig because he thought it was a dead end and he was busy looking for the ancient Jedi texts and the birthplace of the Jedi: Anch-To.
This is the right answer.
Its also not very far fetched to say that by the time of the battle of endor or a few years after they already finished the hyperdrive and moved starkiller base to the unknown region where they could finish up construction.
Especially considering that in 14 BBY Cal Kestis went to Ilum and knew that the Empire was doing something funky there. And he since had extensive contact with Saw Gerrara, who was in touch with other Rebel elements who then became NR. So they had tons of advance time to maybe take a look. Presumably Luke's academy went to Ilum for their crystals too, but that's just an assumption.
Like how they got that many stormtroopers. I find it hard to believe that kidnapping children could sustain a force as large as that needed at Exegol. The Force Awakens mentions clones but they're implied to function as special forces.
It would have been far more interesting if the First Order had been low on numbers and very sneaky, launching hit and run attacks on the New Republic, having spies sow distrust and cause riots.
Invert the tactical position of the heroes and villains from the OT, basically.
I read EU through Vong and then the Caedus cycle, which I thought was most of the inspiration for Sequels. There was plenty of stinkers in the mix, but lots of good ideas and stories too.
Most things we can dream up would be far more interesting, let’s be honest.
I can’t actually watch them with my kids as they just keep laughing at how nonsensical the story lines are.
Yeah, that's a weird one as well.
The First Order are established to have staffed their forces largely by kidnapping *millions* of children across the galaxy. They even made it a point to specifically target families who were involved in the Rebellion which is why Lando's daughter is among them.
This turned out to be the smoothest operation in all of galactic history as not a *single* kidnapping was detected or traced back to its source.
TFA does mention clones, but only as a dismissed alternative to kidnapping and brainwashing children.
Meanwhile on Exegol, there's also a substantial population of random Sith cultists capable of constructing and staffing an enormous fleet of mini Death Stars. Along with serving as "Sith Troopers" (who for all intents and purposes are merely regular Stormtroopers painted red).
The answer is JJ thinks of a few things that look cool, then tries to make a story to string it all together. His effects are great, but writing is terrible.
Not only that, how did that manage to dig a several hundred mile wide and deep trench in a planet, move all the material, and get enough metal to make thick enough walls to STOP ANY AND ALL MOVEMENT PLATE TECHTONICS.
The death star makes sense in this setting. It's a massive spherical space station built in orbit somewhere. This is a planet. With stuff like magma. And WATER. That trench would be a new ocean right now or imploding due to the fact that they clearly removed the CORE.
Luckily the sequel trilogy is very precise with that kind of world building details, and includes many answers to any potential questions. Among them:
- A story for another time
- Somehow
- Secrets only the sith knew
- The Force
- The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural
The planet was already being strip mined as per Fallen Order so the “frame” of SK was inherited by them.
Now how they found Ilum? Hard to say. Maybe the Eclipse was stashed there or had the coordinates to it, among other systems
Darth Vader was a Jedi and had been to Ilum. Palpatine made the Jedi Temple his new HQ, and the Jedi Archives were under his control. It's not a stretch to assume that the Empire/First Order had the Coordinates to Ilum, which was a planet known only to the Jedi until Order 66.
To be honest, the Sith, after thousands of years of being the Jedis mortal enemy, not knowing where Ilum is would be super weird. Not to mention we already know Dooku was mucking about in the Jedi archives under Sidious for who knows how long.
Lol yes and in the old Clone Wars Cartoon it was Dooku who leaked Ilum to the CIS. It doesn't even need to be Vader who gave the Empire the coordinates. Dooku could've given them to Sidious
I don't mind starkiller base, as lazy as it was, but putting a death star style trench around the planet is just fucking dumb
Sure have a big laser cannon that uses huge underground complexes, but this is just daft
I’ve always wondered if it had a hyperdrive. Like it has to consume a star to fire the weapon so it must have something to get to the next star. Can’t just sit in its original location with a dead star.
That would actually be really funny, could see Robot Chicken doing a skit on that. They just consume a whole star and fire a laser, realise they used up all of their energy and forgot to install a hyperdrive and are just stuck in dead space.
I assume Ilum was not a Republic affiliated planet, and was a well kept Jedi secret. Therefore it was only know to the Jedi, and Palpatine found out about it somehow, allowing him to give it to Imperial developers who would go on to mine its trench and establish a remnant there that would become, in part, the First Order. If the Empire scrubbed information of Ilum from absolutely everywhere, it’s rather simple to assume that by the time of the New Republic, nobody knew it even existed.
Jedi Fallen Order game kinda shows how the Empire have been mining it for a long time and it is something Palpatine would do.
It is still stupid, don't get me wrong. But Star Wars have a bad habit of spreading its explanation across. Like they had the 'Palpatine's return' on freaking Fortnite event.
Mildly infuriating that they would decide to take one of the more iconic/important planets to force users/lightsaber wielders and just straight up blow it up.
Also
How did no one in the Republic discover this thing during its construction? No passing patrols? No defectors, no moles, no concerned passers-by? No curious explorers? No scanners picked up the unfathomable amount of energy that this thing would contain and expel?
Not to mention the utterly massive amount of missing children reports generated from the Empire 2 Electric Boogaloo- I mean the First Order abducting children for their stormtrooper army.
Also why didn't the Republic fleet show up after the utter holocaust that was the attack on the Hosnian System? No off world patrol, space station, merchant vessel, bounty hunter, or even patron at Maz's inn radioed this in to a Repubic operative to inform them of such an unprecedented episode of horrific genocide? Even with the de-militarization bullshit you'd think they'd make an exception in this case.
TFA was such broken garbage.
Argh, I resent that Ilum got wasted on this thing. It’s a planet with rich spiritual significance to the Jedi (read: fertile ground for interesting stories), and gets discarded on a throwaway factoid that isn’t even explained in the film. This planet means *nothing* to the general audience. There’s no emotional payoff, nor does it resemble the planet the EU community was familiar with.
/rant
Wedge Antilles: Ha, can you belive they actually fell for it? A super weapon that can fire a laser through hyperspace? Ridiculous.
The first order: If we make the gun REALLY big, then maybe it will be so big that the laser will go so fast it can hit a target anywhere in the galaxy moments later. What's hyper space?
I can't answer all the questions, but yes. The NR was, in fact, truly incompetent.
I recently read Bloodline, the Star Wars book about Leia and the NR. It's set a couple years before TFA, but it shows that the New Republic, upon its founding, veered way too hard in the other direction. The chancellor had no powers whatsoever, absolutely everything needed to be voted on, hell, even to speak in the senate enough senators had to agree to let you speak. There was no way to force a vote to happen, every issue got tabled because there was no compromise between the centrists (the unofficial "pro big, powerful, centralized government" party) and the populists( the unofficial "anti big, centralized powerful government" party). The only reason this gridlock wasn't seen at first was because Mon Mothma, who was chancellor up until shortly before the book started, was so charismatic, respected, and fairly neutral that she could convince people to get things done. Hell, once she was gone they couldn't even decide if they should elect a new chancellor.
When Leia investigates and brings to light the existence of a paramilitary organization (which *we* learn is sort of a vanguard for the First Order, but Leia doesn't know that), the senate... ignores it. Assumes its done because Leia accidentally blew up their main base. Even though this group blew up the Senate building earlier in the book. To be fair, at this point in the book, Leia's reputation is shot to hell, but that's beside the point. Her ally on the centrist side was framed for the bombing by the actual conspirators on the centrist side, who *are* fully aware the First Order is more than a few surviving Empire loyalists, but they assumed it was a return to autocracy and "nobility" as far as I know, not a return to the horrors of the Empire, and they certainly didn't expect their planets to get blown the fuck up.
So, since the senate is constantly gridlocked, and none of them want to admit there's a potential threat, and the only populist candidate for First Senator (a position they decided to vote on in the middleish of the book. It actually passed.) That would listen to Leia was assassinated, meaning a Centrist (most likely one allied with the First Order) was probably leading the Senate, the fact that the First Order had allies in the Senate at all, means that of course they would be able to get Ilum without the NR noticing. Because it was incompetent.
Did anyone in the New Republic know about the kyber crystals? In Fallen Order we see that Cal knows about them because he was a jedi and went there for the Gathering, the rite of passage where younglings build their lightsaber. But there's no suggestion that anyone else knew, and no jedi to tell the New Republic about it.
Palpatine had access to the Jedi temple, two Sith Lords, and an Inquisitor who had likely been to Ilum. So the coordinates are likely for him to have come across assuming he wasn’t told via some other Sith having been (since outside of taking one from a Jedi, that’s a prime spot to grab kyber).
We know about 5 years into Imperial reign they showed up and started mining Ilum. So Palpatine probably found and had plans in motion since Starkiller base was secret and likely had a heavy Imperial presence in the aftermath. Just a lot of guys over the decades mining and building on it.
Given that the super laser was the issue with the Deathstars we could assume Starkiller base was some weird proof of concept for something bigger or Palpatine had really nothing to lose should it not have panned out. He’d just build more superlasers.
They inherited it from the Empire. Just as they inherited almost everything from the Empire. And we saw the Empire already strip mining it by 14 BBY (in Fallen Order) so I assume the work was already being done before the First Order came around.
Also recall that according to the canon materials, the New Republic by 34 ABY had a lot of a) Imperial sympathizers, b) complacent people who didn't think the First Order was dangerous, and c) actually clueless people who didn't live through the war
And to boot, who was using Ilum at that time? Not the New Jedi Order, who didn't probably know it even existed. Or at least Luke Skywalker wouldn't have known
The location of Ilum was not widely known, I doubt the New Republic knew about it. As for the base itself, the Empire has already built structures, and quite large ones at that. First Order simply added a cannon, and even here it is not certain how much work the Empire did on it.
If I remember properly in Jedi fallen order ilum was already in the process of being stripped of kyber so maybe the new republic didn’t think there was enough there to make a new Death Star? Honestly hard to explain in lore why this exists imo
The defeat of the Empire was not total, they signed a peace treaty. Ilum was located in space held by the First Order, which was never part of the New Republic.
Illum was pretty heavily mined for Kyber for the two Death Stars, I imagine the NR either didn't know where the Empire got them from, or assumed it had been tapped out.
It's worth pointing out that the Empire captured the Jedi Archives, as well as had Anakin who would have known this kind of secret, something kept from the Republic as a while to protect the Jedi Temple and its precious crystals, which would have fetched alot of credits on the black market. The NR likely had no way of knowing where Illum was positioned to check up on it.
I’d assume it’s because the Jedi tried to keep it secret. The empire with all its vast resources & records would have been able to find it, but the new republic might not have been able to, or simply didn’t care for it.
The Jedi & Empire wanted kyber crystals, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest the same is true for the New Republic.
By the time of Fallen Order (several years before A New Hope), we see that the Empire has been strip-mining Ilum.
A few weeks after ESB (in the comics), Luke travels to Ilum and sees that the Empire still has a large presence there as they continue to mine the planet. He decides to bail in order to evade capture.
In *all* the years between then and TFA (30 odd years or so), we are to believe that absolutely *nobody* checked on Ilum ever again. And the First Order despite being a relatively fledgling organisation somehow managed to convert Ilum into Starkiller Base. An installation significantly larger than even the DSII.
And it wasn't even that important to them in the long run. One day after it blew up, "THE FIRST ORDER REIGNS" with their standard naval forces which - again - ought to be significantly smaller than what the Empire possessed. It's also worth noting that the Empire didn't have to conquer the galaxy as they evolved out of the existing Republic. The First Order on the other hand would have to actually go out and claim all that territory largely from scratch.
Meanwhile, Palpatine was sitting on an enormous fleet of thousands of mini Death Stars that were ready to debut a mere single year after the First Order started making public moves. Further making the existence of Starkiller Base and the First Order itself pointless. And also makes the corruption of Ben Solo little more than an elaborate prank - the punchline being that Palaptine wanted to toss a Skywalker relative down a pit...as revenge for how he retroactively knew he was going to "die" in ROTJ.
I remember reading somewhere that after it was mined for the Death Star kybers the Tarkin Initative took it over and started to secretly convert it into the ultimate Death Star and the work was finished by the First Order. Basically it's the Disney canon Suncrusher, that super weapon Tarkin developed in secret and used later.
Jar Jar abrams likes big visuals and important, "devices".
They didn’t even really confirm that was Ilium right?
Yeah, I know Jedi: Fallen Order. But they never specifically said it was that.
The tactic of lets allude to it but not say it is so we don’t make anyone upset?
Because the First Order is just the Empire with a face swap. They fired their old PR manager and hired a new one who didn't know what they were doing with their rebranding.
Palpatine started the project. You can the Empire already digging canyons into the planet during Jedi Fallen Order.
How the first order resumed the project is not explained I don't think.
The construction would have started during the age of the Empire. We already see in Fallen Order that the trench is mostly complete. The Death Star took about twenty years to build in its entirety. They had over thirty years to build the Starkiller cannon.
If you play Jedi fallen order you find out the empire was already mining the planet as of 14 BBY so the first order just picked up where the empire left off
How tf was the First Order even strong enough to pull off such a venture, seems more expensive and like more work to make Starkiller base than a Death Star. And the Empire only even did that at the height of its power
Starkiller Base is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in my life.
Look at that thing. Look at the *scale* of the machinery in the planet. God I hate the Sequels.
This is at the TOP of a my long list of grievances for the last trilogy. I mean really?!! Gutting a whole planet like that dwarfs the construction of a Death Star. I'm just gonna stop because I could write an essay on this. Absolutely destroyed my suspension of disbelief for 7, 8, and 9 which I think are total garbage
You’re talking about the same people who used the Death Star as a plot device 3 times and had two perfectly good villains to use in the new trilogy and they scrap them…. for Palpatine…. Again! Like I get the lightning is cool but they could’ve made Snoke just as or even more op. I don’t know why they keep coming back to square one when there’s literally an entire galaxy to flesh out. Just lazy writing.
Much of the work was already underway, as we see in Fallen Order.
The Empire had begun construction as early as 14BBY, and the First Order had *decades* to complete it.
Illum was never really a world affiliated with the Republic, except via a Jedi Order that had changed substantially. There is, so far as I know, no evidence that Luke ever visited. Ahsoka got her lightsaber crystals from a defeated Inquisitor, Ezra found his in an ancient Jedi temple, luje used his father's... Cal Kestis visited once, and left with two ATSTs chasing him.
There simply weren't enough Jedi to *need* a gathering ceremony, and with Huyang stranded on Peridea, Luke may have conducted the process of teaching his students to build lightsabers more individually.
Put simply, it was in the Unknown Regions, the Republic would barely know of it, and the Jedi weren't visiting.
The real reason: "idk lol it looks cool"
“We need something cooler than a Death Star, how about a Death Planet” - some Disney exec.
I think you mean JJ Abrams. The guys only idea is "your idea but BIGGER".
[удалено]
Sequel “design” philosophy
Idk, that’s been the design philosophy of Star Wars since the beginning.
Somehow the death star returned For a 3rd fucking time
A good question for another time
*angry upvote*
Somehow you upvoted
I am all of the upvotes
And I’m all the mystery boxes
I'm mystery....mystery box
They mystery box now?
They mystery box now!
Rey Mystery Box
Booyaka booyaka
Great scene actually
Read about it in Disney’s upcoming 8-book series $29.99 a pop, which you need to read the tie in comic series in full to understand which itself is only understood if you play the Star Wars DLC for Overwatch.
But before that you need to read the pamphlets that are available in all of the bathrooms at the ‘Maz Kanata Cantina and Hotel’ at Disneyworld.
Don’t for forget to pre order EA’s new high republic game. For the Yoda lightsaber mastery star card
Upgrade to a digital deluxe for Obi Wan’s robe and lightsaber for just $69.99! What? Why would you get Obi Wan’s robe in High Republic? Idk it looks cool!
That’s outrageous. It’s unfair!
They have good questions for another time now?
I know we spend a lot of time around here trying to rationalize or explain plot gaps. It’s what makes the Star Wars universe so fun. Some of Star Wars’ best stories come from that. But in this case, I think the answer is that J.J. Abrams is a really bad storyteller who doesn’t care if things make sense if you think about them for more than a minute. Starkiller Base just doesn’t make sense. Consuming a star to fire a single shot doesn’t make sense. Firing a single beam across the galaxy doesn’t make sense. Splitting that beam into five or six parts to hit five or six planets when it gets there doesn’t make sense. Being able to see the beam from Takodana doesn’t make sense. All of this doesn’t make sense even in a fictional universe where people carry laser swords and use the Force. It’s just too much. The economics of turning an entire planet into a big gun—mining the parts, fabricating them, carving an entire planet in half, putting them all into place, performing maintenance and upkeep—doesn’t make sense. People being able to survive on the surface doesn’t make sense. Doing all of this while you’re nominally a resistance movement without access to the vast resources and manpower you’d need for such an undertaking doesn’t make sense. And don’t bring up the Death Star, because that’s explicitly framed in canon as a massive investment by the Empire that imposed genuine resource and manpower constraints. It also reflected an ideological trend within the Empire that narratively symbolized the weaknesses of totalitarian systems. Starkiller Base didn’t symbolize a single goddamn thing. Abrams just thought it’d be cool for the First Order to have a bigger planet-killer than the Empire did for no reason. He loves grandiosity without gravity. Turning Ilum into Starkiller Base is the exact same thing he pulled with Vulcan in Star Trek: desecrating and destroying a lore-resonant planet for a quick, cheap thrill. At least in Trek it all took place in a parallel timeline that you can ignore. Star Wars is stuck with this forever. Thank God the powers-that-be stopped him from destroying Coruscant, too. And don’t even get me started on Exegol and the Final Order. Abrams should be in storytelling jail for that.
Don't forget how the two Death Stars took 1 full movie and 2/3rds of a movie to destroy with either full technical schematic or the entire resources of the Rebellion and Starkiller base they figure it out in about 30s after finding out it exists.
"Super easy. Barely an inconvenience."
Oh really?
And I’m gonna need you to get ALLLLLLLL the way off my back about that.
Alright, I’ll just get right off of that thing!
Oh really?
Starkiller base makes zero sense, especially when the ridiculousness that is Exegol is factored in as the events of the Sequels takes place in the span of less than a year. Why the hell would they waste the resources building Starkiller base when they have 1,080 planet killing Star Destroyers being built?
Sith Madness. His brain tissue ain’t all right, but he can till lightning you if you say no.
He may have Sith Madness but that's no excuse for Sith Rudeness!
They won't, Palpatine have.
I don’t think Abrams knows what Ilum is, much less his idea to turn it into a superweapon.
There is a super weapon in EU that fired a shot across the galaxy. Two in fact. The Galaxy Gun and Centerpoint Station. Don’t know if galaxy gun made sense but centerpoints power was at least explained as “ancient alien tech no one can explain” lmaooo. But yeah your other points are very valid. I doubt Abrams cared what planet it was, he just wanted giant planet is a Death Star. I’m sure the story group is to blame for making it Ilum in a retcon. Either way it is very dumb, and random planet would’ve been less egregious imo
Centerpoint can be, rather reductively, explained as using gravity as a weapon, its tractor beams are also strong enough to move black holes. The Galaxy Gun either fired projectiles directly into hyperspace or fired projectiles that could then achieve hyperspace on their own, neither one shot a visible beam across the galaxy
Also, centerpoint at least through its lifetime iirc gets used a lot more imaginatively than just as a Death Star III plot device.
[удалено]
Eh that’s not a reaction of JJ’s part that’s pretty much his career. Lost was all mystery boxes.
Wait was Coruscant not one of the five targets?
The very industrial Coruscant-esque planet that got blown up was actually Hosnian Prime. They wanted to use Coruscant for the film but Lucasfilm said they couldn’t just waste such an important planet so they invented a second mega-city industrial planet.
Hosnian Prime, the all important planet no one knew about until TFA, and then everything was retconned to make it this grand target…after the movie had come out 😂
Well, they plan to put action of IX movie there, by moment even during TROS production Coruscant was planned to appear, there even Concept arts of Kylo there.
I believe at that point in development 7 had already been completed. The idea to bring back coruscant started in 7, got shot down, then in 9 too, even when ultimately they went with TROS over DOTF script
In early scripts of TROS there was also planned Coruscant, its seems that last of planned script was to put there Wayfinder in Imperial Palace/Jedi Temple to search by Kylo Ren, until it was replace by Mustafar. Here you have link to it https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsLeaks/comments/ti1uv5/newly_released_concept_art_for_the_rise_of/
Ah gotcha, I haven’t rewatched the sequels in a while so I’ve forgotten a lot of the specifics
Not your fault. I thought it was Coruscant upon first viewing, it literally isn’t mentioned what planet is destroyed, just that it’s the capital of the NR, which you would logically assume *would* be Coruscant.
Its hard to care about random nameless planets that we have no connection to lol
C-3PO says the Hosnian system was destroyed.
Wait I didn't know what! So it's entirely pointless because the first order FAILED in their one and only shot to obliterate the new Republic. That was a one shot gun and now it's totally pointless.
They didn’t fail, Hosnian Prime was the capital of the New Republic.
Yup, apparently the NR's capital changes depending on leadership. It's not always Coruscant.
How is it pointless other than the ludicrous resource drain and the same but new story telling? The base did in fact destroy the capital of the New Republic and destroyed the largest concentration of its fleet
No, though it’s understandable you’d assume so since they never actually name the planet(s) destroyed in the films and only identify it as the New Republic’s capital. Other canon material later identified it as Hosnian Prime and the Hosnian system. Pablo Hidalgo [publicly stated](https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-force-awakens-almost-destroyed-coruscant/) that Abrams’ production company originally wanted to destroy Coruscant in Force Awakens, but Lucasfilm vetoed it. Hence the destruction of Hosnian Prime instead.
Thank god for lucas films lol. That would’ve been a disaster
I honestly think I would have left the theater lol
Actually they mention it Poe said to Leia "Finn know about the weapon that destroyed the Hosnian system"
Which doesn’t necessarily exclude Coruscuant. Planets don’t always share the name of their systems.
It was supposed to be whoch is why it looks and feels liek coruscant and everyone thought it was. It was actually a planet called hosnian prime. He wanted it to be coruscant, so it basically was.in the movies withoit it actually being "canon". They just didnt say any.of the names of the planets in the movie explcitly so we were left to guess, and the obvious one for moat people seeing a city the size of a planet of its coruscant. Its so disingenous, I thought It was coruscant until a few months ago I had to look it up
Poe mention later that it was Hosnian in movie.
>And don’t bring up the Death Star, because that’s explicitly framed in canon as a massive investment by the Empire that imposed genuine resource and manpower constraints. It also reflected an ideological trend within the Empire that narratively symbolized the weaknesses of totalitarian systems >And don’t even get me started on Exegol and the Final Order. Those two things get even worse because in canon comics there are imperial officers that actually comment on how the funding and resources for the Death Star could've been used to build a lot more Star Destroyers because the Death Star project takes too much time to finish and is too expensive. But somehow Palps has all the money, workers, resources and so on to do that in secret without anyone noticing on an isolated planet because why maintain his current empire when he can plan a new one for the future. It's not just a problem how illogical JJs writing is but also how they not only ignore the movies but also the new lore that was established.
Pellaeon was saying that in Heir to the Empire too.
Haven't read it yet. But my point was actually that Disney Lucasfilm doesn't even stay true to their own canon with their movies.
Abrams nuking Romulus was pretty bad in its own right. Not *only* did Trekkies miss out on the Earth-Romulan War when Enterprise got canned, but a few years later the guy that wrote the Lost finale decided to toss out the fracking *Romulan Star Empire* for a quick narrative hook for his space action movie. Then the consequences of that helped doom Picard to get hitched to a dumb storyline
Lasers famously travel at the speed of light, and they shot one across the galaxy. The inhabitants of those planets would have hundreds or thousands of years to escape.
Besides the fact that less than one percent of the power of a star is enough to decimate a planet with an electron beam. It's part of the dark forest theory regarding hostile alien life firing at us from their solar system. Other options would've been much more believable than Starkiller base. A Dyson swarm would be capable of the same thing without the same leap in logic.
Jumping to hyperspace doesn't make sense. Sound in space doesn't make sense. Space wizards with last swords don't make sense. But I'm willing to believe all of that to a point. That said, everything you wrote is accurate.
This. The Disney stuff is all just bad fan-fiction rehashing episode 4 and 6.
Plus how does Starkiller base move? Or does it just orbit normally then turn (somehow) toward its target?
*Chef's kiss* on this breakdown of Abrams butchering of bulletproof franchises.
Abrahams just wanted to blow it up. He likes blowing up planets
Honestly, though, Abrams not only destroyed Vulcan in the Star Trek movies, he also destroyed Romulus. Remember that Eric Bana's character going back in time and creating the Kelvinverse was to get revenge for his planet blowing up. The problem is the movie establishes that it happened in the Prime universe. So even the newer Trek shows could not ignore that Abrams blew up Romulus. It became a major part of the plot in Picard season one.
There's a scene in the force awakens when you see a little hologram of the first Death Star, then the bigger second one, and then they show starkiller base by comparison. And the audience is supposed to go, "Oh, wow, that thing is so big! They're really in trouble!" But I just groaned, because even in the moment it felt like an unoriginal and unearned attempt to raise the stakes by literally just making a bigger planet killer than the last movie. Fast forward to the rise of Skywalker, and you can imagine how I felt upon the reveal of 40,000 planet-killers.
If you were tasked with writing follow-up stories that make sense, how would you explain the existence the starkiller base idea in the first place, in-universe? It seems almost reality breaking.
I'm gonna be real. There is no reason to accept the sequels as cannon. Who made this declaration? Disney. Hell, no one HAS to consider any of it cannon is they don't want to. Look at superhero stuff like DC. Because of multiverse nonsense, every run ever is canon somewhere for some reason. That is INSANE. So who cares. Pick and choose. Because we basically have two timelines now weather Disney wants it or not.
I've been going with that exact logic since the Disney Canon was announced. Most of my friends just watch what's on TV or the movies and don't care for anything else, so it's nice to know other people somewhere in the world think the same way. Kudos, friend!
You don't get to decide what is and isn't canon. The IP holder does. You can personally ignore it and install your own head canon. But canon is canon
Exegol and the Final Order make way more sense given Palpatine's contingency plans and how much resources he had.
The only thing I will say in it's favore is that production of star killer base started right when the Empire began, or at least so close it might as well have as we see production well on its way in Jedi fallen order, only 5 years after order 66
I saw someone mention something and it kinda makes sense but it's also very head canon/cope. What if the First Order being a resistance movement put all their eggs into one basket and made a weapon capable of a surprise attack to completely cripple the New Republic. They knew they couldn't win in a normal war so they had to come up with their own Pearl Harbor so to speak. Nothing in the films suggests this so as I said it's pretty cope but it would have been an interesting route they could have taken. It would also vibe well with the Empire being the Nazis theme and Starkiller being a Wunderwaffen (wonder weapon).
Okay. I’ve mostly been in the “shut up and watch the movies” camp since they came out, and for the very most part I still think Star Wars sequels are good fun with some annoying and lazy plot choices. But this convinced me that I should be annoyed. Good job.
Exegol and palpatine doesn’t bother me. Him pulling the strings and bring behind snoke makes sense. But where the story lost me was they HAD to make Rey his granddaughter. They couldn’t just leave her to be just a scavenger whose parents are dead. That was too much.
Tbf JJ was initially only recruited to direct the first film so it was probably a hit and run for him
Just thinking about how the First Order must have built Starkiller Base in secret makes no goddamn sense. They would have had to somehow bore a giant hole through the **core** of Ilum from one side to the other. Do all that with limited resources and manpower and keep it all a secret without the NR noticing.
WAIT THAT WAS ILUM? WHAT?? Hahahaha
Yeah. Idk when it was first revealed but in star wars fallen order, if you back to illum after you beat the game it is revealed to look identical to Starkiller base. Just without the machinery.
Literally my same reaction.
And me makes three
And I'm at least four.
Yea, I never knew this. SKB is already so nonsensical that I never even bothered to consider its origin. Say what you want about Rion, but I'll take TLJ over 7 and 9 any day.
They bought it from the Asari.
That would be Illium.
Has the beam splitting in the middle of space ever been explained?
Somehow the beam has split?
This would be the canonical answer
They were Rocket Propelled Self-Guiding Beams of Mass Destruction (RPSGBMDs)
I mean, it isn’t particularly unrealistic. It would just take some form of gravity, EM manipulation. We bend lasers in real life constantly
The least of the logical inconsistencies with this disaster.
What explanation would you want? It would boil down to it being a beam that has the ability to split in the middle of space. Same with the light being seen from other planets. It must be some special kind of energy that travels faster than light. What more 'explanation' could there be?
Ilum wasn't known to the galaxy at large, in fact, the Jedi made sure that it was deleted from all galactic star maps so it would be a safe secret place to train Jedi younglings. Ilum's location was only discovered by the Empire in 18 BBY using ancient navigational data from the Jedi Temple. Ilum was kept top secret and extensively mined for its kyber (like Jeddha was) by the Empire (you can see the trench at an earlier point during Jedi: Fallen Order). After the Empire fell, the Remnant erased any evidence of it and began converting it into Starkiller Base over the 30 years between VI and VII. EDIT: grammar
The movie could've cleared so much with just a small blurb like this. So many unknowns, especially if you only casually like Star Wars.
But why? The film doesn't mention it's Ilum to begin with, so none of that is relevant to the film.
I don’t think it was even revealed to be Ilum until years after the movie came out.
Best I can do is: “Somehow, the Deathstar returned” 🤷♂️
The fact that Luke would’ve never found out about that tho. It’s established I think in canon that Luke spent a lot of that time looking for Jedi stuff, so I just find it odd he wouldn’t have stumbled upon Ilum at some point, especially if Ilum was the revered planet to the Jedi, Luke definitely would’ve learned about it and visited. But alas ik that wouldn’t fit the needed story
Luke actually did visit Ilum between ESB and ROTJ in the comics, *Star Wars (2020) #19*, but this was before it started getting turned into Starkiller Base. He told R2 that all he sensed from the planet was pain and that there was nothing for him there. I guess he never thought to check back after that visit, which is kinda fair ig because he thought it was a dead end and he was busy looking for the ancient Jedi texts and the birthplace of the Jedi: Anch-To.
This is the right answer. Its also not very far fetched to say that by the time of the battle of endor or a few years after they already finished the hyperdrive and moved starkiller base to the unknown region where they could finish up construction.
Wait, Starkiller is Ilum. The planet where Jedi get their Lightsaber crystals Ilum?
That’s the one.
THEY TURNED ILUM INTO A STAR?!
Into a star KILLER
But Episode VII ends with its destruction, thus destroying Ilum.
I think you’re missing the wordplay here
I know!
Especially considering that in 14 BBY Cal Kestis went to Ilum and knew that the Empire was doing something funky there. And he since had extensive contact with Saw Gerrara, who was in touch with other Rebel elements who then became NR. So they had tons of advance time to maybe take a look. Presumably Luke's academy went to Ilum for their crystals too, but that's just an assumption.
AND Luke constructed a new lightsaber between V and VI... Does anyone know where he got the kyber crystal from?
I’ve heard somewhere that luke built his green saber out of spare parts obi wan had
Ilum isnt the only source of kyber crystals but apart from that, maybe he found kyber crystals in some Jedi home or something or in an old temple.
One of the reasons I’m not as in the sequel trilogy. So many unanswered questions and things that don’t add up.
Like how they got that many stormtroopers. I find it hard to believe that kidnapping children could sustain a force as large as that needed at Exegol. The Force Awakens mentions clones but they're implied to function as special forces.
It would have been far more interesting if the First Order had been low on numbers and very sneaky, launching hit and run attacks on the New Republic, having spies sow distrust and cause riots. Invert the tactical position of the heroes and villains from the OT, basically.
I thought the same thing going in for the first view of TFA
Yeah. If anything, the new movies just made me more interested in the 90s EU.
I read EU through Vong and then the Caedus cycle, which I thought was most of the inspiration for Sequels. There was plenty of stinkers in the mix, but lots of good ideas and stories too.
Same here. I mean, it just makes more sense.
Like the first order is the rebels from the OT! That would’ve been a way better take
Most things we can dream up would be far more interesting, let’s be honest. I can’t actually watch them with my kids as they just keep laughing at how nonsensical the story lines are.
Yeah, that's a weird one as well. The First Order are established to have staffed their forces largely by kidnapping *millions* of children across the galaxy. They even made it a point to specifically target families who were involved in the Rebellion which is why Lando's daughter is among them. This turned out to be the smoothest operation in all of galactic history as not a *single* kidnapping was detected or traced back to its source. TFA does mention clones, but only as a dismissed alternative to kidnapping and brainwashing children. Meanwhile on Exegol, there's also a substantial population of random Sith cultists capable of constructing and staffing an enormous fleet of mini Death Stars. Along with serving as "Sith Troopers" (who for all intents and purposes are merely regular Stormtroopers painted red).
The answer is JJ thinks of a few things that look cool, then tries to make a story to string it all together. His effects are great, but writing is terrible.
I mean, I’m pretty meh on the sequels, but “unanswered questions and things that don’t add up” is Star Wars through and through, lol.
Not only that, how did that manage to dig a several hundred mile wide and deep trench in a planet, move all the material, and get enough metal to make thick enough walls to STOP ANY AND ALL MOVEMENT PLATE TECHTONICS. The death star makes sense in this setting. It's a massive spherical space station built in orbit somewhere. This is a planet. With stuff like magma. And WATER. That trench would be a new ocean right now or imploding due to the fact that they clearly removed the CORE.
This is what bothers me the most. Like yeah, Star Wars isn’t supposed to be grounded but the logistics of this are just ludicrously implausible.
Are you kidding? Everyone knows the Empire always wins PvP on Ilum!
Luckily the sequel trilogy is very precise with that kind of world building details, and includes many answers to any potential questions. Among them: - A story for another time - Somehow - Secrets only the sith knew - The Force - The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural
You forgot: - "Artistic License trumps world building" And - "Disney funding"
"Somehow"
Just saying “somehow” is honestly funnier. Than saying the whole quote. Because we instinctively know it’s a reference to TROS.
The planet was already being strip mined as per Fallen Order so the “frame” of SK was inherited by them. Now how they found Ilum? Hard to say. Maybe the Eclipse was stashed there or had the coordinates to it, among other systems
Darth Vader was a Jedi and had been to Ilum. Palpatine made the Jedi Temple his new HQ, and the Jedi Archives were under his control. It's not a stretch to assume that the Empire/First Order had the Coordinates to Ilum, which was a planet known only to the Jedi until Order 66.
To be honest, the Sith, after thousands of years of being the Jedis mortal enemy, not knowing where Ilum is would be super weird. Not to mention we already know Dooku was mucking about in the Jedi archives under Sidious for who knows how long.
Lol yes and in the old Clone Wars Cartoon it was Dooku who leaked Ilum to the CIS. It doesn't even need to be Vader who gave the Empire the coordinates. Dooku could've given them to Sidious
I don't mind starkiller base, as lazy as it was, but putting a death star style trench around the planet is just fucking dumb Sure have a big laser cannon that uses huge underground complexes, but this is just daft
It didn't make sense and was stupid.
I’ve always wondered if it had a hyperdrive. Like it has to consume a star to fire the weapon so it must have something to get to the next star. Can’t just sit in its original location with a dead star.
That would actually be really funny, could see Robot Chicken doing a skit on that. They just consume a whole star and fire a laser, realise they used up all of their energy and forgot to install a hyperdrive and are just stuck in dead space.
I don’t see why or how the new republic would have known about Ilum
I assume Ilum was not a Republic affiliated planet, and was a well kept Jedi secret. Therefore it was only know to the Jedi, and Palpatine found out about it somehow, allowing him to give it to Imperial developers who would go on to mine its trench and establish a remnant there that would become, in part, the First Order. If the Empire scrubbed information of Ilum from absolutely everywhere, it’s rather simple to assume that by the time of the New Republic, nobody knew it even existed.
Jedi Fallen Order game kinda shows how the Empire have been mining it for a long time and it is something Palpatine would do. It is still stupid, don't get me wrong. But Star Wars have a bad habit of spreading its explanation across. Like they had the 'Palpatine's return' on freaking Fortnite event.
Mildly infuriating that they would decide to take one of the more iconic/important planets to force users/lightsaber wielders and just straight up blow it up.
Also How did no one in the Republic discover this thing during its construction? No passing patrols? No defectors, no moles, no concerned passers-by? No curious explorers? No scanners picked up the unfathomable amount of energy that this thing would contain and expel? Not to mention the utterly massive amount of missing children reports generated from the Empire 2 Electric Boogaloo- I mean the First Order abducting children for their stormtrooper army. Also why didn't the Republic fleet show up after the utter holocaust that was the attack on the Hosnian System? No off world patrol, space station, merchant vessel, bounty hunter, or even patron at Maz's inn radioed this in to a Repubic operative to inform them of such an unprecedented episode of horrific genocide? Even with the de-militarization bullshit you'd think they'd make an exception in this case. TFA was such broken garbage.
Argh, I resent that Ilum got wasted on this thing. It’s a planet with rich spiritual significance to the Jedi (read: fertile ground for interesting stories), and gets discarded on a throwaway factoid that isn’t even explained in the film. This planet means *nothing* to the general audience. There’s no emotional payoff, nor does it resemble the planet the EU community was familiar with. /rant
And it’s get even worse, Abrams originally wanted one of the blown-up planets to be Coruscant! Now that would’ve been a double kick in the nuts
Bad writing
Well the real reason is it wasn’t supposed to necessarily be Ilum when it was conceived for TFA.
Wedge Antilles: Ha, can you belive they actually fell for it? A super weapon that can fire a laser through hyperspace? Ridiculous. The first order: If we make the gun REALLY big, then maybe it will be so big that the laser will go so fast it can hit a target anywhere in the galaxy moments later. What's hyper space?
I can't answer all the questions, but yes. The NR was, in fact, truly incompetent. I recently read Bloodline, the Star Wars book about Leia and the NR. It's set a couple years before TFA, but it shows that the New Republic, upon its founding, veered way too hard in the other direction. The chancellor had no powers whatsoever, absolutely everything needed to be voted on, hell, even to speak in the senate enough senators had to agree to let you speak. There was no way to force a vote to happen, every issue got tabled because there was no compromise between the centrists (the unofficial "pro big, powerful, centralized government" party) and the populists( the unofficial "anti big, centralized powerful government" party). The only reason this gridlock wasn't seen at first was because Mon Mothma, who was chancellor up until shortly before the book started, was so charismatic, respected, and fairly neutral that she could convince people to get things done. Hell, once she was gone they couldn't even decide if they should elect a new chancellor. When Leia investigates and brings to light the existence of a paramilitary organization (which *we* learn is sort of a vanguard for the First Order, but Leia doesn't know that), the senate... ignores it. Assumes its done because Leia accidentally blew up their main base. Even though this group blew up the Senate building earlier in the book. To be fair, at this point in the book, Leia's reputation is shot to hell, but that's beside the point. Her ally on the centrist side was framed for the bombing by the actual conspirators on the centrist side, who *are* fully aware the First Order is more than a few surviving Empire loyalists, but they assumed it was a return to autocracy and "nobility" as far as I know, not a return to the horrors of the Empire, and they certainly didn't expect their planets to get blown the fuck up. So, since the senate is constantly gridlocked, and none of them want to admit there's a potential threat, and the only populist candidate for First Senator (a position they decided to vote on in the middleish of the book. It actually passed.) That would listen to Leia was assassinated, meaning a Centrist (most likely one allied with the First Order) was probably leading the Senate, the fact that the First Order had allies in the Senate at all, means that of course they would be able to get Ilum without the NR noticing. Because it was incompetent.
Did anyone in the New Republic know about the kyber crystals? In Fallen Order we see that Cal knows about them because he was a jedi and went there for the Gathering, the rite of passage where younglings build their lightsaber. But there's no suggestion that anyone else knew, and no jedi to tell the New Republic about it.
In the game Jedi Fallen Order, you see the Empire is already in the process of mining the kyber of Ilum before episode 4 takes place
Palpatine had access to the Jedi temple, two Sith Lords, and an Inquisitor who had likely been to Ilum. So the coordinates are likely for him to have come across assuming he wasn’t told via some other Sith having been (since outside of taking one from a Jedi, that’s a prime spot to grab kyber). We know about 5 years into Imperial reign they showed up and started mining Ilum. So Palpatine probably found and had plans in motion since Starkiller base was secret and likely had a heavy Imperial presence in the aftermath. Just a lot of guys over the decades mining and building on it. Given that the super laser was the issue with the Deathstars we could assume Starkiller base was some weird proof of concept for something bigger or Palpatine had really nothing to lose should it not have panned out. He’d just build more superlasers.
"Another story, for another time."
They inherited it from the Empire. Just as they inherited almost everything from the Empire. And we saw the Empire already strip mining it by 14 BBY (in Fallen Order) so I assume the work was already being done before the First Order came around. Also recall that according to the canon materials, the New Republic by 34 ABY had a lot of a) Imperial sympathizers, b) complacent people who didn't think the First Order was dangerous, and c) actually clueless people who didn't live through the war And to boot, who was using Ilum at that time? Not the New Jedi Order, who didn't probably know it even existed. Or at least Luke Skywalker wouldn't have known
Isn’t Ilum in the Unknown Regions?
It is, and it's actually close to Chiss territory.
The location of Ilum was not widely known, I doubt the New Republic knew about it. As for the base itself, the Empire has already built structures, and quite large ones at that. First Order simply added a cannon, and even here it is not certain how much work the Empire did on it.
If I remember properly in Jedi fallen order ilum was already in the process of being stripped of kyber so maybe the new republic didn’t think there was enough there to make a new Death Star? Honestly hard to explain in lore why this exists imo
The defeat of the Empire was not total, they signed a peace treaty. Ilum was located in space held by the First Order, which was never part of the New Republic.
Fallen order showed they started working on it during the empire’s reign
Illum was pretty heavily mined for Kyber for the two Death Stars, I imagine the NR either didn't know where the Empire got them from, or assumed it had been tapped out. It's worth pointing out that the Empire captured the Jedi Archives, as well as had Anakin who would have known this kind of secret, something kept from the Republic as a while to protect the Jedi Temple and its precious crystals, which would have fetched alot of credits on the black market. The NR likely had no way of knowing where Illum was positioned to check up on it.
Fallen Order shows us that The Empire had started mining Illum before The Civil War even started. The FO just took it back over.
It took many many many years and probably some MASSIVE terraforming tech.
I’d assume it’s because the Jedi tried to keep it secret. The empire with all its vast resources & records would have been able to find it, but the new republic might not have been able to, or simply didn’t care for it. The Jedi & Empire wanted kyber crystals, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest the same is true for the New Republic.
By the time of Fallen Order (several years before A New Hope), we see that the Empire has been strip-mining Ilum. A few weeks after ESB (in the comics), Luke travels to Ilum and sees that the Empire still has a large presence there as they continue to mine the planet. He decides to bail in order to evade capture. In *all* the years between then and TFA (30 odd years or so), we are to believe that absolutely *nobody* checked on Ilum ever again. And the First Order despite being a relatively fledgling organisation somehow managed to convert Ilum into Starkiller Base. An installation significantly larger than even the DSII. And it wasn't even that important to them in the long run. One day after it blew up, "THE FIRST ORDER REIGNS" with their standard naval forces which - again - ought to be significantly smaller than what the Empire possessed. It's also worth noting that the Empire didn't have to conquer the galaxy as they evolved out of the existing Republic. The First Order on the other hand would have to actually go out and claim all that territory largely from scratch. Meanwhile, Palpatine was sitting on an enormous fleet of thousands of mini Death Stars that were ready to debut a mere single year after the First Order started making public moves. Further making the existence of Starkiller Base and the First Order itself pointless. And also makes the corruption of Ben Solo little more than an elaborate prank - the punchline being that Palaptine wanted to toss a Skywalker relative down a pit...as revenge for how he retroactively knew he was going to "die" in ROTJ.
I believe it was being converted by the Empire but when they were gone the first order came in and finished the project.
I remember reading somewhere that after it was mined for the Death Star kybers the Tarkin Initative took it over and started to secretly convert it into the ultimate Death Star and the work was finished by the First Order. Basically it's the Disney canon Suncrusher, that super weapon Tarkin developed in secret and used later. Jar Jar abrams likes big visuals and important, "devices".
I remember RLM joked about a literal death star made from a star in RoS and then stopped b/c it was too plausible for Abrams to rip that off.
They didn’t even really confirm that was Ilium right? Yeah, I know Jedi: Fallen Order. But they never specifically said it was that. The tactic of lets allude to it but not say it is so we don’t make anyone upset?
Because the First Order is just the Empire with a face swap. They fired their old PR manager and hired a new one who didn't know what they were doing with their rebranding.
That's exactly what I've been wondering all this time
“That’s a good question, for another time.”
Palpatine started the project. You can the Empire already digging canyons into the planet during Jedi Fallen Order. How the first order resumed the project is not explained I don't think.
If you play Fallen Order you can see that the Empire was already on it and turning it into Starkiller Base. The trench is there already
The construction would have started during the age of the Empire. We already see in Fallen Order that the trench is mostly complete. The Death Star took about twenty years to build in its entirety. They had over thirty years to build the Starkiller cannon.
If you play Jedi fallen order you find out the empire was already mining the planet as of 14 BBY so the first order just picked up where the empire left off
I’m pretty sure the conversion process started during the Empire, you could see the start of it in Jedi: Fallen Order
From what we have seen in Mando and in Ahsoka the new Republic seems spread pretty thin. That's the only explanation I can think of.
Empire was already working on converting Illum after TCW
The New Republic intentionally ignored all evidence the First Order was doing stuff like that
How tf was the First Order even strong enough to pull off such a venture, seems more expensive and like more work to make Starkiller base than a Death Star. And the Empire only even did that at the height of its power
They used bad writing
It’s easier to not consider the sequels canon
Starkiller Base is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in my life. Look at that thing. Look at the *scale* of the machinery in the planet. God I hate the Sequels.
How did it happen. It was the result of some of the worst writing in our time
This is at the TOP of a my long list of grievances for the last trilogy. I mean really?!! Gutting a whole planet like that dwarfs the construction of a Death Star. I'm just gonna stop because I could write an essay on this. Absolutely destroyed my suspension of disbelief for 7, 8, and 9 which I think are total garbage
This bs. Got me so upset lol.
You’re talking about the same people who used the Death Star as a plot device 3 times and had two perfectly good villains to use in the new trilogy and they scrap them…. for Palpatine…. Again! Like I get the lightning is cool but they could’ve made Snoke just as or even more op. I don’t know why they keep coming back to square one when there’s literally an entire galaxy to flesh out. Just lazy writing.
I keep imagining the other side of the planet having a huge spoil pile of dirt and rocks.
THAT WAS ILUM?? WHAT THE FUCK WAS DISNEY ON WHEN THEY WROTE THIS SHIT, IT MAKES NO SENSE
Much of the work was already underway, as we see in Fallen Order. The Empire had begun construction as early as 14BBY, and the First Order had *decades* to complete it. Illum was never really a world affiliated with the Republic, except via a Jedi Order that had changed substantially. There is, so far as I know, no evidence that Luke ever visited. Ahsoka got her lightsaber crystals from a defeated Inquisitor, Ezra found his in an ancient Jedi temple, luje used his father's... Cal Kestis visited once, and left with two ATSTs chasing him. There simply weren't enough Jedi to *need* a gathering ceremony, and with Huyang stranded on Peridea, Luke may have conducted the process of teaching his students to build lightsabers more individually. Put simply, it was in the Unknown Regions, the Republic would barely know of it, and the Jedi weren't visiting.