Starkiller Base makes no sense.
Disney released The Force Awakens back in December, to mass acclaim. Unfortunately, the interceding months have shed no clarity on a fundamental problem: Starkiller Base, the unspeakably powerful superweapon at the heart of the film, is insane.
This weapon, like the Death Star of the original 1977 film, is used to destroy other planets. Unlike that Death Star, however, this weapon is capable of destroying entire systems of planets in a single stroke. The First Order, the primary antagonist, uses this power to destroy a rival government's star system.
The premise is unremarkable. Unfortunately, the execution in The Force Awakens is appallingly poor. For a film so attentive to detail that the clanks of droid BB-8 rolling down staircases are audible in the background, no excuse should suffice.
The base has problems from the moment it first appears on our screen. Starkiller's first firing is notable as the moment the Republic is destroyed; the cannon fires, and its beam splits into constituent parts that each annihilate a different world.
How?
There are plausible explanations for this, of course. Perhaps the cannon has a beam splitter, and it is designed for the specific purpose of destroying this single system.The First Order proceeds, however, to prepare this weapon for firing against the base world of its military enemies, the Resistance.
If this weapon is tailored for a specific system, does this mean that stray beams are going to fly wildly? If not, how complex must this weapon be to conveniently separate its beam five or six ways at precisely the right angles?
All of this complexity is theoretically possible, given that we see a visual representation proving that the weapon is the size of several dozen Death Stars. Even so, what about the question of the cannon blasts themselves? How are they conveniently visible to our protagonists on another world?
Again, this is possible to explain: If the weapon is powerful enough, and if Maz's castle is on a planet running tangent to the cannon's path, maybe the output should be visible. But instantly? We can extrapolate that hyperspace travel takes hours, sometimes days between planets at faster-than-light speeds - but somehow, this enormous cannon blast covers the span in minutes.
Convenient.
Finally, we come to the question of power. Surely, this is a question so fundamental that the filmmakers could not possibly ignore, and to their credit they provide an on-screen answer. That answer is just terrifically bad.
Starkiller Base, we find out, is powered by a sun. Of course, solar panels or similar absorptive technology would hardly be sufficient, so instead the base just sucks the juice out of the sun like an energy-draining vacuum cleaner. Perhaps the details of this are best left to imagination, because science has no explanation.
Once the planet's sun drains and the base becomes completely uninhabitable, we can only surmise that it either roves the galaxy in pursuit of more suns or that the First Order abandons it entirely. Fortunately, the Resistance destroyed the weapon, sparing us the prospect of Starkiller's return in Episode VIII.
Starkiller Base was a cinematic mess, and the entire construction project was one giant plot hole. In fact, it seems less in keeping with the Death Star and more in line with the ridiculous Sun Crusher, a weapon so absurd that it fortunately never sojourned onto the silver screen.
Furthermore, given that the only military presences witnessed in the entire movie are endless swaths of First Order troops and two small squadrons of Resistance fighters, the entire ordeal just seemed like a waste. Invade the Republic and be done with it, Supreme Leader.
Star Wars is a space opera, not science fiction, and that lends itself to some questionable science. There is a difference, however, between not scientific and not smart. Starkiller Base is not smart, and that's a problem for a movie saga created and loved by very smart people.
When all is said and done, I can forgive a very good movie for a very bad decision. Come Episode VIII, though, Star Wars deserves something much better than Starkiller Base.
Rian Johnson, you have been warned.
