# Death Star vs. Starkiller Base: both are unrealistic, the latter especially so (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 1, 2016, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934 "2016-01-01T19:48:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/101 "2016-01-05T02:08:54Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > YIn the theater, in that moment, when Han and Leia reunited, I understood. I felt a little sad for their lost love, but I understood the circumstances around it. There was no need to sit there and draw some kind of tortured line of justification between the movies. Two kids fell in love and got married. They had a son. Terrible, tragic events happened. Two lovers grew, growing older amid tragedy, drifted apart. Han certainly wasn’t the age of a “kid” in any of the OT. Carie Fisher was in fact young, but her character seemed at least late 20s in ANH. > [@](#): > > Seriously? In what galaxy, near or far, is this an unrealistic line of extrapolation? > > Did we _want_ to see them with a failed marriage? No, of course not. We don’t want anything bad to happen to good guys. Except that we also do want bad things to happen to good guys because otherwise there would be no conflicts. Sure. Some people are going to dig it. I certainly don’t and think it pisses on the OT. Ev’ybody’s mileage gonna vary. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/102 "2016-01-05T02:32:08Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > Han Solo’s reversion to selfish smuggler makes all the sense in the world. Their kid turned into **Darth friggin’ Vader**. Meh, without the mystery or evil charisma, he’s a Dearth Vader at best. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/103 "2016-01-05T07:07:19Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Han certainly wasn’t the age of a “kid” in any of the OT. Carie Fisher was in fact young, but her character seemed at least late 20s in ANH. > > Sure. Some people are going to dig it. I certainly don’t and think it pisses on the OT. Ev’ybody’s mileage gonna vary. Maybe if you’d watch the fucking movie, you would not need to shit on it so much. As you didn’t, at least according to your OP, you’re just commenting from under a bridge. Movie was not perfect, but it was a damn sight better than the prequels, and even Return of the Jedi. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/104 "2016-01-05T08:58:02Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > That’s a lot of filling in the blanks. Normal crazeball religious cults often encourage new recruits to cut off all contact with their families, the better to indoctrinate the chumps. That’s how crazeball religious cults work when they lack magic powers, massive military forces, and interstellar drives. It’s fairly likely that the First Order would be even more extreme in insulating their top new recruit from parents who are galactic legends at defeating members of their cult. Sure, I don’t need for them to have \*succeeded \*in fixing their son 3 years before the movie started. That would be kind of dull, really. I would like to see some evidence that they \*tried \*- or even that they care. Honestly, neither the script nor the acting particularly sold me on the idea that Han or Leia were devastated by their son’s betrayal of all they ever stood for. Irked, yes. Aggravated, certainly. But they treated each other like a couple who had amicably split when they realised they were too different to be together - a fine and mature way to handle the whole “princess and pirate” relationship in itself, but a bad way to handle a “family torn apart by tragedy” story. Han’s finding Ren is a merely a huge, \*huge \*co-incidence - he just happens to stumble across the Millenium Falcon out of all the ships in all the quadrants of all the galaxy at precisely the same time the son he isn’t actively hunting down happens to be looking for it. _"This isn’t how I imagined this day going when I woke up this morning_". Imagine if \*instead \*it was all part of a plan cooked up by him and Leia to bring Ren out of the embrace of the death cult that’s been hiding them from him. That’s why Leia sent one dashing pilot - good enough to get the McGuffin, but weak enough by himself to get Ren to chase him. That’s why Han “just happened” to be off-world - to lend a hand if things went awry. Leia sets up the strategy, Han improvises on the ground (so to speak). Together, they engineer the confrontation with Ren that they desperately hope will bring him back to the Light. Tragically, they fail. But they fail while caring enough to try, so it means something. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/105 "2016-01-05T09:30:13Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > It was a lot more than a city of excavation given the orbital pictures. Here’s one of the first images I came across on the web: [https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tv/image/1447/81/1447810510087.jpg](https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tv/image/1447/81/1447810510087.jpg) > > There’s a belt of excavation around the front half of the planet that looks maybe 1,000 miles deep if this is all Earth-scale\*. Certainly deep enough to go well past the crust into magma, which means some kind of fantastical engineering to support the walls of that excavation. With that level of excavation and fantastical supports, it might be easier to have built the darn thing from scratch. I had a similar reaction during the orbital POV shots of the Starkiller: _how the hell did the First Order build that?_ This is a truly mind-boggling megastructure, and is way, way beyond a Death Star. If the First Order is able to construct something like this, then for all intents and purposes they have virtually unlimited resources. They don’t _need_ to conquer anyone; why bother to attack the Republic? > [@Miller](#): > > Actually, it would be kind of cool if it turned out that the planet they turned into Starkiller base had already been hollowed out before the First Order got there - by the Empire, when they were building the Death Star. I thought it would have been interesting if the First Order had stumbled onto something built by a vanished civilization (like Niven’s Ringworld, or the terraforming machine in _Total Recall_) and weaponized it. Of course I realize the writers probably didn’t think about any of this stuff; they were just taking the original Death Star concept [TO THE EXTREME!!!](https://youtu.be/XZpW2aBLm5I) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/106 "2016-01-05T10:03:11Z")
_Naturally_ hollow planets are not out of the realm of possibility in the Star Wars universe - look at Naboo. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/107 "2016-01-05T11:31:07Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > Clearly the writers just wanted to recreate the original trilogy; they wanted an Empire, they wanted Star Destroyers, storm troopers, Darth Vader, and a Death Star. They also wanted a plucky group of rebels flying X-Wings. They worked backwards from there, not really worried if it made a whole lot of sense how they got there. This, exactly, and don’t forget the driods. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/108 "2016-01-05T12:00:08Z")
The original death star was supposed to also have nearly half million personel. How could they bring in enough supplies to feed all of them? As to its destruction there is a book called "Death Star which claims Luke had inside help from dissidents including former resident from Alderan. ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/109 "2016-01-05T19:17:08Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#): > > As you didn’t, at least according to your OP, you’re just commenting from under a bridge. Don’t accuse anyone of trolling unless you’re in the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/110 "2016-01-05T19:35:22Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > As to its destruction there is a book called "Death Star which claims Luke had inside help from dissidents including former resident from Alderan. Quite a title, what’s the rest of it? ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/111 "2016-01-05T20:51:08Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Quite a title, what’s the rest of it? Darn quotation marks. The book is “[Death Star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star_%28novel%29)”. And dont forget the funny “[Death Star Cantina](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv5iEK-IEzw)” by Eddie Lizard. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2016, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934/112 "2016-01-06T04:54:33Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Darn quotation marks. The book is “[Death Star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star_%28novel%29)”. I just figured that was _Death Star_ after being translated into Japanese and then back into English. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-star-vs-starkiller-base-both-are-unrealistic-the-latter-especially-so-open-spoilers/741934.md?page=5)