Starkiller Base Revealed In New ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Poster And Trailer


The official poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was revealed over the weekend, giving fans their first look at the First Order’s new superweapon, the appropriately named Starkiller Base.

For nearly a year, fans have speculated at the worlds upon which the newest Star Wars film will take place. The desert world once believed to be Tatooine has now been revealed as Jakku, while the verdant green planet that appears in the film remains to be identified. Early images released from the movie, however, showed that an ice world would also be featured in The Force Awakens as the site of a First Order enclave. Fans at first speculated that the remnants of the Empire could have taken refuge amid the snowdrifts of Hoth, but now the true identity of the planet has been revealed.

In the upper right quadrant of the newest Star Wars poster, an ominous globe hangs menacingly. The object appears to be an upgraded version of the Empire’s most dreaded superweapon, the Death Star, but with some serious modifications. The globe is actually the much-rumored Starkiller Base (named after Luke Skywalker’s original last name in George Lucas’ earliest drafts of Star Wars), and it is an incredibly impressive weapon on a much larger scale than anything seen before.

As soon as the poster was released, an entry was added to Starwars.com, detailing the Starkiller Base. In it, we find that not only is the base a hideout for the armies of the First Order, but it is also a superweapon made from an already existing planet. The main weapon of Starkiller Base is apparently in a class above the Death Star’s cannon, giving it the ability to destroy an entire solar system instead of simply a planet.

“An ice planet converted into a stronghold of the First Order and armed with a fiercely destructive new weapon capable of destroying entire star systems.”

The final trailer for The Force Awakens was released on Monday night as ticketing websites offering preorders for the film crashed multiple times. In that two-minute-long clip, fans got their first look at what Starkiller Base is capable of, as Kylo Ren can be seen standing in what appears to be the outpost’s command center, watching as an all-encompassing blast of red laser fire destroys something in his path. While some have suggested that this scene could show Ren upon the bridge of one of the First Order’s Star Destroyers (like the Finalizer, which was previously revealed), the scene was followed by the brief image of a planet’s surface awash in fire, likely the work of Starkiller Base’s main weapon.

The trailer also revealed that Kylo Ren is indeed a massive fan of Darth Vader. As Cinema Blend points out, we once again had the chance to see Vader’s charred helmet as Ren pledged to finish what the fallen Sith Lord had started. With the aid of Supreme Leader Snoke and the rest of the First Order, it appears as if Ren’s efforts to continue Vader’s ambitions toward ruling the galaxy include his very own super-powered version of the Death Star.

While it remains to be seen exactly what role the weapon will play in the film, it appears that the First Order may indeed have the power to once again menace the galaxy, using Starkiller Base in their attempt to retake power.

[Image By Dale Jackson via Flickr | Resized and Cropped | CC BY 2.0]

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