One of the strangest things about Star Wars: The Force Awakens is that it contains the single greatest atrocity ever seen in the franchise, which was forgotten almost instantly afterwards. To demonstrate the immense power of their technically-not-a-Death-Star ‘Starkiller’ weapon, they fire it at the Hosnian System, which contains the Republic capital Hosnian Prime. The entire system was destroyed and, as Hosnian Prime was a bustling city world, we can presume billions of people died.
Recommended VideosBut for some reason, it just doesn’t feel like that big of a deal, and fans are wondering why director J.J. Abrams chose to invent and then destroy a new city when he could have blown away the almost identical Coruscant, which we at least have some emotional connection to via the prequel trilogy.
It turns out that many viewers thought Coruscant had actually been destroyed, and it’s only now that they’re realizing Hosnian Prime is a completely different planet:
Others accuse the movie of failing to establish what Hosnian Prime is and why we should care about it. After all, we didn’t know anything about Alderaan in A New Hope, but it being Princess Leia’s homeworld gave us some kind of emotional reaction:
Maybe a scene of the Republic government in action would have helped, though we suppose Disney was nervous about getting too deep into galactic politics after the prequels:
And some fans are just disappointed that what should be a hugely emotional moment is flubbed. Perhaps the famous behind-the-scenes misery on The Force Awakens took its toll?
Another says that this may not actually be Abrams’ fault, assigning blame to the Lucasfilm Story Group:
The Force Awakens is a fun movie, though the whole Starkiller base plotline is a weak retread of the Death Star, with planet-killing weapons so commonplace in the old Legends continuity that they became a running joke among fans. Fortunately, the franchise seems to have gotten superweapons out of their system in newer movies, so we’re hoping that we can move on to threats with more emotive wallop.
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