Death Star
Although details, such as the superlaser's location, shifted between different concept models during production of "Star Wars", the notion of the Death Star being a large, spherical space station over 100 kilometers in diameter was consistent in all of them. George Lucas gave the original task of designing a "Death Star" to concept artist and spaceship modeler Colin Cantwell, who had collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the 1968 film "". In a 2016 interview, Cantwell related that "I didn't originally plan for the Death Star to have a trench, but when I was working with the mold, I noticed the two halves had shrunk at the point where they met across the middle." As it "would have taken a week of work just to fill and sand and refill this depression," Cantwell suggested a trench to Lucas to save the labor. Lucas liked the idea, and the Death Star model was created by John Stears. The buzzing sound counting down to the Death Star firing its superlaser comes from the "Flash Gordon" serials. Portraying an incomplete yet powerful space station posed a problem for Industrial Light & Magic's modelmakers for "Return of the Jedi". Only the front side of the 137-centimeter model was completed, and the image was flipped horizontally for the final film. Both Death Stars were depicted by a combination of complete and sectional models and matte paintings.
Death Star
"" features Starkiller Base, a planet converted into a superweapon built by the First Order. Significantly larger than either the first or second Death Star, and unlike either of those cost-prohibitive space stations, this superweapon cut-costs by terraforming an existing planet and draws its fire power directly from a sun (by extracting a kind of Dark Energy called Quintessence and turning it into another type of dark energy called Phantom Energy), but it requires time to draw enough energy. Once fired, it has the power to destroy up to five planets within the same star system simultaneously, making it a far deadlier superweapon than the Death Star. General Hux gave an intense speech while Starkiller Base demonstrated its lethality by obliterating the five planets of the Hosnian Prime system (the location of the Republic government, which rotates every few years), the cataclysm witnessed by Han Solo, Chewbacca, Rey and Finn from Maz Kanata's castle. After Rey was captured by Kylo Ren, he interrogated her within the base. Han, Chewbacca and Finn approached the base at light-speed because the Starkiller's shield kept out anything going under the speed of light. They found Rey and successfully lowered the protective shields, enabling an X-wing assault led by Poe Dameron and Nien Numb to destroy the planet-converted superweapon, with Poe firing the crucial, destructive shots. The name Starkiller Base paid homage to the early drafts of the original Star Wars film, referring to Luke Skywalker's original name as Luke Starkiller.