Star Wars: The Force Awakens - 10 Design Secrets You Probably Didn't Know

8. Only A Handful Of Starkiller Base Corridors Were Built

Star Wars The Force Awakens Falcon Dish Jpg
Lucasfilm

Although in 1977 it looked like nothing anyone had ever seen before, Star Wars wasn’t actually a massively budgeted movie; for reference, it only cost $11 million ($45 million adjusted for inflation), a fifth of Superman: The Movie’s budget a year later. To keep things in check (something that proved very difficult with the location shooting and visual effects), a whole host of money-saving film-making tricks were use, most notably only constructing a handful of Death Star corridors and just shooting it repeatedly from different angles.

Despite having a budget upwards of $250 million ($62 million by 1977 standards), The Force Awakens’ production was also dominated by cost-cutting measures, including repeating the same trick from the original. Only three or four corridors of Starkiller Base were constructed, with just enough variation to create the feeling of a massive, planet-sized base.

Wow, I guess it really is just a Death Star copy!

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Contributor

Film Editor (2014-2016). Loves The Usual Suspects. Hates Transformers 2. Everything else lies somewhere in the middle. Once met the Chuckle Brothers.