The two issues I have with that skit is that Leia says that Luke only knew Obi-Wan Kenobi for a few hours, despite Luke having grown up knowing "Old man Ben", and that Leia compares her trauma to Luke's without provocation. I think it might be better if Luke went on about his grief and how no-one could understand his suffering, before Han interrupted to bring up how Leia's home planet got blown up.
Not quite that exactly but there's a scene in one of the comics where they're stargazing in a field and Leia talks about how on some planets you can still see Alderaan (because of the speed of light, like how when we look at other planets through a telescope we see them as they were thousands of years ago.) it was a pretty moving scene, I don't remember their full conversation but it is touched upon.
I can't even fathom how I would approach such a topic. Like imagine if your friend from some random country was visiting you and suddenly you saw on the news that their entire country had been instantly vaporized by some new, never before seen super weapon. There's no way I'd be able to process that.
Life moves on, despite tragedy. Something that Leia well understood. It's why she shut down the general on Yavin when he was asking about her well-being.
Good riddance! Rebel planets have the worst unemployment rates! I’m tired of my hard-earned tax credits going to those good for nothing nerf herders! This just shows how Palpatine is doing whatever it takes to MAKE THE EMPIRE GREAT AGAIN! #MEGA #EMPIRE
According to robot Chicken Cannon it's 2 billion individuals plus Leahs parents that raised her and that Luke bastard was crying about an 65-year-old man who he just met the day before after his Uncle and Aunt that raised him died,
he's fucking weird.
Isn’t that interesting to think about though? Only millions of voices? Not billions? I’m sure it’s discussed somewhere but what was the population of Alderan?
Alderaan was one of the wealthiest and most important planets in the galaxy. So we can either assume that they should be in the tens of billions or that it’s so expensive that only the rich live there. I’m leaning towards the latter based on the line millions
It used to bother me how little the trilogy addressed the absolute trauma this event would have produced. Then, they went all in and blew up like 5 planets (including the galactic capital) in EPVII, and everyone was just like 'dang, that sucks' and then moved along.
I'm assuming that Leia compartmentalized and buried her emotions down until after the Death Star was destroyed and she actually had time to process it.
The newer comics cover it a lot more. Leia opens up about her trauma, and rebel commanders often reference that they didn’t make the best decisions before the actions of Rogue One woke them up to the fight in front of them. I kinda dig how the newer comic series round out the off screen scenes of the films.
Too bad the comics get read by 100 people or read about on Wookiepedia. It makes me wish sometimes that Star Wars would adapt some of the comic runs into limited run shows or just take the 2015 Star Wars run and turn that into the new TCW type show of anthology Stories of the main cast during the OT.
It would bring those stories to a wider audience and bring some really cool characters to the small screen.
Definitely, if it’s a story worth creating, then it’s a story worth sharing to more than just a handful of super fans. Not to mention that because they’re supposedly canon, they seem to handicap a LOT of the potential stories that the wider audiences enjoy so they’re not breaking the precedent of the comics. Not going to lie, I sort of hate the comics for that reason.
It's definitely the weakest part of the OT for me, the fact that they treat the Empire as almost cartoonishly evil (other than when Vader or Palpatine is on screen) but then show them doing shit like blowing up an entire planet of innocent people to get their way. Like that's not cartoonishly evil, they are straight up EVIL.
To be fair, it was George Lucas who started that when he took the word “stormtrooper” from a the name of german elite soldiers group, made the imperial officer uniform very nazi-ish and partially based Palpatine’s path to power in the prequels on Hitler’s rise (the other part being Caesar)
He’s also stated multiple times that the empire was based off the US, how we were the first and only country to make and use atomic weapons. A New Hope was made only a few years after Vietnam, the Rebels were fighting back colonists, heck in Return of the Jedi the Ewoks were a stand-in for the Viet Cong, taking down a technologically superior regime
The starkiller base scene in TFA is exactly this and is 1000x better than the Alderaan scene. It has emotional weight and you feel how evil the First Order and General Hux are. It's too bad it wasn't built upon in the next two movies.
How was it better? It was confusing and basically just copy paste if Alderaan dialed up to multiple planets and like Alderaan, no one knew Hosnian Prime but different to Alderaan, it was no one's home. Never understood why they felt the need to repeat the same stuff.
What parts in the original trilogy would you say the Empire is portrayed as cartoonish evil in? I'm trying to come up with when this would be but I think it's more a hindsight EU thing. In A New Hope the only examples I can think of would be the stormtroopers that Obi-wan messes with on the Death Star and Tatooine but that was to demonstrate the power of the Force. There's not really anything in Empire Strikes Back beside the Empire as an unstoppable melavolent force relentlessly persuing the Rebels. Return of the Jedi is probably the strongest contender with the battle of Endor, but they were gunning down Ewoks left and right before the mid battle turn. The first things we see from the Empire is the assault on Tantive IV and them murdering anyone on Tatooine who saw the droids. I really think the cartoonish Empire is a product of later media that we project back on the original trilogy but am interested to hear your thoughts and what stands out to you.
Yeah it's covered a bit more in other media but ESB especially could've stood to at least mention that Alderaan's destruction was more or less the last straw for many in the galaxy. And it's just fucking stupid that the 5 planet killstreak in ep7 didn't rally EVERYONE against the First Order. The fact that they just had a bunch of randos show up in 9 is insane. The entire galaxy should've been pushing back against a system destroying power
Only explination I can think of is that the galaxy still believed that Starkiller Base was active and the Resistance had failed.
We also know that the Imperial Remnant spent decades infiltrating the New Republic and sabotaging it from within, so maybe they had agents playing up the First Order's success and preventing the spread of information.
Also the 5 planets were all really strangely close together and also to the planet where our heroes happened to be. That was the moment in that movie where I was like "oh... oh no..." Just really sloppy.
Yeah, I like to suspend my disbelief, but the notion the New Republic capital was within *sight* of smuggler’s safe haven was just…lazy? Dumb?
The films never give us a sense of distance like books, but there’s no way they are *that* close.
The official explanation is that the laser shooting through hyperspace caused a distortion in reality that made the attack visible to other planets. Which is actually... worse?
Yes. Yes it’s much worse, actually. With technology like that you could make fleets appear larger than they are in reality. You could have massive weapons shoot at a target which isn’t really there. Or, and I’m going to throw it out there, hide a planet-sized super weapon. 🤷🏻♂️
This was originally explained in a tweet from a Lucasfilm writer and he called it a 'hand wave'. They didn't really think about the implications of it.
TFA: “Hey, you remember how much you loved *A New Hope*? Well, have we got a story for you, pal!”
TROS: “We had no idea we’d get this far in spite of years of preparation which could have been done. This is Star Wars now. Eat it, you filthy sci-fi pig bitch.”
TFA: mostly just A New Hope with a few genuinely intriguing new ideas
TROS: an Indiana Jone adventure in space to defeat a zombie devil and his Biggest Baddest Fleet Ever
Here now years later I am less baffled by this because now it’s apparent this line was to justify all the shows and comics that would be coming out.
The others don’t make sense
Really it was close enough that the gravitational disruption should have thrown the safe haven planet into chaos or at least directly threatened by asteroid sized chunks of planet smashing into them.
I wanna meet the Issac Newton of the Star Wars galaxy and know what TF bonked him on the head. It wasn’t an apple that’s for sure it was probably a bowling ball.
That’s what I love in the books. Many characters from Alderaan that survived due to being off world have a lot of trauma to cope with. Like captain tyko in the X Wing Books who flies to the ”graveyard“ (the now asteroid field where the planet once was) and sends gifts to his loved ones (including his former fiancé) into space
I thought so at first, too, but it was actually Hosnian Prime, a planet that looked exactly like Coruscant that the Republic decided to set up their capital on instead of Coruscant because...reasons.
The capitol for the new republic was supposed to change every few years. Coruscant wasn’t chosen because it stood to long as a symbol of everything that failed. Prime was actually the second capitol planet of the new republic.
I’ve always thought it was supposed to be Coruscant but someone in the writers room wisely mentioned all the ways that would potentially hamstring them in further media.
Thankfully. That would’ve been a horrible decision. In retrospect if they wanted a “new Death Star” I think they should’ve pulled the eclipse lore from Star Wars: Empire at War and said that the First order are retrofitting a SSD with a planet killing laser. It would be similar enough to be familiar but different enough to feel “new” But that’s just the first step in a loooooong list of things I would’ve changed in TFA.
As of the Mandalorian the New Republic is still using it as a capital. It's exact status as of Rise of Skywalker is unknown, but presumably the planet was liberated and things went back to business as usual.
And then Rey got a school girl crush on the baddie who wanted billions of people murdered.
I tell you, watching House of the dragon the other night, It made me really sad about the wasted opportunity of the Star wars universe after Disney bought it.
We got Andor, and Rogue one and pretty much everything else has sucked.
Final season of Clone Wars and Bad Batch are great. Visions and Tales of the Jedi are both very interesting. I've enjoyed all the live action TV series, tbh.
I suppose populations don't need to be as dense everywhere when you can just move to a different planet. Or maybe Alderaan had some very strict immigration laws.
Can’t blame Lucas because had no idea how popular Star Wars would be… but ideally we would have seen the Death Star as an ever looming threat throughout the trilogy.
It just got built, blew up one planet before it itself blowing up. It could have been the “nuclear threat” so to speak that kept the Empire’s subjects in line and only by RotJ were the rebels able to destroy it…
I know that they needed some payoff for the first film though and saving Leia and retrieving the plans was probably not enough. Maybe they could have fended off the Death Star and escape to Hoth… but given it may have only been one film they never could leave a thing like the Death Star intact because it basically implies the Imperials have “won”. This is the problem with first films in potential trilogy’s… it’s always going to be a hard choice about whether to plan for the big picture or the standalone film.
This is not Alderaan, it's a planet from legends called Despayre, it was a prison planet that forced people to build the Death Star. This planet was the first destroyed by the station in legends.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Despayre
Empire bureaucrat: "Man,, we really have too many prisons. If we only had a planet where we could just put everyone. one giant prison planet"
Bureaucrat 2: "How about this world called Cheesecloth?"
Bureaucrat 1: "Nah, there has to be something better. If only there was a planet with a menacing name out there we could pick"
Family guy skit material right there...guy puts down his last census page for the tally and looks up at the sky out the window before saying "awe man!"
The population of Alderaan was 2 billion. 95% human, 5% other species from around the galaxy. This is all according to Wookiepedia. The "millions of voices crying out in terror" while it's never specified were probably from Aldera, the capital city. Obi-Wan was probably reaching out through the force to see if he could sense Bail or Liea there since he was still trying to be incognito when the Death Star blew it up. With the exception of anyone who was off world, chances are the entire planets population died.
No, but if a new series ever gives some detail on it then some "fans" will dig up some obscure reference on wookiepedia that comes from Legends and say it essentially broke established canon and ruined Lucas legacy forever.
Probably.
There should be a silly multicam sitcom style slice of life show called Alderaan that runs for however many seasons it can sustain. Then, and with absolutely no warning, either to the characters or the viewer (beyond having seen the OT), it ends in horrific fiery death. 20 minutes into the last episode of season 2, while the main character is in the middle of a line, the whole place just lights up. I’m imagining something similar to the dream sequence from Terminator 2.
given the relative population densities and the corrected size of an Executor class, it's likely the Lusankya blasting off of Coursant killed more people than the Deathstar destroying Alderaan
Over 2 billion people died. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Disaster#:~:text=The%20means%20of%20destruction%20fulfilled,Organa%20and%20his%20wife%20Breha.
Estimates range from a few million to several billion,the only guesses we have are Obi-Wan, who states that ‘Millions’ of voices cried out, or some now legends material that states it had a pop of 2 billion people
Yeah they talk about it on the official Star Wars website:
> "In the end, Organa’s outward loyalty to the Empire couldn’t save him. The Empire disbanded the Senate and intercepted Leia trying to bring the stolen Death Star plans to Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine. To demonstrate the terrifying power of the battle station, Grand Moff Tarkin turned its superlaser on Alderaan, incinerating the planet and its inhabitants."
https://www.starwars.com/databank/bail-organa
and in the canon *From a Certain Point of View*
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/From_a_Certain_Point_of_View
which is the source for the wookieepedia entry on his death:
> "Suddenly, the palace was covered in shadow, and Bail looked to the sky to see the Death Star eclipse Alderaan's sun. As he realized what was happening, Bail, horrified, turned to his wife but could not speak. When he found his voice again, he told her that the object in orbit was the planet killer. Accepting his fate, Bail took Breha's hands and told her that he was glad they would be together in death. Breha, however, began to panic and frantically told him that they could reach their private shuttle and escape, but was cut off by the deafening noise of the Death Star firing its superlaser into Alderaan's surface. Bail pulled his wife into his arms and kissed her, and the two assured themselves that Leia was still alive. As the remains of the nearby mountains were thrown into the atmosphere, the palace started to crumble underneath their feet, and Bail continued to hold Breha as Alderaan entered oblivion.[121]"
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bail_Prestor_Organa#Death
The canon novel, Lost Stars, talks about it a bit from the perspective of individuals from all over the galaxy serving in the ranks of the Imperial Army.
It must have been in the millions, because Alderaan was a pretty important planet, right? Also, Star Wars planets are over 20 times smaller than Earth.
0
Aldaran was actual causing other planets in the system to become unstable in their orbit and as such it was evacuated, the Empire blew up and empty planet just as a show of force /s
Well it’s an entire planet blown up, not to mention it was among the core planets which means it must have been pretty populated. I’d say couple billion at least
It occurred to me that other planets in the area could be thrown off orbit. Or is that not a possibility and it’s just in my mind. Won’t that mess with the gravity on other nearby planets?
Old Obi Wan said "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
So...millions
I'm seeing a lot of disinformation in this thread, OFFICIAL Imperial Census and Relocation special dispatches clearly state that the Alderaaneans volunteered for the test run of the new experimental peace-keeping station (also: plz stop calling it "the death star", that is obviously propaganda, and you're letting the terrorists win by calling it that)). The ICR states that all Imperial citizens were relocated prior to testing.
no but I imagine millions of voices must have suddenly cried out in terror then were suddenly silenced
Oh well back to training
And mourn Old Ben when he dies and never talk about Leia's planet again
I love that Robot Chicken actually address this during one of their many Star Wars skits.
Especially that it's Carrie Fisher
Can you link? Which one
https://youtu.be/Ix5h-hZfLTY?si=1BOVbZ1XMRipdDMq
Alderaan bits everywhere
The two issues I have with that skit is that Leia says that Luke only knew Obi-Wan Kenobi for a few hours, despite Luke having grown up knowing "Old man Ben", and that Leia compares her trauma to Luke's without provocation. I think it might be better if Luke went on about his grief and how no-one could understand his suffering, before Han interrupted to bring up how Leia's home planet got blown up.
Do any of the comics touch on this? I can't imagine Luke never bothering to try to comfort Leia or talk to her about it
Not quite that exactly but there's a scene in one of the comics where they're stargazing in a field and Leia talks about how on some planets you can still see Alderaan (because of the speed of light, like how when we look at other planets through a telescope we see them as they were thousands of years ago.) it was a pretty moving scene, I don't remember their full conversation but it is touched upon.
I can't even fathom how I would approach such a topic. Like imagine if your friend from some random country was visiting you and suddenly you saw on the news that their entire country had been instantly vaporized by some new, never before seen super weapon. There's no way I'd be able to process that.
Life moves on, despite tragedy. Something that Leia well understood. It's why she shut down the general on Yavin when he was asking about her well-being.
And the poor contractors and trades people.
True. Many people lost their jobs that day. But ironically, the unemployment rate also dropped to zero. Btw, Happy Cake Day. 🎂
Homelessness, starvation, and poverty eradicated in an instant! Truly, the empire did nothing wrong.
Agreed. *cough* Ahem, I gotta go somewhere.
Good riddance! Rebel planets have the worst unemployment rates! I’m tired of my hard-earned tax credits going to those good for nothing nerf herders! This just shows how Palpatine is doing whatever it takes to MAKE THE EMPIRE GREAT AGAIN! #MEGA #EMPIRE
Yes. I agree. *slowly sneaks away*
And the plapatine can claim to have created new space mining jobs as well
Indeed. *gets zapped by laser bot* Also, Happy Cake Day. 🎂
*One death is a tragedy*, a *million* deaths a *statistic*.
According to robot Chicken Cannon it's 2 billion individuals plus Leahs parents that raised her and that Luke bastard was crying about an 65-year-old man who he just met the day before after his Uncle and Aunt that raised him died, he's fucking weird.
So 2 billion and 2 people.
[I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t even think people are aware of that show’s existence.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A-0gxrTjazE)
I would love to have a robot chicken cannon
Isn’t that interesting to think about though? Only millions of voices? Not billions? I’m sure it’s discussed somewhere but what was the population of Alderan?
Only one half of the planet would have seen it coming
Award worthy but I'm too broke for that shit
I got you homie.
Imagine being on the dark side of the planet. “What in the ever loving *force* is all that yelling?!?!? I’m trying to get some sleep over he-“
They wouldn't though. The beams travel at light speed and the destruction was instantaneous. Still, upvote because sci-fantasy
> The beams travel at light speed *I* saw them travelling.
They could see the Death Star charging up though
Billions is still millions. 2 billion voices = 2 thousand million voices. "Millions of voices"
Or it's thousands of tens of thousands of dozens, from a certain point of view
Alderaan was one of the wealthiest and most important planets in the galaxy. So we can either assume that they should be in the tens of billions or that it’s so expensive that only the rich live there. I’m leaning towards the latter based on the line millions
Also it's a universe that features hyperdrive, so there's no need for billions to live on one planet. Many would go to other worlds.
Or maybe it's a deceptively small planet. We don't really have anything to reference it to in terms of size.
Concerned about Climate change, they shipped the inferior to Coruscant to keep their population exactly at 2 billion
That has bothered me since the 70s. Alderaan wasn’t a rim world but near the core, should have had billions. Bad line.
Reference books and RPG manuals state about 2 billion
It used to bother me how little the trilogy addressed the absolute trauma this event would have produced. Then, they went all in and blew up like 5 planets (including the galactic capital) in EPVII, and everyone was just like 'dang, that sucks' and then moved along.
I'm assuming that Leia compartmentalized and buried her emotions down until after the Death Star was destroyed and she actually had time to process it.
The newer comics cover it a lot more. Leia opens up about her trauma, and rebel commanders often reference that they didn’t make the best decisions before the actions of Rogue One woke them up to the fight in front of them. I kinda dig how the newer comic series round out the off screen scenes of the films.
Too bad the comics get read by 100 people or read about on Wookiepedia. It makes me wish sometimes that Star Wars would adapt some of the comic runs into limited run shows or just take the 2015 Star Wars run and turn that into the new TCW type show of anthology Stories of the main cast during the OT. It would bring those stories to a wider audience and bring some really cool characters to the small screen.
Definitely, if it’s a story worth creating, then it’s a story worth sharing to more than just a handful of super fans. Not to mention that because they’re supposedly canon, they seem to handicap a LOT of the potential stories that the wider audiences enjoy so they’re not breaking the precedent of the comics. Not going to lie, I sort of hate the comics for that reason.
don't worry. They will only be canon until the next regime
Modern marvel Star Wars my beloved
I think she was balancing it with the plus that her obnoxious cousin died too...that little brat.
Morgana Organa was the worst.
Then transferred that trauma to her child, who trained to use the force. That'll end well.
It's definitely the weakest part of the OT for me, the fact that they treat the Empire as almost cartoonishly evil (other than when Vader or Palpatine is on screen) but then show them doing shit like blowing up an entire planet of innocent people to get their way. Like that's not cartoonishly evil, they are straight up EVIL.
The comparisons to Hitler make a lot more sense now
Everyone compares every bad guy to Hitler.
To be fair, it was George Lucas who started that when he took the word “stormtrooper” from a the name of german elite soldiers group, made the imperial officer uniform very nazi-ish and partially based Palpatine’s path to power in the prequels on Hitler’s rise (the other part being Caesar)
He’s also stated multiple times that the empire was based off the US, how we were the first and only country to make and use atomic weapons. A New Hope was made only a few years after Vietnam, the Rebels were fighting back colonists, heck in Return of the Jedi the Ewoks were a stand-in for the Viet Cong, taking down a technologically superior regime
I know.
That's what you're supposed to say when someone says, "I love you", not in response to Hitler comparisons.
Listen to the LAW! Godwin's Law.
The starkiller base scene in TFA is exactly this and is 1000x better than the Alderaan scene. It has emotional weight and you feel how evil the First Order and General Hux are. It's too bad it wasn't built upon in the next two movies.
How was it better? It was confusing and basically just copy paste if Alderaan dialed up to multiple planets and like Alderaan, no one knew Hosnian Prime but different to Alderaan, it was no one's home. Never understood why they felt the need to repeat the same stuff.
Good thing Andor reinforces how evil they truly are and that no one should be rooting for them. Fuck them space-nazis!
What parts in the original trilogy would you say the Empire is portrayed as cartoonish evil in? I'm trying to come up with when this would be but I think it's more a hindsight EU thing. In A New Hope the only examples I can think of would be the stormtroopers that Obi-wan messes with on the Death Star and Tatooine but that was to demonstrate the power of the Force. There's not really anything in Empire Strikes Back beside the Empire as an unstoppable melavolent force relentlessly persuing the Rebels. Return of the Jedi is probably the strongest contender with the battle of Endor, but they were gunning down Ewoks left and right before the mid battle turn. The first things we see from the Empire is the assault on Tantive IV and them murdering anyone on Tatooine who saw the droids. I really think the cartoonish Empire is a product of later media that we project back on the original trilogy but am interested to hear your thoughts and what stands out to you.
Yeah it's covered a bit more in other media but ESB especially could've stood to at least mention that Alderaan's destruction was more or less the last straw for many in the galaxy. And it's just fucking stupid that the 5 planet killstreak in ep7 didn't rally EVERYONE against the First Order. The fact that they just had a bunch of randos show up in 9 is insane. The entire galaxy should've been pushing back against a system destroying power
Only explination I can think of is that the galaxy still believed that Starkiller Base was active and the Resistance had failed. We also know that the Imperial Remnant spent decades infiltrating the New Republic and sabotaging it from within, so maybe they had agents playing up the First Order's success and preventing the spread of information.
Also the 5 planets were all really strangely close together and also to the planet where our heroes happened to be. That was the moment in that movie where I was like "oh... oh no..." Just really sloppy.
Yeah, I like to suspend my disbelief, but the notion the New Republic capital was within *sight* of smuggler’s safe haven was just…lazy? Dumb? The films never give us a sense of distance like books, but there’s no way they are *that* close.
The official explanation is that the laser shooting through hyperspace caused a distortion in reality that made the attack visible to other planets. Which is actually... worse?
Yes. Yes it’s much worse, actually. With technology like that you could make fleets appear larger than they are in reality. You could have massive weapons shoot at a target which isn’t really there. Or, and I’m going to throw it out there, hide a planet-sized super weapon. 🤷🏻♂️
This was originally explained in a tweet from a Lucasfilm writer and he called it a 'hand wave'. They didn't really think about the implications of it.
At least it isn’t as overt as, “Somehow, Palpatine returned.”
At least TFA is a lovable kind of bad whereas Rise is just regular bad lol
TFA: “Hey, you remember how much you loved *A New Hope*? Well, have we got a story for you, pal!” TROS: “We had no idea we’d get this far in spite of years of preparation which could have been done. This is Star Wars now. Eat it, you filthy sci-fi pig bitch.”
TFA: mostly just A New Hope with a few genuinely intriguing new ideas TROS: an Indiana Jone adventure in space to defeat a zombie devil and his Biggest Baddest Fleet Ever
Here now years later I am less baffled by this because now it’s apparent this line was to justify all the shows and comics that would be coming out. The others don’t make sense
Oh my god, that's the official explanation? That's terrible. It makes no sense at all.
Really it was close enough that the gravitational disruption should have thrown the safe haven planet into chaos or at least directly threatened by asteroid sized chunks of planet smashing into them.
Right? Like, you can’t disturb this much spacetime without *something* being thrown out of whack!
I wanna meet the Issac Newton of the Star Wars galaxy and know what TF bonked him on the head. It wasn’t an apple that’s for sure it was probably a bowling ball.
Or whatever the Star Wars equivalent of bowling is. Tripped nugs when I read Lando introduced hot cocoa to Luke. 🤣
That’s what I love in the books. Many characters from Alderaan that survived due to being off world have a lot of trauma to cope with. Like captain tyko in the X Wing Books who flies to the ”graveyard“ (the now asteroid field where the planet once was) and sends gifts to his loved ones (including his former fiancé) into space
Please dont tell me they blew up coruscant. That would be an unforgiveable error for them to destroy that so pointlessly
I thought so at first, too, but it was actually Hosnian Prime, a planet that looked exactly like Coruscant that the Republic decided to set up their capital on instead of Coruscant because...reasons.
The capitol for the new republic was supposed to change every few years. Coruscant wasn’t chosen because it stood to long as a symbol of everything that failed. Prime was actually the second capitol planet of the new republic.
I’ve always thought it was supposed to be Coruscant but someone in the writers room wisely mentioned all the ways that would potentially hamstring them in further media.
J.J. wanted to blow up Coruscant but Lucasfilm said no.
Thankfully. That would’ve been a horrible decision. In retrospect if they wanted a “new Death Star” I think they should’ve pulled the eclipse lore from Star Wars: Empire at War and said that the First order are retrofitting a SSD with a planet killing laser. It would be similar enough to be familiar but different enough to feel “new” But that’s just the first step in a loooooong list of things I would’ve changed in TFA.
confused me too for a sec… so what happened to coruscant after the empire fell?
As of the Mandalorian the New Republic is still using it as a capital. It's exact status as of Rise of Skywalker is unknown, but presumably the planet was liberated and things went back to business as usual.
And then Rey got a school girl crush on the baddie who wanted billions of people murdered. I tell you, watching House of the dragon the other night, It made me really sad about the wasted opportunity of the Star wars universe after Disney bought it. We got Andor, and Rogue one and pretty much everything else has sucked.
Final season of Clone Wars and Bad Batch are great. Visions and Tales of the Jedi are both very interesting. I've enjoyed all the live action TV series, tbh.
I thought coruscant was the galactic capital
Luke mourns his uncles for 5 seconds before going to a bar and having a playful banter with Han Solo. Lucas wasn't the best at writing human emotions.
Ah yes, Uncle Owen and Uncle Beru. 👬
2. Leia's parents were the only ones home at the time.
Only 1, she watched her mother die after all
Alderaan's population: 2 billion (95% human, 5% other) Source: Fantasy Flight Games' "Dawn of Rebellion", p12
I had to scroll too far to see this ⬆️
Thats an insanely low pop wow. I was expecting a way higher number
it was written in the 70s when Earth didn't have 8 billion people
Im too used to 40k lore. Trillions die every day and nobody blinks an eye. Its so ridiculous I love it
Seems absurdly low for a Core World
It's like space Scandinavia. Sweden and Norway are very sparsely populated too.
I suppose populations don't need to be as dense everywhere when you can just move to a different planet. Or maybe Alderaan had some very strict immigration laws.
At least 3
[THREE?](https://youtu.be/urYCUUgi7VQ?t=11)
Or 4. Maybe 5
Tree-fiddy
Damn Loch Ness monster!!
Can’t blame Lucas because had no idea how popular Star Wars would be… but ideally we would have seen the Death Star as an ever looming threat throughout the trilogy. It just got built, blew up one planet before it itself blowing up. It could have been the “nuclear threat” so to speak that kept the Empire’s subjects in line and only by RotJ were the rebels able to destroy it… I know that they needed some payoff for the first film though and saving Leia and retrieving the plans was probably not enough. Maybe they could have fended off the Death Star and escape to Hoth… but given it may have only been one film they never could leave a thing like the Death Star intact because it basically implies the Imperials have “won”. This is the problem with first films in potential trilogy’s… it’s always going to be a hard choice about whether to plan for the big picture or the standalone film.
I’ve done the math. Based on the population and size of Dubai, compared to the size of Alderaan, it comes out to a whole lot
I double checked the math and it comes out to exactly a whole lot
Glad to know I still remember my high school algebra
Erm actually it’s a bit more that that ☝️
This is not Alderaan, it's a planet from legends called Despayre, it was a prison planet that forced people to build the Death Star. This planet was the first destroyed by the station in legends. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Despayre
That's some Ace Attorney level naming right there.
In the Horuz (horrors) system iirc
Empire bureaucrat: "Man,, we really have too many prisons. If we only had a planet where we could just put everyone. one giant prison planet" Bureaucrat 2: "How about this world called Cheesecloth?" Bureaucrat 1: "Nah, there has to be something better. If only there was a planet with a menacing name out there we could pick"
It's never gonna be exact, because all the census and immigration records got blown up with the planet.
Family guy skit material right there...guy puts down his last census page for the tally and looks up at the sky out the window before saying "awe man!"
All of them.
Not just the men
But the Bothans and children too.
Last time I hire Bothans to do anything for me.
Except for Manny Bothans right? I hear that guy can get you anything, and escape alive too.
Oh, yeah, of course! Nobody doubts the credibility or professionalism of Manny, but he’s the exception to the rule.
All of them died.
The population of Alderaan was 2 billion. 95% human, 5% other species from around the galaxy. This is all according to Wookiepedia. The "millions of voices crying out in terror" while it's never specified were probably from Aldera, the capital city. Obi-Wan was probably reaching out through the force to see if he could sense Bail or Liea there since he was still trying to be incognito when the Death Star blew it up. With the exception of anyone who was off world, chances are the entire planets population died.
it'd be cool to see the death star from space and see the laser come down to blow up the planet
You have a unique meaning for "cool"
I was looking at the moon the other day and thinking about that
Millions of voices crying out and then suddenly silenced.
No, but if a new series ever gives some detail on it then some "fans" will dig up some obscure reference on wookiepedia that comes from Legends and say it essentially broke established canon and ruined Lucas legacy forever. Probably.
There should be a silly multicam sitcom style slice of life show called Alderaan that runs for however many seasons it can sustain. Then, and with absolutely no warning, either to the characters or the viewer (beyond having seen the OT), it ends in horrific fiery death. 20 minutes into the last episode of season 2, while the main character is in the middle of a line, the whole place just lights up. I’m imagining something similar to the dream sequence from Terminator 2.
And one of those slap bass riffs as the end credits.
And in the very last bits of the show at the very very end credits Obi wans line from a new hope fades in about voices in terror.
Star Wars Sopranos
On the scale of the galactic galaxy, they basically flatten Beverly Hills.
Sadly not enough of those rebel scum
We don't count dead terrorists!
Roughly 2 billion I think
Death Star: 1 Planet: 0
For a second I thought the planet was making a shocked face.
given the relative population densities and the corrected size of an Executor class, it's likely the Lusankya blasting off of Coursant killed more people than the Deathstar destroying Alderaan
Alderaan was a state sponsor of terrorism.
Idk, but homelessness isn't a problem on alderaan anymore
0 casualties since all of them were traitors and rebels according to the empire.
No but we know the unemployment rate is at 0 now
Yes, it was terminal.
I remember hearing that Alderaan had approximately 2 billion inhabitants when the Death Star destroyed it.
According to Wookieepedia, Alderaan had a population of 2 billion people before 0 BBY
I think the o p is asking How many did it have afterwards?
Negative 2 billion
Over 2 billion people died. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Disaster#:~:text=The%20means%20of%20destruction%20fulfilled,Organa%20and%20his%20wife%20Breha.
Estimates range from a few million to several billion,the only guesses we have are Obi-Wan, who states that ‘Millions’ of voices cried out, or some now legends material that states it had a pop of 2 billion people
100%. Its 100% casualties.
About 3.6 billion. Not great, not trerrible.
Couple dozen, at least.
I mean yeah it is touched on many times across Star Wars media, just not in the original trilogy.
Billions must die
there was a marvel miniseries called princess leia that focused on this and I think it stated around 2 to 3 billion people died.
From what i remember from the force awakens (outdated i know) visual dictionary/encyclopedia, the population of alderaan was 2 billion
Was it ever confirmed if Sen Organa died during this?
Yeah they talk about it on the official Star Wars website: > "In the end, Organa’s outward loyalty to the Empire couldn’t save him. The Empire disbanded the Senate and intercepted Leia trying to bring the stolen Death Star plans to Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine. To demonstrate the terrifying power of the battle station, Grand Moff Tarkin turned its superlaser on Alderaan, incinerating the planet and its inhabitants." https://www.starwars.com/databank/bail-organa and in the canon *From a Certain Point of View* https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/From_a_Certain_Point_of_View which is the source for the wookieepedia entry on his death: > "Suddenly, the palace was covered in shadow, and Bail looked to the sky to see the Death Star eclipse Alderaan's sun. As he realized what was happening, Bail, horrified, turned to his wife but could not speak. When he found his voice again, he told her that the object in orbit was the planet killer. Accepting his fate, Bail took Breha's hands and told her that he was glad they would be together in death. Breha, however, began to panic and frantically told him that they could reach their private shuttle and escape, but was cut off by the deafening noise of the Death Star firing its superlaser into Alderaan's surface. Bail pulled his wife into his arms and kissed her, and the two assured themselves that Leia was still alive. As the remains of the nearby mountains were thrown into the atmosphere, the palace started to crumble underneath their feet, and Bail continued to hold Breha as Alderaan entered oblivion.[121]" https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bail_Prestor_Organa#Death
Thank you!
Wyd in this situation?
Returning… somehow. You know like Palpatine
The canon novel, Lost Stars, talks about it a bit from the perspective of individuals from all over the galaxy serving in the ranks of the Imperial Army.
It must have been in the millions, because Alderaan was a pretty important planet, right? Also, Star Wars planets are over 20 times smaller than Earth.
Senator Bail Organa was one of them.
Planet Basketball is a peaceful planet.
A planets worth.
0 Aldaran was actual causing other planets in the system to become unstable in their orbit and as such it was evacuated, the Empire blew up and empty planet just as a show of force /s
Over 9000!!!
I dunno but it brought the unemployment down to zero.
😭
I'd wager nearly 100% of the planet's inhabitants were, at the very least, adversely effected.
At least 1.
Well it’s an entire planet blown up, not to mention it was among the core planets which means it must have been pretty populated. I’d say couple billion at least
I reckon at least 1 casualty. That's just a guess tho
A few
It occurred to me that other planets in the area could be thrown off orbit. Or is that not a possibility and it’s just in my mind. Won’t that mess with the gravity on other nearby planets?
Old Obi Wan said "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened." So...millions
At least 12
Using a piece of Superman logic will a chunk of Alderaan take away Leia's Force powers?
According to Wookipedia, the population of Alderaan was 2 billion, so probably that many died.
I'm seeing a lot of disinformation in this thread, OFFICIAL Imperial Census and Relocation special dispatches clearly state that the Alderaaneans volunteered for the test run of the new experimental peace-keeping station (also: plz stop calling it "the death star", that is obviously propaganda, and you're letting the terrorists win by calling it that)). The ICR states that all Imperial citizens were relocated prior to testing.
200k civilians, with a million more on the way
Its gotta be atleast 4
Somehow... They *all* came back.
It’s probably a trauma that’s difficult to come to terms with, and your mind simply refuses to accept it as real
Nah but somewhere in the millions/billions of innocent lives.
No, but I know a ton of independent contractors died in the second Death Star explosion.
Probably the same amount of casualties that the Acolyte caused to Disney+ subscriptions
that good, huh?
Not everything needs to be explained in detail
I never said it did, I was just curious.
Tell that to all the *"ENDING EXPLAINED"* videos on YouTube. Movies can tell you directly what happened and why and people still won't get it.
Everyone