Though most of Star Wars: The Force Awakens key plot points will remain under lock-and-key until release day, a new feature published in Rolling Stone magazine has some pretty big reveals.
Author Brian Hiatt was given the privilege of sitting on an actual editing session for the film. Though his time was short, he was able to see some juicy footage from the film.
I am permitted to watch Abrams editing the movie for precisely 20 minutes. That adds up to maybe a minute or two of actual footage. So I can confirm that there is a space battle in the film, featuring X-Wings and TIE fighters and something like a Death Star," he writes.
"I can confirm that there is a space battle in the film, featuring X-Wings and TIE fighters and something like a Death Star." He continues. "There is a lightsaber duel, where Kylo Ren is unmasked, revealing an intense-looking, unscarred Driver. There is a weapon that the filmmakers, at least, refer to as a "Sunsucker."
Space battles have been completely absent from the previously released trailers and teasers, which makes Hiatt's discovery of their existence extremely fascinating.
The most interesting tidbit from this reveal however, was the mention of the 'sunsucker.' The term is most likely an alternative name for Starkiller base, the new death star like super weapon pictured on the film's poster.
Back in November Domhall Gleeson, the actor playing a new Imperial character named General Hux, told Entertainment Weekly that the base would be several times more powerful than the Death Star of the original trilogy.
This lead the magazine to speculate about its capabilities:
"The only thing more devastating than being able to blow apart a whole planet is the power to detonate, say, an entire sun." reads their theory.
"That eerie red sky we see in the trailer right before a large forest gets annihilated? Maybe that's not the planet blowing up from a direct hit but rather the shockwave from a dying (or murdered) star."
Given the use of the term 'sunsucker', there could be some truth to EW's speculation.
