The Empire may have collapsed in Return of the Jedi, but evil still lurks in the universe, and it needs a headquarters. This is the construction blueprint for the interior of the Starkiller Base, seat of the First Order’s power. (It was known on-set and in production designs by the codename “Evil Castle.”)
In The Force Awakens, it’s a monstrously huge structure, full of twisting hallways, long corridors, and a central control room. But in real life, the mostly wood-and-plastic set occupied a single soundstage at Pinewood Studios in London—and movie magic was the Force that turned it into the new Death Star.
The all-purpose set can be reconfigured, Lego-style, in a variety of specific arrangements, says Darren Gilford, a production designer.
Thousands of people—carpenters, painters, metal fabricators, and set designers—spent about three months assembling the simulacrum.
Wall panels—called cabinets—can be flipped upside down to transform hallways into entirely different-looking corridors of the base.
Materials mostly included wood, vacuum-formed plastic, steel, and plaster. Rock was also used to give parts of the base a subterranean look.
In the movie, the Starkiller Base is Death Star-magnitude huge; the Evil Castle hallway set, by contrast, is a mere 6,800 square feet.
