Sorry if this post feels to the point, I lost my initial write up for this post.
I really like this idea because while it removes the repetition of the Death Star-trope, it also provides a solid in-movie explanation for how the First Order got their resources and grew so much without the Republic noticing, and it’s a nice inversion of the Death Star as well (weapon of destruction, machine of creation). I still think it would be a challenge to pull off seamlessly, but it would be really effective if you could.
I hope you don’t mind, but I would like to suggest to you an alternative approach to this as well.
I think by having the Republic already be destroyed in the crawl, you’re back to Rebels vs Empire before the movie even really begins. And if the base ends up being a laser in the end, I also feel it sort of goes against the effort of setting it up as something else in the first place.
So I think Starkiller should either stay as just a superweapon, or…
Let it just be a star forge. Just not both.
You could retain the same basic structure as TFA: Restructured, so you can use as much of those assets as possible, but instead of a super laser destroying the Republic, the First Order fleet does.
So how can this realistically be set up?
I really like your idea of seeing the base spit out Star Destroyers. If you can make at least one shot like that, that alone would visibly demonstrate its function. You also could establish the fleet it has created by having dozens of Star Destroyers in orbit around Starkiller in any establishing shots of it.
Later in the film, after Hux gives his big speech, we see the fleet jump into hyperspace. This would also explain why Starkiller Base felt pretty light on security when Finn, Han and Black Squadron show up.
Then, around or when Han dies, you cut to the First Order fleet arriving at Hosnian Prime. You could retool some footage from TLJ, specifically with the Dreadnought, to show that one or multiple Dreadnoughts are bombarding the surface of the capital (or at least wherever the Senate is located on the planet).
And this way you could still use the shot of Kor Sella on the surface reacting, since both the Starkiller laser and the Dreadnought lasers are red.
It would require you to possibly rotoscope the First Order ships for use in different shots, or paint out the D’Qar asteroid field and replace D’Qar with Coruscant, maybe, since there really isn’t a good image of Hosnian Prime I don’t believe. But you could focus on the Dreadnought action rather than the main fleet destroying the Republic fleet to make it a little easier, maybe an initial wide shot or two comparing them could just imply they’re heavily outnumbered, and we can assume the worst.
This would also require a new sound mix for this montage and the set up shots for the star forge itself, maybe.
The one other thing that I was worried about was the moment Kylo kills Han. The sun disappears, so would that mean the base is now useless, making their attack now pointless? I don’t think so. In that initial scene with the base ejecting a new Star Destroyer, maybe you could also establish that the base doesn’t drain the sun constantly, but in cycles. Maybe during a cycle, so much light gets absorbed that it makes the sun appear like its gone. So after the new Star Destroyer gets spit out, you could reverse the shot of the sun beginning to drain and make it flicker/shimmer back to full brightness.
Then, sometime in the third act, the base could start draining the sun again, which will eventually make the sun appear to fade away during Kylo’s moment. And when the base blows up, you could either assume the primary sun is off camera, or, have it be in the distance while Starkiller collapses and you could have a nice little twin suns shot when it explodes.
The hardest part is making the First Order invasion work. But with the footage from TLJ, I think it is possible.
And if you can set up the function of the base visually, I don’t even think you need to mention it in the opening crawl, which is a good thing since you can avoid the danger of it being overloaded with information.
Earlier in the same thread, Anakin Starkiller helped give me an idea for yet another attempt at a section of the opening crawl, specifically the second paragraph:
“Convinced that First Order spies have infiltrated the New Republic, General Leia Organa forms a covert Resistance…”
Certain words could be swapped:
Convinced/Fearing/Believing
spies/sympathizers
infiltrated/influenced
This would give a little more context as why it needed to be a small resistance fighting the First Order rather than just the New Republic, and it would also make the New Republic seem less incompetent or ignorant, but rather, compromised. I just feel like this explains the political situation in a pretty concise way. I know we’ve tried to make this opening crawl work SO MANY TIMES. Rian Johnson said when he was doing TLJ, the first thing he worked on and the last thing he worked on was the opening crawl, and I completely understand why. It took him 2+ years to make that work!
I know this is pretty crazy, and I know a lot of people didn’t like Starkiller Base, but I think this might be one of the more possible routes to take without sacrificing too much of the narrative’s structure. So I would say either try something like this or just stick with Starkiller being a super laser.