(first posted Stardate 12/17/2015)
… I found a book in a second-hand shop called ‘Architecture Without Architects’ (Bernard Rudovsky, pub. MOMA, New York, 1964). It’s a superb compendium of buildings and structures from history designed by ‘non-pedigreed’ architects. About halfway through I came across this desert fortress in Southern Morocco. Was I seeing things?
I first heard of this craft in a Melbourne schoolyard as the ‘Aluminium Falcon’ in 1977. Probably from the same kid who would later tell me of ‘Injunary Jones’. I got to see the movie during its first run, and was enthralled. How could I not love this amazing-looking and fully-kinetic adventure?
The best spaceship in the whole movie was this ‘piece of junk’.
The Millennium Falcon was originally planned to look like the above. It was, after all, a smuggling ship so it seemed logical to give it a lengthy cargo configuration like most freighters of the 19th and 20th centuries. Things got as far as the construction of the shooting model, which would ultimately be used instead as a background spacecraft.
George Lucas had been alerted to the fact that it bore some resemblance to the Eagle Transporter from television’s ‘Space: 1999’. Legend has it he looked at a half-eaten hamburger and decided to base his new shape on that.
Joe Johnson, who designed the replacement Millennium Falcon for the film, doesn’t mention the burger. ‘George insisted on a different look entirely, something that wouldn’t look like it had been inspired by anything we’d ever seen.’
‘He may have said at some point that it could have the essence of flying saucer. I’m not sure about the conversation that happened almost forty years ago, but I do remember that it was a situation of “anything goes!” I started with identical upper and lower dish shapes that looked like they had been cut away around the edges to enclose components that had been hot-rodded together. Landing gear bays on the bottom and the com dish on the top helped to break up the symmetry and give it a distinct top and bottom.’
A similar treatment was used by Paolo Martin on the 1970 Pininfarina Ferrari 512S Modulo.
‘I did several sketches with the cockpit centered, just above the loading arms, but I really liked the offset cockpit. It also let me add another asymmetrical tube shape that looked like it housed the corridor to the cockpit. Even though the ship is supposed to be a “spice freighter” I didn’t want the shape to give any indication of its purpose. It’s a big hot rod pure and simple.’
None of Johnson’s original concept sketches of the Falcon have seen the light, but these storyboard frames and Ralph McQuarrie’s unfinished keyframe show how the ship evolved; firstly without the side-mounted cockpit, then with a vestigial version, towards something that broke out of the fuselage more convincingly.
According to Wookieepedia (yep), the YT-1300 light freighter was built by the Corellian Engineering Corporation. It was first owned by the Corell Industries Limited shipping firm, who had the ship for twelve years and utilised it as a shipping vessel in the Corellian system. ‘Millennium Falcon’ was not actually the model’s name, but rather one of a number of titles bestowed upon the craft by its various owners.
Technical Specifications
Length – 34.37 meters
Width – 25.61 meters
Height/depth – 8.27 meters (including lower cannon and upper sensor array)
Maximum speed (atmos) – 1,050 km/h
Engine unit(s) – 2 Girodyne SRB42 sublight engines (heavily modified)
Hyperdrive rating – Class 0.5; Backup class 10
Hyperdrive system:
Avatar-10 hyperdrive (original)
Isu-Sim SSP05 hyperdrive generator (heavily modified),
Later upgraded to a Series 401 hyperdrive motivator
Power plant:
Quadex power core
Incom N2I-4 power converter
Konesayr TLB power converter
CEC emergency power generator
Cryogenic reserve power cells
Lando Calrissian won it in a game of sabaac, but lost the ship in another game of sabaac to Han Solo years later. Han’s personal enhancements included upgrading the armour plating, weapons, engines, sensors, and sensor jammers.
When we first met the Millennium Falcon, Han had just shot first and now he was taking Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO and R2-D2 off Luke’s home planet of Tatooine in search of a woman bearing a peculiar bun hair-do.
And the shenanigans commenced.
As of this week it has appeared in five of the Star Wars movies. George Lucas gave it a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in ‘Revenge of the Sith’, and it featured in all three middle films; ‘A New Name’, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’.
The appearance of Millennium Falcon was the goosebump moment of the first trailer for ‘The Force Awakens’.
It also made an appearance in 1982’s ‘Blade Runner’. This science fiction film starring Harrison Ford had nothing to do with Han Solo or Star Wars. It was a difficult shoot with a very limited budget for special effects, but the crew knew they were working on something special. Some of the model makers brought in their own creations to help populate the visual environment. Bill George provided his scratch-built Millennium Falcon and Jon Roennau his Dark Star ship.
The Millennium Falcon was converted to a building, sitting upright on its rear with its distinctive maw filled in. It sits at the centre of the above shot.
And, thanks to furiousfanboys, here’s where it appears in the film. I don’t think the Disney lawyers could make a case. It’s also apparently hidden somewhere within ‘Star Trek: First Contact’.
I’m not sure George Lucas, as prescient as he was at that time, suspected that the Millennium Falcon would become so singular. Most of these are the theatrical posters from the first US release of the film. Also shown is the production poster (top left) and the poster that came with the soundtrack (bottom right). As you can see, there is more emphasis on the X-wing fighter and Luke’s landspeeder – which gets a nice Drew Struzan (with Charles White III) interpretation.
The Millennium Falcon only makes an appearance on the soundtrack poster, hidden somewhere near the middle.
There were just as many (if not more) alternative poster artworks for 1979’s ’The Empire Strikes Back’, one of which included the Millennium Falcon quite prominently.
By 1982, the Japanese theatrical re-release of the first two films makes it clear who was really becoming the star of the series.
The Millennium Falcon had become a character in its own right.
Quietly handsome and passively moody, it was the George Harrison of the group dynamic. Han was sardonic John, Chewy was the band’s cuddly teddybear Paul, and the droids combined in light comic relief and crucial percussive noise to match Ringo.
And just like George with his songwriting, the Millennium Falcon was capable of stratospheric (if intermittent) brilliance.
It stands as the single most iconic spaceship in fiction. 2001’s cartwheel space station, Star Trek’s Enterprise configuration and Thunderbird 2 also come to mind, and there is a whole universe of great spacecraft shapes out there, but none have the endurance and broad recognition of the Millennium Falcon. It’s also likely to outlast the memory of the Apollo needle rocket and the space shuttle in the minds of non-enthusiasts.
It represents its kind with the simplest of silhouettes.
Of course, its endurance was not insignificantly enabled by George Lucas’ gamble on merchandising. That first large toy at top left was a unicorn even amongst my more privileged friends. Today Lego have an influential franchise and it’s a natural fit for gaming.
It wasn’t just about fanbois, either. Kayla Kromer of Lounge Geeks fashioned this bespoke creation in 2009, although I’m not sure how many were made.
Ultimately, I wonder whether it’s something deeper inside us – a collective psyche or pan-generational remembrance of visitors past – that feeds into the Millennium Falcon’s popularity.
Or maybe I’m just seeing things.
Further Reading:
Joe Johnson on his Millennium Falcon
Some interesting thinking on the shape’s development
Jim Klein finds a distant ancestor
Paul Niedermeyer on the history of the Ford Falcon platform
Brings back memories of Marcon ’77 (the annual Columbus, OH science fiction convention held in March of every year – or at least it was). Science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster did a slide show presentation of this neat new SF movie coming out this summer “Star Wars”. The audience thought it pretty neat, we had some serious hopes that it would be good. At that time, serious SF fans had two movies of the past decade they could look at proudly: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running; plus there was the fannish keeping of the flame for Star Trek, which at that point existed only in reruns on the local UHF station, in fanzines and at conventions.
Little did we know what we were about to have thrust upon us . . . . . .
Nice little movie, indeed.
No, I won’t be in line tonight. I got burned out with Star Wars at the end of “Empire Strikes Back” due to ewoks (they were put there to sell more action figures, period); Star Trek when they didn’t have the guts to leave Spock dead, and SF fandom in general, having had a wonderful ten year run with my first wife in the science fiction masquerade. We were doing cosplay before the term originated (LA Con II in 1984, by the way – the masquerade from hell).
Maybe a couple of months from now, once the fans have quieted down. Or wait to rent a BluRay . . .
Warning to the group at large: Unless you actually intend to see the new Star Wars, this is NOT a good weekend to go to the movies. Unless what you want to see is playing at some single screen art house.
Side thought: At the time of that presentation, not everything was completely nailed down. They had just changed Luke’s name from Starkiller to Skywalker.
I like the concept of Silent Running, but the plot moves sooo verrry slowwwly. They spend a long time on character development. It’s not like Star Trek where it doesn’t drag on even when there isn’t a lot going on.
Since you brought up Star Trek burnout, I think Trek has officially lost me as a fan. On DVD I have all 3 seasons of TOS, plus the animated series, and the box set of original Trek movies. I never really warmed up to TNG or the other spinoffs, though I’d watch them from time to time.
When they rebooted Star Trek with the new cast, I was guardedly optimistic. I had some issues with the first movie, but Into Darkness brutally desecrated my favorite Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan. I watched the preview for the upcoming Trek movie “Beyond”. All I can say is that this is supposed to be Star Trek, not Guardians of the Galaxy!
They re-lost me with the first Star Trek movie. From Star Trek: TOS, I’d always seen the Enterprise populated with ordinary people doing extraordinary things in extraordinary situations. Then you get to the movie and suddenly the Enterprise is populated with every under-appreciated genius in Star Fleet Academy.
I’m weird. I like “Deep Space Nine” until they put them on a ship and started sending them everywhere. Just like all the other Star Trek shows.
I didn’t like DS9 for the same reason you liked it: they never went anywhere. The whole show was character development. Too cerebral, too much politics, too many ongonig plots that required you to keep up, not enough photon torpedoes. I have the same criticism against Babylon 5, except it was even worse.
Not sure what you mean by, “the Enterprise is populated with every under-appreciated genius in Star Fleet Academy”. If you’re talking about the real TOS movies with the original cast, I think they are a worthy continuation of the series so I would disagree. If you’re talking about the rebooted first movie with the new cast, then I think you have a very good point.
Now, I am a totally gonzo, died-in-the-wool B5 junkie. My favorite show of all, followed by Firefly and The Prisoner.
Yeah, my dislike of the first reboot ST movie is that everybody got on the Enterprise because they were effing geniuses. Which I never saw in TOS. I write a lot of that to fan inflation. Back in the days of TOS, there were calls for episodes with other ships, other captains, other parts of The Federation. That evolved into a pack of Kirk-Spock-McCoy junkies who went ballistic when they first announced Next Generation would have an all new crew. (If you haven’t seen it, Shatner’s documentary on the making of ST:TNG on Netflix is wonderful.)
I’ll try to find time to watch that ST:TNG documentary, thanks. I don’t have a Netflix account though. I don’t watch much TV these days. I’ll admit to trying to catch the new Muppets reboot, but half the time I even miss that. No time.
I tried to watch B5 back in the day, but it was so heavy with ongoing plot that if you missed an episode you were lost. And it wasn’t like today where you could catch-up by reading a synopsis or streaming it a couple days later off the internet.
Some of my friends were Firefly fans and it sounds like a series I could get into. Someday, probably when I’m home from work sick sometime which doesn’t happen often, I’ll do a Firefly binge/marathon. First I need to finally get through the last two seasons of Mad Men….
My mild dislike for ST:TNG was that the entire first season was either variations on TOS plots or the Enterprise was just a space taxi. Pick up alien A. Pick up alien B. They don’t get along. Resolve their differences while exploring character development of the main characters. Now everyone is happy. Drop off the aliens at their destination. Repeat next week. It did get better later though. I liked that they tried to avoid getting mired in ongoing plots for most of the series just like in TOS, so I could sit down and enjoy an episode in reruns without being lost.
You’re absolutely correct regarding the first season of ST-TNG. Catch the documentary and you’ll discover the details: Roddenberry wanted it that way. And his dictums were making the episodes impossible to write.
B5 is definitely one of those series where you have to watch the whole thing, in order, or it doesn’t make a lick of sense. My college housemates and I did just that back around 2002 or so, when the Sci-Fi channel broadcast the whole series in sequence, one episode per day during the week. We had the VCR set and taped them, to be watched back on weekends. Sort of a primitive version of what’s done with DVR today.
It’s really an excellent and rewarding series, and worth your time if you’re at all a SF fan. IMO the fifth season didn’t really need to be there as they had prematurely closed the main story arc, but if you’ve watched all the rest, why not?
Firefly is also amazing, and much less of a time commitment, as there are only 14 episodes plus the movie (Serenity).
I watched the first Star Trek movie with my kids a couple of years ago. I had to apologize to them afterwards. “Sorry guys, I remember that as being much, much better..”
What’s still better is the Falcon, although in 1977 I was building my own cardboard X-wing models and throwing them off the garage roof.
If you’re talking about “Star Trek the Motion Picture”, that one does move slowly when you watch it again. That movie was really made for die-hard Trek fans, who had been without any fresh material for a decade. The long slow reveal of the Enterprise as they approach in the shuttlecraft is like a striptease for geeks.
I remember walking out of the theatre opening night, first showing (yes, I used to stand in line for first showing of all the major SF films) yelling at the top of my lungs, “Save your money, it sucks!”
They don’t call it Star Trek: The Motionless Picture for nothing.
Great memory Syke. IIRC Allan Dean Foster wrote ‘Splinter of the Mind’s Eye’, the first Star Wars offshoot (before the musical TV special I believe).
I was collecting 007 stuff in the early 80s and found myself at a Star Trek convention held in a small theatrette lobby. Very small. First time I ever saw fans in costume. Scored the Airfix Moonraker model, very happy with that. We didn’t have UHF, so these fans only got to see orig episodes on the very rare occasion this theatrette showed them.
Was never really a sci-fi buff (Blade Runner aside), but watched Next Gen avidly for Deanna Troi and Dr Beverley Crusher… mmmmmm.
Blade Runner: I was working the stage at Constellation (1983 Worldcon, Baltimore) when Ridley Scott accepted the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation (the vote wasn’t even close). His opening comment was, “Thank you for recognizing what we have done. I just wish we could have gotten more people into the theater than those of you sitting here.”
Go to http://www.costume.org if you want to take a look at the stuff we used to do (and a lot of people are still doing – these cosplayers that the media makes a big deal about at San Diego Comic Con are just johnnie-come-latelies who have no clue what has gone before them). I was doing the Worldcon and CostumeCon scene 79-85 with my then-wife Sally.
I caught Blade Runner during its first run. I’d seen the trailer and was blown away by the visuals. Still blown away by the visuals today, but back then this 13 year old kid didn’t realise he was watching one of the great existentialist pieces of American cinema.
In those days, the only way to find info on 007 was Starlog and Cinefantastique (plus Don Shay’s unsurpassed Cinefex from which I got the Blade Runner MF story), so my exposure to SF was a tangential yet crucial part of my growing up.
The Ewoks were in Return of the Jedi, which was definitely a letdown from Empire. The Empire Strikes Back isn’t just the best of the series, it’s one of the best sci-fi/fantasy films ever made, period. Even though when it was released it wasn’t as well-regarded critically or commercially (audiences thought it was too dark compared to the original).
And yes, a lot of the problems that some fans have with the prequels can be traced back to Jedi. Gary Kurtz, producer of the first two original films*, had a lot of ideas for Ep. VI that were shot down by George Lucas, in Kurtz’s words, “to sell more toys.” Han Solo would’ve been killed in the first half-hour and the film would’ve ended with Luke walking off into the sunset, spaghetti Western-style. Kurtz’s disillusionment with having many of his opinions disregarded directly led to his departure from Lucasfilm before Jedi was released.
*One hallmark of the OT, the absence of which many believe directly contributed to many of the problems seen in the prequels, was that George Lucas was not the only guy in charge, as far as actual production of the films went. Producer Gary Kurtz, directors Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand, and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan, along with countless others, all served to temper George’s wild vision and rein him in when things got too “out there.” During the production of the prequels, the opposite was true: Lucas surrounded himself with yes-men whose only job was to say, “that’s great, it’s gonna be great.” *coughRickMcCallumcoughhack*
(Paraphrasing:)
George Lucas – ‘Lar, we need Darth to say something really amazing to Luke during this climactic fight scene.’
Lawrence Kasdan – ‘How bout we make Darth Luke’s father?’
That one actually is attributable to Lucas. Watching the original movie, it’s clear that not only are Luke and Leia unrelated (they didn’t become siblings at earliest the first draft of Jedi), Darth Vader and Luke’s father were two completely different people (and “Darth Vader” was the guy’s name, not a title).
Writer Leigh Brackett had just finished the first draft of Star Wars II when she died of cancer in 1978. During the second draft, Lucas came up with the twist that Vader was actually Luke’s unnamed father, as well as the idea that the original film would be the fourth episode of a six-episode saga, and he would eventually create prequel trilogy exploring Anakin’s fall to the dark side. Hence, Star Wars II became Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. (When the original film was re-released in theaters in 1981, it carried the subtitle Episode IV: A New Hope.) After another draft, Lucas turned the script over to Lawrence Kasdan. How much he worked on it is unknown, but we do know Lucas refused any writing credit, even though he had probably done much more work than Leigh Brackett.
During production of Empire, only five people knew the truth of Luke’s parentage: Lucas and Kasdan (of course), director Irvin Kershner, James Earl Jones (“Oh, he’s lying!” Jones said of Vader*), and Mark Hamill (who was infamously told only moments before the pivotal scene was shot). The line in everyone’s script, the line that Vader actor David Prowse said, was, “Obi-Wan killed your father.”
By a complete coincidence, David Prowse spoiled this plot point to an audience in Berkeley in 1978, but he himself had no idea it was true (he said the reveal would be in “Star Wars III”). This incident, though, was what started to drive the wedge between Prowse and Lucasfilm (a whole story in itself), culminating in Prowse’s lifetime ban from any official Star Wars convention in 2010. It’s sad, but both sides have burnt their bridges and aren’t interested in negotiating, because that would involve apologizing.
*Remember that brief shot in Empire when we see Vader’s helmet being lowered onto his head? That shot was very important, as it showed that Vader was a living being and not a robot.
They’re lucky that nothing was revealed in A New Hope that would’ve made the plot twist of Vader being Luke’s father unworkable.
Thanks. I remember that story being told, but can’t find the reference. This gives a little more detail
http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2014/01/29/movie-legends-revealed-was-vader-originally-not-lukes-father-in-empire/
That Prowse grief is still going.
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/why-the-original-darth-vader-is-still-furious-with-george-lucas/news-story/2d60ddf3aab27bbc1672649cb789ae43
A coworker and I were discussing this yesterday. Empire Strikes Back was setup to be a great movie for a couple of reasons. Viewers were already familiar with the main characters, backstory and general technologies in the Star Wars universe, so they didn’t have to spend time on those. Also, they knew they were doing a third film afterwards, so they could do a “to be continued” ending without cleaning-up any loose ends in the story arc. The movie is free to jump straight into the action without feeling rushed.
One could argue that a similar situation was also helpful to BTTF2, Aliens and Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, except in the last two cases I think they didn’t yet know that more sequels would follow.
At the time, I considered the X-Wing the most iconic craft in the series. I think most people did. That started to change with Jedi.
I always thought the Millennium Falcon didn’t look like much of a freighter. Now I know why. Nice piece Don.
The void in between the two points that jut out in front is where it’s supposed to dock with another ship or space station for loading. It doesn’t seem like a very efficient shape as far as hauling cargo though.
The Millenium Falcon is the weird ship in the series. You have the big ships which can do light jumps, and you have the little ships which have local area range only (X-wings, tie-fighters, etc.). Then you’ve got the Falcon, barely bigger than the local stuff with the range of any Empire star destroyer.
And then they really screwed it up by having Luke pilot an x-wing to Degobah. Which should be impossible.
Actually I’m pretty certain the the X-wings did hyperspace trips as well. Tie-fighters did not.
X-wings are much more capable than TIE fighters and are clearly larger craft. I don’t see an inconsistency in X-wings having a hyperdrive engine.
TIE fighters are like short range planes bound to an aircraft carrier (star destroyer). They are bare-bones without hyperdrive, shields or even life support, which is why their pilots have to wear space suits when inside. That’s fine for them, because the Star Destroyers (and the Death Star) are clearly central to the Imperials strategy for space warfare. Obviously they also consider their TIE pilots fairly expendable too.
X-wings are more like planes that would be used for bomber escorts, capable of long range travel. There are other times when X-wings and I think Y-wings are seen going to hyperspace in the movies, particularly when they’re escorting other ships in the rebel fleet, such as during the rebel escape from Hoth. I think it makes sense that the rebels would use ships like that, more robust and self-sufficient, not just for attack strategy but they probably don’t have many carrier-type ships to transport their attack craft as the Imperials do. Otherwise they could stay in space and wouldn’t need to build ground bases with hangars all the time.
Darth Vader flew a TIE Advanced in A New Hope. This was a larger ship more comparable to an X-wing. It had shields and a hyperdrive. Good thing too. After the Death Star was blown up, Vader would’ve been rather lost in space without a hyperdrive.
Most of the others are purpose-built military, the Falcon is a commercial cargo ship, a flying pickup truck that has to do everything.
I was flipping through a copy of the Haynes Millennium Falcon Workshop Manual in the bookstore yesterday. It includes the known history of the ship and the extensive modifications. If everything written in that book is canon, then the Falcon isn’t just a “flying pickup truck”, it’s a smuggler’s secret weapon!
Closest prop-aircraft analogue might be the Lockheed 14 Super Electra. Its 250mph top speed was much higher than the DC-3 & rivaled the fastest medium bombers. It flew PM Neville Chamberlain to Munich in 1938, & was adapted by Kelly Johnson into the Hudson patrol bomber, also ordered by the British. The Hudson was Lockheed’s 1st large order; British & French contracts were a fillip for many US aircraft companies.
Howard Hughes also chose the 14 for his circumnavigation flight.
The resemblance to that fortress is rather spooky. Very enjoyable read!
I won’t be seeing it this weekend, either, but this will be one of the very rare movies I actually go to a theater to see on the big screen.
A design far, far away from the Grumman Apollo LEM, the only manned spacecraft having landed on a place other than the Earth. VW had a famous ad with only its picture, saying simply, “It’s ugly, but it gets you there.”
When one sees Star Wars displays in even Bed Bath & Beyond, & Joanne’s Crafts, that’s Carpet-Bombing Marketing. As Mel Brooks put it, the Power of the Schwartz.
Ludicrous speed. hehehe
“They’ve gone to plaid!”
You wrote an article about THAT thing? You’re braver than I thought!
Anyway, My tickets have been purchased. I’ll be seeing The Force Awakens tomorrow, and I can hardly wait. The extremely positive critical reception has only increased my excitement. Good luck to my fellow CC readers and writers venturing out to see it this weekend, and may the force be with you.
And also with you.
Thanks Don, that was super-enjoyable! I wonder why there was no reference to the German Millennium Falcon? 🙂
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/kessel-run-outtake-the-millenium-falcon/
Our tickets for tomorrow are on the counter, my boys are the same ages my brother and I were when my parents took us to the original (at S.F.’s Coronet!), we watched the original again last week, and for the past year I’ve let the boys take both my original Star Wars lunchbox as well as my brother’s Empire lunch box to school with them when they wanted. But surprisingly I don’t consider myself a Star Wars mega-dork. The neighbors may think differently though, who knows.
Apologies for the omission. Your piece as been added to ‘further reading’.
Not the first German take on the MF, this is a genuine floor plan for a theatre by Otto Wagner from 1880.
http://lifewithoutbuildings.net/2008/04/otto-wagner-and-millenium-falcon.html
That’s not a Star Wars mega-dork. If you want a good definition of one, there’s my old costuming competitor who lives outside of Washington, PA: Despite there being tarps as temporary patches on the roof of her house, she’s currently back home in San Diego where she and the gang that waited in line for the first showing of Empire Strikes Back will be doing it again for tonight’s midnight showing.
That LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon kit (No. 10197) is yours for almost $6,500 via Amazon…
http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Ultimate-Collectors-Millennium-Falcon/dp/B000WLW3W0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450370424&sr=8-1&keywords=lego+millenium+falcon+10179
Dang! I should have bought five when they were cheaper!
It’s 10179. Yes, I have a lot of LEGO model numbers memorized. I only have about $3500 worth of sets from 1996 to 2009.
And yes, everyone (myself included) is kicking themselves for not getting one at the low, low MSRP of $500 when new. One usable tactic for getting a retired UCS set is to buy all the pieces on a third-party website, since UCS sets are usually just a mass of gray and black parts, and you can get parts for less than their original worth.
In this case, though, the Falcon was the first UCS set (2007) to come with LEGO minifigures, since it was built to scale. Earlier Falcon sets (7190 and 4504, respectively) were more like playsets that had all the stuff you see in the movies, but were much, much smaller than the ship would be in real life. A downside of the UCS minifig-scale set is that it has no interior; just the dorsal and ventral turrets and a 4-person cockpit. The inside is all beams and special connector parts so that the ship doesn’t collapse under its own weight.
Insane. I’ve never looked into the Lego collector market so that current value is news to me. Not a surprise though.
Awesome read! I never knew that the Falcon was snuck into Blade Runner….another of my favorite movies. Cant wait to see the Force Awakens but Im gonna hold off til the madness settles down…
I’m loving this.
The is life besides broughams and Panthers.
Star Wars, LEGO, and old cars…never did I think my three passions could come together in one article.
Also, a little tidbit of information I like to pass on to people who may not know:
When the Falcon is attacked by TIE Fighters, Han climbs up to the dorsal turret, facing upwards from the ship, and Luke climbs down, facing downwards. The two turrets are back to back. Yet neither one needs to wear a seatbelt or harness to stay in their seat. Just like every ship in the Star Wars universe has artificial gravity, the turrets also have their own local gravity generator at 90° to the orientation of the ship. The guns themselves are pointed forward when locked, which would appear to be down if you were sitting in the gunner’s seat. When the guns are unlocked, they go into a standby position that appears to be pointing forward from the gunner’s frame of reference, but is pointing either straight up or straight down from the Falcon’s orientation.
In my research I found mention that the MF was to rotate 90 degrees along the longitudinal axis during flight which would have made it look like it was travelling on its side, but that idea was not used. For the better I think.
I’ve never heard that before, but it makes sense. The “rotating ship” gimmick was later recycled for Boba Fett’s ship, the Slave I.
The B-wing heavy assault starfighter has a rotating cockpit.
An excellent and timely article! The force is strong with this one.
The Millenium Falcon is certainly one of the most well known fictional spaceships. It has so much character that it’s practically part of the cast, and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to it on some level. A friend of mine had a 1977 Dodge van which I affectionately nicknamed the Millennium Chicken — a heap reminiscent of the Falcon, but flightless. Haynes even published a service manual for the Millennium Falcon.
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Millennium-Falcon-Workshop/dp/0345533046
It would be an understatement to say I am very excited about the new Star Wars movie. I know it’s the continuation of a giant marketing exercise, and Disney is genius for buying Lucasfilm and bringing this out now to indoctrinate the next generation, but I don’t care. I’m taking my son to the show, and it will be awesome! (At least it had better be, or I’m holding J.J. Abrams personally responsible.)
Unfortunately, I’m waiting until early January to actually see it, so I have to suffer the agony of waiting, and trying to avoid spoilers in the media and from my geek friends and coworkers who are going to see it in the next few days.
Ooh, you’re a brave man. I thought maybe I could put it off until next week sometime, when it’s not so crazy, but I couldn’t stand it any longer and got tickets for tomorrow night. Hopefully the really enthusiastic fans will have gone tonight or early Friday morning.
The real enthusiastic fans (the ones you really want to avoid if you’re not into it like they are) are only getting warmed up. One of my old movie going buddies (in his 50’s) caught the first midnight showing last night, and, as I write this (1023 ET) is back in the theater for the second run thru.
This is why I’m waiting for January. And I don’t care about spoilers. If the movie’s good (and how can you screw up redoing A New Hope, point by point?) I’ll enjoy it anyway.
>redoing ANH
Hey now. JJ Abrams has been pretty open about his love for the OT, but I think it’ll be more than just a redo of the original film.
Maybe you are just seeing things. But you have damn good eyes, I must say.
The first three were good, but the franchise took a nosedive withy “The Phantom Menace” The only things I remember about “Menace” were the Pod Race, a sort of rocket powered chariot race a la Ben-Hur and the Italian renaissance design of the planet Naboo. RE the Millennium Falcon, it was OK, but I really loved those awesome wedge shaped Star Destroyers, and the cantina sequence in the first one was a not too subtle “tribute” to almost every Western ever filmed.
Looking back on it 16+ years later, it’s my personal opinion that The Phantom Menace (Ep. I) was a slightly better film than Attack of the Clones (Ep. II).
Another motoring connection to the Millennium Falcon; the Millennium Falcon!
Superb
The design of the Millennium Falcon is curious for a fast cargo hauler. It has a lot of engine for something that size and while it has cargo holds for smuggling, they’re not big enough to haul things in the substantial bulk that other planets need and to justify the expense of fuel and maintenance. BUT…look at this pic and the excess power becomes more understandable when you see it as a pusher. You add as many cargo modules in front as you need to when the Falcon docks with them in orbit.
Basically Han Solo and Chewbacca are BJ & the Bear. Vader is Sheriff Lobo.
Excellent article even if I’m seven years late to the original showing. So many interesting points mentioned about Sci-fi’s best known Jalopy aka. the Millennium Falcon. So much fun revisiting the ultimate space opera where gravity still applies, yet never constrains the imagination.
The X Wings have a lot of top fuel dragster in them, with that long skinny nose and big old engines behind the pilot. The Y Wings have more a souped up pick up truck vibe going on, while also referencing WW2 fighter bombers. Snowspeeders in the Empire Strikes Back have European supercar influences and also reference the then highly classified Have Blue concepts for the future F1-17 Nighthawk. Tie Fighters cockpit references German planes from WW2 like the Heinkel bomber, and sound like Stukas. The Falcons cockpit is more B29 inspired. Boba Fetts ship SlaveOne is inspired by a Sunbeam clothes iron.
I can’t believe I never made the X Wing – Dragster connection until you mentioned it.
I greatly enjoyed reading Rudovsky’s Architecture Without Architects’ when I was introduced to in in 1978. I have mentioned the book a number of times since then in conversation about vernacular architecture. The relationship of that book to this article is rather tangential and somewhat distant. Not light years distant though, probably just a few synapses.