Via Forbes.com:
Star Wars is beloved by so many for more reasons than there are grains of sand on our shores. It’s a fable, with a backdrop of near-infinite size; in much the way adventurers, heroes and villains in Earthbound epics wander through natural or magical realms, on quests of redemption, vengeance, and hope, the First Order and the Resistance leap from planet to planet, star to star.
Therein lies one of the most underrated, implicit and yet powerful aspects of Star Wars – it’s pop culture’s greatest way to showcase the stunning natural beauty of our very own planet. You might not be able to jump in an X-Wing, but you can hop on a plane and go to see the pivotal battleground of Rogue One, for example: it’s in the Maldives. Why not head up to Norway’s particularly chilly northern climes and explore Hoth for yourself? If you to see where Jyn Erso grew up, you can simply jump on over to Iceland.
The dunes of Jakku. Mustafar’s rivers and waterfalls of lava. The icy forests of Starkiller base. The waterlogged world of Kamino. The tropical shores of Scarif. No matter where they go, a beautiful landscape awaits, like geological paper just waiting for poetry of mythology, illuminated by lightsabers, to be written onto it.
I was clearly quite taken by the arresting visuals of Crait, the scene of the climatic confrontation in The Last Jedi – so much so that I had to write about its geology. It’s blood-red soil and its white, powdery crust may look entirely alien, but as with every other planet in Star Wars, it’s set in a real location here on very our lonely planet; in this case, the salt flats of Salar de Uyuni, in Bolivia.
The long, long wait for Episode IX has begun, but I’ve already begun mentally salivating at the prospect of a smorgasbord of brand-new planetary additions to whatever distant galaxy the Star Wars stories is actually set in. Earth has so many more aesthetically alien places to offer – so, naturally, I’ve decided to suggest a few that would serve the world’s greatest space opera saga well.
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