Via Cinefex.com:
“This should begin to make things right.”
What’s your favourite movie starship? If Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon isn’t on your shortlist, there’s something wrong with you. And if you haven’t yet enjoyed the crazy aerobatics of the galaxy’s most iconic hunk of junk in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, there’s something really wrong with you.
For the latest film in the staggeringly popular space saga – featured in the February issue of Cinefex – the Falcon gets a new pilot in the form of Rey, a lonely scavenger from the desolate planet of Jakku. However, just as Rey isn’t the first person to sit behind the controls of this much-loved spacecraft, so the Falcon seen in The Force Awakens is hardly the first version of the ship to have graced cinema screens over the years.
So just how many Falcons have there been?
The very first Falcon of all was created for the original Star Wars in 1977. To begin with, she didn’t even have a name – Lucas and the rest of the crew referred to her simply as the “pirate ship”. What’s more, she didn’t look one bit like the retrofitted saucer now familiar to fans around the world.
Constructed by the model department at Industrial Light & Magic, that first Falcon was long and thin, with a cluster of chunky engines at the back. Late in the day, when the lovingly-created six-foot miniature was more or less ready to go in front of the camera, director George Lucas decided the ship looked too much like the Eagle transporter from TV show Space: 1999. Suddenly, it was all change on the Falcon front.
The final Falcon design, worked up by effects illustrator and designer Joe Johnston following a brainstorming session with Lucas and mechanical effects supervisor John Stears, reimagined the vessel as a souped-up hot-rod shaped like a hamburger. With the production clock ticking, the complete design was turned around – incredibly – in less than a week.
Rather than waste all the work they’d already done on the prototype pirate ship, ILM repurposed their model to become the Rebel Blockade Runner seen in the film’s opening scenes, fitting a new hammerhead-style prow to replace the original glass-fronted cockpit, which now sat proudly on the flank of the new, improved Falcon.
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