Via USAtoday.com:

When he first lays eyes on the Millennium Falcon in the original Star Wars film, Luke Skywalker can’t help but mutter “What a piece of junk!”

He wasn’t kidding.

Airplane parts and other metal pieces from the scrap yard were used to create Han Solo’s cosmic freighter, one of many iconic set pieces boosted by the low-budget creativity of Roger Christian. The set decorator won an Oscar for his work creating the first lightsaber, designing R2-D2 and crafting signature weapons for George Lucas’ original sci-fi trilogy.

Christian revisits his time in a galaxy far, far away with filmmaker Joe Johnston — an effects technician on the first 1977 production — in a special bonus feature as part of The Star Wars Digital Movie Collection, which brings the six movies to digital HD for the first time starting Friday.

“This is my world. I love it,” says Christian, 71, who chronicles much of his most famous work on Star Wars and Ridley Scott’s classic Alien in the upcoming book Cinema Alchemist. “I have a very good memory, thank God. I’ve kept healthy and it’s intact.”

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