A Complete History of the Millennium Falcon

Michael Heilemann, writing for his remarkable Kitbashed:

One of the things I find so interesting about Star Wars is how the creative process so clearly wasn’t locked from the beginning. It was a long and winding road, and throughout writing the essays for Kitbashed I’ve found that despite intense pressure there was always an energetic adventurousness with ideas which inevitably lead to some of the most iconic designs in film history.

The Falcon is a great example of that, specifically because the final design is so distinct. It makes it a much more enticing to try to decipher how it came about.

While I’ve been pursuing this subject for years, it wasn’t until I starting putting together this essay that I finally began to find some of the finer details of the Falcon’s creation.

The Millennium Falcon is my favorite thing in all of Star Wars — and it was almost something altogether different. The original design was a fine space ship, but it had none of the character the actual Falcon has.

★ Wednesday, 2 March 2016