Introduction to Millennium Falcon Notes

I'll be the first to admit that these pages really are nerd-o-rama. And admittedly a bit goofy. After all, the makers of Star Wars probably thought they were producing a one-off bit of summer fun. Not a lucrative and multi-decade entertainment franchise. And certainly not a beloved masterwork that people would be poring over 45 years later, like mediaeval monks searching for secret truths in ancient manuscripts and holy books. Still, here it all is.

Note that in-story fictional aspects (how Lando did this, how Han did that, the Corellian shipyards, etc) are not the focus of this site. Neither is post-movie marketing stuff like "blueprints" which expand the fantasy universe to talk about fictitious rocket engines or whatever. The focus is model-making, set building, and special effects.

WHAT A PIECE OF JUNK!

The Millennium Falcon is arguably one of the coolest fictional spaceships ever designed, and certainly one of the most memorable. It first appears in 1977's Star Wars as the elderly, scruffy, and battered ride of Corellian smuggler and outlaw Han Solo.

The vehicle, variously described in the script and novelization as a "pirate ship" and "freighter," was envisioned by director George Lucas as a patched-together hotrod of a craft; an old wreck which has seen better days but which keeps on outrunning and outsmarting Imperial patrols through the combined efforts of Solo and his enormous and hairy copilot, Chewbacca.

“That battered ellipsoid which could only loosely be labeled a ship appeared to have been pieced together out of old hull fragments and components discarded as unusable by other craft. The wonder of it, Luke mused, was that the thing actually held its shape.”

– from the novelization Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. Credited to George Lucas; ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster.

The audience's first view of the Millennium Falcon, in the tired and scuffed surroundings of Docking Bay 94 on Tatooine.

In addition to being a transport, the ship is also a character in itself. Especially in 1980’s the Empire Strikes Back, when the Falcon's frequent breakdowns lead the protagonists to the edge of peril and back.

In the real world, the design started on production drawing boards as a more conventional rocketship, but after a last-minute redesign, ended up as an unusually asymmetric saucer equipped with beak-like "mandibles". Covered in fine detail, the ship also had a complex paint job which implied years of rough life. Rust streaks abounded, as did primer-coloured mismatched armour panels, much like an old car with slapped-on and randomly-coloured doors scrounged from wreckers' yards.

In the first films the ship was represented by models, physical sets for the actors, and special effects paintings. Since the 1990s the ship has also been represented by digital models.

SPECIAL MODIFICATIONS — OR CONTINUITY ERRORS?

The Falcon is a frustrating ship for obsessive fans who want to nail down a canonical and self-consistent representation of a fantasy vehicle. In fact, the mere concept of canon is rather tricky in Star Wars! It boils down to one fact:

There is no single Millennium Falcon.

It‘s like the legions of dogs employed to play Lassie or Benji. Or the different actors who have played James Bond. Quite simply, different models, sets, paintings, and computer files have been used to depict the Falcon over the years, and there isn’t full consistency between them.

Although the models and sets are similar in a broad sense, they differ in sizes and details. The discrepancies were mostly caused by tight budgets, insufficient time, and changing plot requirements. Sometimes details will even change from shot to shot and scene to scene. There was also the expectation, frankly, that the film would be seen once or twice in the cinema and then rarely again. Home video wasn’t much of a market back in 1977, let alone freeze frames at BluRay image quality!

The main points of geek frustration are:

1) The physical sets representing the interior of the Falcon could never have fit into the physical set representing the ship’s exterior. This is the biggest problem. A large exterior hull was built on a soundstage in England for the first Star Wars film, but for budgetary reasons, the set wasn't remotely big enough to match the scale of the magnificently detailed interior sets.

It’s easiest to see this problem by way of a diagram. Stinson Lenz has kindly shared his fantastic work in this regard - his rendering shows the full-size interior set (in black) superimposed over the full-size exterior set (in grey). In this case the plans are from the Empire Strikes Back sets, though they’re pretty similar to the other movies where the Falcon has appeared.

And as you can see, there’s simply no way in heck that the interior layout could actually have fit inside that exterior hull!

2) Various models and sets were built for the movies, and they look different – sometimes subtly and sometimes significantly. The camera never lingers in Star Wars films, so you don't usually get a long static view of the Falcon or anything else. But if you sit down and take a look at the various appearances of the ship you'll notice very low continuity!

This isn't the greatest comparison, as the three photos were taken from different angles. But it should help you see how different some of the renditions of the on-screen Millennium Falcons actually were! The top photo is of the five foot miniature built for the original Star Wars film. The second photo is of the full-sized set built for Star Wars. And the third photo is of the 32" Falcon built for the Empire Strikes Back. Note how they all look basically Falcony, but the details on the sides have little in common.

3) Different features and functions were added to the Falcon as time went along, for both narrative and visual reasons, but no effort was made to explain how these features were added and how they affected previous features.

Post-ANH

The biggest changes between the Falcon’s appearance in ANH versus ESB and later films are:

Landing gear. The original spaceship design featured a three-point landing gear system with five footpads (two pairs at the back and a single at the front). However, this isn’t really stable enough for an actual physical set, so this was revised to a five-point system with seven footpads for ESB.

Cockpit interior. The ESB cockpit has a bit more internal space at the back (it was made deeper), compared to the ANH version. A lot of additional details were added, along with steering yokes.

LEIA:  But Han – won't all the crazy fans notice these continuity errors?

HAN:   Not on your life, sister! This is just a movie.

LEIA:  Don't call me sister. You're creeping me out.

Exterior lighting. From ESB on, the underside of the Falcon was kitted out with white spotlights for illuminating the ground, small red “don’t bang your head” warning lights, and two headlights.

THREEPIO:  If I may say so, sir, I can't help but notice that the exterior lighting does not correspond to equivalent detail on any known model!

Special Editions

Starting in 1997, George Lucas released “Special Edition” versions of the original trilogy, featuring cleaned-up effects and some controversial CGI changes. In the case of the Millennium Falcon, a new digital model was constructed to show the ship lifting out of the Mos Eisley docking bay and flying through Cloud City. Some matte paintings were also revised. 

Prequels

Digital models were used to show Corellian freighters in microscopic cameos in both the Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith prequel films. AOTC featured three Falcon-style ships parked at a Naboo spaceport, and ROTS shows a brief fan-service shot of the Falcon landing at Coruscant, below:

The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi

For the nostalgia-fest of 2015, JJ Abrams’ The Force Awakens, a new digital model was constructed. This was based around measurements and scans of the original 5 foot Star Wars model, but various changes were made, reflecting the passage of time since the previous movie. Some alterations were very subtle, but others less so – the replacement of the Falcon's original round dish with a bowtie one being the most obvious. This design was reused for The Last Jedi.

“Solo”

The look of the Falcon in the Young Han Solo movie was of course of intense geek interest. How would they represent the Millennium Falcon in a pre-Star Wars film? How would it have looked in the days before Han swindled it from Lando?

Well, it was a pretty sparklingly new ship, with an extra layer of white and blue panels covering the mechanical guts, and so on. The nose appears longer because there's an extra T-shaped module bolted on the front. Some of the details, such as the docking rings and oddly flattened dish, are directly modelled after early Ralph McQuarrie drawings and paintings and Joe Johnston sketches.

SO WHY WRITE UP THIS STUFF?

Well, some 35 years ago I was a kid fascinated with Star Wars, as so many of us nerds were. And one Canadian Christmas my wonderful parents gave me the most amazing present ever – the MPC Millennium Falcon model kit imported north from the USA. A gigantic 18 inch piece of geek boy heaven! The thrill of getting that huge box and the amazing treasures inside. Wow!