For its appearance in Solo: A Star Wars Story, the iconic Millennium Falcon received a shiny makeover, with the task of coming up with a new look for the classic ship falling to Lucasfilm’s design supervisor James Clyne.
“The way I saw it, it’s like ripping a tablecloth off, you know those magicians that rip a tablecloth off and everything is still there?” said Clyne in an interview with the official Star Wars website. All the things that we know and love about Han Solo’s ship is underneath that. That was kind of the starting off point.”
“I think the big exciting thing about doing a new Falcon was the question of, we all know what an old Millennium Falcon looks like, but what does the new Millennium Falcon look like? That was really exciting,” he continues. “What does a clean Millennium Falcon look like? I think that was the big thing that I always wanted to see going into the movie. As a kid, I just loved it for what it was. I thought it was perfect. But when it was proposed that you would see a cleaner, newer Lando version, I couldn’t get more excited about and more scared about that prospect. There was a certain level of sheer terror in taking this on. I mean, it’s like the most beloved thing you’ve ever seen in the Star Wars universe. It’s like somebody asking you to change the Eiffel Tower or something.”
Clark and his team produced around 60 concepts before settling on the final look seen in the movie, and you can take a look at a few of these designs here, which include alternate paint jobs as well as some drastically different iterations…
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A new adventure with the most beloved scoundrel in the galaxy. Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his mighty future copilot Chewbacca and encounters the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian, in a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga’s most unlikely heroes.
Solo: A Star Wars Story features Alden Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!) as the famous smuggler, Donald Glover (Atlanta) as Lando Calrissian, Woody Harrelson (War for the Planet of the Apes) as Tobias Beckett, Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) as L3-37, Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) as Qi’Ra, Thandie Newton (Westworld) as Val, Ian Kenny (Sing Street) as Rebolt, Harley Durst (Wonder Woman) as Moloch, Jon Favreau (Spider-Man: Homecoming) as Rio Durant, Paul Bettany (Avengers: Infinity War) as Dryden Vos and Warwick Davis (Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi) as Weazel.
Originally published June 1, 2018. Updated June 2, 2018.
