star wars cockpit display screens in stock

After watching Star Wars while it was on a TBS Marathon this weekend, that same "shiny star symbol" can be seen on several terminals in the Rebel Base on Yavin as well. I am sure that it was used several times as "technological filler" and one could spot it in the original trilogy - maybe add it to the drinking game list.

star wars cockpit display screens in stock

Full color control panels for making cockpits! My new color control panels are ready for downloading and making a great looking spaceship cockpit. Please share your creations! #cb4n #etsy #controlpanel #cockpit

star wars cockpit display screens in stock

You"ll find no touch screens in Star Wars: The Last Jedi—not even when you can watch it at home next month (March 13 for digital, two weeks later for physical). Same goes for mice and keyboards. They"re all too familiar, too of-this-world, to appear in a galaxy so far, far away. What you’ll find instead are interface displays, and lots of them. Whether in an X-wing"s cockpit or the bridge of a Star Destroyer, every display in The Last Jedi exists to support the story—to provide a graphical complement to the film"s action and dialogue.

And it started with the film’s director. “Whenever possible, Rian [Johnson] wanted us to use practical graphics to enforce the narrative,” says creative director Andrew Booth, who oversaw the creation of TLJ’s assorted instrument clusters, targeting systems, medical readouts, and tactical displays. “It would actually appear in the script that you look at a screen and gain a deeper understanding of what’s happening. The challenge was always, what can we do in-camera to create something that feels real and believable?”

What"s impressive about the interfaces in The Last Jedi is that they feel believable not just to the audience, but to the film"s dramatis personae. In the real world, designers design for one person: the user. But creatives like Booth—whose design agency, BLIND LTD, has been behind the look and feel of some of this century’s biggest blockbusters, including every Star Wars film from TFA onward—designed the practical displays in The Last Jedi with at least three groups of people in mind: the characters, the actors depicting those characters, and the folks watching along in theaters.

Consider the film’s opening scene, in which (fair warning: plot points and spoilers from here on out) Commander Poe Dameron calls General Hux. The point of Poe"s call is to buy time; he"s charging the engines on his X-wing so he can stage a surprise attack on the First Order Dreadnought that’s poised to obliterate his Resistance buddies planetside. It’s a plan the audience comes to understand when the camera cuts to a display inside Poe’s starfighter that shows the status of his boosters.

The inside of Poe"s X-wing. The top display depicts the Dreadnaught tower Poe attacks at the beginning of the film; the middle one shows the status bar for his X-wing’s engines; and the bottom one, which is all wonky, visualizes his spaceship’s damaged targeting system.LUCASFILM LTD./BLIND LTD.

“For us, that’s a perfect piece of storytelling,” Booth says. “Now you’ve got exposition, drama, and tension all wrapped up in this close-up of a progress bar.” And because it’s a practical effect, that tension is experienced by audience, actor, and character alike. In fact, every single display in Poe’s cockpit pulls triple duty: The top one depicts the tower Poe is attacking; the middle one shows the status bar for his X-wing’s engines; and the bottom one, which is all wonky, visualizes his spaceship’s damaged targeting system, which BB-8 spends much of the sequence trying to repair.

Similar details abound inside the spacecraft from Canto Bight, the opulent casino city. The graphics aboard the ship that DJ and BB-8 steal are shiny. Slinky. Sumptuous. A striking contrast to the First Order"s stark, militaristic vibes and the ragtag aesthetics of the Resistance. "This was us trying to evoke a different world," Booth says.

But look closely, and you’ll see that the screens inside the shuttle are loaded with details. Crait’s topography, the blast door separating the Resistance from the First Order, the line of AT-ATs—they"re all depicted on screens, often for the briefest of moments. "It gives you an idea of the level of detail that we put into these interfaces," Booth says. "It"s one of the things we pride ourselves on: You don’t necessarily always see it, but you sure as hell feel it.”

star wars cockpit display screens in stock

Not sure if this is the RIGHT place for this question but, I wanted to see if anyone knows.  Many years ago, I picked up a Hydra Cockpit for $250... anyone who knows classics, knows it was a star wars.  It even had all the original stick with the graphics inside it.   I spent many months using a very light paint stripper to get the side art back out, most of it is in pretty good shape but, not all of it.  After that, rewiring it with the original harness with all parts to make it all work, Still a holy grail type thing. It"s been a passion of love on this classic game. It all worked, even the coin slot.. but, I have it set on free play.

As most people should know, Star Wars used a Color XY monitor(that was know to have a very high failure rate in the arcades).   The Hydra had a shelf put in and a 19" color monitor.  I was able to find a 19" Color XY monitor(from a stand up star wars, I had one that was badly water damaged for a bit) for a good deal years ago, this got it up and running.  Over the years, I was trying to find the parts to put the ORIGINAL 25" monitor in , I was able to find an original tube (had to drive almost 5 hours each way to get it), all the boards and should have everything I need to get it running BUT, the Flyback transformer is shot (big red as it"s called), for those who don"t know, it"s the high voltage part of a CRT with the suction cup. When I looked into years ago, I was talking $350-400 minimum to get it replaced/fixed, the project has sat in a box and nothing has been done besides it"s been working... till about a week ago.

Anyone have a star wars cockpit that can pull off the back cover and take a few pictures how the 25" tube is mounted so I can make sure I do it right ?

star wars cockpit display screens in stock

You"ll find no touch screens in Star Wars: The Last Jedi—not even when you can watch it at home next month (March 13 for digital, two weeks later for physical). Same goes for mice and keyboards. They"re all too familiar, too of-this-world, to appear in a galaxy so far, far away. What you’ll find instead are interface displays, and lots of them. Whether in an X-wing"s cockpit or the bridge of a Star Destroyer, every display in The Last Jedi exists to support the story—to provide a graphical complement to the film"s action and dialogue.

And it started with the film’s director. “Whenever possible, Rian [Johnson] wanted us to use practical graphics to enforce the narrative,” says creative director Andrew Booth, who oversaw the creation of TLJ’s assorted instrument clusters, targeting systems, medical readouts, and tactical displays. “It would actually appear in the script that you look at a screen and gain a deeper understanding of what’s happening. The challenge was always, what can we do in-camera to create something that feels real and believable?”

What"s impressive about the interfaces in The Last Jedi is that they feel believable not just to the audience, but to the film"s dramatis personae. In the real world, designers design for one person: the user. But creatives like Booth—whose design agency, BLIND LTD, has been behind the look and feel of some of this century’s biggest blockbusters, including every Star Wars film from TFA onward—designed the practical displays in The Last Jedi with at least three groups of people in mind: the characters, the actors depicting those characters, and the folks watching along in theaters.

Consider the film’s opening scene, in which (fair warning: plot points and spoilers from here on out) Commander Poe Dameron calls General Hux. The point of Poe"s call is to buy time; he"s charging the engines on his X-wing so he can stage a surprise attack on the First Order Dreadnought that’s poised to obliterate his Resistance buddies planetside. It’s a plan the audience comes to understand when the camera cuts to a display inside Poe’s starfighter that shows the status of his boosters.

The inside of Poe"s X-wing. The top display depicts the Dreadnaught tower Poe attacks at the beginning of the film; the middle one shows the status bar for his X-wing’s engines; and the bottom one, which is all wonky, visualizes his spaceship’s damaged targeting system.LUCASFILM LTD./BLIND LTD.

“For us, that’s a perfect piece of storytelling,” Booth says. “Now you’ve got exposition, drama, and tension all wrapped up in this close-up of a progress bar.” And because it’s a practical effect, that tension is experienced by audience, actor, and character alike. In fact, every single display in Poe’s cockpit pulls triple duty: The top one depicts the tower Poe is attacking; the middle one shows the status bar for his X-wing’s engines; and the bottom one, which is all wonky, visualizes his spaceship’s damaged targeting system, which BB-8 spends much of the sequence trying to repair.

Similar details abound inside the spacecraft from Canto Bight, the opulent casino city. The graphics aboard the ship that DJ and BB-8 steal are shiny. Slinky. Sumptuous. A striking contrast to the First Order"s stark, militaristic vibes and the ragtag aesthetics of the Resistance. "This was us trying to evoke a different world," Booth says.

But look closely, and you’ll see that the screens inside the shuttle are loaded with details. Crait’s topography, the blast door separating the Resistance from the First Order, the line of AT-ATs—they"re all depicted on screens, often for the briefest of moments. "It gives you an idea of the level of detail that we put into these interfaces," Booth says. "It"s one of the things we pride ourselves on: You don’t necessarily always see it, but you sure as hell feel it.”

star wars cockpit display screens in stock

You’ve seen it hundreds of times in the Star Wars movies, but how many times have you ever dreamt of jumping into the pilot seat of the Millennium Falcon and throwing it into hyperdrive? Well now you get that chance in the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride in Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge in Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disneyland.

Before we start, if you want to find out the latest Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run updates and other Disney vacation planning tips, don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Weekly E-Mail Newsletter. You can sign up here:

The Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride is a dream come true for Star Wars fans as it puts you in control of the most iconic spaceship in film history. It’s one of the newest Disney E-Ticket attractionsfound in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run is located in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in both Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World and also in Disneyland Park. With a Star Wars Land coming to Disneyland Paris, we may get Smugglers Run there too eventually.

The Smugglers Run ride is the first of two attractions in Star Wars Land. The other attraction coming to Galaxy’s Edge is the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride which opened on December 5, 2019 (Hollywood Studios) and January 17, 2020 (Disneyland).

Guests enter the iconic Millennium Falcon starship for a secret interactive smuggling mission, with each passenger playing a role in the completion of the mission. It’s almost as much video game as it is a ride, with dozens of buttons and levers to push to complete your tasks.

Think of Smugger’s Run as a more interactive version of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. The two ride systems are very similar, with Smugglers Run obviously pushing the technology to another level.

The interactivity in the Millennium Falcon ride however is much more complex and detailed, with hundreds of switches and buttons to press within the cockpit.

The Millennium Falcon features 7 “pods” each holding 6 guests, giving a total of 42 guests per ride. Inside each pod it will look and feel exactly like being inside the Millennium Falcon cockpit with dozens of working lights, levers, and switches to mess with, all interacting with the environment.

The Millennium Falcon doesn’t really spin, but like Star Tours, moves side to side and shakes, simulating movement left and right and forwards and backwards.

The actual ride length for the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run ride is approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds long from beginning to end. It’s pretty close in length to Star Tours.

The part when you find the coaxium and start your escape feels like a big drop down, and then you crash at the bottom of the room. Again it’s not a real drop, but the sensation of one is there.

Guests entering the Single Rider line will be separatedfrom the rest of their group during the ride experience. If two people together enter the Single Rider line, they will NOT be able to ride together in the same Millennium Falcon cockpit.

Usually, as a single rider, you can make it into the Millennium Falcon cockpit within 15-20 minutes. This depends on how busy Galaxy’s Edge is the day your visit and how many other people have entered the Single Rider queue.

Then, right outside the cockpit Hondo reappears on a monitor explaining your pre-flight specifics, the role of each rider, and the details of your mission.

Engineers are in the back row and have the best view of the cockpit, getting to see all the action. The most passive of the 3 roles, but I find it more enjoyable than being a gunner.

Try to site on the side of the cockpit which corresponds to your dominant hand. Sit on the right side if you are right-handed, left side for left-handed. This way you will tire out less quickly.

We’ve been on the Millennium Falcon Smuggler’s Run Ride now countless times, and we’re going to give you a full walkthrough of the ride queue, and ride vehicle (cockpit really) and show you all the details there. We’re also going to give you our full review of the attraction and a description of what to expect when you go.

The Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run has a pretty extensive and interesting backstory you’ll want to pay attention to as you walk through this hyper-detailed area. Everything starts in Black Spire Outpost, the main village on Batuu and where most of the attraction happens.

Most attraction queues start out slowly and as they lead you towards the beginning of the attraction, there’s a build-up to the most interesting part of the queue. Not true on Smuggler’s Run. The queue’s crown jewel is by far the Millennium Falcon itself parked right outside.

The ramp takes you up to the second floor into the mechanic shop where an animated blaster-riddled starship engine suspended from the ceiling glows a pulsating red, and other ships being repaired.

This engine is so cool and every once and a while it revs up and starts malfunctioning so you think it’s going to explode or something. Such a cool effect!

You’ll have a good 10 minutes or so in here so try to take your time and soak everything in. It’s too much to see on the first trip and you will be star-struck and feel out of sorts if you are a big Star Wars nut like myself.

Right outside the cockpit, Hondo reappears on a monitor explaining your pre-flight specifics and the details of your mission. The missions vary which is nice so each time you go on it will be a somewhat different experience.

There are dozens of cockpit buttons, switches, and levers, each making sounds and having flashing lights, etc. I literally was jamming every button and switch I could get my hands on for a good minute or more, and there are a ton of them!

The missions on Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run are the same and don’t have different missions like Star Tours does. That makes the deployability not quite as fun, though this I expect to change with an update in the future.

Once everyone is strapped in and ready to go, you take off! You see the Ohnaka Transport Solutions hangar bay where you just were projected onto a domed screen outside the cockpit windows and you take off for your mission.

From our experience, the gameplay is a bit difficult at times (especially for the non-video game generation) but after a couple of rides, you start to get the hang of it. I think Disney did as good of a job as they could with balancing the difficulty of the ride as well as possible, but the difficulties remain nonetheless.

The actual ride is good but not great, though it’s grown on me over the last few months. It’s an interactive version of Star Tours with better graphics. That’s gotta count for something right?

It’s not nearly as bad as some would like you to believe. Every time I’ve been on it, all the people inside the cockpit with me have been screaming with joy and laughing the whole ride. I’ve brought big-time Star Wars friends on the ride, who were overjoyed by the whole experience.

I think all the hate comes from guests coming to Galaxy’s Edge for the first time, expecting Smugglers Run to be a headlining E-Ticket attraction. That is never what it was supposed to be, and the narrative got portrayed that way because of the delayed opening of Rise of the Resistance, which is the REAL headline attraction for Star Wars Land.

Of course, you are going to compare Smugglers Run to Star Tours: The Adventure Continues. They are both flight simulator rides, and they are both based on the Star Wars franchise.

Smugglers Run is interactive and Star Tours is passive. On Star Tours, you don’t have any part in the completion of the mission. Instead on Smugglers Run, each guest is assigned a job they must perform if you want the mission to go well.

Star Tours has multiple missions. This is the thing I would give Star Tours the edge in, and having multiple, random missions to go on, means you can ride dozens of times and never get bored. Smugglers Run has one mission and gets quite repetitive after a few rides.

While both rides have queues themed to Star Wars, the Millennium Falcon ride queue is on a totally different level and is among the best queues ever created in a theme park.

While it does get repetitive at times, it has the better queue, superior technology, and is also interactive. That wow factor you get walking onboard the Millennium Falcon into the chess room, and then into the cockpit is something many guests have been dreaming about since childhood!

Our biggest complaint about the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride is that there is only one mission to carry out. It’s a fun mission no doubt, however, after about the 3rd or 4th time you do it, there starts to be some staleness to it.

The future possibilities are awesome here to continue making new missions relevant to the new Star Wars movies, which I fully expect Disney to continue to do.

The massive popularity of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance nearby has dramatically increased the number of visitors to Batuu, therefore making Smugglers Run busier than before. We can expect that trend to continue through the end of the year and into early next year.

Read our Star Wars Land Wait Times Guide for more detail on the wait times for Star Wars Smuggler’s Run ride and other attractions and experiences there.

However things have started getting busier, and with the opening of Rise of the Resistance, Galaxy’s Edge has drawn even more guests. This has led to Smugglers Run having an influx of new guests, and with them, longer lines.

As crowds start coming back to the Disney parks, we’ve already started to see this happening, and much bigger lines have been forming recently. Add this to the fact that Genie+ Lightning Lane passes have now become available for the ride and it might leave you frustrated if you don’t know when to go.

Cast Members let guests into the park before the listed time so that a line can start forming. That plus going through security means you want to be there and in position well before all this happens.

I would say it’s not very scary, no. It’s not a super-thrill ride and overly intense. It does, however, have a bumpy and rough ride at times like Star Tours, so if you get motion sickness easily this isn’t for you.

For more info on Star Wars Land read our Guide to Visiting Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge for a detailed look at the attractions, dining, planning, touring strategies and everything you need to know.

My name is Ziggy and I love Disney, everything Disney! I grew up on Disney and it has and continues to be a huge part of my life. I started young when my parents took me to Disney World when I was 18 months old. Little did they know that would be the first of an uncountable number of trips we would take. I have so many amazing memories going to Disney with my family and friends and it has been interwoven into my DNA.

star wars cockpit display screens in stock

It’s obvious that the ESB plans are a direct copy of the ANH plans, but the mid section of the cockpit is slightly longer, as I’ve indicated here in red. While the ANH cockpit is 3 feet deep, the ESB cockpit is 4"6" deep, though the blueprint does add “dimensions subject to alteration.” However, I understand that the Volvo 343/345 dashboard box that’s to Fisher’s right is 1 foot 1 inch wide, so it appears that the 18" additional depth measurement is correct.

A narrow shelf at waist height runs around either side of the cockpit. Not much to say about this, other than it had a stepped routed edge. I think it"s kind of fascinating that despite the limited budget of the show they went to the trouble of designing the shelf that way, even specifying its routed-out measurements on the original blueprints.

The set lighting is notably very old-fashioned in the first Star Wars movie. The director of photography was old-school English cinematographer Gil Taylor, who took the traditional approach of just blasting light into every set. The light was very hard, likely from huge Fresnel lens lamps. And so everyone is lit by rather unflattering lighting. The scenes of Leia and Tarkin on the Death Star are classic examples of this.

The lighting in ESB is considerably different. Empire"s cinematographer Peter Suschitzky adopted a darker, moodier, and subtle style, with much more soft and complex lighting. He usually lit the Falcon interior to give the illusion that everything was illuminated by the actual lights inside the cockpit, rather than being lit by some random light source outside in the blackness of space. The sophisticated cinematography is a significant reason, I’d argue, that ESB has aged less than ANH.

This approach wasn’t without its risks, however. During filming of one cockpit scene in Empire, Peter Mayhew’s Wookiee costume actually caught fire because of a light mounted on the floor!

LightbarsThe cockpit is ostensibly lit by a set of horizontal lightbars. These were milky white acrylic panels, backlit. They also had fine pinstriping running parallel to the edges.

It turns out that George Lucas visited the cockpit set when it was nearly done and offered the view that it was too big. He wanted a cramped and crowded cockpit, like a plane from a war movie. This request for a lower ceiling resulted in a hasty rejigging of set parts shortly before filming, in order to make the cockpit smaller in diameter. This is apparently the cause of the alignment problem.But why is the lightbar misaligned on Han"s (port) side, but fine on Chewie"s (starboard) side? I"ve vaguely puzzled over that for some years, but Stinson Lenz has come up with a logical explanation. Basically when the crew revamped the cockpit to make it slightly smaller, they simply "rotated" the sidewalls as a whole intact unit. They did so in a clockwise fashion if you"re looking towards the door of the cockpit, and the rotation point was essentially around the lower bottom edge of the Chewie side of the set.This explains why the sidewalls are mostly aligned on the Chewie side, since they pivoted at that point. But they were rotated and thus lowered slightly on the other. The manoeuvre also decreased the visible top section of the cockpit backwall, which also explains why the Han-side medium-grey coloured wedge piece has a different profile from the ESB and later cockpits (essentially the rotating sidewalls took a notch out of that panel).1980

This version of the set fixes the alignment issue. All light bars line up. Also, a small light panel is visible in the rear starboard corner, near the nav display. The shot below shows a roof panel that was removed for the filming so that additional lighting could be added. It also is one of the few clear shots known of the ceiling handles.

Backwall “nav computer” displayOne notable detail of the backwall is the circular screen to the top starboard corner, often referred to in ancillary marketing material as the nav computer display, though it’s never described in any OT script. It was later retconned in "Solo" to be the navigational capabilities of ill-fated rebellious droid L3-37.

This screen was simply a round piece of glass or plastic with a simple picture behind it. The display showed a graphic of curved lines and a box in green, red, and white, and never changed. There were small lights around the “screen” grouped in a part circle, and these lights mostly flashed on and off in groups. This design was shown in "Solo" as an Easter egg when Qi"ra installs the display.

The TFA and TLJ nav display has a bunch of red LEDs showing an animation in a circular sweep. It doesn’t have a hall of mirrors look – it’s just a plain black circle with the red lights. Kind of naff looking, especially since it seems to have used ordinary 5mm LEDs and so the patterns are made up of obvious dots.

One of the extra ring panels - a starboard blank panel with the X-shaped bracing - becomes openable in TFA. This is for the moment when Rey manages to miraculously fix a problem with the Falcon by extracting some component or other. The panel recess seems oddly deep given the diameter of the cockpit tube, but presumably the Falcon’s hull is made of some powerfully tough, yet thin, material.

The dashboard.The cockpit has a T-shaped dashboard with a central console running between Han and Chewie, and a front panel. All kinds of controls adorn this thing – mostly switches and pushbuttons.

The central black object is supposed to be a display screen of some sort. It’s an odd design, really, since it’s a very small portrait-orientation display, buried deep inside a black rectangular thing that appears to resemble a stepped lens hood from a very old large-format camera. It  contains a static diagram that"s visible during the "I"m in it for the money" scene.

star wars cockpit display screens in stock

What would Star Wars be without the many cool space ships that populate its universe? From starfighters to military cruisers and worn hunks of junk that separate Star Wars from the chrome aesthetic of countless other sci-fi stories, this vast armada is a true marvel of cinema and the science fiction genre.

Since the release of A New Hope in 1977, we’ve seen plenty of awesome ships on screen, on book covers, and in comic book panels. Who can forget the first time they laid eyes on an X-wing as it prepared to attack the Death Star? Or the Millennium Falcon, as it made its escape from Tatooine? You can’t possibly forget the cry of a TIE fighter once you’ve heard it.

We love so many of these ships that we’ve decided to list our favorites in no kind of particular order. We’re not ranking them. We just want to appreciate one of the best aspects of Star Wars. Oh, and we’re looking at both Legends and new canon ships. Because continuity doesn’t really matter in this case. That said, we’ll warn you now that you won’t see the Death Star or Starkiller Base on this list. One’s a space station and the other is an ice planet. Not the same thing. That’s not to say they’re not the coolest things ever, though!

Now, if you don’t have the time to read through this entire list, that’s fine. We’ve got you covered on that, too. Check out the top 10 coolest Star Wars spaceships in this handy five-minute video:

Since the starship battles inA New Hope were modeled after real-world dogfights, X-wings fit the role of the quick, darting fighter planes that fought in them. Their maneuverability and the split wings that match the X in their name make them one of the coolest starship designs in Star Wars, utilized by the heroes of both the Original Trilogy and The Force Awakens. Poe Dameron’s black-and-orange T-70 is the evolution of the classic T-65, with the same sharp ferocity. The X-wing is the ship of heroes, and it looks the part.

Few can forget the cry of a TIE fighter, as it zooms over their heads or right at them at dangerous speeds. Although it is absolutely the Empire’s most expendable starship, it is also its most iconic. The original TIE fighters from A New Hope were white in color, while the ones in Empire and Jedi were a bit grayer, with blue-ish hues. The signature shriek of the fighter was created by combining an elephant’s scream with the sound of a car driving on a wet road.

Don’t panic—we didn’t forget the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy! I’d say this is the most iconic starship in all of Star Wars. At the center of the entire Original Trilogy (and it makes a look-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in the Prequels, too!), the Falcon rightfully became one of the standout icons of the Sequel Trilogy, too.

You absolutely remember Darth Vader’s flagship, Executor, from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The ship that hunted Luke Skywalker and the Rebellion was the same one that later crashed into the Death Star II’s surface during the Battle of Endor. It’s quite poetic that it’s a Rebel A-wing—one of the fleet’s smaller fighters—that ultimately deals the killing blow.

Still, the Super Star Destroyer (or Executor-class Star Dreadnought) is a sight to behold, as it overshadows the Star Destroyers that once loomed over our heads in the opening scene of A New Hope. Surprisingly, the Executor had a pretty short lifespan of almost four years before its ultimate destruction. Another Super Star Destroyer, Ravager, became the Empire’s prized possession in the novel Aftermath before it was also destroyed in the Battle of Jakku. It’s the same fallen Star Destroyer we see in The Force Awakens!

Nearly every starship from the Original Trilogy is iconic, and that’s certainly true for the Y-wing, a favorite of Original Trilogy fans and collectors. Often used as bombers, Y-wings were in service during the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War. Not quite as maneuverable as X-wings, Y-wings could nevertheless dodge with the best, while carrying two crew members and heavy ordinance. Their distinctive tuning fork shape instantly evokes the war against the Empire.

The next step up from the Y-wing when it comes to heavy-ordinance starfighters is the B-wing. What it sacrifices in maneuverability it makes up for in firepower, being a formidable deterrent against capital ships when partnered with other starfighters. The B-wing’s precarious-looking upright spike design was introduced in Return of the Jedi and joined the ranks of instantly recognizable Original Trilogy ships. Rebels expanded on its history when Hera Syndulla found a reclusive engineer working on a prototype. She convinced him that she was the right pilot for the precarious prototype, which eventually led to this ship becoming a key asset for the Rebellion.

With Supreme Leader Snoke’s desire to out-Empire the Empire came an intimidating starship: the Supremacy made its debut in The Last Jedi and became one of the largest vessels ever put in a Star Wars movie. Its winglike shape sets it apart from the Star Destroyer dagger shape, while the black paint and narrow profile create a similar aura of menace. According to canon lore, the flagship contained R&D labs and factories to build smaller vehicles and weapons as well as docking bays for the fleet and living quarters for troops. The Supremacy’s finest moment might have been its destruction when Admiral Holdo’s hyperspace jump created a visually striking rip through the flagship.

Rebels is the story of a found family, so the team’s ship, The Ghost, needs to feel like home. Decorated with paintings by resident artist Sabine Wren and posters hung by Ezra Bridger and Zeb, the Ghost’s living quarters captures the lived-in feeling of classic Star Wars. The Ghost is also war machine and Jedi training center: Kanan Jarrus teaches Ezra while standing dangerously and thrillingly on top of the ship. Hera Syndulla shows off her piloting skills at the helm, a storied career which leads to the ship’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in Rogue One. Technically, the Ghost is a modified Corellian VCX-100 light freighter, and sports a one-pilot shuttle called the Phantom (later replaced by the Phantom II), which can dock with the freighter’s top.

The next in the roster of heroes’ ships is the Aethersprite-class light interceptor, more commonly known as the Jedi starfighter and popularized by Anakin and Obi-Wan in the Prequels. With their bright colors and talkative astromech droids, these ships contributed to the characters of the Jedi and looked pretty cool while they were doing it, especially twisting around in the beautiful Battle of Coruscant at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. Like the Jedi, the Aethersprites are agile and quick—and didn’t fare very well in Order 66.

While the TIE fighter is the iconic Imperial ship, with its screeching noise, the Lambda-class shuttles were iconic Imperial vessels in their own right. In weird contrast to the Mon Calamari cruisers used by the Rebellion, the Lambdas have an organic symmetry to them, like a spiny underwater fish. The Sentinel-class shuttle is very similar in shape but was developed slightly earlier, and this is the ship you’re more likely to see on Star Wars Rebels than in the movies. Both the Empire and Darth Vader use the Lambda shuttles to travel between Imperial capital ships and the Death Star.

Like the Sequel Trilogy, the Prequels brought more color to the starfighters of the galaxy, enabled by more advanced technology and symbolic of a galaxy that hadn’t yet fallen into the Dark Times. The bright yellow, needle-tipped Naboo fighters serve the same role as the X-Wings in the Original Trilogy, as the front line fighters of the Naboo forces. They were used by the local Naboo Royal Security Forces but were more than capable of taking out a Trade Federation droid control ship.

While the Ebon Hawk shares some of its flattened UFO shape with the Millennium Falcon, its role as the literal flagship of the Knights of the Old Republic games matches the Falcon in another key way too: the ship becomes almost like a character in its own right. Both Darth Revan and the Jedi Exile used this ship on their journeys across the galaxy. The player spends hours there getting to know the crew and preparing for the war either for or against the Sith. Formerly the weapon of a crime lord, Ebon Hawk is put through its paces too, with turret guns powerful enough to tear apart Sith starfighters.

Darth Maul’s starship didn’t get a lot of screen time, but its black paint and folded wings give it the attitude of a swooping bird of prey, adding to the Sith Lord’s fearsome appearance in The Phantom Menace. The Scimitar got some more screen time in the Star Wars comics, where it was recently the site of one of Lando Calrissian’s adventurous heists. Something else we never see in the film is the ship’s stealth capabilities, which might have allowed it to get in and out of the blockade over Naboo. The curved wings are reminiscent of later TIE fighters.

The Interdictor Star Destroyer was the next step in Imperial technology on Star Wars Rebels. While packing the punch of a Star Destroyer, it can also force ships out of hyperspace using its gravity well generators. The Interdictor changed the way the Rebel fleet had to think about their movements. Although it’s still basically impossible to detect where exactly a ship is from hyperspace, with Interdictors in use in a blockade, the Imperials didn’t have to—they could just tug out any ship that approached them, and then bring the Star Destroyer’s armament into play. In Legends, the Interdictor was its own class of Star Destroyer. Things seem to be progressing slightly differently—or at least at a different rate—in the new canon, with experimental gravity well projectors affixed to an existing Star Destroyer in Rebels.

Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress both use these elegant ships on their solo journeys across the galaxy. Dooku’s solar sailer makes for a colorful, unexpected visual in the Prequels, as it unfurls its reflective sail. These ships had to be small, because of the way they operated. Solar sailers used lasers and tachyon streams pushing against the sail to propel themselves. Also because of this, the sails had to be enormous in order to enable the vessel to go into hyperspace, making this kind of ship rare and difficult to produce. Their unique look sets them apart from anything else ever seen in Star Wars, though, and gives Ventress and Dooku a lot of style points.

While the Fireball may not be the most reliable starfighter in the galaxy, it does deserve a place on the list for being one of the most unique. In Star Wars Resistance, pilot Kazuda Xiono is tasked with fixing this starship up for the local races. It’s a puttering, ungainly ship with a bright yellow paint scheme, often seen trailing a cloud of smoke from the latest mechanical issue. Both the ship and Resistance have their flaws, but the Fireball and the other ships in the show seem born right from that part of George Lucas’ brain that liked race cars. It’s like a first car Kaz fixed up all by himself: not the most beautiful or reliable of ships, but full of character.

Speaking of unique, one of the most unusual-looking starfighters inStar Wars doesn’t appear in the movies at all. The Chiss Clawcraft that appeared in the Expanded Universe looked like it sounded—swept-forward struts gave it the appearance of clawed hands partially closed, all stemming from a spherical cockpit. These ships aren’t completely alien, though. The symmetrical design lacking aerodynamic wings looks similar to the TIE fighter, but perhaps more wild, suitable for a militaristic alien culture. Chiss pilots—and the human Jagged Fel, who was born and raised in Chiss space—were critical during the Yuuzhan Vong wars that played out in The New Jedi Order book series, and could hold their own against either X-Wings or the Yuuzhan Vong’s living ships.

Speaking of living ships, some of the fastest ships in the galaxy came from a living planet. The New Jedi Order series was full of all kinds of biological weirdness, starting with the Yuuzhan Vong’s bioengineered technology. The living planet Zonama Sekot is like an inverse reflection of these villains, and so it has its own living weapons—ones that can be sculpted into ships that create a psychic connection to their pilots. Obi-Wan and Anakin got to know Zonama Sekot during the Prequel era as well, before the planet disappeared for decades, taking its technology with it.

Corellian smuggler Dash Rendar is clearly supposed to be a stand-in for Han Solo while he’s still frozen in carbonite in the Shadows of the Empire multimedia event from the 90s. And the Outrider does the same for the Millennium Falcon, down to the familiar cockpit design. The ship was designed by Doug Chiang, who later worked on designs for the Prequels and The Force Awakens. While the Outrider is very similar to the Falcon, it stands out for being an iconic ship for one specific story, something that doesn’t happen often in Star Wars, which has often put our favorite Corellian freighter at the center of its adventures. The Outrider was later edited into a shot of the special edition of A New Hope.

While it’s not much larger than a starship, the Sun Crusher is one of the most devastating superweapons ever created, capable of turning a star into a supernova and destroying entire star systems. And it’s nearly invincible due to Quantum-crystalline armor, which could repel any laser blasts and withstand any collision. This little ship ripped through the bridge of a Star Destroyer and even withstood a super laser blast from a prototype Death Star! Good thing the Empire never quite got a chance to use this ship against the Rebellion…

Outbound Flight wasn’t as much one ship as it was a combination of six Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers connected by a central fuselage. While the design is cool enough, the ship’s purpose is even more captivating: to venture into the Unknown Regions of the galaxy and search for extragalactic life. Yes, this was basically Star Wars‘ own version of the Starship Enterprise, even if it was ultimately fated for a doomed expedition. This ship makes appearances or is mentioned in much of writer Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars work.

The Knights of the Old Republic series is responsible for many of the best ships in Star Wars. This Hammerhead-class Republic cruiser is the second of three on this list. Both the Endar Spire and Harbinger are key ships in the games, tied to the ongoing war between the Republic and the Sith. Few who have played the games can forget running through the hallways of a doomed Endar Spire, as it gave in to the Sith assault. Or the approaching Harbinger, the ship piloted by Darth Sion, a Sith hell-bent on hunting you down once and for all.

Our all-time favorite Hammerhead moment is when a bunch of them team up to take down the Star Forge at the end of the first game. So good. This ship made its first new canon appearance in Star Wars Rebels episode “A Princess in Lothal.”

The Ravager is awesome because it’s barely able to hold itself together at all, but is still one of the most threatening ships in Star Wars. This Centurion-class battleship was used by the Republic during the Mandalorian Wars, which took place before the events of Knights of the Old Republic. For all intents and purposes, Ravager was left a carcass in the aftermath of the Battle of Malachor V. Yet it was Sith Lord Darth Nihilus who willed it to fly again by using the Dark Side to power it and hold the ship together. With Ravager, Nihilus traveled around the galaxy, with the help of zombie Force slave pilots, feeding on the life energy of unsuspecting planets. It is one of KotOR II‘s scarier settings.

star wars cockpit display screens in stock

The B-29 bomber’s Plexiglas nose was the obvious inspiration for the space freighter Millennium Falcon. Special effects artists replaced the blue screen with stars only in post-production; on set, the actors had to imagine them.

In early 1977, director George Lucas invited some of his friends and associates to view a rough cut of his latest project. It was a kids’ movie that in one early draft had sagged under the title Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode One: The Star Wars. The crowd he’d summoned to his Bay Area home were at least outwardly just like him: Filmmakers with major successes under their belts though not one of them was yet 35 years old. They included screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who’d worked with Lucas on his 1973 smash American Graffiti, and directors John Milius, Brian De Palma, and Steven Spielberg.

When the lights came up, there was embarrassed silence. The movie was long, poorly acted, and staggeringly weird. Lucas was stung by his peers’ feedback. De Palma, who’d just had his first big hit with the 1975 Stephen King adaptation Carrie and would go on to make blockbusters like The Untouchables and the first Mission: Impossible, was particularly brutal, poking fun at Princess Leia’s hair and the frequent references to “The Force.” He also mocked the muffled voice of Darth Vader, whose dialogue had not yet been menacingly dubbed by James Earl Jones (to the chagrin of actor David Prowse, who played the towering villain on camera), and howled at the movie’s tedious six-paragraph opening crawl (later slimmed down, with De Palma’s help, to three). While no one else was as acerbic as De Palma or as optimistic as Spielberg, there was a clear consensus that Star Wars needed a lot of work before its Memorial Day weekend 1977 release date.

Over a group lunch after the screening, De Palma scoffed that Star Wars was good for only eight to 10 million dollars, but Spielberg predicted the film would gross 100 million. “And I’ll tell you why,” he said to the gathering. “It has a marvelous innocence and naiveté to it, which is George, and people will love it.”

We know now that Spielberg was right. In fact, he underestimated. To date the movie, now retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, has grossed more than $775 million worldwide. And that sum leaves out the additional billions generated by sequels, spin-offs, and merchandise over the four decades following its initial release.

Imagery of U.S. fighters during Stateside training exercises, lifted from a jittery newsreel, showed aircraft peeling out of formation and dropping from sight. The clip was used as a model for the memorable shot of Rebel craft diving to attack the Death Star. One at a time, the fictional spaceships elegantly “aileron roll” across the screen, mimicking the movements of the 1940s aircraft almost exactly.

Some 45 shots later—about 75 seconds of screen time—Jek Porkins’ X-wing fighter becomes the first casualty of the desperate raid. The visual cues that inspired the starfighter’s demise came from a panning shot taken by a nervy U.S. Navy cameraman in the midst of a harrowing kamikaze attack in the Pacific more than 30 years earlier. The sailor captured the final moments of a Japanese Zero as it burnt up over the deck of an American aircraft carrier. As VFX artist Paul Huston described the shot in the book Star Wars Storyboards: The Original Trilogy, “[An artist] would show me a shot of a Japanese Zero flying left to right in front of a conning tower of an aircraft carrier and say, ‘The aircraft carrier is the Death Star, the Zero is an X-wing. Do a board like that.’ ” The art became storyboard 168, shot 245, which was entitled, “PORKINS’ X WING COMES APART IN FLAMING PIECES.”

The climactic bombing raid from 1955’s The Dam Busters was the primary inspiration for Star Wars’ memorable rebel attack on the Death Star, the Empire’s planet-destroying battle station.

War movies and hot rod automobiles had shaped George Lucas’ young life in Modesto, California in the 1950s. Both interests can be seen in the genesis of the space fighters in Star Wars. In the movie’s climactic sequence, the Rebels’ X-wing and Y-wing squadrons operate as a complimentary set. Their pairing recalls the immortal Battle of Britain team: Supermarine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes had gallantly fought over England in 1940 and again on the silver screen in 1969’s Battle of Britain, a Lucas favorite.

The X-wing was the racy, handsome star of the show. When Lucas discussed the ship with California model maker and concept artist Colin Cantwell, he said he wanted it to look sleek and fast. The X-wing conceptual model’s nose was stolen from a 1960s Revell 1/16 scale dragster model kit. The far aft position of its cockpit turned the ship into a cosmic Corsair fighter. Its strange split wings, which open up from two wings into four as the fighter goes into combat, came from Cantwell.

The underdog starship was older, slower, and bigger than its stablemate. Like the earthbound T-bucket hot rods Lucas admired in his youth, the Y-wing had been heavily modified in an effort to keep up with the times. With discarded hull plates, skeletal cowlings, and reduced weaponry, the old machine could possibly pass as a fighter-bomber. The efforts to lighten the ship echo the conversion of 1940s fighters into speedier reconnaissance aircraft by stripping them of armor and guns.

The Y-wing’s distinctive twin booms and centrally placed cockpit echo the hometown hero of its creators. Industrial Light & Magic—the Lucas-founded VFX house that built the models—was located in a warehouse just a few miles down Vanowen Street in Burbank, where Lockheed had assembled P-38 Lightnings 30 years earlier.

The nearly full-scale exterior mock-up of the Falcon cockpit and boarding ramp towers over production crew at a soundstage in England’s Pinewood Studios in 1976. Pinewood was also used for the filming of the 1960 war classic Sink the Bismarck!

The fighters were key to Lucas’ lived-in aesthetic. Unlike the ships in 2001 or Star Trek, the Rebel spacecraft were battered and scorched, resembling the ground-attack P-47s in France, which quickly became patched, bleached, and caked with mud. The Y-wings managed to look at once futuristic and obsolete, more like a teenager’s lovingly patched-together muscle car at Venice Beach than lightspeed-capable starships from a distant galaxy.

By contrast, the Imperial ships were clean, dark, and angular. The cold aesthetic of their Twin Ion Engine (TIE) fighters owes something to the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt Bf 109, a design that Germany found relatively easy to build quickly and in great numbers. A character in one Star Warsspin-off novel notes the basic TIE fighter is “a commodity which, after hydrogen and stupidity, was the most plentiful in the galaxy.” Nevertheless, they come screaming in from above on our startled heroes in much the same way the real German interceptors ambushed Royal Air Force pilots Douglas Bader and “Sailor” Malan over the English Channel.

The Death Star attack is all about combat in the face of desperate odds. It’s a clear homage to the epic air battles seen in movies from the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1954 Korean War film The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Navy pilots attack a group of strategically critical bridges in North Korea, defended by murderous anti-aircraft fire. In the World War II film The Dam Busters,released the following year, RAF Lancaster pilots raid a strategically critical dam, also heavily defended by anti-aircraft fire. In 1964’s 633 Squadron (based on the 1956 book) RAF Mosquito pilots take on a German rocket fuel plant in Norway which is, you guessed it, heavily defended by anti-aircraft fire. But 633 Squadron adds a twist: The aircraft must navigate a high-walled fjord at high speed, braving storms of gunfire. This memorable scene was one of Lucas’ main inspirations for the trench run in Star Wars.

While 633 Squadron provided much of the physical environment for the Death Star raid, The Dam Busters supplied the fliers’ tactics and radio communications. As the Rebel ships assemble, Luke Skywalker becomes one of a chorus of voices checking in with, “Red Five standing by.” In The Dam Busters, the Lancaster pilots chime “Here leader,” over the radio. Then, in both movies, someone breaks in to marvel at the size of the target.

In Star Wars, Red Leader asks a Y-wing pilot, “How many guns do you think, Gold Five?” The reply: “Say about 20 guns, some on the surface, some on the towers.”

The Rebels suffer heavy losses and the raid teeters on the brink of failure, until a pivotal moment when Millennium Falcon comes diving out of the “sun,” a trick as old as military aviation itself. The Falcon is a hefty machine compared to the starfighters. And everyone besides Han Solo knows it’s not as fast as they are. Industrial Light & Magic put the sub-light cruising speed of this storied YT-1300 Corellian light freighter at roughly three quarters that of an X-wing—more like a bomber than a fighter. The Falcon’s cockpit was strikingly similar to the glass greenhouse nose of a Boeing B-29. And like the Superfortress, the Falconsports defensive gun turrets.

A Japanese “Jill” torpedo bomber disintegrates after being struck by anti-aircraft fire during the Gilbert Islands assault in December 1943. George Lucas borrowed the image for the fiery ends various X-wing pilots meet during the climactic Death Star raid.

Star Wars’$11 million budget was thrifty relative to the film’s scale. In 2020 dollars, that’s about $47 million. By contrast, the most recent Star Wars sequel, 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, had a reported budget of $275 million. To pinch pennies back in 1976, ILM model-makers used parts of rejected kits from the Monogram model company in Hawthorne, California to texture their Millennium Falcon prop. A close observer can see hatches, mantelets, and rear decks from World War II Panther and Tiger tanks worked into the Falcon’s skin, along with fragments of airplanes, trucks, and artillery pieces.

This scene from the 1934 Nazi Congress at Nuremberg, as captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 propaganda film Triumph of the Will, was perhaps Star Wars’ most troubling lift.

Rebel pilots Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, and Han Solo receive honors for their heroism during the successful Death Star raid in Star Wars’ final scene, which closely replicates compositions from Triumph of the Will.

That attention to fantasy-burnishing detail paid off. In his just-published memoir, film editor Paul Hirsch, who won an Academy Award for his work on the movie, calls Star Wars’ first test screening for a public audience—months after that private screening for his pals had left Lucas so discouraged—“the most exciting screening I have ever been to in my life.”

Hirsch recalls that the famous shot of the stars stretching out beyond the Falcon’s canopy as the ship jumps to light speed “had people jumping out of their seats, something I had never seen before and have never seen since. It was as if they were rooting for a baseball team that had just won the seventh game of the World Series with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth.”

Hirsch speculates, as many other writers have over the last 40 years, that a collective yearning for the moral certainties of the 1940s was a big part of what made Star Wars such a phenomenon in the fractured and uncertain ’70s. In fantasy as in history, we like to see the good guys win.

star wars cockpit display screens in stock

The skeleton that C-3PO passes belongs to a Tatooine creature called a Greater Krayt Dragon. This artificial skeleton was left in the Tunisian desert after filming, and still lies there. During filming of Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), the site was visited by the crew once more, and the skeleton was still there. In The Mandalorian The Mandalorian: Chapter 9: The Marshal (2020), locals on Tatooine join with Sand People to fight and kill one of these serpents.

After visiting the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), George Lucas was sure Close Encounters would outperform the yet-to-be-released Star Wars at the box office. Steven Spielberg disagreed, and felt Lucas" Star Wars would be the bigger hit. In the idea of getting a compensation if Star Wars were a box office bomb, Lucas proposed a gentlemen"s pact (as they were close friends from the university), trading two and a half percent of the profit on each other"s movies. Spielberg accepted the deal, and he still receives two and a half percent of the profits from this movie (as Lucas receives the same from the Close Encounters).

During the scene on the Death Star right after Ben leaves to shut down the tractor beam, Chewbacca barks something to Luke to which Han says, "Boy, you said it Chewie." Backstage footage reveals that what Chewbacca says is, "The old man"s gone mad."

When the Stormtroopers enter the room where C-3PO and R2-D2 are hiding, one of the actors accidentally bumps his head on the doorway. It was always believed that this happened due to the actor"s limited visibility. However, British actor Laurie Goode, who claimed to be the one inside the suit, later said that he was distracted by an upset stomach that day. Four takes of the shot were filmed that day, and the last one which included the bump made it into the movie. When the special edition came out in 1997, a sound effect had been added to the scene to accompany the head bump, and as a sort of "homage" to the goof, George Lucas had Jango Fett bang his head on a door in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002).

Carrie Fisher"s breasts were taped down with Gaffer"s tape, as her costume did not permit any lingerie to be worn underneath. She joked later, "As we all know, there is no underwear in space." Contradicting this claim was Leia"s gold bikini in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983).

This is the only Star Wars movie where Darth Vader"s signature theme "The Imperial March" is not played in some form or another, as it had not been written at the time.

Out of all six live-action Star Wars films from the original and prequel trilogies, this is the only one to feature profanity more than once. "Hell" and "damn" are used several times, and R2-D2 "swears" in droid language, but he only chirps and beeps. The language was added to get the movie a PG rating, and avoid its being stereotyped as a G-rated "kids" movie".

George Lucas waived the normal writer and director fee, and asked for a mere $175,000 plus 40% of the merchandising rights. After the failure of Doctor Dolittle (1967), when its massive merchandising push proved an equally costly debacle, studio executives saw little, if any, profit from such matters and agreed. Star Wars-related merchandise has since generated many millions of dollars in sales, allowing Lucas to make movies completely independent of the studio system he decried. Merchandising rights are now a major part of any movie contract.

The accounts on how Alec Guinness regarded the movie and his work on it vary greatly. He frequently recalled the experience of making the movie as a bad one, and consistently claimed that it was his idea to have his character killed off in the first movie, so as to limit his involvement and make sure he "wouldn"t have to carry on saying these rubbish lines." He later mentioned to "shrivel up" each time someone mentioned the movie. In one particularly infamous incident, a young boy, asking for his autograph, proudly told him he had seen the movie over a hundred times, and Guinness gave it to him after promising to never watch it again. He also claimed to throw away all Star Wars related fan mail without even opening it (a logical paradox, making it likely that this is not true, as his journals report what some of this mail said in detail), because he hated the fact that he would be most remembered as Obi-Wan Kenobi, despite other roles which he held in much higher regard. Contrary to all this, George Lucas has said he made the decision to kill off Kenobi, since the character had no part to play in the movie"s finale, and deserved a memorable exit. According to George Lucas, Guinness was "less than happy" that his character was dying earlier than expected, and even appeared to enjoy his time on-set. Lucas, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher have always stated how patient and helpful Guinness was on the set, and praised his professionalism and respectfulness to all cast and crew members. While Guinness made no secret that he disliked the dialogue in Lucas" script, he claimed that he accepted the role for two reasons: 1) He was an admirer of Lucas" previous movie, American Graffiti (1973) and 2) The narrative compelled him to read the whole script through to the end, in spite of not liking the dialogue, and not being a fan of science fiction. Of the final movie, he remarked that he found it "staggering as spectacle and technically brilliant, exciting, very noisy, and warmhearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five minutes too long, and some of the dialogue is excruciating, and much of it is lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience."

The 2003 book, "Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography", reprints several letters that Guinness wrote to his longtime friend and correspondent, Anne Kaufman, in which he expressed his displeasure with and dubiousness about the quality of this movie as it was in production. Before filming started, he wrote, "I have been offered a movie (Twentieth Century Fox) which I may accept, if they come up with proper money. London and North Africa, starting in mid March. Science fiction, which gives me pause, but is to be directed by Paul (sic) Lucas, who did American Graffiti (1973), which makes me feel I should. Big part. Fairy-tale rubbish, but could be interesting perhaps." Then, after filming started, he wrote to Kaufman again to complain about the dialogue and describe his co-stars: "new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper, and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable. I just think, thankfully, of the lovely bread, which will help me keep going until next April. I must off to studio and work with a dwarf (very sweet, and he has to wash in a bidet) and your fellow countrymen Mark Hamill and Tennyson (that can"t be right) Ford. Ellison (? - No!), well, a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing. But Oh, God, God, they make me feel ninety, and treat me as if I was one hundred six. Oh, (the actor"s name is) Harrison Ford, ever heard of him?"

Harrison Ford was originally not allowed to audition, as he had starred in American Graffiti (1973), also directed by George Lucas. Lucas originally intended to use only new faces for this movie, but after using Harrison Ford to read lines with actors and actresses auditioning for the other roles, he realized Ford was the best actor for the part of Han Solo.

The shoot-out between Han Solo and Greedo inside the Cantina was the subject for a lot of controversy and debate amongst Star Wars fans as to who shot first. Many fans debated that Greedo actually shot first a split second before Solo did, but with careful examination of the scene, it was obvious that Greedo never fired his shot at all. For the 1997 Special Edition release of this movie, George Lucas had edited the scene to include Greedo shooting first at Solo at point blank range, with Solo moving his head slightly to the right to dodge the shot before firing back at Greedo. This caused perhaps the worst backlash of all the alterations made to the original trilogy from outraged fans, although i