Millennium Falcon Cockpit Mystery Solved?

As I've worked on a replica of the Millennium Falcon's cockpit over the years, there has been a mystery spot that has always eluded me. But I may have solved the mystery. 

The problem area is a box of levers hanging from the canopy, directly over the dashboard console. In A New Hope, Han Solo reaches up to pull one of these levers after they run into the lone TIE fighter in the destroyed Alderaan System. This area is in perpetual shadow, and I've never really know what kind of levers were up there. You can only really see them in silhouette:

Some months ago, on a routine scouring of screencaps from ANH, I came accross the lever that Ben Kenobi uses to deactivate the tractor beam on the Death Star.

which also turned out to a part of the tactical display on Yavin.

The art department on Star Wars was pretty heavy on repeating parts throughout the movie. If you made a small prop in one area, why not recycle it in another. So I got to thinking, is this lever our mystery part? I had nothing really but a hunch to go on, but I decided to model the lever anyway, and see if it fit.

The lever itself uses another part that shows up in a number of places. The long piston-like part was used both as an acuator on C3PO's legs, and as the hyperspace throttles on the Millennium Falcon's cockpit.

Once built, I added them to the cockpit, and after some careful adjustment, they seem to fit very well.

This is a render in silhouette

And here's that bluescreen shot again:




not a bad match at all.

and now, here are some renders of the full cockpit.

Don't get cocky...

The composition popped into my head over lunch. I had all the models built, so I thought I'd give it a try. Not too shabby, even if I say so. 

Millennium Falcon: what might have been

The original designs of the Millennium Falcon was basically what we now know as the Rebel Blockade Runner, but with the current Falcon's cockpit for a nose. This version was slated to be Han Solo's ship for quite some time. The filming model was fully built, and blueprints exist for full scale shooting sets. But the flying saucer with mandibles we now know and love took its place. Below are some renders of what might have been, if that original version had made it into the final cut of the film.

Millennium Falcon Engine Block (part 2)

ughhh! so many details! It never ends!

I'm probably about 3/4 done with the back half here...

Farewell to a nice weekend

A Stopover on Bespin

A Bet Between Stormtroopers

It's an obscure point, but there's been some argument over there years about Lando's rescue of Luke from underneath Cloud City on Bespin. An exterior shot of the Falcon does show Lando coming up from the circular hatch pictured above, but the scale is off. Though the Millennium Falcon is no stranger to mismatched scale (such as the interior not fitting the exterior), so in the end, it's just a bit of movie magic.

Millennium Falcon Engine Deck

The back quarter of the Falcon has more detail than I can shake a stick at. But I'm gonna try to shake that stick anyways. I've been avoiding building the details in the engine for just about 2 years now. But I'm finally, finally putting in some good hours back there.

Also, while you're working on a model like this, it's really easy to lose sense of the scale of things. So I've included a Stormtrooper, just hanging out there gawking at the details. It's amazing to me what he does to put things in perspective.

all the images are cropped to hide the fact that at the moment the rest of the engine deck is bare of details. In the near-ish future, I have to go from blank slate, to something resembling this:

yikes.

worth it though, I hope. 

IG-88 Blaster

The 3D printed part for the IG-88 blaster (mentioned here) came through from Shapeways.com

 Looks like a great fit!