A Name for the Ages

Since Bogart was a source of inspiration for Han Solo, I always thought the name of the ship was somehow inspired by The Maltese Falcon (1941), or maybe from a source of inspiration for the soundtrack, The Sea Hawk (1940) in which the ship is named The Albatross. Birds all around.

I also noticed of course that The Eagle from Space 1999 was similarly a bird of prey, but it wasn’t until I ran across a reddit post that it clicked.

Add a year to Space 1999 and you get Space 2000, a new millennium.

The Millennium Falcon.

In Closing

One of the interesting things 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.

Ralph McQuarrie’s sketches in particular were something of a revelation for me; I’d forgotten that he had done those early Pirate Ship sketches, and I’d never even considered the very first sketches he did as portraying the Pirate Ship (nor has anyone else as far as I can tell).

It’s also just a pleasure to revisit McQuarrie’s Star Wars, which is quite a bit different from what ended up on the screen. As much as I love the used-universe of the final film, I also appreciate why Lucas would have found the film to be somewhat disappointing when compared to what McQuarrie had put in his head. His use of color, light, shapes and space is unparalleled. Even his sketches brim with life and potential.

• • •

There are still a lot of vague and unanswered questions in the exact design progression (I've done my best to recreate it, but it is an attempt fraught with missteps), but I will come back and slowly fill in the last missing pieces over time.

Unfortunately Joe Johnston’s mythical missing link-‘centered cockpit’ sketches have not been released over the years. It would certainly fill in a blank on our map, even as the saucer design process is beginning to come into focus for me, and hopefully for you the reader as well.

But I've been assured by two separate sources that the drawings do still exist, but are in private hands, so there is hope yet. It is likely that they will end up on auction, when that private owner's grandchildren need to go to college; it's played out like that several times in the past anyway.

At least I feel like I finally managed to largely dispel the burger creation myth, which has haunted me for years.

I leave you with these stills from the final film, and hopefully a feeling that you now know more about the Millennium Falcon than you ever wanted to; maybe it’ll come in handy at some trivia night down the road.