I just spent the last week of my life building the largest, most expensive Lego set of all-time: the Star Wars Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon. But you can watch this glorious Lego masterpiece get made in just a few minutes.




Okay, I didn’t spend the whole week building it. I slept and worked a bit, too, and I’m pretty sure I drank water at some point. But between Friday, September 1, and Saturday, September 9, I spend 34 hours putting together Lego’s brand new, flagship Star Wars set. And let me tell you, it’s a thing of beauty.

But you can see for yourself, since I had two GoPros set up to shoot a time-lapse video of the entire ordeal. You can watch the adventure below:

I also kept notes the whole time, of my time spent, my progress, and my frustrations. Most of those were from pieces falling, either out of the bags onto my rug, or off the Falcon itself when I moved it. I do not recommend moving the Falcon too much because while it’s beautiful, it’s also very fragile. There are even instructions on how to move it at the back of its giant instruction manual:


To be fair, though, that could also be partially my fault. When you are connecting 7,541 pieces together, sometimes you make mistakes and don’t push the bricks together with enough force. So they fall off. And you scream. Or cry. Or you realize you screwed something up 15 sets ago, so you have to spend an hour disassembling a section to fix it. These problems will happen a lot as you build it... but it’s still completely worth it.

This new Millennium Falcon set costs $800—a lot of money for a Lego set. But I think it’s worth the price. Generally, Lego sets cost about 10 cents per brick so $800 is commensurate with the 7,541 bricks. But as you can see in the video, it comes with so many perfect, tiny touches that it really earns the designation “Ultimate Collectors Series.” Hell, even the 494-page, bounded instruction booklet is gorgeous; in addition to detailing the 1,400 steps to make the Falcon, it even includes the history of the ship and its history with Lego. You get what you pay for.

The build is incredibly difficult, which kind of goes without saying. Mostly because of its massive size, but also because so much of the ship goes together in such a specific way. Every single connection you put together is done in a way that, if you make a mistake by putting a brick even a single space off, you could mess up the whole thing. So attention to detail is key, especially when building the bottom and top of the Falcon, which snap into the ship’s skeleton. But as the Falcon begins to take shape, those problems seem to melt away.


Admittedly, I’m a massive Lego, Star Wars, and Millennium Falcon fan so this set was basically made for me. I had been following rumors of its existence for literally years, and having now put it together, it wasn’t just worth the wait, it blew away my expectations. Truly, it’s a sight to behold.



The set goes on sale for Lego VIPs September 14 and everywhere October 1.

