SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY To Make Original Star Destroyer Design Canon

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There has been a lot of Star Wars concept art that was never used. People like Ralph McQuarrie and Colin Cantwell had created all kinds of things that were influences for the things that actually made it into the movie. One such design was Cantwell’s original star destroyer design. Now a toy shown at the New York Toy fair shows that design being used in Lucasfilm’s upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story.

The creation of the #Stardestroyer – I asked George about the scenes. We had a few words in which he described the scenes. I then asked “Is it bigger than Burbank?” to determine the size of the Imperial Cruiser and the opening scenes of the movie. The hatch concept was developed in terms of the need of actual scenes later in the movie. In the opeing I was describing something WWII-ish of a concept with a gunner in the fuscelage. The ship was designed with a lot of thought on what the viewer would experience related to the massiveness of the ship. This involved thinking of things and creating relationships between all of the ships and their interactions with each other. George and I also discussed several other topics in which I asked qualifying questions. This gave me enough information to start designing the ships. It also gave him the information to continue with his work. I was separate from George for most of that time and worked on the final products alone. I started by creating what had to be in the middle and things were added on and so forth. I basically designed this ship and other ships around the function and the impact of the ship on the viewer. The sequence of function and the emotion and it had to feel like it was already there. When starting on a ship, I never did know what it would look like by the end. PS – those fighters in the concept illustration were the original imperial attack ships. I didn’t create the #TIE until much later. See the other concepts at www.cantwellcollection.com

A post shared by Colin Cantwell (@colin_cantwell) on Feb 13, 2018 at 3:58pm PST

Cantwell lays out the reason for his design pretty well. The final product from Mattel looks remarkably similar.

stardestroyer

Star Wars: Rebels borrows from McQuarrie’s designs quite heavily. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have things from McQuarrie and Cantwell too. The new Disney regime has dipped into the archives a lot recently. It is really cool to see some of these designs finally make it to the screen.

What do you think of the design? Are you excited to see it in action when Solo: A Star Wars Story comes out this May?

Source: Star Wars News Net

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Matt Vernier

Lifelong geek who is passionate about movies. I review things on my blog: https://www.GeekyRegards.com. Find me on Twitter! @MattV525 - Inquiries: Mavern519@gmail.com

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