The Millennium Falcon is based on a stack of dirty dishes, says Joe Johnston
Sometimes not doing your chores can unlock your creativity
Aux News Joe Johnston
We all know that the Millennium Falcon is a hunk of junk, but what if that’s the point?
Speaking at the Star Wars Celebration Weekend’s Light & Magic panel, Star Wars veteran Joe Johnston revealed that a stack of dirty dishes “that always seemed to be there” inspired the fastest ship in the galaxy, the Millennium Falcon.
“There was a ship that was going to be Han Solo’s ship,” Johnston said on stage. “But there was this show called Space 1999 that had a ship that looked like Han Solo’s, and George didn’t want to copy anybody, so he said ‘We need a new ship right away.’”
Unfortunately, for Johnston, who was now under the gun, he would have to use some leftover, already-built pieces, including the Falcon’s iconic satellite dish and cockpit.
“So I was feeling a little pressure and I’m looking around my apartment and Im looking at this stack of dirty dishes,” Johnston explained. “I thought ‘Wow, if I put a plate here and put another plate here, it looks like a flying saucer.’ If you put the engine in the pack it implies it goes this way.”
It still had to pass the Lucas test, though, which is apparently hard to do because “George likes options” and getting him to pick the choice as the artist was a little tricky.
Apparently, he liked everything but the cockpit, which was originally in front. “So I thought what if we put it on the side?” Johnston recalled. “’Yeah, that’s good.’”
So now we welcome “Yeah, that’s good” into the pantheon of great George Lucas notes along with “Faster and more intense.”
28 Comments
So wait, all these years we’ve been told it was inspired by a hamburger with a bite out of it and an olive on the side. Which is it?
It’s a pizza with a piece missing! Oh, wait, that’s Pac-Man.
It’s just Spatiotemporal Agent Valerian’s ship
“Welcome to episode 508 of Lucas Likes to Embellish. On today’s episode, George will explain how the design for the Millennium Falcon was inspired by a half-eaten hamburger he saw on a flight back from London.”
I’d like to hear Bobba Fett’s ship’s explanation.
“Well, I took it from street lamps.“- Nilo Rodis(which is weird because that doesn’t look like any street lamp I’ve ever seen, but it does look exactly like a steam iron lol).
I thought it was borrowed from the Valerian comic.
Your mom’s based on a stack of dirty dishes. Good lord I’m insightful.
BooooooLol
Can I just take a moment to appreciate Joe Johnston? Other people, like Ralph McQuarrie and Colin Cantwell, often get more credit for designing Star Wars but Johnston really deserves accolades for making Star Wars look so cool. When he wasn’t designing something fresh, like the Millennium Falcon, he was taking another design, like Cantwell’s X-Wing, and just making it great. On top of that, dude is really a solid director. Probably the best director to get a Marvel franchise taken away from him (I mean, any problems I had with the first Captain America movie, it wasn’t the direction!) He has a bunch of good movies in his resume, a couple great ones, and maybe only two I wouldn’t want to watch again (The Wolfman and that Nutcracker fiasco he co-directed)
I’m not sure he got the franchise “taken away” from him. He was hired pretty specifically because of his strength at retro/pulpy feeling period pieces like First Avenger and The Rocketeer, and this specific MCU movie needed that sort of feel. This is something Joe Johnston does as well as, if not better than, anyone in the business. Aside from another retro Captain America movie, and maybe Agent Carter or Howard Stark or the (OG) Human Torch, I can’t think of many Marvel characters nowadays that would quite fit Joe Johnston’s specific talents. GotG and Ragnarok maybe, but they wouldn’t have suited him nearly as well as they suited James Gunn or Taika Waititi anyway.
Jurassic Park 3 os so exciting and fun compared to 2. I love ot when he out-Spielberg’s Spielberg.
After all these years, I just noticed something… if this were a real ship, the position of the cockpit makes no sense, or at least, is a terrible design. Almost 90 degrees of the pilot’s view is obstructed.
There was a fan retcon that slotted the ship into a long train of cargo containers, like a tug boat. Cleaned up everything, including the notch in the bow.
Why would the cockpit even have windows? It’d be all screens.You could tuck it away safe in the center someplace.
If you follow the old logic that the “teeth” in the front are where a cargo container would latch onto, having the pilot seat on the side makes more sense to not obstruct the pilot’s view.I’m also reminded of the old Harrison Ford saying “Who gives a shit?”
Its original purpose is being freighter, so it was just for shuttling cargo around and didn’t need amazing visibility. Later it got repurposed and retro-fitted with guns and stuff.
Its a freighter. The offset cockpit made for easier stern side docking.
My understanding of this is that, aside from its internal cargo, the YT1300 was designed to act as a tug that could ‘push’ much larger cargo containers that slotted between the two forks at the front (where some models already have a little cargo pod). In this mode it makes way more sense to have the little side cockpit, because a centrally mounted one couldn’t see past the containers.
This tug idea makes the most sense, since the idea of the Millenium Falcon as a cargo ship is sort of ridiculous. Its shape and size mean it has similar carrying capacity to an 18-wheeler trailer. I have trouble believing there’s any economic sense in moving cargo between planets in units that small.
In case anyone was wondering what that first ship was that they had to redesign, it was this:The original Falcon got rebuilt as Tantive IV.
What ship on Space:1999 did it look like?
Eagle One.They’re not THAT close, but the redesign ended up giving us two of the most iconic ships in cinema history, so I think they made the right choice.
Apart from the nose/cockpit there aren’t any other similarities (and I am plenty familiar with the Eagle Transporter).But, whatever…
It’s a long greebly body, the tail is just a solid bank of thrusters, and the front is a kindy pointy cockpit. I think they were being overly cautious, but I can see where they were coming from. Back in the 1970s there weren’t that many spaceships in mainstream pop culture. Why invite comparisons to another IP by having a ship that even loosely has a similar layout when you could design something totally unique?
Eh, fair enough.
Here it is over 30 years since Joe Johnston’s The Rocketeer premiered and it’s still the all-time best comic book movie.
The YT-1300 moved freight like this: