It’s probably a slow day for LEGO news or I’ve been watching too many reruns of The Force Awakens and Rogue One since they hit the iTunes store, either way, you get to be entertained by this curiosity of mine. I’ve always wondered how accurate is the 10179 in terms of overall shape to the movie Millennium Falcon.
Granted we all know (and Starwars.com) has confirmed that Han Solo is always tinkering the MF and you’ll probably see some differences here and there, but let’s use what we can find reliably to get a general feel. It’s quite hard to find a top view and clear image of the ships in both form, but nothing a little googling can’t help with.
Let’s get to the breakdown of the comparison. Before we head to that, i’ve used the baseline comparison as the centre of the circle where the quad laser cannon is hosted as the reference point to scale the outlines. LEGO on the left, MOVIE on the right (you didn't need me to tell you that, did you?)
Comparison
The overall shape of the ship is pretty impressive (Yellow Outline), I would say with over 5000 pieces of LEGO they’ve got it get it right, else it would be a bit disappointing. Few areas that I felt were short are:
Concussion missiles storage area which is slightly shorter (Deep Blue Line)
Bottom area, rear thrusters / Drive Units is slightly off in shape
Placement of the equipment access bay (4 black circles at the top) is off by a bit
Placement of the Radar Dish is slightly off
The heat exhaust vents are larger and start out right, but due to the size, it starts to drift off but a huge amount
The cockpit could have been slightly longer
I’m impressed with the angle of the walkway to the cockpit (Orange Line) which starts off at the centre of the quad laser cannon accurately and ends at the bend
Last but not least look at the reddish bricks on the LEGO Falcon, they’re accurately placed as the highlights exactly where the movie parts! Now you really know how much attention they’ve paid to honor the Millennium Falcon.
Overall, I think it’s a superb effort from The LEGO Group and their designers. We bunch of AHOLES, I mean AFOLS... are quite particular (or perhaps just me?) and glad to see this level of care and detail.
With the upcoming rumoured re-release, let’s hope that things only get better as the part count increases and design as the treatment tweaks to the UCS Snowspeeder on improvements.
You didn’t come here for this part
(but Important Stuff for me to credit and other cool bits if you wish)
I used the reference image from the Simon & Schuster book. I would assume that a credible book publisher would have to go thru the gods at Lucasfilm to get it all done and right. Here’s the book reference and here’s the image which I cropped from.
The wonderful and clean and clear photos by Stick Kim of the top view of the 10179 (which is quite rare out there) You should check out his other photos at Flickr. Really good stuff, including his smaller sized MOC of the MF. My favourite is actually this one below!
Since you’re here and so patient and ACTUALLY READ STUFF, bravo! Here’s a bonus for you. Yes, I'm like going to the movies, wait for the credit to roll, and you get good stuff! :-) Comparison of the LEGO 71015 Millennium Falcon with the movie model by Caine Scheider. Click here.
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