Star Wars Build Your Own X-Wing
Luke Skywalker’s Legendary Starfighter. Inspired by the movie props from A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back! This iconic spacecraft, instrumental in the destruction of the evil Empire’s planet-destroying Death Star, has now been recreated in stunning detail.
All elements are accurately reproduced from blueprints provided by Lucasfilm Ltd. From the remote activated working lights, motorised s-foils, removable hyper drive, opening cockpit to a highly detailed R2-D2 miniature – all details are captured in metal and high quality ABS plastic.
This is a fabulous model for any Star Wars fan – and comes with an assembly guide and magazine full of fascinating facts.
DeAgostini bring us their latest release, following hot on the heels of their magnificent Build R2-D2 series which gave readers a chance to construct their own controllable astromech, and once again – like we did with the brilliant and award-winning Build The Millennium Falcon – we head for the stars as this time round you can build your very own X-Wing. While the marketing focus of these partwork releases is the building of the model, here on the site we’re going to hone in on the accompanying magazine while Fantha Tracks TV will in time look at the model build.
When you first think of the X-Wing you could be forgiven for only thinking about the work of ILM, or the designs of Ralph McQuarrie, but there’s far more to this iconic vehicle than that as this magazine does and will delve into over the coming months. Utilising a different layout to previous partworks, there’s a fresh and clean design that gives the images and text room to breath which puts the focus very much on the writing, allowing us to learn even more about the ship and its creation.
Issue one is broken into three distinct sections. The first – Creating A Starship Fleet – looks at Ralph McQuarrie, from his birth in Gary, Indiana (the same town as Michael Jackson, random fact fans) his time with Boeing, his work for NASA and then his time working for George Lucas, investigating the timeline of his work for Lucasfilm on A New Hope and noting that the design he presented for the original film was revived in the form of the T-70 X-Wing in The Force Awakens decades later.
The second section is Starfighter Aces, and the first issue hones in on Luke Skywalker. A New Hope saw him destroy the Death Star at the climax of the film, but we learned more about his abilities during the film than we perhaps realize. His love of his T-16 Skyhopper showed his proclivity for flying – something the EU expanded upon greatly back in the day – and was also a smart introduction to the controls of the T-65. His time in the gunning position of the Millennium Falcon showed his quick reactions, while the remainder of the piece looks at his first time in an X-Wing cockpit.
The final section – Build The X-Wing – looks at the physical build of the X-Wing model, walking you through the various steps of putting the craft together week by week, and this carefully describes the build process for the back half of the magazine. Folks buying Build The X-Wing purely for the model will be thrilled, as the constituent parts are clearly high quality and will provide a very satisfying project for those keen to make their own starfighter, but people looking for information on the creation and design of the vessel for the films and its in-universe reality will be keen for future issues, knowing the creatives involved – Cantwell, Johnston, the ILM model makers – and the legendary stories behind the vessel. After all, what other starfighter can lay claim to blowing up two Death Stars and Starkiller Base?
