Attakus Diorama – Complete Saga
While away for the holidays my fiancee and I suddenly felt a disturbance in the force — a harsh spike on our credit card that suddenly maxed us out. Which could mean only one thing — One of our Star Wars preorders had gone through!
On January 3rd, the morning after my return to L.A., I headed straight to the Entertainment Earth warehouse to claim my booty.
This long-awaited piece is a diorama that features a cross-section of the Millennium Falcon, set in the Death Star Hangar. The set comes in three separate pieces: The hangar floor, the corridor where Vader duels Obi-Wan, and the Falcon itself. You can learn about this sculpt by going HERE.
The set is made entirely of sculpted and hand-painted resin. The figures (which I bought separately months earlier) are hand-painted pewter.
Behold the first installment of me opening up this massive monolith of geekdom. Watch in fear as I finally go off the deep end of star wars collecting!!!
DAY ONE:
Arriving at Entertainment Earth in North Hollywood, a place where Seth and a few pals used to go to root around for figures.
I had the diorama ordered for pickup, which saved a few hundred bucks on shipping.
Before going inside I called Arnie and Marjorie at Star Wars Action News, since I love their podcast and thought they might be interested to know I was standing in the parking lot of the warehouse they no doubt order from all the time. 
Seth knew these guys back when they were working out of a tiny garage.
The warehouse is now immense. Nice fellas there, who brought out my boxes on a giant dolly.
You’ll see three boxes – the falcon (on it’s side, far right) the death star corridor (fatter box) and the death star hangar (flat box). I was totally overwhelmed at the sight. It was much bigger than I’d expected.
We wedged the boxes in tight and had to open one of the shipping boxes to narrowly fit the last box (the death star plinith) into place…
I sat, mouth agape as the boxes barely fit into my car.
My “spaceship” had traveled from galaxies far, far away…
The longest of the three boxes was so immense, I hurt my arm dragging it into the house. Note the IPOD on top to give you a sense of scale…
Only 400 of these babies have been made and mine is number 138.
The outer layer was actually a shipping carton that I tore away and discarded. Opening the inner box revealed styrofoam packing. I nearly jumped back when I lifted the first piece out…
HOLY CRAP was this thing gonna be huge. I really wasn’t prepared for the scale. The only time I’d ever seen a model this big was at a Star Wars convention.
It’s almost as long as my dining room table and remember, this is only HALF of the entire diorama!
The falcon is lying upside down. Note the bottom of the cockpit in the upper right and the landing gear in the lower left. Sticking up from the middle is the boarding ramp. No way I could lift this myself.
Again, I placed the IPOD to give you some idea of how big this monster is.
The next day me pallie Matthew arrived and we decided to extract the falcon from its tomb:
We carefully lifted the box by the styrofoam and tilted the falcon right-side-up onto the dining table.
Kid in a candy store:
The cockpit canopy came off to reveal immense detail inside. Not sure how it compares to that of the STUDIO SCALE FALCON made
by Master Replicas.
Arnie at Star Wars Action News will be reviewing his signed edition at his website.
A full cross section of the entire piece.
A closer look at the interior. The detail is drool-worthy. No holograms on the Dejarik table though
That hallway in the picture above ACTUALLY connects to the bridge:
It’s just about an arm’s length from the cargo bay!
Included were a bunch of bins and props from the Death Star, including three MOUSE DROIDS (not pictured)
MORE PICS, TAKEN WITH SOME ACTION FIGURES:
Wide view of the left side:
Top view of left side front:
Top view of left side rear:
Figures shown are Attakus Metal Collection Stormtroopers, made of pewter. Apparently the entire diorama was based on the scale of these figures (specifically Vader, who I will reveal when I open the death star corridor).
Han and Chewie are Hasbro figures (Chewie is early bird version and Han is Trilogy Edition). They blend pretty well and are only slightly taller than the Attakus figures.
Closeup of the carbon scoring from laser blasts on the hull:
Side view of right side (cross-section of interior):
Long view of cross-section:
Shown here are the Metal Collection versions of R2 and Threepio, along with the Habro Early Bird Leia (who I think was just repacked in the Episode IV tin collection).
Again, scale is pretty close. Many of the Attakus prototype pictures show Metal Collection versions of Han, Leia and Luke (in stormtrooper gear) but they have not yet been made available.
I’m hoping I might find one of these when I open my other boxes…
A stitch in time (a long time ago, to be precise):
Detail on the seats and rear wall:
The cargo bay, with Early Bird Luke looking fairly dazed by my flashbulb.
Prepare to be boarded !!!
Hey everyone! It’s Boulie from DRIVING MISS DAISY! Anyone seen Hoke??
Another scene for the extra-special edition:
Strangepork, we hardly knew ye:
Matthew says what we’re all feeling:
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!!!
TWO MORE BOXES REMAIN:
The top-most box was the “plinth,” a section of flooring from the death star hangar, shown here packed upside-down:
Quite a weight on the sucker – none of these items are manageable by one person. The resin is heavy and the scale is cumbersome. The bottom of the plinth is covered in a soft velvet to prevent scratching of table surface:
Next, placing the falcon cross-section on the flooring:
Then onto the third and final box, which opened to reveal the Death Star Corridor, also packed upside-down. Why, I have no idea:
We had to carefully tilt the box to allow the weight of the model to pull the styrofoam free. This is probably the heaviest piece of the three.
Since the corridor has flooring attached, it matches up with the plinith to create the illusion of a complete hangar:
Like the falcon, the corridor has something to look at on all sides, making placement against a wall an inconvenient method for display. Shown here, a little alcove for R2 and 3PO, just in case anyone should get caught in a trash compactor…
There is an open section in the middle where Vader and Obi-Wan duel. On the opposite side you can see the hallway where Han and Chewie run from the stormtroopers, a good place to put a mouse droid or two. (Shown at bottom corner of final image, scroll down)
As with the falcon set, there were additional items packed within the corridor set. These were revealed to be MORE miscellaneous boxes, to decorate both the hangar bay and the cargo area of the falcon.
This was my first and only disappointment — WHERE THE HELL WAS LUKE? A Metal Collection version of Luke (in stormtrooper gear) was supposed to be included with the corridor!!!
My fiancee read the description on Entertainment Earth’s website, which states that “Mail-away certificates for Luke and Mouse Droids” should be included. Well, the mouse droids were actually included with the Falcon, and there were no certificates (or paperwork of any kind) included in any of these boxes.
So looks like tomorrow I’m calling customer service.
Ah, well — There is no light, without dark. ;(
Metal Collection Vader, Obi and Troopers are placed:
Hasbro figures are placed at the boarding ramp. I love how the Trilogy Collection version of Han is perfectly sculpted to hold onto the ramp hydraulics. So cool!
A few more angles:
The circle is now complete!!
———————————————————————————————-
So there you have it. The word “awesome” is often over-used, but it really does apply here. No picture can show just what it’s like to try and lift one of these pieces, or how intimidating the scale is, especially on a dining room table. It’s both the prize of my collection and something of an albatross at the same time.
The craftsmanship and scale are epic. It’s truly amazing work. My only complaint, an apparent lack of any display plate or certificate of authenticity to state the limited edition number! (So far my only proof is what’s been hand-printed on the box).
Truly, it is the elephant in the room:
For all my glee, I also feel kind of like I’ve shot some really amazing heroin, and have now woken up in an alleyway smelling of my own excrement and realizing – “This (addiction) has gotta stop…”
So this is my way of celebrating 30 years of Star Wars. Special thanks to my fiancee Christa (who not only approved of this purchase but actually made it herself), my buddy Matthew who shares my love of galaxies far, far away, and any of you at Entertainment Geekly, the SWAN forums or Force.net that cared enough to check out these links and reply to them.
I DID AN AUDIO REVIEW OF THIS DIORAMA IN EPISODE #73 of
(“Now THIS is Podcasting!”)
See you at Celebration!
GregTheWookiee
Author
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