Author: Jason W. Ellis

Following the destruction of the Mandoralorian’s Razorcrest, one of the happy surprises in The Book of Boba Fett was Mando’s new ship–a heavily modified Naboo N-1 Starfighter featured in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. So, when the LEGO version of Mando’s new ride debuted as set 75325, I picked it up at the local Costco for about 20% off MSRP.

The Naboo Starfighter is one of the redeeming elements for me from the Star Wars prequels.

Years ago, I had the original LEGO 7141 Naboo Fighter from 1999, and I built set 10026 Special Edition Naboo Starfighter in 2002 as seen in the photo of my bookcase from that era above. The chromed parts made this an excellent build. If only it had been designed for minifigures!

Later, I got to see a life-size Naboo fighter at the Star Wars Exhibition in London in 2007. It was the exhibit’s centerpiece in the display space adjacent to the London Aquarium and the London Eye. Being in the same space made the starfighter seem real. It’s design detail evoked the craftsmanship of a Howard Hughes hand-built race plane. It was extraordinary to behold!

When I first assembled Mando’s modified N-1 LEGO set, I was impressed with its greebling details to the engine nacells and overall design. While there are limitations to the overall smoothness at the scale used for this set, it captures important details that mark it as an inspired model based on what we see on the screen.

The thing about the Naboo Fighter is that it deserves to be swooshed. It’s design implies motion and speed. It was that feeling about what the design inspires that pushed me to design and build a stand for it.

This presented some challenges, because Mando’s N-1 is larger than the 10026 set, which came with a display stand. The 75325 set is bigger than that set, which also implies that it is heavier. Using a rotational click ring supported by Technic beams does not provide enough friction to maintain the model in the orientation desired. I devised a secondary support arm with a 2×2 turntable plate to prevent the weight of the model from changing the desired orientation of the model.

In the photos above, you can get a sense of how to build a similar model display using Technic and other LEGO bricks.

I think the displayed version of the set brings the excitement and joy that Mando and Grogru feel when they open up the sublight thrusters!

While I have enjoyed reading Marvel comics for as long as I can remember, I have loved the Marvel Cinematic Universe films that brought together Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man to ultimately battle (two temporal versions) of Thanos with the gravitas and realism of live-action, moving pictures. This is probably because my deep love of Science Fiction is rooted in film and my memory of seeing the Millennium Falcon swoop and dive among the asteroids in a televised trailer for The Empire Strikes Back while watching television on my family’s console TV in Hortense, Georgia.

After visiting my parents in Georgia over the summer, one of the first things that I did when I was back in Brooklyn was to begin constructing this My Own Creation (MOC). Perhaps it was because I had rewatched some of the MCU films or because I picked up LEGO’s 76192 Avengers End Game Final Battle set.

I built this MOC to capture the essence of the End Game battle but not as an accurate rendition of the beginning of that fight. Instead, I wanted to depict the essence of the confrontation akin to a movie poster or comic book cover.

As with most of my MOCs, I built one version that I put aside for some months and returned to later.

In the photos below, you can see that it began with a tan/light wood simulated base beneath a dark gray dais with curved corners. I positioned the heroes in a sweeping action with the villain facing them from the corner. The configuration implied action and energy. But, the positioning placed the heroes’ backs toward the viewer and the clear support rods cut through the scene.

In the photo at the top of the post and in the photos below, you can see the second iteration of my MOC. About a week ago, I decided to return to the MOC after letting it rest on a bookshelf opposite my work area in our living room. My first concern was flipping the scene so that the villain’s back faces the audience and the heroes faces can be seen clearly from the front. This required a re-engineering of the Technic pin with ball joint assembly. Instead of having them project from bricks, I embedded the pins in the floor of the scene and I used Thanos’ body to obscure where the pins protrude from the ground. This also allowed for a more dramatic triangular positioning of the heroes so that they are focused toward a single point terminating at the figure of Thanos. Another reevaluation was with Thanos’ minifigure and weapon. In the first iteration, I used the newer Thanos minifigure from the 76192 set and a scaled down double sword weapon. In the revised version, I opted to use the minifigure from 76107 Thanos: Ultimate Battle equipped with the jewel-encrusted Infinity Gauntlet. Finally, I constructed a broken wall in the back of the scene to provide a backdrop and I built it with a tapering and cupped shape to envelop the scene and draw the eye back to the colorful figures of action in the scene.

While I have more ideas about how to further iterate this MOC, I’m happy with its current configuration. I’ll sit it on the bookshelf to look at it and let its presence feed into the percolating design ideas that might lead to a future revision.