Gallery: Let's All Nerd Out About Our Millennium Falcon Star Wars Cover
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic01WI1215-coverspread-1800px-ADJ-RGB-nofade
Image not big enough for you? We've got more sumptuous close-ups than you can shake a Tusken Raider's gaffi stick at it. Click on.
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic02cockpit
And there's that beautiful cockpit, only visible from the right. Who's piloting it, though? We'll never tell.
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic03dish
Battle scars are battle scars: The *Falcon*'s round radar dish got knocked off in *Jedi*, but decades later it's been replaced by a new...blockier model. We won't even begin to guess how many credits that repair cost.
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic04angle
TIE Fighters shoot green, the *Falcon* shoots red; that's to make parsing the dogfights easier. But that top-mounted quad cannon isn't firing, so where's the—hey, there's a cannon on the bottom, too! Nice work, guys.
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic05redstripe
According to the LEGO sets, the red stripe means this is a First Order Special Forces TIE Fighter. It's also a two-seater, and we're guessing maybe has a Jacuzzi tub?
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic06explosion
Even with their colors reversed, TIE Fighters still blow up real good. And that VFX work is nothing to sneeze at, either.
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic07detail3
No ship is indestructible, as the downed Star Destroyer can attest. But that doesn't mean we don't like looking at the carnage.
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic08detail
Who's in the mood for some more wreckage? Yeah, us too.
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic09detail2
Wait, so *how* long ago did this happen? Just seems like kind of a lot of sand, you know?
Art by the team at Industrial Light and Magic10jingo
Every issue of WIRED has what we call a "jingo"—an in-joke or Easter egg that pertains to the cover story. Bay 327 is where the *Millennium Falcon* docked on the Death Star in *Star Wars*; when an Imperial controller granted clearance, he uttered these fateful words.
