In the second of their videos on the upcoming Star Wars attraction, Madame Tussauds are revealing the sculpting process that will, eventually, give us wax likenesses of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Leia Organa. It all starts with clay and a lot of careful, deliberate modelling. Judging from Leia's hairdo in this video, they're building the Return of the Jedi version from Jabba's sail barge, the so-called "Slave Leia" look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XthSErHSRM There may be any number of Lukes, Leias and Hans in the different displays for this exhibition, but I'm wondering how many overtly alien faces we'll be seeing. Can you imagine a wax Jar Jar Binks? Some nut would be bound to vandalise that, wouldn't they? As much as I'd hope nobody would be so stupid, I've been around the block enough to be genuinely worried about that. In Madame Tussauds' previous Star Wars video we did get a look at their fake Yoda. You know, as opposed to a "real Yoda." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02mVbDwmg9Y The "wax" Darth Vader, Stormtroopers and Chewbacca will be a bit of a cheat, won't they? The new Star Wars tableau will be open to the public from May 16th. There's going to be 11 in London and 11 different ones in the Berlin branch, all the better to get Eurotripping tourists in the net not once, but twice. I won't be going anywhere near any of it - I learned everything I need to know about wax figures from horror movies, thank you very much.
Brendon Connelly has been a film writer since the early 90s, with time on the staff of Orbit Magazine, Slashfilm, Bleeding Cool, Den of Geek and many more. He's a long time teacher of film studies and practical filmmaking classes, and has directed music videos, commercials, short films and more. His favourite film is Terry Gilliam's Brazil, his favourite food is pancakes or crepes, and he tries to live his life by the teachings of Kermit the Frog.
