ORLANDO, Fla. — You could say a giant movie star of sorts has arrived at the famous Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Margaret Weitekamp, a Smithsonian curator who normally handles space-related pop culture items, like a “Neil Armstrong For President” button or action figures, hadn’t worked with something so big before — a full-size X-wing Starfighter with a 37-foot wingspan used as a prop in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”
The movie’s production company, Lucasfilm, shipped the X-wing, taken apart in about a half-dozen large pieces. The wings were off, and the pieces laid out in a Virginia complex for the Smithsonian crew to start cleaning it before it gets reassembled and publicly displayed next year at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
“After any long trip, you would want to get cleaned up,” Weitekamp said.
Seeing the X-wing up close for the first time this month, Weitekamp noticed all the little details, like one spot that looked a little beat-up. She could see scrapes. Was that “hangar rash?” on the side, she wondered.
But then, Weitekamp learned quickly it was part of the original paint job since the X-wing wasn’t meant to look pristine in the movie. It had been in a few close call calls while flown by Resistance commander Poe Dameron (played by Oscar Isaac).
“That kind of detail is a wonderful thing to get to see up close and then, you make a note of, ‘OK, we’ll make sure we leave that alone. That’s not something we’re trying to fix,’” Weitekamp said.
News over the Smithsonian’s exhibit broke last week on May 4, which Star Wars fans know as “May the Fourth Be With You” day.
It was the culmination of an idea that began in 2019 when Weitekamp and her family sat a row over from a Smithsonian executive at the premiere of the latest “Star Wars” movie.
By the time Weitekamp got home close to midnight, the email was already in her inbox: What could the Smithsonian do to capitalize on the excitement?
The phone calls with Lucasfilm began.
For Weitekamp, who grew up watching the original “Star Wars” in the theater and playing with the movie action figures with the neighborhood kids in rural Pennsylvania, she felt the excitement.
The nearly 20-year Smithsonian veteran joked her “day-to-day job” fails to impress her kids anymore. “But the idea that I have to be off on a call with Lucasfilm. ... This is one of the moments where my kids think I’m cool,” she said.
Weitekamp also knew it was going to be a tough ask.
“This is a big complicated request because those kinds of screen-use vehicles are not easily available,” Weitekamp said. “Lucasfilm is rightly very careful about how they work with those assets as an active film company.”
Going in Weitekamp’s favor, the Smithsonian and Lucasfilm have a long history working together, including a Star Wars exhibit from 1997 that was one of the Smithsonian’s most popular attractions displaying costumes and other movie props, she said.
Lucasfilm did not return a request for comment for this story.
Walt Disney Co. bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012. Since then, Disney has opened Star Wars-themed expansions at Disney World and Disneyland where you can see an X-wing fighter parked in the lands.
In the movies, the fictional plane features an X-shaped attack formation made famous when Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star in the original 1977 film.
The two sides reached an agreement with Lucasfilm agreeing to loan the prop for free on a long-term basis. Because of the pandemic, Lucasfilm explained the logistics of the X-wing and reassembling it back together over video conferencing.
Finally, earlier this month, Weitekamp saw the plane for the first time and admired the X-wing’s detail from top to bottom. The X-wing was filmed in ground shots, Weitekamp said.
“This is a really well-detailed vehicle on all sides of it, and that is not always the case for movie props. Very often, if they know that some piece of something is going to be away from camera, then they don’t bother to make the decorating completely symmetrical if they know it’ll be out of view,” Weitekamp said. “So this is a rare, wonderful example of really the fully realized vehicle where it is detailed on all sides.”
The fictional starfighter will hang in a museum that already displays famous historical aircrafts from space travel to the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
“The museum has long had an interest in the themes of inspiration and imagination,” Weitekamp said.
To see the X-wing paired along with real aircraft “allows people to think about the creativity of design that we see in the Star Wars universe, and then the creativity of design that we see going into the very latest aerospace builds for actual spacecraft and actual new airplanes,” she added.
