LEGO Star Wars 75389 The Dark Falcon makes one major structural change from previous Millennium Falcons, and it’s all thanks to LEGO.com reviews.
75389 The Dark Falcon reimagines Han Solo’s ship with a menacing new colour scheme for the upcoming Disney+ special Rebuild the Galaxy, and follows five years on from the previous Millennium Falcon released alongside The Rise of Skywalker. But as we’ve already picked up on in our detailed review, this new version doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. And it turns out there’s a good reason for that.
“We wanted to keep most of the features from the last one, because it has been quite successful in terms of play features and the way it looks and all that,” LEGO Star Wars Senior Model Designer César Soares tells Brick Fanatics. “We wanted to keep most of it – apart from the colour, obviously. And the interior, because the interior had to be redesigned a little bit to accommodate the storyline of the TV show.”
75257 Millennium Falcon is actually still on shelves right now, which is surely all the proof you need that this is one LEGO Star Wars model that has continued to sell like gangbusters. The LEGO Group is on the verge of cycling through three different X-wings during its lifespan, but has never felt the need to update the Falcon – even while the Rise of Skywalker version includes sequel trilogy rather than original trilogy characters.
That’s perhaps partly because the 2019 freighter represents the pinnacle of LEGO Millennium Falcon design at this scale – the gaps around the panels are finally closed (as much as possible), for one thing – and introducing a new version with only a change in minifigures (and radar dish) might have felt superfluous. But the Rebuild the Galaxy special has now given the LEGO Star Wars team the chance to do something a little different.
We say ‘a little’ because at face value, the only thing that’s really changed from 75257 Millennium Falcon in 75389 The Dark Falcon is its colour scheme, shifting from grey, dark grey and more grey to black, dark red and trans-red. When you come to put the model together yourself though, you’ll spot one surprising structural change to the way the Falcon comes together.
Where each of the panels across the top of the ship were previously attached using a couple of clips, they’re now anchored to the hull using a single clip and two 1x1 plates with hole attachments – one on the panel, and one on the hull – through which you’ll slide a bar to lock them in place. It’s a tiny bit of extra stability to really refine 75257 Millennium Falcon, which was originally designed by César. But the prompt to make that change didn’t come from the design team internally.
“I remember being called out for one of the meetings where we go through and build the model, because I was part of the previous [Falcon], and we wanted to tackle some of the things that could be better,” César explains. “We went to the NPS score, and the comments we have from people on LEGO.com, and we tried to look to see if there were any specific issues that could be improved.
“One of them actually was the big panels that open, they are better locked now using a different set of elements. One of the things that we discovered was that because the panels were so big, and kids usually aren’t very careful with the model so they open it up too quickly or a bit too rashly, they would pop off. So we tried to tackle that problem and a couple more things.
“We always do that, every time we have something that's being redone, we go and see the reviews and see what we can do better. But also very important is the feedback from the kids, right? And many times kids leave comments on LEGO.com and it's really helpful.”
75389 The Dark Falcon is
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