Star Wars land gets even more awesome with the addition of life-size AT-ATs
Echo station 3-T-8, we have spotted Imperial walkers.
Disney Parks just revealed a few Yoda-sized nuggets of information about Star Wars land, coming to both Disneyland and Disney World in 2019. The major news is that AT-ATs, the four-legged armored beasts seen in Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Rogue One (2016), will be present in full-sized, laser-blasting form.
In a brief blog post, the Mouse House also confirmed a couple of details we already knew about the parks: you'll be able to pilot the Millennium Falcon and take part in a battle between the First Order and the Resistance.
"These two new immersive lands will transport guests to a never-before-seen planet, a remote trading port and one of the last stops before wild space where Star Wars characters and their stories come to life," wrote Disneyland PR director George Savvas. "Guests will find themselves in the middle of the action."
The company also dropped this video, revealing the AT-AT skeletons that are already rising above the 14-acre spaces where Star Wars Land will open in two long years.
AT-ATs, or All-Terrain Armored Transports, have been a sensation ever since audiences first witnessed them in 1980. Lucasfilm designers based them on a concept combat vehicle from General Electric: A car on legs that was intended for the army to use in the jungles of Vietnam, but was never actually built.
They were also the first Star Wars vehicles to be rendered in a revolutionary special effects process called "go motion." That's like stop motion, but with a moving, blurring effect during each click of the camera that made the AT-ATs terrifyingly realistic. (The Rogue One versions -- technically a different cargo-carrying model called AT-ACTs -- achieved the same effect through CGI.)
Just remember, your only chance of stopping them is if you use harpoons and tow cables and go for the legs.
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
