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Star Wars Celebration 2022
The best thing about Star Wars Celebration has to be the way it brings your favorite film and TV fantasies to life. Sometimes that looks like the actual John Williams coming out on stage and conducting a brand new piece of Star Wars music, and sometimes it looks like the entire cast of Obi-Wan Kenobi taking a bow after a surprise screening. But sometimes this transmogrification goes even further, revealing that what you thought was fantasy was, in fact, reality.
That’s exactly what the Mandalorian Experience does for fans. The exhibit, which was announced as a surprise during Thursday’s Lucasfilm Studio Showcase, is a celebration of the two Disney+ Star Wars shows, The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. What’s wild though is that, uh, it’s all real. Like, it’s all real. No, really. It’s all real. And it’s also really in use; Dave Filoni, co-EP on The Mandalorian, made sure to tell audiences not to touch any of this stuff because a lot of it’s gonna go right back to work on future Star Wars shows.
But yeah — it’s all real! Every costume, every mask, every prosthetic, every alien, every vehicle, every blaster, every saber — they are all on display and they are all tangible, 3D objects that have been worn/affixed to/held by actors. This isn’t a surprise, per se. The return to old school special effects has long been The Mandalorian’s point of pride. But it’s impossible to really get the scale of it, to really appreciate the amount of work involved, until you step foot into a huge room filled with life-size spaceships and Banthas and a Rancor head.
It’s also telling that, while this year’s Star Wars Celebration is big on Attack of the Clones for its 20th anniversary, there’s no such exhibit for Episode II. That film was a predominantly digital affair, and ahead of its time because of it. But the Mandalorian Experience is a major wow of a reminder that these new shows are tactile experiences — and one that I’m so glad I got to experience at Star Wars Celebration. Experience a fraction of the magic of the Mandalorian Experience with this selection of photos.
