So I FINALLY made it down to Philadelphia on April 23rd to see the Star Wars exhibit at the Franklin Institute. It was a dream come true to THIS fan of the Star Wars movies!!
I'd like to give a quick thanks to Cheryl from H.R.C.C. and Alan & Alice at the DoubleTree Hotel Philadelphia - Broad & Locust streets for making this all possible. Thanks again to you all!! :)
I was a little bored driving the 2 hrs to Philly. so I took some pics of my drive down - hope you don't mind. The museum pics are in reverse order, so the ones at the bottom of the album are the 1st ones. Just please be aware that some of the pics are good while others may not be. Some I used the flash & they came good; others the flash was a bad idea. Still others I used the "museum" setting on my Nikon to grab the lighting of the exhibits themselves; often it caught the light from a nearby exhibit or the one behind me. I apologize up front for this, but hey -- I'll take what I have!!
The exhibit was fairly decent size, and since part of the Franklin Institute is geared toward children, they had a dozen exhibits in the specifically towards children - which I though was a neat idea. Everything from explaining how some of the droids worked, to how the "movie technology" related to modern technology (e.g. - how the Land Speeder's levitation related to Hovercrafts and Maglev Trains). So I had to take pictures, and quite often move out of the way of the 2 or 3 field trips there, and come back in a few minutes to actually read what was there.
I could not get over the fact of the size of some of the models!! I kid you not that the "Millennium Falcon" model was at least 4 feet across!! It was the original model from Episode IV: A New Hope. Because of it's size, it didn't "move" much in the movie, and that's why smaller models were created for later movies.
Another example from Episode IV: A New Hope was the opening sequence between the Rebel Blockade Runner and the Imperial Star Destroyer. We are led to believe that the Start Destroyer was at least 10 - 15 times as big as the Blockade Runner. However, in real life, the Blockade Runner was a staggering 4 - 4.5 ft. in length, while the Star Destroyer was a mere 2.5 - 3 ft in length!! It's amazing what they did with the filming of the movies.
I could not believe all the movie articles they had in this exhibit -- I was surely impressed by the magnitude of it all, and all the various costumes, props, etc. that were present from the movie. I only spent 2 hrs in the entire exhibit, but to me it was 2 hrs well worth spent.
Well, I will let you enjoy the pictures for yourself. If you're interested in seeing it, hurry -- it's only in until Sun. May 04. If you want more info, check out the museum's webpage:
Star Wars - Franklin Institute
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU - ALWAYS!!
