The X-wing is one of the most recognizable vehicles in sci-fi history. Some might argue that the Millennium Falcon is more iconic, but regardless of your stance, these ships wouldn’t be sci-fi icons if it weren’t for their designers and, more importantly, the muses they used. In the X-wing’s case, the designer, Colin Cantwell, took inspiration from a surprisingly mundane source: a British pub.
Several years ago, Cantwell started an AMA thread on Reddit, and one of the first questions asked what inspired the X-wing’s design. He said that it had to be “ultracool and different from all the other associations with Aircraft,” but the inciting idea was a simple dart thrown at a target in a British pub. From there, he iterated on the design. One version had a much bigger wing-to-nosecone ratio, but he eventually settled on the vehicle everyone knows and loves.
Cantwell didn’t stop at just the X-wing’s iconic shape; he was also the driving force behind the ship’s functions, most notably its signature folding wings. Instead of drawing from more popular British pastimes, Cantwell took inspiration from Wild West gunslingers of yore. He wanted the ship to “draw its guns like in a Western,” and the rest is sci-fi movie history.
It takes a village to design a starship
Colin Cantwell has a lot of credits to his name. He also designed the Y-Wing, TIE fighter, and Star Destroyer for “Star Wars,” and he worked on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (an incredible movie you need to see). He even paved the way for modern OLED computer monitors by working on a program to give Hewlett-Packard screens more display colors. But there are other visionaries who helped bring ships like the X-wing to life.
One of the biggest guiding forces attached to “Star Wars” — aside from George Lucas, that is — was the legendary artist Ralph McQuarrie. He translated many of Lucas’ descriptions into paintings that served as storyboards and a visual bible. However, when it came to the vehicles, he mostly refined Cantwell’s ideas. The other big name was art director Joe Johnston, who oversaw visual effects. Johnston took Cantwell’s designs and made subtle changes based on what the special effects team needed for filming.
While many of Cantwell’s ideas survived moving to the big screen mostly intact, some had to undergo serious changes. For instance, Cantwell came up with the original concept of the Millennium Falcon, which was later used as the blockade runner ship that a Star Destroyer attacks in “Episode IV: A New Hope’s” opening scene. However, you can still see echoes of Cantwell’s original design in the final Millennium Falcon’s design. While Johnston is credited for creating Han Solo’s iconic ship, the original cockpit Cantwell designed for his vision was recycled for the Millennium Falcon that made it to film.
