Brussels: What the fuck?: Part I

Last Saturday my friend Nick and I finally made our long discussed trip to Brussels, Belgium for the sole purpose of visiting a Star Wars exhibit being hosted in the city. We didn’t really know what to expect before we left; the exhibition’s website promised hundreds of props and something called “Jedi School,” but visiting that website, along with its less-than-helpful directions to the exhibit, was the extent of my research for the trip. We left for Centraal with a vague idea how to get from the train station in Brussels to the exposition but little else.

The train ride from Amsterdam to Brussels was uneventful. We discussed Kubrick for a little while, and knowing us, Pavement and Radiohead probably came up once or twice. The conductor looked at my ticket for a long time after stamping it, as though she had noticed something wrong with it after the fact. She asked a question to the conductor checking tickets further down the aisle, and they debated for a little while. Eventually she wrote something on my ticket and handed it back to me without an explanation. My assumption is that she just stamped it in the wrong place and then had to figure out how to fix her problem, but that’s just a guess.

As we neared Brussels about two and a half hours later, we noticed what appeared to be a gigantic chrome sphere off in the distance, and we decided that if we had extra time we would venture toward this unknown structure. Out of the train station, we glanced at a nearby map of the city. I found the street where the exhibition was being held, at a venue called Tours & Taxis. It seemed like an odd place for a Star Wars exhibit, but who was I to question Belgium? We knew we had to walk west to the river to find Tours & Taxis, and by figuring out what direction our train entered the station from (north) we set off on what we believed to be a western direction.

After walking up a long hill into what appeared to be a predominantly Turkish neighborhood, I thought we had to be close. The road in front of up began to slope downward, which indicated to me that we were coming up on a riverbed. At the bottom of the slope with no river in sight, we decided we should probably check another map, which, after some serious investigative work to determine which bus stop we were standing at, informed us that we had been walking east for the past twenty or so minutes. Since we were at a bus stop we figured we could just take the next bus back to the train station We only had €4 or so between us in change, which we figured would be more than enough for two bus tickets, but we were informed by the driver on the next bus that a single ticket was €4, so we decided our best bet was to just walk back in the other direction.

Arriving back at the station, set out again in a direction that we were almost certain was west. Before too much time had passed, we quickly found the river, and from there, it was a quick journey to find the nearest bridge to cross at, after which we found ourselves right in front of Tours & Taxis. There seemed to be some sort of carnival going on in the parking lot but we were undistracted and walked right in. Immediately we were greeted with a life-size Naboo N-1 starfighter. [quick note: Nick's account of the Star Wars exhibit can be found at his website The Bygone Bureau. I suggest you check it out, he's much more professional than I am here] I snapped a few pictures, but was cast into a brief dour mood as the model of Anakin Skywalker sitting inside the cockpit served only to remind me of Jake Lloyd’s unimpressive contribution to the Star Wars saga.

As I walked through the early exhibits, which were focused almost exclusively on the prequel trilogy, a couple of thoughts struck me. First of all, I was reminded how, by and large, George Lucas got a lot worse at naming things between trilogies. Tatooine, Hoth, Endor: those are bad ass names for planets. For some reason, Naboo, Mustafar and Utapau just don’t have the same gravity. Same with characters: Qui-Gon Jinn doesn’t have same weight as Obi-Wan Kenobi just as Jar-Jar Binks doesn’t ring with the same otherworldly cool as Chewbacca. I’ve heard that George Lucas’s son came up with the name Jar-Jar Binks, which I guess only makes sense coming from a four year old kid named Jett. I was surprised and heartened to see no mention nor any props relating to Jar-Jar. I guess part of that may have to do with the fact that he was a completely computer generated creation, but even Watto was represented by numerous preproduction models and sketches. I guess it just goes to show that LucasFilm is responding to fan backlash against Jar-Jar, much like they did as the prequel trilogy progressed (I don’t think he had a single line in Revenge of the Sith.

The second thing I noticed, and this may seem obvious for anybody who had seen the films, but to me it appeared that the rooms devoted to the prequels were dominated by costumes more so than any props or models. Sure, there was the life-size Naboo starfighter and Anakin’s podracer, but there didn’t seem to be as many models or miniatures. On the other hand, there were about eight different versions of Queen Amidala’s gowns. Maybe it was just a coincidence, maybe it was because the prequel trilogy’s costumes are much more ornate than the original trilogy’s (whether this is a good thing or not is debatable), but I’d be willing to be it’s because there simply weren’t very many props or models made for the prequels because everything was animated on a computer. Or maybe I’m just making this entire thing up and there were just as many miniatures devoted to the PT as the OT, but I don’t think so.

The room devoted to the original three films, on the other hand, were glorious. Models of AT-ATs, TIE Interceptors, A-Wings, B-Wings, the Snow Speeders, a life-size Speeder Bike, Leia’s gold bikini, Boba Fett’s armor, Han in Carbonite, the Wampa puppet, an Ewok; what more could I possibly want? I went from display to display snapping pictures at each, geeking out for the entire time. It was great seeing little kids run around the exhibit, screaming “Hoth! Hoth!” in their little French accents, a level of enthusiasm I don’t think I detected in the prequel rooms. We soon came to the final room, the room where they collected all the props related to the Empire, and there, greeting us as we walked in, was the enormous Darth Vader costume. It was easily seven feet tall and looked just as badass in person as on screen, a tough feat when so much, even back in the ’70s, was faked to make it look good on screen. Right beside the full costume was Vader’s helmet, opened up into the two pieces seen when Luke removes his helmet at the end of Return of the Jedi. The detail was amazing. I thought that was probably the coolest prop in the entire exhibit, apart from Leia’s bikini, of course.

After leaving the Imperial room, Nick and I briefly checked out the gift shop. I had been worried beforehand that I would spend waaay too much money there, but although they had some pretty cool action figures, there wasn’t really anything that I felt I had to own. Ever since my pewter lightsaber keychain that’s I’ve had since high school broke last fall I’ve been looking for a replacement, but the only keychains the gift shop had were of bulky character busts–not at all what I was looking for. There was a pretty sweet model of Jango Fett made of Legos, however.

Outside of the gift shop was a long hallway filled with displays from Art Vader. It was just 56 Darth Vader helmet decorated primarily by artists from Belgium, but with a couple Dutch and Luxembourgian(?) artists thrown in for good measure. The masks ran the gamut from grotesque and slightly terrifying to warm and fuzzy to pretty freakin’ funny. My favorite was pretty easily a Lucha Libre Vader helmet, because it was so simple yet effective at the same time. One of the artists has actually contacted me after seeing my pictures on Flickr, which is kind of cool. His design turned Vader’s mask into a football helmet, which is clever, I suppose. His helmet can be seen here.

That’s about it for Star Wars: The Exhibition. I was originally going to post my entire Belgian experience into one long post, but there’s been a bit of whining about my recent lack of posting, so I felt I should probably go ahead and put whatever I had up. Check back in the future for the exciting conclusion, in which Nick and I venture to find the mysterious chrome spheres off the in distance.