There’s tired and then there’s post Star Wars Celebration tired! Four days is possibly far too much Star Wars for most people. Much fun was had though in amongst the queues and whooping at screens. It took over a week to get through the photos, the swag and recover from the dreaded ‘con crud’.
This was my third Celebration and it was a strange mix of being the biggest one yet but the one that had the least for people to do. Once you had covered the two main halls with stands and fan displays, and the Celebration shop there wasn’t much else except to hang around the live stage. There was an interesting schedule of talks ranging from small fan led sessions to the major panels and we tried to get to a few where we could. We were fortunate to get lottery tickets to the Lucasfilm Showcase on the first day – though even that was from a livestream in the next biggest hall, the Galaxy Stage, rather than the Celebration Stage.
The Lucasfilm Showcase was a great start to the four days, we were bombarded with new series trailers and film announcements. My husband had hoped for an appearance by Harrison Ford to promote the new Indiana Jones film, but sadly he wasn’t there. We did get the fabulous new trailer and an exclusive 6 min minute clip from the middle of the film. All looking good so far! We also got a wristband that allowed us to return later in the day to attend an early screening of the penultimate episode of the Mandalorian – now that was a cracking episode to enjoy on the big screen with a live audience. But then we had to keep quiet so as not to spoil it for anyone – that was hard!
The Lucasfilm Showcase clashed with a talk that I really would have liked to go to “Star Wars Tourism: Visiting the Galaxy Far, Far Away on Earth”, it sounded quite up my street. We did get to attend a talk called ‘Built in Britain: The Making of the Millennium Falcon’. We almost didn’t get into the University Stage as it was so popular, the room was already full before its scheduled start time. We got to squeeze in when a few people left and it was a fascinating talk about the little museum display created at the Pembroke Docks site in Wales where the ship for the Empire Strikes Back was originally constructed. It was great to see behind-the-scenes photos and hear stories about the team that constructed it. I certainly plan to visit should I ever be the area.
Another talk I couldn’t get to was about filming locations in Tunisia “Star Wars Location Hunters: Tunisia”. I don’t know if there was a link but there was a travel company that had a stand in one of the halls promoting guided tour to the Star Wars locations in Tunisia. Throughout the four days it always seemed to have interested people gathered around – hopefully encouraging a new swathe of fans to head to Tatooine!
One talk I didn’t want to miss (but did arrive slightly late to due to having to see the start of the Running of the Willrow Hoods) was “Blabba Live: Ireland, the Emerald in a Galaxy Far, Far Away”. I’ve recently started following the Blabba the Hutt podcast and enjoy listening to it on my commute to work. The Blabba the Hutt podcast team Gary and Kate gave a great talk about the Star Wars filming in Ireland, its impact on tourism and its legacy. It’s well worth checking out their podcast, they’ve has some great guests on including Star Wars composers Kevin Kiner and his sons Sean and Dean. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blabbathehutt
In the talk they showed a graph demonstrating the increase in visitors to Skellig Michael due to its appearance at the end of ‘The Force Awakens’. I must admit I was part of that surge – how could I resist when they promoted it so well last Celebration in 2016? https://fromscenetoseen.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/these-are-your-first-steps/
While following Celebration on social media I noticed that a lot of fans attending had taken advantage of being in London to visit the locations used in Rogue One and the series Andor. Many Star Wars fans will have been able to visit ‘Scarif Base’ and the ‘ISB Headquarters’ on Coruscant with surprising ease as one is literally on top of the other. I’ve been to Canary Wharf tube station before (blog here) and this time around all I needed to do was come up to the surface and I was on Coruscant in an Andor location (my third now after Cleveleys and Winspit Quarry).
The path below the covered walkway is where Syril Karn stalks the ISB agent Dedra Meero and it’s at the North side of One Canada Square (the tallest building in the Canary Wharf complex). If you visit, do check out the Crossrail elevated walkway – there’s a very funky artwork inside which looks great at night.
Other parts of London used as Coruscant in Andor that can be visited are the Brunswick Centre and the Barbican. Both are prime examples of Brutalist architecture which makes them work so well for the ‘used future’ style of Star Wars. Sadly I didn’t have time to visit either on this trip, but I did see plenty of pictures on social media of fans who’d had time to track down the locations whilst in town for the convention. It’s great to see fellow location hunters taking advantage of their time in London. I did get a useful tip from someone at Celebration – the Barbican does tours, not of Star Wars location specifically but does include them https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2023/event/architecture-tours
The Tuesday morning after Celebration we had a much needed lie-in and some time to kill before our train journey home in the afternoon. Rather than dash across London to try and squeeze in a Star Wars location we, instead, took a leisurely stroll to a James Bond location. In doing so we found a really interesting, off the beaten-track part of London. Our hotel was a just a short walk from City Island – an old industrial area by the Thames that has had some significant redevelopment recently. New residential apartment blocks, art galleries and yoga rooms have all sprung up, it’s all very young and trendy – with, unexpectedly, the English National Ballet in the middle of it all.
The Bond location we were seeking was from the boat chase at the start of the 1999 Pierce Brosnan film ‘The World Is Not Enough’. The thrilling opening sequence which takes place on the Thames and ends at the Millennium Dome is a mix of actual London and places doubling for the city. There’s a YouTube video of it here
The spot we wanted was from the moment where Bond’s boat crashes through a restaurant and out onto the Thames. My husband Andy had done his research and found that it was a place you can visit as part of an area called Trinity Buoy Wharf.
It’s a quirky arts centre now with some original dockland buildings mixed in with shipping containers cleverly repurposed as artist’s studios. The heritage of the area is commemorated in some displays – there’s a charming little shed all about the inventor Faraday. There’s also a café with a taxi on the roof (with a tree growing out of it for that extra Instagram touch). We had breakfast in a genuine 1950s American diner. It was brought to London’s Spitalfields Market in the 1990s and was used in the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow film ‘Sliding Doors’. In 2003 it moved to its current location and is often used for photoshoots and featured in a Bastille music video ‘Bad Decisions’.
While having our breakfast we re-watched the boat scene and were confident the car park by us was where they would have launched the boat from. Screen grabs below show probably the most dramatic use of profiteroles in cinematic history.
The restaurant the boat goes through was cinema fakery, it was a set built against the Royal Dockyard Church in Chatham. The platter of profiteroles the boat skims would have been on location. In a blink and you miss it shot you can see the ‘Knocker White’ boat in the background as Bond flies past and lands in the water. It’s fascinating to see the development of the London skyline since the filming nearly a quarter of a century ago.
Trinity Buoy Wharf and City Island is not an area we would have ventured out to if it had not had a film location link – it was the perfect place to chill and enjoy the last few hours of our time in London.
From scene to seen 