The release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi is just a few months away. The excitement for this new Star Wars movie is already building to a crescendo. With little details coming out from Lucasfilm, it continues to build. The newest reveal is actually TWO reveals! On StarWars.com two new vehicles utilized by The First Order have been revealed.
Dreadnought Warship
The first vehicle revealed is the massive Dreadnaught warship. This ship is classified as Mandator IV-class warship. It features two orbital autocannons that are huge. These are used for large-scale bombardments. There are also 24 point-defense anti-aircraft cannons on its dorsal fin. Just how big is it you ask? It is 25,162.8 feet LONG!
Design Supervisor Kevin Jenkins shared this about the Dreadnaught:
Basically, it evolved from story reasons because Rian needed a new battleship in the script called the Dreadnought. Essentially, it needed to be a ground-firing gun platform, and the other limitations that Rian put on me was he needed and required a flat surface with gun turrets on it. So basically, it’s an armored gunboat, an armored gun platform. It’s sort of a heavy artillery that’s much bigger than a standard Star Destroyer, about two-and-a-half times the size of a standard Star Destroyer.
AT-M6
The newest walker to come to the Star Wars galaxy is the AT-M6 (All Terrain MegaCaliber Six). It is named for the laser canon on its back. It will be MUCH bigger than the Empire’s At-At. It’s simian-like gait is designed to stabilize the canon.
Jenkins said about the AT-M6:
Well, there were a few ideas that were kicking around before we came up with this idea. Funny, just before I took a vacation, sort of half way through preproduction, I talked to Rian about “what is a walker.” We went through this whole discussion about iteration. Iteration, to me, makes more sense than random walker design. So we talked about the way a Sherman tank in World War II evolved into an Abrams tank, for various reasons, or a Chieftain tank, or a Challenger, or whatever you want to say. And so we were trying to think about what made sense for a walker and I just said, “Look, a walker, to me, it’s essentially a Panzer tank mixed with a dog.” One of the questions that tied us up a lot is the fact that they’d been taken down by snowspeeders in The Empire Strikes Back, and it felt like everyone else is trying to avoid the problem of a four-legged version of a walker because they had been defeated on Hoth. So I sort of took that on board and I suggested to Rian, “Well, instead of a dog, what about a gorilla?” I can’t remember why I said a gorilla, but I just said, “They have a great stance, they are very aggressive,” and that’s how the idea of the gorilla came. And literally in profile, I molded it over an actual photo of a gorilla to get the initial base pose.
He also shared about how they would be better balanced and heavily armored. He added, “You can’t take these down with a snowspeeder.” These walkers are also about a third to twice the size of the walkers seen in The Empire Strikes Back. Yes, they will be massive.
Kevin Jenkins shares more about the design process on StarWars.com. Are you excited about these two new vehicles? What are you most looking forward to with Star Wars: The Last Jedi? Let us know in the comments below!
