MOC: ROTJ Emperor arrives on Death Star 2 (Part 1)

LEGO Star Wars started just over 20 years in May 1999, timed with the Prequel Trilogy film release. To celebrate this event, I made a new LEGO "rather big" MOC!

This is technically my second attempt at rebuilding one of my all-time favourite scenes from Star Wars: Return of Jedi where Emperor Palpatine arrives to a Chinese Army-like display of power. 

Until recently, I thought this was an epic set like Ben-Hur (which used 15,000 extras). Unfortunately this was just an amazingly painted backdrop and camera work. This made finding different viewing angles almost impossible. However I did my best, and this is what I came up with:

(Card-Table Sized LEGO Death Star Hanger Bay)

This was the closest I could get to the original scene:

(Matching Movie Screen with Royal Guard and Emperor)

This build came together in about a week, and:

• My biggest build so far, covering 4x large grey base-plates (totaling 96 x 96 studs)
• Approximately 11,400 LEGO peices
• 391 LEGO minifigs
• Including: Stormtroopers, Snowtroopers, Sandtroopers, Deathtroopers, Shadowtroopers, Scout Trooper, Shock Trooper, Jump(Rocket)Trooper and Patrol Troopers

(Birds-Eye of all 391 LEGO minifigs)

(My favourite Snowtroopers.)

(Peering over the shoulder of Stormtroopers)

I did not already have a T4a Lamda-Class Shuttle, so I heavily modified Sentinel-Class Shuttle I had. Given more time, I would consider building this from scratch. I tried to get the wings as accurately as I could.

(T4a Lambda-class Shuttle)

It took a couple of tried, but the back wall is about 26x blocks high and made of 8-panels that are 12 studs wide. The wall structure itself is a surprising 4,000+ pieces (.

(Hangar wall detail)

For those that have never tried, large scale LEGO models take time, space and money (aka LEGO pieces). I am just *rough* estimating that this is about 11,000 pieces. The biggest LEGO set EVER was the UCS Millennium Falcon (75192) and it only had 7429 peices and 8 minifigs. Definitely more complex and intricate, but I just wanted to contrast how big this LEGO build was and how more amazing some of the even bigger MOCs are, 200,000 piece Rivendell and 150,000 piece Helm's Deep.