Star Wars comes to Earth in Santa Ana
Take a good look at Yoda. A really good look.
If you go to the new and sprawling Star Wars exhibit at the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana — opening today and running for five months — you’ll see that it’s really him.
Yoda, in a glass case. The real one. Turns out he’s a puppet; no animatronics, and in the 1970s, not much in the way of CGI.
If you grew up on replays of the Star Wars saga, or received a strong dose from someone close to you, you’ll have a similar sense of cognitive dissonance as you walk through the exhibit.
There’s Princess Leia’s outfit from the first film made. Darth Vader’s costume stands tall, and recognizeable, with convincingly broken-in boots, also from the first movie.
The model used for the Millennium Falcon is there, and the one for the giant, wedge-shaped ship that pursued it, and shot lasers at it.
Close up, they look oddly small, plastic and painted. And yet, they’re unmistakeably the real thing, the originals.
The exhibit, “Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination,” is made up almost entirely of genuine artifacts from all six Star Wars films — the first three made, numbered four, five and six, and the second three, numbered one, two and three.
That was a recurring point of confusion that didn’t seem to interrupt the excitement of the first guests walking through the exhibit hall Thursday night.
“I hate to admit I’m such a Star Wars freak,” said Kent Yamaguchi, director of the Santa Ana Zoo, among the 600 or so invited in early for a preview. “I’ve spent half the time staring at the Millennium Falcon.”
For people of a certain age, possibly including local science reporters, the opening of the first Star Wars film is indelibly stamped in the files of memory.
“This is part of Americana,” said Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, just outside the case containing Princess Leia’s white, hooded outfit and the robots C3PO and R2-D2. “This is history. we all remember where we were when the first Star Wars movie came out. we felt it was something special.”
So the place seemed full of grown-up kids. plus some actual kids.
They included Nicky Sciocchetti, 8, and his friend Quint Steffey, both slickly turned out, Nicky’s mother explained, as ARF Clone Troopers.
Both boys are fans of “The Clone Wars” animated series.
They were busy constructing their own miniature R2D2s and setting them to roll off onto tracks, one of the hands-on parts of the exhibit.
“I like the clones,” Nicky said. “They have different colors and badges.”
His mom, Leslie Sciocchetti, was wearing the white Princess Leia outfit, complete with donut-shaped hair pieces that covered each ear.
“I remember when it first came out,” she said. “I was in high school. I remember waiting in line for the first showing.”
The excitement extended to Discovery Science Center president Joe Adams, who said that, by luck, the exhibit had to leave another venue and its next stop was up in the air.
He was immediately on the phone to Lucasfilm Ltd., the George Lucas outfit that has been running the exhibit for years in different parts of the country.
“I said, ‘Don’t talk to anybody else,’” said Adams, who, dressed in a brown, hooded robe and carrying a glowing lightsaber, later did battle with Darth Vader as part of the exhibit’s Grand Opening Ceremony.
The huge exhibit put a bit of a strain on the modest-sized science center. It covers some 10,000 square feet, and what used to be storage space in the back had to be coopted to fit in all the glass cases, robots, models, vehicles and assorted artifacts.
A full-sized replica of the Millennium Falcon cockpit, a Disney-esque ride with a C-3PO voice-over and a projected trip through the universe, stands some 16 feet tall and had to be housed separately outside.
But the exhibit isn’t all Star Wars all the time. being a science center, Discovery uses parts of the exhibit as an entre to lessons about the real, nuts and bolts science.
It’s divided into two major themes: “Getting around,” which is all about transportation, and “Robots and People.”
In the transportation section, you’ll find the original, full-sized land speeder used in the first film, “Star Wars IV: A new Hope.”
It sits on three mundane-looking wheels. Mirrors around the bottom edges gave the illusion that it was levitating off the ground.
Nearby, kids can build their own levitating cars out of Legos and magnets, then magnetically levitate them on special tracks.
There’s also a case containing models from the “real world of speeders,” including a Boeing Canard rotor wing and Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipOne.
The Star Wars space cruisers and various other ships are there, but so is a case containing real proposals for star ships — the Daedalus interstellar ramjet and a matter-anti-matter rocket.
Over in the robot section, you can get a look at Luke Skywalker’s prosthetic arm from “The Empire Strikes Back” — a last look, in fact, because the well-worn arm is expected to be retired when this exhibit ends.
You can also learn about real prosthetics and implants: the Abiocor artificial heart, along with artificial retinas and cochlear implants.
Admission is by “timed tickets,” so advanced reservations are a good idea; they cost $10 for adults and $8 for children, but that’s added on to general admission, which is $14.95 for adults and $12.95 for children.
The center is pretty easy to find, on Main Street just off Interstate 5 in Santa Ana — the place with the giant, tilted cube that is, at the moment, emblazoned with Star Wars characters.
