Iconic sci-fi: Bespin/Cloud City

The opening Star Destroyer crawl blew my mind. The Death Star was magnificent. Endor and the redwoods? Brilliant. Tattooine is a brutalist glory ... but Bespin? It was Bespin and Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back that fired my imagination.

There was always a certain degree of realism in other Star Wars shots, a naturalism that comes from Earthbound alignments in design and architecture, but Cloud City was like nothing else. It wasn't animated or fake, at least to my childlike mind at the time. It was a real place in my imagination, one that I desperately wanted to visit.

It's one of those iconic sci-fi locations that looks glorious from any angle and at any perceived time of the day. And while there is an Earthbound correspondent, the Chemosphere house by John Lautner, Ralph McQuarrie and the design team elevated the ideas within its design. It's like they put rockets on it and shot it into space.

If you're interested in the architecture of Star Wars, check out this article here. It's fascinating, and if your thing is what inspires alien design, then you're in for a treat.

The look alone isn't what makes Cloud City so special. Exterior shots carry hints of Metropolis at times, evoking the idea of a city that is perhaps hiding big secrets. Social inequality, the dangers that come with industrialization, the growth of technology, and a future dominated by controlling empires are all at play here. Although, it has to be said, for veracity, that the Ugnaughts who work in the city aren't actually indentured servants, like they are on other installations. This is one of the very few places in the Star Wars galaxy where this is so.

Once inside the halls of Cloud City, the shots are no less stunning. And that includes both the original film and the remastered.

Aren't these shots beautiful? Such alluring design, with the action complementing the use of the space. Fancy dinner entrapment party? Fancy dining room on hand. Wide halls suitable for chasing bounty hunters? Just name your color palette. We've got cool or sunset inspired themes at the ready. Need to freeze someone in carbonite? A space to conduct a fight? We got you covered.

The lighting in the fight scenes is sensational, but it needs the location to make it work. It's an interesting fight scene too, as we have two characters feeling each other out, probing for weaknesses. How much has Kenobi taught the kid? How will Skywalker stack up against the Empire's most dark and dangerous henchman? We weren't burdened by much in the way of Skywalker backstory at that point, so the cautious nature of this fight was on point and the location only enhanced this first meeting.

And the reveal! That is perhaps the subject of another article, but the scene where it took place wasn't yet a joke in the Star Wars fandom.

How many engineering-type bays with wide open chasms came in the franchise entries that followed? We saw it in Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, and even an episode of Star Wars Rebels. RIP the grand inquisitor. Here, though, it was new. It was big, expansive, and it gave Cloud City a sense of scale.   

Sci-fi locations and imagery can be, and mostly are, derivative of Earth architecture, but scale and deviation from what we perceive as normal are what makes a place like Cloud City so special. 

The remastered versions of The Empire Strikes Back added more shots of Cloud City, some of them well done, others 'meh', but it retained the original shots that inspired this kid to pursue a love of sci-fi. It's locations like Cloud City that lead to speculation on what Earth's interstellar mining operations will look like in the future. I can't see what we design to be anything more than functional, but style should be a consideration. 

Inspiration can come from anywhere and be built into anything. We have the blueprints. We have the imagination. And we have iconic representation like Cloud City to keep inspiring those who create.