In keeping with the annual Star Wars Day festivities, LEGO is releasing a detailed replica of the TIE Interceptor—most famous for its appearance in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi—on May 4.
LEGO TIE Interceptor
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A sleeker, more imposing upgrade over its more famous, weaker predecessor, the TIE Interceptor defended the Death Star II during the Battle of Endor. More recently, the ship reappeared in Season 3 of The Mandalorian, piloted by Moff Gideon’s Imperial guards.
The LEGO Tie Interceptor is a simple, straightforward build. You first construct the body of the ship, starting with the cockpit and working your way outwards. The cockpit contains a single chair, steering controls, and stickered plates meant to represent monitors and dashboards. The top of the ship opens on a snap hinge, allowing the pilot to climb in.
Then you build the wing struts, which extend outward from the port and starboard sides of the cockpit. The LEGO designers used LEGO Technic rods to stabilize these struts, so they could extend outward without collapsing under their own weight. Then, you plate the struts and cockpit with traditional LEGO bricks, an assortment of curved bricks create the illusion of roundness, which gives the ship’s body its signature shape.
Then you build a black stand, upon which the LEGO TIE Interceptor sits—or rather is impaled, to be more precise. There is a hole on the bottom of the ship, and the top of the stand inserts into it. This requires no precarious balancing, no delicate pins that fasten a fragile model midair. There’s a nice, reliable stability to the ‘impaled’ approach that you’ll appreciate even after you’ve spent numerous hours putting the ship together and subsequently want to move it to a displayable location.
The stand comes with a printed placard (not a sticker!) which gives the specs for the ship, and classifies it as part of the “Ultimate” collection branding that LEGO uses for its major Star Wars models. The stand comes with a TIE Pilot Minifigure and a miniature build of a Mouse Droid, although the ship model is scaled to be much larger than a LEGO Minifigure’s proportions.
Lastly, you build the four wing flaps. The instructions tell you to add each wing as you build it, but I decided to wait until all four were finished before attaching any of them. It felt more visually engaging–to see the final build in its entirety rather than having it fed to me, two bags of bricks at a time. The flaps hang on a hinge, which bend inward to create the spaceships’ convergent appearance.
My favorite part of the build is the inner part of the wing struts, where there’s all sorts of technical details—rods, hoses, co-opted pieces from other builds—that are reimagined in a new context. Star Wars has never cared about the science and physics of its universe. But these tiny surface details are the closest we’ll ever get to an explanation. They look complex and enmeshed enough that you’ll believe that space dogfights could happen, even if you don’t know how.
Suffice to say, the TIE Interceptor was ideal for the sort of streamlined brick-ification that LEGO is famous for. The end result is visually impressive; at a distance, the monochromatic gray and black color scheme does most of the heavy lifting. But get closer, and the “greebling”—the gray-on-gray cosmetic details on nearly every surface—takes center stage.
From a construction perspective, this is tedious. But from an aesthetic perspective, especially as it goes with Star Wars sets, this is essential.
LEGO Star Wars TIE Interceptor, Set #75382, retails for $229.99, and it is composed of 1931 pieces. It is available now via Early Access at the LEGO Store for LEGO Insiders, and will be available to the general public beginning on May 4.
Kevin Wong is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in LEGO. He’s also been published in Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinjameswong.
