Any Star Wars fan worth their salt has daydreamed about being an X-Wing pilot in a dogfight, blasting TIEs, defying the odds and turning off their targeting computer to use the force instead.
Games like Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and its sequels, Star Wars: Squadrons, and X-Wing Vs TIE Fighter allowed us to live out these dreams virtually, and there’s even an X-Wing book series about Rogue Squadron which I can highly recommend if you want to dive a little deeper into the lives of the pilots behind the ships.
A Star Wars: Rogue Squadron movie is currently in development from director Patty Jenkins, lest we forget. Refresh your memory with the trailer below.
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With the above film sadly not on Disney’s release radar for quite some time (Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy noted that it has been put back in favour of Taika Waititi’s Star Wars project) fans were in need of a little something to tide them over, and thankfully YouTube channel NobleEngine has stepped up to the plate with a fantastic fan film called Star Wars: X-Wing.
The video, which you can see just below here, follows two X-Wing pilots - Wraith One and Two - as they dogfight through the skies above Coruscant, while the New Republic fleet attempts to liberate the planet from the recently defeated Empire. The description for the video reads “After its defeat at Endor, the Empire struggles to maintain control over a fractured galaxy. Seizing the opportunity, the New Republic launches a desperate assault to liberate the galactic capital. The X-Wing pilots of Wraith Squadron rush into the fray to add support.”
Directed by - and starring - Christopher Parks, the video has been a hit on the platform and has racked up close to 800,000 views at the time of writing. Parks notes that the video has been four years in the making and is actually based off the storyline of one of those X-Wing books I mentioned earlier.
For my money, this might be one of the best Star Wars dogfights I’ve ever seen, and the fact that it’s a fan project makes it all the more breathtaking. It’s got me well and truly hyped to see more from NobleEngine in the future and if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find out my replica X-Wing pilot helmet and disassociate for a while. Red Two, standing by.