Star Wars

Tantive IV

The first ship you ever saw in Star Wars, rebuilt with real love.

Brick Rated Score

4.0/5

Set 75244 · 2019

Pieces1,772

Minifigs6

Year2019

Set number75244

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The verdict

This is the ship that opens A New Hope, the little Rebel corvette that comes tearing across the screen before that Star Destroyer swallows the whole frame, and the 2019 version finally does it justice.

It's a gorgeous shelf piece with a proper minifig cast, and the build is a calm, pleasant three-and-a-half hours. Just know going in that it wants to be a play set too, and that ambition is exactly where it gets fragile. If you want a display-worthy A New Hope hero ship and you'll leave it be, you'll adore it.

Best for: A New Hope fans who want a display ship with a proper minifig cast

The full review

What it is

Here's the thing that gets me about the Tantive IV. It's the very first ship you ever see in Star Wars, the little white Rebel corvette that streaks across the top of the screen in the opening seconds of A New Hope, right before the underside of that Star Destroyer keeps rolling and rolling and you realize how tiny this ship really is. LEGO® had a go at it in 2001 and again in 2009, but this 2019 set is the one that finally captures that feeling. It's long, it's slender, it's properly white, and the fan of engines at the back looks like it belongs on the real thing. At 1,772 pieces it builds out to about 24 inches, so this is a centerpiece, not a shelf-filler.

The catch

I'll be straight with you, though, because it's the same note nearly every reviewer landed on. The designers wanted this to be a play set as well as a display piece, and that's where it gets shaky. Literally. The top hull panels lift off to show a little interior, the escape pods are meant to detach, and the fins on the sides are supposed to come away too. In practice all of that means the ship is fragile. Pick it up wrong and a fin drops, a pod feels loose, a panel wants to lift. It's the sort of model you build once, place carefully, and then admire rather than swoosh around the room. There are also twenty stickers, and a few of them sit on curved cockpit surfaces that test your patience and your steadiest hand. Add in the price. It launched at 199.99 dollars, and because it retired back in December 2020, you're now looking at resale numbers closer to 350 for a sealed box.

Who it's for

The audience for this one is pretty clear. If you love A New Hope and you want the opening-shot ship on your shelf with a proper cast of characters standing next to it, this is a joy. The build is calm and unhurried, the details are the best this ship has ever gotten in brick form, and it photographs beautifully. If you're buying it to actually handle and play with, or you need a chunky, sturdy set that shrugs off a knock, I'd steer you elsewhere. Go in knowing it's a display model at heart and you'll come away really happy with it.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build runs on a Technic spine. You start by laying down a long central frame that widens into a T-shape toward the rear to carry the engine block and keep the whole thing from sagging, and that skeleton is genuinely clever engineering. From there it's a steady rhythm of plating the slim white fuselage, dropping in the little interior sections, and finally fanning out that cluster of rear thrusters that gives the ship its silhouette. It's a relaxed three-and-a-half hour build with no real difficulty spikes, the kind you do over a quiet evening with something on in the background. The one recurring grumble is the stickers, twenty of them, and lining the curved cockpit ones up cleanly is the fiddliest part of the whole session.

The star of the parts box isn't a brick, it's the minifig lineup. Six figures, and the headline is Bail Organa making his first-ever LEGO appearance in his Rogue One outfit. Alongside him you get an updated Princess Leia with a printed skirt piece over standard white legs so she can still sit, plus C-3PO, Captain Antilles, and a pair of Rebel Troopers in their crew helmets. On the parts-value side, at 1,772 pieces for a 199.99 launch price you're around eleven cents a part, which is fair for a licensed set, and a lot of those pieces are useful white plates and slopes that any hull-builder will want to raid for their own MOCs.

Fun facts

01The Tantive IV is the first ship ever shown on screen in Star Wars, appearing in the opening seconds of 1977's A New Hope before the pursuing Star Destroyer fills the frame.
02This is LEGO's third crack at the ship, following the 2001 Ultimate Collector Series 10019 and a smaller 2009 version, and it's widely considered the most screen-accurate of the three.
03It gave us the very first LEGO minifigure of Bail Organa, Leia's adoptive father, styled after his appearance in Rogue One.
04The real filming miniature used for that famous opening chase was tiny, built just a few inches long, with a separate larger model made for other shots.