People are starting to get
really excited about the next Star Wars film. The long-awaited trailer released last month had fans close to wetting themselves with excitement, with the promise of exciting showdowns between the new generation of Jedi – Rey and Kylo Ren. However, we also have familiar faces like Luke Skywalker and Leia to look forward to (Carrie Fisher managed to film her scenes shortly before tragically passing away last year).
While the new band of protagonists in the Star Wars sequel trilogy has people hooked, it's still the original characters and storylines that give a certain nostalgic comfort to fans. The new films always refer to old characters, but only two have managed to feature in every single Star Wars film – droid R2-D2 and his companion, C3P-O.
While people sort of tolerate C3P-O and his neurotic behaviour, it's clear that R2-D2 is the people's favourite. He's perfectly cheeky, brave, supremely clever and a little melodramatic, with a blooping voice that makes him weirdly adorable for a robot – just an all-round catch really.
“There is something about R2-D2,” said the robot’s original designer, Tony Dyson, “that people just want to cuddle.”
And now, a mysterious street artist has brought a giant (too big to cuddle) R2-D2 to the city of Prague. They turned a nuclear bunker from the Cold War era into an enormous R2-D2 lookalike in the Czech capital. Prague TV discovered the redesigned bunker earlier this week, and posted photos of the nuclear fallout shelter to their Facebook, showing what it looked like before and after.
Here's how it looked before:
It was found off an overgrown path in Folimanka Park, a spot popular with local dog walkers, just south of the centre of the Czech capital. Prague TV said the makeover may have been a team effort by a community of artists-slash-fans. They said that the art piece has probably been there for a little while, but it's only now that the media has found out about the impressive monument of the droid.
Here it is after:
As well as painting the entire thing with close attention to detail, the artist(s) also added two large concrete pieces on either side of the vent, representing R2-D2's legs. Other concrete features were also added for extra detail.
Although the paint job is
technically graffiti, it doesn't seem like they were too phased about removing the existing graffiti before. So it looks like it's here to stay, with Prague 2 confirming that they won't paint over the redesigned shelter.
By the looks of it, people are already flocking to Folimanka Park to check it out for themselves.
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One person shared the exact location of the redesigned bunker vent, which can be found in the north-east section of the park.
Prague TV said that the bunker was opened on October 14 for free public tours, and the air vent that is now R2-D2 wasn't painted on that occasion, save for some random graffiti. They said that the tours probably made the artist aware of the old bunker, giving them creative inspiration to transform it into everyone's favourite little droid.
Sorry, BB-8, but it's true.
