Cloud City
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Cloud City is a fictional floating city on Bespin, a planet in the Star Wars universe which appears in the film The Empire Strikes Back.
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[edit] Description
The city floats among the clouds with the aid of repulsorlifts and is home to Lando Calrissian and his aide, Lobot. It is a mining colony used to mine Tibanna gas, which is used for weapons and hyperdrives.
The city is patrolled by cloud cars, which escorted the Millennium Falcon on its entrance to Bespin.
Cloud City is the largest of the airborne Tibanna refineries, and it is also unique, doubling as a top-notch vacation resort and entertainment complex.
Cloud City was originally founded by Corellian eccentric Lord Ecclessis Figg, nearly 2000 years BBY. In the beginning, it was little more than a mining colony but it soon evolved into a cosmopolitan center and a major resort complete with casinos and shops.
In the bowels of the station, Tibanna is frozen into carbonite blocks for transport, and in the uppermost towers, idle tourists win and lose fortunes in the Royal, Trest, and Pair'O'Dice casinos. The city features a large wind tunnel in the interior that helps protect it from the high velocity winds produced by Bespin's atmosphere. Cloud City has 392 levels.
The city is the setting for the famous line in The Empire Strikes Back in which Darth Vader informs Luke Skywalker that he is Luke's father, which was something Obi-Wan Kenobi had neglected to tell young Skywalker. It is also where Lando Calrissian was forced to betray Han Solo, Leia Organa, and Chewbacca to Darth Vader; and where Vader eventually betrays Calrissian.
After the empire took over Cloud City, the new administrator, Captain Treece, brought back slaving practices causing the Ugnaughts to revolt and overthrow the Empire.
[edit] Trivia
- Is the only city that is made a bit changed in the re-release of any original trilogy.
- Because of the sets of the city and its interior and now the changes made in the re-release, the film matches the prequel to some point, which appears to be an attempt at satisfying fans. However, due to the detail oriented fans, the acceptance of this is not absolute.
[edit] Similarity
Cloud City bears a great deal of similarity to one featured in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Cloud Minders", The episode takes place in a floating city named Stratos on planet Ardana. Inhabitants of this planet are divided between the elite class living on the cloud city and the labor-class working in the dangerous mines on the planet's surface.
[edit] See also
- Laputa is another floating city, from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
- floating cities
