BFI IMAX London, 6-20 September 2018

Your opportunity to get an up-close look at a wide variety of famous and infamous bits of movie history, all for free. Or maybe even pop in a bid or two, if you’re feeling especially flush! Greg D. Smith reports.

As I walked into the lobby of the BFI IMAX in London, I couldn’t help but be struck by a feeling of the surreal. Lined up along the right hand side as I walked in was the full crew from Rogue One, or at least mouthy droid K2-SO and mannequins wearing the outfits of all his friends. Meanwhile on the left was the strangest supergroup lineup I’d ever seen, Edward Scissorhands and Christopher Reeve’s iconic Superman sandwiching a T-800 endoskeleton and the T-800 outfit from T2 on a headless mannequin. Truly, this was a place full of movie magic.

That’s not figurative either. Arranged in a selection of glass cabinets were some 260 examples from the full 600 item list planned for the auction, set to take place on 20 September run by Prop Store. Variety was the key – next to big ticket items like Indiana Jones’ fedora from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman claws and mask from Batman Returns were smaller, more obscure pieces like a Big Kahuna Burger bag from Pulp Fiction, a coin from The Goonies and a Bubba Gump shrimp hat from Forrest Gump.

It wasn’t limited to simple props either – among the treasures to be found was a fourth draft script of 1977’s Star Wars, a film can from the same movie, and a copy of J K Rowling’s Goblet of Fire novel, signed by the actors who played Harry, Ron and Hermione on the big screen.

Walking through this wonderland of Hollywood memorabilia, several things struck me. First, how much smaller some people are than the camera might make them appear. Felicity Jones’ Rogue One costume maybe didn’t provide much surprise, but Tricia Helfer’s famous Caprica Six red dress did, emphasising just how much her co-star’s height and her own high heels served to elevate her physical stature.

The second was just how instantly recognisable most of these pieces were, how deeply the movies I had loved had cemented them in my mind. Take Arnold Schwarzenegger’s jacket from The Terminator – to all intents and purposes just a simple denim jacket in an 80s style, yet from the other side of the room instantly familiar. Similarly, a display of various lightsabers from across the breadth of the Star Wars franchise was pleasingly easy to identify.

The final was the journey that has been made in terms of props and effects in movies. Nowhere was this more starkly evident than in the contrast between a 1977 Stormtrooper helmet from the set of A New Hope sat next to one of the First Order examples from The Last Jedi. The original was slightly the worse for wear, chipped paint and all, but there was more difference than that. The older piece was clearly a hand-made thing, crafted from materials to hand to serve as a prop. The newer helmet might well have been actually stamped out on a First Order assembly line, so perfectly shaped and expertly built was it.

The point was similarly made by the presence of some miniatures, such as the wrecked star ship model from Starship Troopers – the sort of item, as one expert explained to me, which is all the more sought after in the modern age, when such things are no longer made, the majority of such effects now being rendered in CGI.

The star of the show, at least in terms of price, was Harrison Ford’s blue jacket from The Empire Strikes Back, with an estimate of between £500,000 and £1million. So precious was this item that the team could only briefly open the cabinet for me to get a clearer picture, and then only with a large security man at my side to ensure that neither I nor anyone stood near me got any ideas about trying it on for size.

Truthfully though, of all the items on display, my favourite was a Judge costume from Karl Urban’s Dredd, though with a £15-20,000 price tag, I was content merely to gaze through the glass at it rather than attempt a purchase.

Verdict: The display of these items is on at the BFI IMAX for the next two weeks, and is free to enter. Even if you don’t have the sort of spare cash lying around that could grab you any of the pieces here, it’s well worth a visit if you’re in the area. Even if you aren’t, it wouldn’t make a bad day out. After all, how often is it that you can see the Kurgan stood next to a Judge and just above Lara Croft’s guns and holster? 10/10