Star Wars Darth Vader - ROTJ Light-Up ArtFX Statue

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The statue measures just under 25 inches tall. The Collector's Edition version comes with both masked and unmasked heads. The Exclusive Edition includes two bonus accessories - a partly damaged masked head (clearly inspired by Vader's duel with Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars Rebels) and an alternate lightsaber blade wreathed in flame. Candidates with the name Darth Vader, and those of other Star Wars characters like Chewbacca and Yoda, registered to run in Ukraine’s 2014 parliamentary elections. “We are non-political,” says Milov, “but we decided with one shot to kill two hares, as the Russian saying goes. To save the Lenin monument but also take it away from the eyes – to make a new art piece with a new sense.” Yet it is far from being a publicity stunt. Milov is responding to the so-called ‘de-Communisation’ law passed by the Ukrainian parliament in April 2015, calling for the removal of Communist symbols such as monuments or place names. “We didn’t want to vandalise the statue but the monument to Lenin was due to be dismantled in connection with the new law,” says Milov. “I decided to take a monument to Lenin and transform it into a monument to Darth Vader, because at this moment Darth Vader is a political figure in Ukraine.” Honestly, I did not like the idea of destroying it, so we decided on a more flexible solution," he said, adding that they were planning to install a Wi-fi router on the statue's head so that he can "communicate with the other Siths." Unfortunately Spencer couldn’t be there to take delivery of the universe’s most hated villain today.

To create his new sculpture, Milov strengthened the original structure and added a helmet and cape made out of titanium alloy – he also inserted a Wi-Fi router in Vader’s head. Despite the statue’s apparent glibness, it serves as a reminder that we can’t control which memories last and which don’t. “I wanted to make a symbol of American pop culture which appears to be more durable than the Soviet ideal.” Martin Davies, commercial manager from the company said: “As soon as we read about Spencer’s appeal, we were only too happy to help but we had to do the move as a split operation. Martin added: “We parked up on the pavement very briefly while we loaded the sculpture into place - right by Spencer’s front door. Vladimir Lenin fell victim to the so-called Darth Vader movement in Ukraine on Friday when some Ukrainians added new elements to his communist-era statue in Ukraine's fourth largest city.Darth Vader - a villainous masked character fighting against the forces of good - is a popular character in George Lucas' movies. The transformation of Lenin's statue into Darth Vader comes two months before the release of the latest Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, in the US. Like the other pieces in the Mythos line, Vader is a polystone statue designed at 1:5 scale. Rather than being based on specific moments from the Star Wars movies, the Mythos pieces take more artistic license with the franchise. This Vader statue, for instance, alludes to a major battle with the Rebel Alliance, perhaps drawing inspiration from Marvel's "Vader Down" comic book storyline. Capturing the crossroads in his character evolution, Sideshow’s Star Wars Mythos statue includes two portraits — one featuring his iconic helmet with slight battle damage and one un-helmeted to reveal the scarred visage of Anakin Skywalker™ completely consumed by his own darkness.

We did get a few funny looks and the traffic certainly slowed down when the sculpture was loaded off the wagon.

The sculpture measures 8ft from base to tip but Darth himself is 7ft 2” - the same height as Spencer when he’s inside the famous costume. The force was strong as the Sith Lord was hoisted into place outside the home of Spencer Wilding - the man behind the iconic mask in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Sideshow presents the Darth Vader™ Mythos Statue, a dark-sided addition to your galaxy of Star Wars™ collectibles. We did get a few horn toots from some drivers as they passed bemused as to why there was an 8ft Darth Vader flying in the air.”

I was born in the USSR, and I am a child of a country that doesn’t exist any more,” Ukrainian sculptor Alexander Milov tells BBC Culture over the phone from Odessa, via his English-speaking wife Margaret. “I wish to save the monuments of history. I’m trying to clean up the operating system and keep them on the hard drive of memory.” Margaret laughs at the metaphor. The pose of the old statue has proven to be strikingly appropriate for the new subject; Lenin’s long coat has become Darth Vader’s flowing cape, and the former Soviet leader’s clenched fist now holds a lightsaber. This is not Lord Vader’s first foray into Ukrainian politics, as the Sith master put forward by the Internet Party of Ukraine as a candidate for prime minister in 2014 (the statue is not a project of the Internet Party, despite Milov’s past involvement with them). Located in an old factory courtyard on the outskirts of the port city, the statue was scheduled for demolition until Alexander Milov — a local artist whose work was featured at Burning Man in 2015 — proposed a different solution: encasing the existing Lenin statue within a new titanium facade, creating the world’s first monument to Darth Vader.

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This piece could even be viewed as a sequel to Sideshow's previous Darth Vader Mythos statue. But where that statue showcased Vader in a moody, contemplative pose, this is all about the power of the Dark Side. As a collection, Sideshow’s Mythosseries are fine art collectibles that allow the collector to imagine what could have been, but maybe never was. Myths meant to be initiated by the eye and completed by the mind.