A question that the original Star Wars trilogy failed to answer was what exactly the Empire did with the bases on Hoth after chasing the rebels off of the ice planet. I would like to think this would be one of the things they did:

Credit: Yahoo!

Japan’s annual Sapporo Snow Festival has kicked off this week and unveiled their central snow sculpture tribute to Star Wars. The sculpture features almost everything The Dark Side has to offer. Stormtroopers, TIE Fighters, the Death Star, and Darth Vader himself all tower over the streets of Sapporo. This frozen shrine to the lord of the Sith stands almost fifty feet tall and almost seventy-five feet wide. It took a crew of two thousand workers about a month to turn nearly thirty-five tons of snow into this symbol of galactic power.

Credit: Movie Pilot

Credit: ijunji

Lord Vader himself even made an appearance for the festival.

Credit: Kotaku

The Sapporo Snow Festival has been an annual tradition of Odori Park in Sapporo, Japan for sixty-five years. Beginning as a handful of snow statues built by students, the Festival has grown for over half a century to include additional sites on the grounds at Community Dome Tsudome, and along the main street in Susukino, Japan. Every year, nearly two million visitors from Japan and abroad visit the Festival to witness the elaborate snow and ice sculptures. The Susukino location of the festival has also become the site for a beauty contest known as the Susukino Queen Of The Ice Pageant. To find out more about the festival check out their official website.

Head over to Kotaku to see some more shots of this assume feat of snow art.

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What do you think should be next year’s major snow sculpture? What do you think happened on Hoth after Luke and the gang left? Let us know in the comments.