Captain Antilles first appeared on screen in ANH, when he was physically choked and then had his neck broken by Darth Vader.  In the years following that scene, I had found it weird that Vader didn’t just use The Force as he had done multiple other times later in the Saga, but chalked it up to the simple fact that Lucas hadn’t developed that trait yet.  But now in hindsight, I’ve decided it was just bad-ass that Vader decided to murder Antilles with his bare hands.

There used to be all kinds of confusion about the character.  Between the film and the novelization, it wasn’t clear whether he was Captain Antilles or Captain Colton.  In the old EU, there was an attempt to resolve this by naming him Captain Colton Antilles.  But it was later established that there were two different people named Antilles and Colton.  This was then made indisputable when Captain Raymus Antilles made an appearance in ROTS, alongside Captain Jeremoch Colton (played by Jeremy “Boba” Bulloch).  Fans were further confused by the name Antilles also belonging to Wedge, but it finally dawned on people that in a galaxy with hundreds of quadrillions of sentient beings, there would maybe be another Antilles.  This was probably hinted at when we heard the name “Bail Antilles” in TPM, which was even funnier that “Bail” was his first name, and he was a Senator from Alderaan.  Oh, yeah, and the ship was the Tantive III, not the Tantive IV, for some reason.  I think Lucas was just messing with us half the time. 

While played by a younger actor, it was established that this Alderaanian captain was, in fact, the same character that was choked out by Vader.  The interesting bit of behind the scenes trivia is that the actor cut himself shaving before he was to film his part.  He was afraid he was going to get dropped from the film, and apologized to Lucas personally.  Lucas then choked him to death in his office, quietly declaring that his apology was accepted.  No, don’t be ridiculous.  Lucas blew it off, and kept him on, joking that the wound was from his action in the Clone Wars.

Anyway, enough of that nonsense.  Let’s talk about the figure.  It stinks!  Well, I mean, in the world of 2005 being a deep backgrounder was pretty glorious, and I do feel that I’m happy he exists today, of course.  But he’s objectively a bad action figure, but it’s not completely without merit.

First of all the general sculpting isn’t terrible, but its success here is undermined by three problems.  The articulation is bad, having his neck being the only ball joint.  The shoulders, wrists, and hips are all swivel, and he has a right elbow cut/swivel, with no left elbow.  He also lacks knees or ankles.  The second problem is that he has a bad lean to his left.  I fixed for the gallery with some corrective angled photography, but it’s pretty bad.  And the third problem is the hard plastic cloak essentially voids what little articulation the figure has.

All that is bad, but as I said, there is some pretty good.  While the holster is a bit large, it does fit the blaster well, and he can grip it nicely in his right hand.  When he’s not wearing his cape, he can aim it pretty convincingly.  He also comes with a headset, which fits marginally well on his head, but does add a neat pilot dimension to the figure.  But the best part is the face sculpt.  Not only is it really good, especially for 2005, but Hasbro even included the shaving cut on his chin, which is pretty awesome.

For good measure, he comes with the “ship floor” figure stand, which is pretty common except that it was repainted for Antilles and Bail Organa to specifically represent the colors of the Tantive III.  Nice touch.

Overall, it’s crappy action figure, but he looks okay when posed with Bail on board his ship.  It would be a massive improvement if remade today, but the priority on such an effort is negligible. 

5 Stars.
5 Banthaskulls.