HE is here. - Darth Vader

This is the first time in a while that I was excited waiting for a figure to arrive.  I got the shipping notice early last week from Amazon with an estimated delivery date of this past Friday (I don’t have Prime).  The USPS was taking care of the last mile of the delivery, so I immediately opened up a browser tab for the tracking.  I would refresh every morning.  On Thursday it was at the post office in the next town over “preparing for delivery”.  It was starting to get real.  I went to bed that night with a little bit of the “Christmas Eve” feeling from when I was a kid.  Sure enough on Friday it was out for delivery.  I did the best to distract myself with work all morning.  Purely by chance, I happened to be upstairs for a moment (my office is in the basement) when I heard the mail truck in the driveway.  I exclaimed, “Luke is here!”  The dogs starting spazzing out as they fed off my energy, and I bolted outside.  A wait that’s basically been twenty years in the making was over.  I poured over the card for the next five minutes feeling like Ralphie when he finally got his Red Rider air rifle.

One of the downsides of this site is that sometimes when I get an item, I can’t open it right away because I need to photograph the packaging first.  Luckily, I ordered two of this figure so I could tear into one right away.  I easily got it into the blocking pose you see in image three.  The legs gave me no resistance striking a fighting crouch.  The rocker ankles function like a dream to the point of almost working too well.  You can achieve some “broken ankles” poses if you push them to the extreme.  The arms, by virtue of the sculpted, blousy sleeves, required a little more effort, but it got there.  I was thrilled.  The head sculpt, which looked iffy in the promotional photos looked much better in person (we’ll get more into that later).  I was so happy.  I immediately went to the comments to declare this figure a 9 out of 10. I’m standing by that grade, but in the process of forming this gallery, it’s not quite as effusive of a nine score.  If we did half grades, I’d probably give it a 8.5.  So this is a high eight that rounds up to a nine.

The first controversy with this figure is the color of the boots.  I am satisfied that they are correct.  If you take a close look at A New Hope, you will notice that the boots and leg wraps are darker than the tunic, but lighter than the pants:

The color isn’t the problem to me; it’s the lack of a dirty wash.  The leg wraps are lighter than the pants, but they appear a little grimy due to the Tatooine sands.  The lack of a wash also fails to highlight the sculpted detailing of those wraps.  So it give the impression that Luke is wearing knee-high gym socks.  Give him some short shorts and a pair of Chuck Taylor All Stars, and he’s ready for some two-handed set shots out on the old hardwood.

As stated above, the head sculpt isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than it looked in the promotional photos.

(click for the full sized image)

One thing I noted when watching through some scenes in A New Hope is that Hamill almost always has his mouth partially agape with teeth showing.  You will notice that the VOTC release was sculpted that way.  I think the closed mouth is part of the reason it gives off an Episode 5 vibe.  The jowls probably flare a little too much.  Hamill has a pointier jaw.  Finally, I think the mullet doesn’t flare in the back as much as it should.  In the movie, it’s visible from the front which help frame his face.  That alone probably gives the impression that the jaw is a little too wide.  Still, I don’t think it’s a total misfire at all, and honestly, it might be the best we have for a young Hamill.  One thing to remember is that in our collections, we’re not looking at the sculpt zoomed in like this.  The heads tend to be like a pointillist painting.  They look good at normal viewing distance, but fall apart when zoomed in too closely.  John Hughes made a documentary about this:

Trust me. There has been a near-consensus of “it looks better in hand” with those who have already received the figure. 

The last negative that gnaws at me a little is that the elbows and knees only bend to ninety degrees.  I saw those beautiful, chonky elbow discs and thought this Luke would be able to scratch its own ear.  Sadly, that’s not the case.  It also can’t kneel naturally due to the same issue with the knees.  The limitation of the arms might be due to the bulkiness of the sleeves, which is necessary for accuracy. The flare of the sleeve cuffs also can become a limitation, but we can’t blame the figure for that.  You will notice in some of the poses above, I can’t slide the hilt through the left hand because it’s obstructed by the sleeve flare.  Again, this is not the fault of the figure.  I knew we were going to have to deal with that for the purpose of accuracy.  These issues are probably also going to manifest themselves when/if Hasbro starts upgrading the PT Jedi.

One really neat thing is the detachable droid caller that Luke uses to roust 3PO from making out with himself behind the Lars family speeder.  You can see it attached to Luke’s right hip throughout the movie, or his left hip on the flipped negative for the film out on the card.  The other accessories are the lit and unlit sabers.  For the diorama shots, you will notice that I avoided shots that require Han, Ben and the Cantina since those are all soon to get updated, and we will be taking those photos then. This meant that the photos are basically up until Luke gets to Ben’s hut even though the utility belt load out isn’t quite right for the early shots on Lars homestead.  He has the macrobinoculars clipped to the front, and a large, holster-like pouch on the back during that part of the movie. Those are both missing from this release, but it offers the opportunity for some future tweaks.  I would definitely buy a deluxe version with a tweaked utility belt load out, a little bit of a wash, and all the accessories to include the poncho and blast helmet.  About the latter, one of the nightmares about moving is misplacing things in a collection.  I have the blast helmet. I got it with the Training on the Falcon battle pack.  I put it some place “safe” for the move, which means I’ve effectively lost it.  Some future archeologist will find it in a random Altoid tin under the rubble of my house.

I absolutely love this figure, but it’s not perfect.  It’s not quite definitive, but our “needs tweaking” description is too harsh.  So it’s nearly definitive and nearly a nine out of ten.  I already know that this first figure reviewed for the year will be on my Top 10 list at the end of it.  It’s currently sold out out both Pulse and Amazon.  I wouldn’t snooze on picking one up.  You can still preorder it from Entertainment Earth HERE (sponsored) at the time of this review.  Don’t miss the window on this figure.