Jon Favreau is working his way towards the top of the Star Wars mountain.  He voiced Pre-Vizsla in The Clone Wars.  He voiced Rio Durant in Solo.  He’s the showrunner for the upcoming live-action television series, The Mandalorian..  But of course, none of this success will rival the worldwide recognition Mr. Favreau received after being immortalized by Bantha Skull.  The point of this is that this Rio Durant figure is probably the closest you will ever get to owning a Star Wars version of Jon Favreau.  I mean, I guess you could have a Pre-Vizsla figure.  So maybe it’s not that big of a deal.  Except that crap figure is in stupid animated form.  So this is the only live-action figure you’ll have of Jon Favreau.  What’s that you say?  Pre Vizsla was super-articulated?  A super-articulated animated figure?  HA!  You’re making that up.  No?  It’s real?  OK, so maybe this whole train of thought is misguided.  Never mind what I just said.  But the takeaway here is that Jon Favreau is awesome and I’m looking forward to The Mandalorian.

Rio Durant was one of Beckett’s crew.  In doing some quick research for this review, I have learned that while on Mimban, there was a fourth member of the crew.  Korso was killed almost immediately on screen.  Honestly, I don’t remember this at all.  In fact, I’m still sad that I never went back to the theaters to watch Solo a second time.  It’s the only Star Wars movie that I did not see multiple times in the theater.  There’s no real reason.  I enjoyed Solo a lot, I just never got around to seeing it again before it closed down.  My favorite line from Korso’s page is “According to screenwriter Jon Kasdan, Tui’s performance was great, but given the hectic environment of the scene, it became confusing to introduce Korso as he was going to immediately get killed off, likely hinting that Korso was featured in deleted scenes.”  I guess we’ll have to take his word for it.  Believe me, Korso was awesome.  Probably the greatest Star Wars character of all time. 

Anyway, Rio was the team’s pilot.  During the Vandor-1 heist, one of the Cloud Riders (another figure we’ll never get), boarded the AT-Hauler and mortally wounded Rio.  Han Solo (the film’s titular character, by the way) had to take over the controls of the Hauler, while Rio died of a broken heart blaster wound.  Like Val, Rio was perhaps a bit underutilized in the film, but he made a good impression with his minimal screen time.

So Hasbro has rewarded fans with a non-TVC version of this character, so at least he’ll match up with the other members of the underarticulated Solo line.  Nevertheless, I believe this figure has the most articulation points of any “5POA” figure to date.  Obviously it helps that he has 4 arms.  Even still, all 4 wrists are articulated.  So along with 2 hips and a neck, there are 8 arm points of articulation.  Impressive.  You know what would be more impressive?  If this figure was SA and it had 20+ points of articulation.  That would have been cool.  The legs are pre-positioned in an action pose.  The bare feet are not articulated at all (not even having almost useless swivel ankles).

As for the general sculpt, it’s actually pretty great.  There’s a lot of detail in this figure.  The flight suit has a lot of textures and folds, including the unique design of the arms and legs, which look like accordion tubes.  The bare feet have gradient color applied, and you can make out his toenails.  That’s always a plus.  All four of the gloved hands can grip the included blaster accessory quite nicely.  The blaster also fits snugly into the separately sculpted belt/holster combo.  Rio is equipped with a separately sculpted cross-chested harness, as well as a separately sculpted chest control box and comms cables that attach to the headset.  It all comes together to make fore a really good looking figure.  You really wonder how little it would have taken to make this figure great.  Oh, and other than eating a bowl of soup at a campfire, Rio (in this outfit) spent almost all of his screen time behind the controls of the AT-Hauler.  Naturally, he’s a pilot without a ship in the toy line.  So good luck with that Vandor-1 scene you’d like to set up on your shelf.  Maybe just have Rio floating above the cardboard set as if he’s flying Wonder Woman’s Invisible Jet.  Sigh.  SIGH!

It’s a nice figure.  And definitely a cut above your standard 5POA fare.  The figure design, the unique nature of the character, the accessories, the sculpt, and the paint all come together well enough for me to feel this figure deserves a 6.  I’d give it a 7 if it had removable goggles.  It would possibly get a 10/10 if it was super-articulated.