Review : General Leia (The Last Jedi) Star Wars Black Series (Hasbro) Wave/Series : Wave 13 (Phase 3) Released : Sept 2017
£24.99
Pros : Excellent likeness to Carrie Fisher, even without the facial printing technique Cons : Some nasty paint variation from main outfit to legs. The changes to the back of box spoil the wonderful artwork.
Can you believe we've reached Wave 13 of the Black Series, Phase 3 and number #52! Wave 13 is the 2nd The Last Jedi wave and contains a mix of new Last Jedi figures and re-repacks of The Last Jedi Kylo Ren as well as the AT-AT Driver and Snowtrooper. The new Last Jedi figures are made up of Maz Kanata, Poe Dameron, Finn in his First Order disguise and the figure we are looking at here - General Leia Organa.
There are no discernible packaging changes for General Leia. It comes with the expanded bottom rail and the brighter Star Wars Black Series Logo. The grey-scale artwork to the bottom right is a particularly nice image of Carrie Fisher and feels quite poignant in the circumstances.
The character name is specifically General Leia Organa, no mention of the word Princess, but "to me, she is royalty".
Leia is #52 in the range and this is positioned as usual on the gloss red spine. The number is repeated on the box reverse, this time in red, and under this we get a short paragraph that talks about "all she has endured and lost in a lifetime of war". The image from the box front is blown up and repeated on the back, but is cropped at the bottom of her nose by what looks to be a new section of the card back.
This large section of text simply contains the wording "some poses may require additional support" and this is then repeated over and over again in 26 other languages. Considering there are no poses shown on the box, this addition is bizarre and spoils the box back for me by truncating the artwork we love. This amendment is present on other Wave 13 figures, but we will have to see if this continues into future waves and if it is specific to European releases (we purchased this review figure at Toys R Us UK).
Leia slides out from either the top or bottom flap of the box and is presented in the clear plastic tray inside a red cardboard sleeve. To the right of her head, as you look, is her blaster. There are no other accessories or contents.
Now while we may still be waiting for the new Face Printing technology to arrive, this facial sculpt of Leia is one of the best we've had to date and has captured the older Carrie Fisher. The sculpt is quite expressive with that pouted mouth that Leia has through The Force Awakens and we assume into The Last Jedi as she struggles against the might of The First Order.
The head is a single flesh tone, but with the high cheek bones the shadowing does add depth and structure to the face. The eyes are painted well and not as heavily made up as some of the earlier female figures in the range. Likewise the lips are not bright red and are a subtle pink flesh tone.
The hair is not quite the "Baboon's ***" style, but is quite intricate and carries some braiding similar to what we saw in The Return of the Jedi. The hair is a single tone of brown.
Like Luke Skywalker from Wave 12, this figure works as both a Force Awakens and Last Jedi version as the outfit is consistent across both films. This is made up of a light blue jump suit with large collars. This is fastened with a black belt and silver buckle. Over this is a purple body warmer and the boots are knee high gloss brown with silver buckles.
The majority of the clothing is one tone, but the upper part of the blue jumpsuit seems to have a very mild wash to dirty it up and yellow it a little. Sadly they didn't continue this beyond the thigh swivels, so the lower part of her legs are brighter than the rest of the outfit.
Articulation on Leia is excellent, she benefits greatly from slim arms with nothing to obstruct the joints. The shoulder are ball jointed followed by a single elbow joint hidden neatly in the sleeve of the shirt, this also rotates. The arms finish with a pivot wrist that rotates and bends. As we move and pose the arms we also start to see other subtle details on the figure - check out the rings on her right hand with gold and blue paint details.
The trunk of the body has a torso joint , and while this is partially hidden under the body warmer - it is still quite visible and cuts through the figure quite aggressively. It also doesn't add much in terms of movement - it allows the torso to rotate, but this looks unnatural, and doesn't really do much else - I would have expected a ball joint to allow leaning forward and backward. For what you get I'd have preferred to see the give this joint a miss altogether.
Lower leg articulation is just as wide ranging as the arms. The ball jointed hips and double-jointed knees allow for kneeling fully and a sitting position if you really want it. The thigh swivel is a bit of an eyesore, worsened by the paint variation I mentioned earlier. We then get ankle rockers to keep her stood upright and these are night and tight and feel ratcheted
While not (as far as we know) screen accurate, the body warmer is removable giving Leia a differing look underneath.
The rest of the body is sculpted so removing the body warmer doesn't expose any unfinished or unpainted parts.
For me, this outfit reminds me of the Endor outfit and with an amended head and soft goods poncho, this would look awesome as a re-release with or without a Speeder Bike (or a Wicket).
The sole accessory is a new blaster weapon. The blaster is very similar to the Defender Sporting Blaster that Leia first brandishes right back at the start of A New Hope as she tries to fight off Stormtroopers on the Tantive IV. This is however not a recast of that particular gun that was packed with A New Hope Leia in Wave 9 and the 40th Anniversary series
It is cast in black plastic, but has touches of silver on the barrel and just above the rear grip.
We certainly didn't see Leia with a weapon in The Force Awakens. It may or may not be accurate to The Last Jedi, but I do thank Hasbro for including something with the figure. Leia looks awesome with the gun and can get into a number of action poses with it. A holster may have been nice to keep it in when not in hand, but that would have then strayed from the accuracy of the costume.
While we have had the older Han Solo for a while now, it is good to get the other two key human characters to display together - even if the three of them didn't meet in this format in The Force Awakens.
These images of Han, Luke and Leia do also show the progress on head sculpting Hasbro have taken since 2015 and Han does look out of shape against Leia in particular.
Leia is a wonderful addition to the Black Series range for the new films. The facial likeness is one of the best yet and the outfit, while pretty tame, is well realised. Articulation is great, but we could have done without the thigh swivel and the torso joint. The other issue is the paint variation on the legs which is pretty visible.
I score General Leia Organa a solid 4 out of 5.
