I've bought NINE Jedi figures in the last week... 9.
6 from TRU multi-packs. 1 Vader. 1 Anakin. And this Luminara Undulli...
Not ONE has a flippin' unlit lightsaber hilt.
Eat a dong on that one Hasbro.
PROS:
-Articulation... Once again Hasbro excels at making a figure poseable. Unfortunately they also excel at making all the articulation pointless... But yeah, they made this figure poseable.
It rocks 14 points of articulation, kind of a standard thing these days. Mostly ball/socket joints... It's good. I mean, it's supposed to be good... right? RIGHT!?
-Paint Aps... I'm not sure what's exactly right about it because Luminara has a pretty detailed look to her. My sample seems pretty perfect though.
The little markings on her chin are perfect, as are her eyes... if this is the way she should look, it looks great to me. It's all very tiny little paint aps on this characters face I'm noticing. Her hair is also perfectly painted and no straying at all.
The figure's outfit has some fairly, by today's standards, ornate paint aps too... There's bronze on her gauntlets and sash... the details aren't maybe what they would've been 6 years ago, but they're pretty great and ornate by today's paint ap standards.
-Sculpt... This is, to me, the finest Luminara figure they've ever done... Her face is very calm and zen-like. It's a look she seemed like she sort of had going on in the movies in her brief scenes, so I like that the figure expresses that serene nature.
The hat is sculpted so it fits JUST perfectly on the figure's head... It has folds and wrinkles that look just perfect.
The design on her gauntlets and sash are pretty ornate and detailed. They really look good, and she even has a nice little broach detail that brings her shirt together with tiny wrinkles where it is cinched in.
-Accessories... Luminara comes with a removable hat for the first time, a saber, and a removable cloth cloak... All are nice accessories, and other than the inability to move her head any direction than forward due to the hat falling off, it's all nice stuff.
What isn't nice is a lack of a saber hilt... Good lord.
CONS:
-Price... $9.99 sucks, let's get this out of the way now.
-No Saber Hilt... ALL Jedi should have them... I can't believe I've gotten 9 new Jedi figures this week and not one has an unlit saber hilt. Pathetic cost-cut on Hasbro's part.
-Poseability Issues... Luminara's new figure is the definition of the saying, "all dressed up and nowhere to go".
She's sporting 14 points of articulation but, due to her costume's design, you can't make her hold a saber with 2-hands... Something all Jedi should be able to do. She's able to pull off some cool poses, but she battles wielding the force with one hand and her saber with the other I guess.
Her hat, while a nice touch that it's removable, falls off if you try to pose her head any direction but forward. It's a drapey fabric hat, and the drapey fabric sculpted on the plastic hat means it's going to sit one way, and one way only.
Now... How bad is this poseability flaw? So far, we've had no less than 3 distinctly different Luminara Unduli figures... One's a pre-posed nightmare from 2002, and the other 2 are simply repaints of her ROTS figure which was a marked poseability improvement.
NONE have a head you can pose well because of her goofy-stupid headgear.
Soooooooo, this figure is an improvement by far... She's a good deal more poseable than all previous incarnations. But you won't pull off really dynamic looks I'm afraid.
She makes me think it's probably best that most Padme's are kept a saltshaker because those ornate duds don't work well with articulation they render useless, and she did nothing in those outfits.
Luminara did stuff. She kicked ass I guess at some point. So it's nice you can try and pose her... Customizers may want to try their hand at a cloth hat of some sort, so you can make use of the poseability.
She also has some arm movement inhibited by the draping of her upper arms... It makes a 2-handed saber pose difficult at best, and because the arms need to be raised a bit for the pose to actually work, again it pops the contrary little hat off her noggin.
So is the removable hat a good thing? Well, the last Luminara wasn't any more poseable, so I guess. A cloth hat just needs made I guess. Good luck.
OVERALL:
I think the best thing I can say is, thank god she's not my favorite Jedi... She's far from perfect, but perfection seems impossible due to the design of this character's costume.
She can stand "at attention" in a nice neutral pose, and that's about it... with her hat on. With it off, she's all kinds of fun to pose. She never is seen without it, but she is fun to pose without the hat.
Buy at your own risk for rage... For me, I'm calling this one as it is what it is, and unless they lose their minds and try a cloth hat to help poseability issues, I honestly don't care if they never do this again.
