Luke Skywalker (Throne Room Duel) - SW [S - P3] - Basic (’03 #17)

Captured and taken to the second Death Star, Luke is manipulated by the Emperor into a lightsaber duel with his own father, Darth Vader. The two battle fiercely with their lightsabers, but then Luke chooses to yield the fight rather than destroy his father. Enraged, the Emperor turns to eliminate the young Jedi, and with him the galaxy's last hope.

Before you look for the nearest dull weapon to shut us up with, let us explain fully why we’re fond of the Star Wars “Saga” Luke Skywalker (Throne Room Duel) action figure. We absolutely loathe action features in our action figures. There is no doubt about that at all. But without coming across as hypocritical, there is something very screen accurate and striking about Luke Skywalker (Throne Room Duel). It’s without a doubt a wonky action figure. And it’s limited to looking good in probably only two angles. But when he is posed in those said angles, we don’t think that there will ever be another updated version of this character that will look better, even a super-articulated update. The ability for the figure to look this good while riddled with distracting action features is quite an impressive feat. And it is exactly this trait coupled with an awesome environmental display stand that reminds us why this figure looks as good as it does. It’s absolutely an imperfect action figure, and as a standalone action figure he is essentially worthless. So it’s its own yin and yang. it will be a tough sell to try to persuade you to appreciate this piece, but hopefully we can offer some points on why it’s charming in some respects.

Luke Skywalker (Throne Room Duel) comes with a modest seven points of articulation, eight if you count the button in his back which activates the action feature. A scrunched swivel head is jointed by swivel shoulders and swivel hips. And hinge-jointed elbows (with extremely loose joints) have been added to make the action feature in the shoulders look better. You can recreate him slashing his lightsaber at Darth Vader while breaking a portion of the railing in the throne room. Some collectors feel that his head sculpt is absolutely atrocious, but we think it captures the moments of this part of Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi flawlessly, even if his appearance comes across and too cartoony or animated. His chin is buried into his chest to help show his expression of anger and his near turning to the dark side of the Force, so all of the pieces are in place to perfectly recreate this scene in Episode VI. Magnets have been added to help him hold his lightsaber better and it aids the action feature by allowing him to fling the lightsaber hilt if you so choose, so all of these random pieces work together to make a truly fun action figure.

The best part of Luke Skywalker (Throne Room Duel) is the environmental display stand. It is solely this accessory that makes the Luke Skywalker figure look better than he is. Hasbro developed an interactive display piece that is made up of three separate pieces: the main portion and two separately connecting railing portions. They can freely stay in an “undamaged” position and can “break in two” by the Luke Skywalker figure swinging his lightsaber down to break it in half. But you don’t even have to utilize the action feature to make this setup look incredibly cool. If you take the time to set up the entire system: figure and stand, we believe you’ll have to concede that the combination looks pretty darn neat. You may have noticed that Luke’s glove is on the incorrect hand in our photo gallery. This is the error version. Hasbro corrected the figure by switching which hand gets the globe and which one does not, and they also lightly changed the color of his hair by making it appear a little more reddish which is certainly strange, but that’s exactly what they did. Hopefully you’ll find some novelty in this release. We have thoroughly enjoyed it, but it’s certainly not the consummate “Death Star II” version of Luke Skywalker.