Holographic Luke Skywalker (Jabba’s Palace) - SW [S - P3] - Basic (’04 #11)

As part of the plan to rescue Han Solo, Luke sent the two droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, to the palace of Jabba the Hutt. R2-D2 played a holographic message to Jabba in which Luke requested an audience with the infamous crimelord and, to prove his sincerity, asked the Hutt to accept the two droids as gifts. While the nervous C-3PO was startled at this news, it was all part of Luke’s plan to put everyone in position for the planned rescue attempt.

In 2004, during the final phase of the Star Wars “Saga” line (and subsequently for a little longer after that), Hasbro decided to get a little adventurous with the way they created holographic versions of Star Wars characters. Keep in mind that they shown little difference between true hologram images of some characters and the “spirits” of other characters. All have been cast in a light blue or purple plastic with very few exceptions. But things changed in 2004, albeit briefly, with the release of Holographic Luke Skywalker (Jabba’s Palace). This figure was intended to be the visual representation of the message R2-D2 was carrying inside to present to Jabba the Hutt. We understand why the figure was created at this point in the game. After all, Hasbro developed the truly wonderful Luke Skywalker (Jabba’s Palace) figure so the timing was perfect and right to reuse it for a holographic purpose, but we have to admit that the release of this seemingly extemporaneous figure in newly revisited clear plastic doesn’t fully meet our expectations, so we imagine yours won’t be met either. Whether or not this release has merit or is admirable is debatable, but let’s look at Luke to debate whether this is even the right way to do this figure.

Fans of Return Of The Jedi will probably interject immediately that this isn’t a scaled representation of holographic image seen in Episode VI. If you recall, when R2-D2 played the message for Jabba, Luke “towered” over all of the other aliens and humans in the scene. Even if it’s debatable that R2-D2 is projecting this image of Luke off of the ground (which is truly difficult to make out in the scene), Luke is just wider and nearly twice the size of C-3PO which proves that the holographic image of him was much bigger than his normal human self. We don’t believe that all holographic Star Wars action figures are meant to be scale accurate. Hasbro must develop these with the mindset that no matter how big the projected image is that they are going to “correct” it by bringing it up or down to “normal” 3.75” scale. So this is a point we may have to let go. No matter the scale, Hasbro has cast this figure in varying shades of translucent plastic depending upon the body part. And while it makes for an action figure that looks much better than one solid color, it’s still has muddily applied final paint operations that affect the aesthetics of how accurate the character looks. Does this action figure look like Luke Skywalker? Well, maybe.

What is perhaps the strangest thing about Holographic Luke Skywalker (Jabba’s Palace) is that he isn’t just a simple repaint of the Luke Skywalker (Jabba’s Palace) (’04 #04) action figure. Parts of him, most notably the legs, have been repositioned in a way that gives him a more upright stature (remember, the Luke Skywalker (Jabba’s Palace) figure leans to the right quite a bit) and overall better posture. It may just be the plastic used, but his joints are also tighter and looks like they’ll remain that way much longer than its predecessor. It may have been better is Hasbro abandoned the pearly paint used to give Holographic Luke Skywalker (Jabba’s Palace) his defining features like eyes, hair and skin tone. We feel it actually works against the sculpt in creating a weird version of Luke Skywalker (in the flesh), rather than a true holographic form, (i.e. an intangible projection) of the character instead. It’s hard to applaud new efforts like this when they don’t fully meet expectations. But then again, we wouldn’t have wanted to give us an all clear blue plastic action figure of Luke Skywalker either. Obviously we’re hard to please in these regards, so you will have to be the judge to see if this is an action figure for your own collection.