Chirrut Îmwe - TVC - Basic (VC174)

There is some breakdown between Hasbro and the action figures produced in the second phase of The Vintage Collection. And we’re not sure if we’re going to be able to explain it. But when we look at a figure like Chirrut Îmwe, a character we adore from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and see the finalized 3.75” super-articulated action figure, we don’t understand what’s going on with Hasbro. How can we equally love and hate how the final figure turned out? Why does the Photo Real application give the figure features more akin to Otto, the AutoPilot from Airplane!, instead of good-looking human actor Donnie Yen? Before you get too mad at us, let us make it clear that Chirrut Îmwe is an action figure that should have represented the perfection Hasbro often institutes in the figures produced for The Vintage Collection. But sadly, the figure falls short in a couple of areas, and we feel the issues stem from taking things further than they needed to go. Photo Real in 3.75” scale is a mixed bag. For Chirrut Îmwe, we don’t think it works much at all. We’ll get into that more. Also, we love super-articulation, but do the figures in The Vintage Collection need to come with almost 30 points? We’re finding that the articulation systems are working against the ability to pose them with ease and accuracy. Is it possible to take technology and articulation too far for The Vintage Collection action figures?

On paper, Chirrut Îmwe should be a perfectly scored action figure. Hasbro tooled the figure brilliantly. The action figure is the correct height, has an exact outfit created from mixed materials, and has a likeness that should be screen-accurate, but we don’t know because the Photo Real doesn’t look right. Chirrut Îmwe also comes loaded with 28 points of articulation. As you can imagine, while it allows for some creative posing options, the swivel thighs and ball-jointed hips often “skip” and make posing a relative nightmare for the collector. There are some great plusses with Chirrut Îmwe as there are with other action figures produced with this much articulation. The two-point ball-socket head joint allows for the most incredible range of motion ever for action figures within this scale. The ball-socket head and reverse ball-socket neck offer the collector a stunning range of motion in the lifelike and natural head. The ball-jointed articulation in the arms, from the shoulders to the wrists, recreate real human movement in the body, and they work exceptionally well in these action figures. The root of the problems is focused in the lower body. We’re like to see Hasbro omit either the swivel thighs or the ball-jointed hips to see if the elimination of either help with posing these figures more easily.

The rest of the figure is rather excellent. We love the incorporation of soft-goods and molded parts to recreate the character’s outfit. We’re astonished that Hasbro retooled the part that includes the cape and harness when they already developed it for the character’s 5POA version. It seems that they could have saved a few pennies by reusing it. But perhaps it didn’t fit, necessitating an all-new re-sculpting instead. With patience, you can place Chirrut Îmwe in some screen-accurate positions and recreate many of the scenes from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. To help finish the character, Hasbro included the lightbow, which breaks down into two parts, and added the flame-hardened staff. The accessories are beautiful and interact with the figure wonderfully. We wish the lightbow folded, but it, unfortunately, does not. Chirrut Îmwe and the figure’s accessories are all beautifully painted. But let’s revisit talking about the paint operations on the portrait. We’re not digging it at all. As briefly mentioned earlier, we feel that Chirrut Îmwe has more in common with Otto, the AutoPilot, than the actor. And we’re disappointed by that very much. We still want to see Hasbro produce the rest of the crew from Rogue One despite how we feel about Chirrut Îmwe. This figure isn’t terrible; we only wanted to see Hasbro deliver better accuracy and a tad less articulation.