Awesome And Excessive, Rogue One Mission Briefing Trading Cards Split My Standards!

The Good: Good overview of the time period in the Star Wars universe, Some cool autograph signers, Cool Rogue One teases
The Bad: Ridiculous numbers of parallel cards, Insane rarities on a wide variety of cards, A weird card choices, Sticker autograph card style.
The Basics: Leading up to the cinematic release of Rogue One, Topps produced the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards which are interesting-enough, but absolutely impossible to collect.


Every now and then, I encounter a product that forces me to re-evaluate how I rate various products. Sometimes, there is a film where I find myself literally caught between a 2/10 and an 8/10, usually when something that is nauseatingly horrific, but I have to acknowledge that it is done well. With trading cards, I find myself occasionally trapped because "collectibility" is one of the standards by which I rate a trading card set. In recent times, many trading card sets have become prohibitive to even attempt to collect the set. Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards from Topps are one such set. Given that there are at least 184 unique - 1/1 cards - not counting the printing plates (!) the Rogue One Mission Briefing are impossible to collect. Literally, the moment any two collectors actually committed to trying to collect this set, it became absolutely impossible to make a true, complete master set of the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards.

That said, when I started opening packs, boxes and cases of Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards, I found there was actually quite a bit to like about the card set. Outside the weird volume of hard-to-assemble parallel sets, the content in the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading card set is actually pretty cool. The Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards blend key Star Wars prequel events with animated series moments with the highlights - usually concerned with the first and second Death Stars - of the original Star Wars Trilogy . . . with teases of Rogue One.

Basics/Set Composition

Topps has begun to be an active part of building hype for the new Star Wars movies by creating transitional trading card sets that connect the new works to the classic Star Wars films. Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards are one such set and it does its best to capitalize on the connections between classic Star Wars works and Rogue One.

The Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards are dominated by a retro cardboard cardstock for the bulk of the cards. Chase cards like the sticker cards, autograph cards, foil cards and printing plates have a different sheen and feel to their fronts, but most of the trading cards in the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards have a retro cardboard look and feel, which goes back to the original Topps Star Wars trading card releases from the late 1970s. While all of the common cards (and most of the chase) are formatted in one orientation (landscape), the text on the back of the cards is (unfortunately) oriented the same way as the text on the front. As a result, when one flips a page in the binder, they must rotate the binder around in order to read the backs. This is not very friendly to those who want to sit and read the cards.

The Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards could be compiled to make a single, true master set of 1583 trading cards. Most of the cards in the true master set would be chase parallel cards and the set is prohibitive to collect because of some of the odds of ever finding the rarest cards, which were truly unique 1/1 individually numbered parallel cards. Boxes of the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards contain only twenty-four packs of eight cards each. Topps, Inc. only guaranteed two “hits” per box. In my experience, that meant that each box had a patch card and then an autograph, sketch or printing plate card; there were three boxes in my case that had parallel cards that were part of the individually-numbered sets.

Common Cards

The Rogue One Mission Briefing common set is an interesting concept that loses a little bit of focus near its end. The 110 card set focuses in a general way on the elements that went into the creation and destruction of the Death Star. The first 68 of 110 cards transition from the Star Wars prequel films to events in A New Hope that focus on the Death Star. Cards 69 through 78 do a fast gloss-over of The Empire Strikes Back and the destruction of the second Death Star in Return Of The Jedi before going into character cards. The common set ends with ten cards focusing on events and characters from Rogue One.

The common card set is generally well-written, though some of the cards are weird stretches that seem designed entirely to sell the rest of the set. Chief among these are cards in the character portion of the common set like card 90 - John D. Branon (Red Four). Topps managed to track down the random actor who appeared for a few frames in A New Hope who played the Red Four X-Wing pilot. The actor is Jack Klaff, who actually was credited in A New Hope, which was his first film, who had perhaps thirty seconds of screentime (including where he was in the background). Card 90 fleshes out the briefly-seen character with a full backstory, arguably to build enthusiasm for an autograph card where one's first instinct upon seeing it would be to wonder "Who is this?!" The nine-card mural, with a final card showing what the mural is supposed to look like assembled, help infuse the Rogue One Mission Briefing common card set with actual material from Rogue One.

As for the images, the Rogue One Mission Briefing, most of the shots are from the films and the animated television shows, no promotional shots. Interestingly, astute fans of the Star Wars films will recognize the ten shots from the final cards in the common set all from the trailer from Rogue One. These are hardly ambitious images from Rogue One, but they are the shots that Topps had in advance of the film's release.

Chase Cards

The Rogue One Mission Briefing cards are loaded with bonus cards. The bonus cards range from various levels of parallel cards to basic chase cards like Death Star, Heroes, Villains, and Rogue One character cards, as well as higher level chase cards like patch, autograph, and printing plate cards. There are 1473 chase cards in the Rogue One Mission Briefing set, with only ten that are not found in the packs and boxes of the cards.

Most packs of Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards contain two parallel cards, though there are six different parallel sets. The six parallel sets replicate the common card set with different border colors. The common set has a retro look to it, with a red border around the big image of the card's subject. The parallel cards replace the red border with "Death Star Black," green, or blue borders. For the three rarer sets, the red border is replaced with a sickly blue-gray (the backs are individually numbered out of 100), gold - which actually looks orange and is individually numbered out of 50 - and orange, which are unique 1/1 parallel cards. There is nothing particularly special about these parallel cards, save their collectibility, though the black parallel cards actually look pretty awesome. It's funny that they are the most common of the parallel cards.

There are a number of fairly common bonus cards - whose sets take about three boxes to complete - in the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards. Found one in every eight packs are Rogue One foil cards, Heroes Of The Rebel Alliance, and Villains Of The Galactic Empire cards. A little more common are the Rogue One comic strip cards and Death Star cards; found two per box are Darth Vader Continuity cards and the sticker cards. Only the Death Star cards are in landscape format, like the common cards; the rest are all in portrait orientation. Rather wisely, the Heroes and Villains chase sets do not bother with real text on the back; fans already know who these characters are. The sticker cards feature mediocre artwork of characters in sepia tones on a blue background and decent artwork of the various ships from Rogue One. The Death Star cards are neat in that they include some weird, obscure shots of various interiors of the Death Star, while the character foils do a decent job of blending the promotional images of Rogue One characters with generic foil backgrounds. The only real issues I found with the basic chase cards are that some of the Darth Vader continuity cards and Darth Vader-themed character cards are virtually identical, with one having to look at the back of the card to determine which card they are looking at!

One per box of the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards is one of nine Rogue One Montage cards. The Montage cards are a truly nice replicated artwork card of the new characters from Rogue One. These include very cool artwork cards of Jyn Erso, Director Krennic and some of the distinctive Rebels from Rogue One.

Also one per box are manufactured patch cards, which make up a thirteen card set. The patches are cute and some feature really neat ideas, like the MP-5 of Krennic. Instead of the standard Imperial symbol (which is the subject of Krennic's MP-8 patch card), the patch in the MP-5 card features the Death Star with Darth Vader superimposed on it. It might look vaguely like a Dalek, but it is pretty cool. There are three different individually-numbered parallel patch cards and, mercifully, the most rare of these is x/10 (featuring a red stripe on the front). The patch cards are pretty neat, though the parallels of the patch cards do appear to be exceptionally rare (I did not pull a single one).

As is frequent in all modern movie-themed trading card sets, the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards include autograph cards. There are 74 autograph cards spread between the classic Star Wars Trilogy, the Star Wars Requel films, and the animated The Clone Wars television show and Star Wars Rebels. The autographs are the incredibly unpopular format of autograph “card” where the signer signed a pearlescent white sticker and Topps slapped that sticker on a trading card. The Mission Briefing set was sold on its inclusion of the Original Trilogy’s Big Three – Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill, in addition to significant supporting actors like Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker and Billy Dee Williams. There are a number of autographs that are poised to explode in value like Jason Isaacs (now that he has been cast in the new Star Trek television show), but the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards also have a bunch of filler autographs, like David Ankrum (Wedge Antilles's redubed vocal actor), Jack Klaff, Rusty Goffe (who played a Jawa), and Megan Udall - whose only IMDB credit is The Phantom Menace, whose role she arguably got as one of Anakin Skywalker's childhood friends was because she was being dragged around the Tunisia locations because her mother was the Unit nurse there!

There are four levels of autograph parallel cards that mimic the common parallel cards, though all are individually numbered. The borders on the autograph cards are bright green. The parallel cards feature the autographed stickers slapped on cards where the bright green borders are replaced with Death Star Black (and individually numbered out of 50 on the back), Blue (25), "Gold" (I swear, they look orange!, x/10) and orange (I can only imagine how these might be differentiated from the "gold" outside the number on the back - 1/1) borders. The death star black autograph cards all look amazing.

For insane collectors who want high-level chase cards, there are two dual autograph cards (each numbered our of 3), two triple autograph cards (also numbered out of 3) and one quad-autograph booklet, of which there are only two copies. Having only seen photos of the multiple autographs, they are far more rare than they are extraordinary. The quad autograph booklet is sold on its inclusion of Mark Hamill's signature alongside three other X-Wing pilots. Topps has found the formula of including killer signatures with unremarkable signers unsuccessful with some of their other products, like the Firefly: The Verse trading cards (reviewed here!) and Alien Anthology cards and one has to figure Star Wars trading card collectors have enough to chase without something quite this insane. I would argue that the best of these high-level multiple autographs is the Carrie Fisher and Caroline Blakiston (Mon Mothma from Return Of The Jedi) dual autograph card. It is the most sensible of the multi-autographs considering Topps could not release a Carrie Fisher/Ingvild Deila (Leia's body model in Rogue One, which was kept as a pretty well-guarded secret before the release of the film) for the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading card set.

The Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards include sketch cards from 33 different artists. In the case I cracked, I pulled only a single sketch card and Roy Cover's sketch was one of the nicest I've seen. Ingrid Hardy did some beautiful sketches for the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards, as did Chris Meeks. I was a little surprised by how little variation there were in some of Rob Teranishi's sketch cards, but most of the sketches for the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards were a decent chase card!

For the four people who want to chase everything but the 1/1 parallel common and autograph cards, there are 263 printing plate cards (four different colors - black, cyan, yellow and magenta) that were used to produce the cards in the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading card sets. The printing plates were used to make the common cards, sticker cards, character foil, comic strip, Darth Vader continuity, Heroes and Villains, Rogue One Montage cards and Death Star cards. The 74 autograph cards also have printing plates included in the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading card set and to the credit of Topps, they slapped an autographed sticker on each one, so one gets an autographed printing plate card, which is pretty cool.

Here is where the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards left me truly divided; were it not for the insane parallel numbers and the multi-autographs, the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards actually impressed me with the bonus cards. I liked the more common chase cards, especially for a set working to transition between the existing works and Rogue One with its limited available footage at the time the set was produced.

Non-Box/Pack Cards

Outside the boxes and packs, there was a set of ten promotional cards, which were originally made available at the New York City Comic Con. The set was, mercifully, made available to fans through Topps's website and is now available surprisingly commonly in the secondary market.

Overall

So. The Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards left me very divided in my opinion and I decided to make a split decision on the rating. When I consider the content of the set, I found myself liking the set a lot more than I expected - even with the weird biographies of pilots who were seen only for a few fractions of a second on-screen or some of the obscure signers. When I considered the collectibility of the set, I very much did not like the Rogue One Mission Briefing set. I found myself unable to reconcile myself to this set. So, I decided to give two ratings for the set, one for people who might like to collect, generally, one of each of the cards versus how the set would look to try to collect a master set (i.e. all of the parallels). For those who want a fun exploration of the elements that made Rogue One a viable standalone film, the Rogue One Mission Briefing trading cards are fun and cool. For those attempting to complete a trading card set, the Rogue One Mission Briefing are a dog to collect!

This set culls images exclusively from the Star Wars Saga, reviewed here, The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels and some early images and artwork from Rogue One (reviewed here)!

This is a set of trading cards I sell in my online store (new inventory being added daily!). Please visit and purchase from the current inventory of them at: Rogue One Mission Briefing Trading Card Inventory!

For other trading card collections based upon the films, please check out my reviews of:
2016 James Bond Classics
The Mortal Instruments Trading Cards
2014 Star Trek Movie cards

7/10 (Substance)
.5/10 (Factoring collectibility)

For other card reviews, please visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L .Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Liam Neeson As Han Solo: Why The 2016 The Force Awakens Han Solo Ornament Flops!

The Good: Good balance, Some of the coloring details
The Bad: Light on facial detailing, Poor coloring details, Expensive
The Basics: The Han Solo ornament from The Force Awakens is a tremendous disappointment and a poor tribute to the legendary character.


Before Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit theaters last year, many fans were miffed at how Mark Hamill's role of Luke Skywalker was left out of the advertising materials. Harrison Ford's reprisal of Han Solo became a key component of the advertising campaign and, after the fans saw the film it became pretty clear why that was the case. This year, Hallmark immortalized the incarnation of Han Solo who appeared in The Force Awakens and, sadly, it is one of their less successful renditions of the character. In a nutshell, the 2016 Han Solo ornament is plagued by a facial sculpt that more closely resembles Liam Neeson than it does Harrison Ford.

The new Han Solo ornament is the twentieth in the series of character ornaments from Star Wars. Fans of the Star Wars Saga know who Han Solo is and have the potential to recognize him in ornament form from The Force Awakens by his costume and gray hair. Having allied with Finn, Han Solo finds himself once again fighting for the Rebellion in The Force Awakens (reviewed here!). Hallmark captures Han Solo with a blaster in his hand, in the process of drawing the weapon!

This is an overpriced, simplistically-rendered Star Wars ornament with no bells and whistles, which is a tough sell for its key demographic of hard-core Star Wars fans.

Basics

The Han Solo ornament recreates the aged smuggler in solid plastic. The ornament, released in 2016, is the smuggler holding a blaster in his right hand. As a result, most of Han Solo's body is the character in his indistinct outfit from The Force Awakens, with only his head being truly distinctive to the character. Hallmark charged $15.95 originally for this ornament and it is selling very few pieces at that price. Han Solo is in the same scale as the other ornaments of people from the Star Wars films. This character ornament is four and one-eighth inches tall, two inches wide and one inch deep.

The Hallmark Han Solo ornament is made of a durable plastic and has him holding a blaster in his right hand, just out of its holster. His feet are arranged in a solid stance, as if he is prepared for attacks coming from any direction. Han Solo's outfit from The Force Awakens is hardly as distinctive as his smuggler's outfit or even his Hoth outfit, making it an odd choice for an ornament. The sculpt of the blaster Han Solo is holding is more detailed than the facial sculpt for the ornament.

Han Solo is detailed generically in the body and in the accessory. Unfortunately, Han Solo looks virtually nothing like he did in the movie. The skin tones are monotonal and the eyes lack the depth of Ford's eyes. In fact, this character looks more like an animated version of Han Solo than a recreation of the live-action character. The sculpt looks more like the head of Liam Neeson than it does Harrison Ford. On the coloring details, the ornament is monotonal in the skin, shirt and pants, but has depth and shading for the grays in the hair and the browns and black on the boots.

Features

As a Hallmark Keepsake ornament, Han Solo could have a function like a sound chip or light effect, but does not. This is just an ornament, a low-cost (comparatively) option for those who might not want to shell out for the ship or diorama series' of Star Wars ornaments. This is Han Solo simply hangs. Han Solo's gun may not be removed from his hands.

Balance

As with all ornaments, the intent of the Hallmark Keepsake Han Solo ornament is to be hung on a Christmas Tree. And for those creating the ultimate Star Wars Christmas Tree, the Han Solo is very much a luxury; this version of Han Solo was hardly an essential character. The ornament has a brass hook loop embedded into the top center, slightly back, of the character's skull. From that hook, the Han Solo ornament hangs well balanced. It is impressive and the ornament sways when rocked, but otherwise hangs stable in the right position!

Collectibility

Hallmark Keepsake began delving into the collectibles market in 1991 with Star Trek when it introduced the exceptionally limited edition original U.S.S. Enterprise ornament (reviewed here!) and the more common Millennium Falcon ornament from the Star Wars line. Since then, they have branched out into other popular franchises like Star Wars and The Wizard Of Oz. The Han Solo ornament is very common and one suspects more will sell on clearance after the holiday is over. At this point in the Star Wars ornament collections, the primary characters have all been done and the popular secondary characters are being explored, as well as alternate versions of principle characters.

This is not a great investment piece and it is unlikely to appreciate for some time, if at all.

Overview

The Han Solo ornament is a poor one; it is a mediocre rendition of an un-iconic version of the essential Star Wars character. As a result, most fans will be underwhelmed by the ornament and not feel the need to add it to their collections.

For other Hallmark ornaments of Star Wars characters, please check out my reviews of:
2015 Captain Phasma The Force Awakens
2015 Kylo Ren The Force Awakens
2015 C-3PO and R2-D2
2015 Admiral Ackbar (Limited Edition)
2014 Yoda Peekbuster Ornament
2014 Imperial Scout Trooper
2013 Jango Fett
2013 Wicket And Teebo
2013 Lego Yoda
2013 Boushh Limited Edition
2012 Lego Imperial Stormtrooper
2012 Sith Apprentice Darth Maul
2012 General Grievous
2012 Momaw Nadon Limited Edition
2011/2012 Lego Darth Vader
2011 Jedi Master Yoda
2011 Bossk Limited Edition ornament
2010 Lando Calrissian Limited Edition ornament
2010 Luke Skywalker X-Wing Pilot
2010 Boba Fett and Han Solo in Carbonite mini-ornament set
2009 Greedo Limited Edition ornament
2009 Han Solo As Stormtrooper
2008 Emperor Palpatine ornament
2005 Slave Leia ornament
2000 Darth Maul
1999 Max Rebo Band mini-ornament set
1998 Princess Leia

2.5/10

For other ornament reviews, please be sure to visit my Ornament Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Consequences Of The Classic: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Packs A Lot In (For Adults)!

The Good: Decent story, Excellent character moments, Some good moments of performance, Special effects
The Bad: Moments of direction, Busy
The Basics: Largely satisfying, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has more character punch for the new and beloved characters from the Star Wars universe!


As cinematic anticipation goes, it is hard to imagine a film with more pressure to perform than Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (reviewed here!). Telling the backstory of Anakin Skywalker was the promise of fleshing out a universe that had been defined by effect, rather than cause. Indeed, one of the most common oversights made by casual viewers of the first film in the Star Wars Trilogy is that the Senate is dissolved by the Emperor, ending the Old Republic. The original Trilogy is about effect and beginning the prequel Trilogy was the promise of cause. As much as I allowed myself to get excited about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the truth is that in many ways it had the potential to be merely a vanity exercise.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a chance to see old friends and see the effects of the familiar story on a galaxy far, far away. But with the fall of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor who led to more than twenty years of tyranny in that galaxy is, in truth, a satisfying enough end for most fans. There was a tremendous amount of hype surrounding Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but the real risk in continuing the story of Star Wars following the events of Return Of The Jedi (reviewed here!) was that the story would not be strong enough to justify the continuation. After all, the nostalgia element of seeing how the beloved characters of the original Star Wars Trilogy aged and developed is not nearly enough to hold a full film, if they are not the focus of it.

Fortunately, Star Wars: The Force Awakens finds the right balance.

In fact, Star Wars: The Force Awakens offers something that George Lucas's original idea for a "space opera" lacked and that is a sense of impact, consequences and adult relationships between most of the characters. Prior to watching the film, I was speaking with friends who were with us about the color motifs in the original Star Wars Trilogy and I pointed out that Luke Skywalker wearing black throughout Return Of The Jedi was intended as a visual cue to viewers that during the final battle between Luke and Vader, the viewer is supposed to believe that Luke Skywalker could actually go over to the Dark Side and join the Emperor. I noted that the film had absolutely failed to portray Luke in a convincing way where that turn to the Dark Side seemed like a legitimate character development (indeed, the idea that the dramatic tension at the film's climax was supposed to suggest Luke could go to the Dark Side only became clear to me through one of the commentary tracks on one of the DVDs; and that was after decades of watching the movie!). The brilliance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is that the film's dramatic tension is such that throughout the film there is the feeling that, truly, anything can happen.

Opening thirty years after the Battle Of Endor and the fall of the Empire, Luke Skywalker has gone into hiding and the First Order has risen in its place. The First Order is hunting Luke Skywalker to eradicate the last trace of the Jedi from the Galaxy and on the planet Jakku, they may well have found the means to find him. On the desert planet Jakku, Poe Dameron is given a map to find Skywalker and when the First Order descends upon the village he is at, he puts the map into the droid BB-8. The First Order is led by the aspiring Sith Kylo Ren, who takes Poe back to his star destroyer for interrogation. In slaughtering the inhabitants of the village, one of the Stormtroopers breaks his conditioning and realizes just how wrong the First Order is and he refuses to kill anyone there. While that Stormtrooper rescues Poe from the star destroyer and flees the First Order, on Jakku, a scavenger named Rey finds BB-8. When the freed stormtrooper, named Finn by Poe, crashes near Rey, Rey, Finn, and BB-8 flee Jakku in a piece of junk . . . the Millennium Falcon!

The Millennium Falcon is rescued in space by none other than Han Solo. Rey and Finn describe their predicament to Han Solo and Han Solo is not eager to get involved, until a deal he is in the middle of goes south. Han reveals that Kylo Ren is his son and that he was being trained by Luke Skywalker when he turned to the Dark Side and ruined Luke's attempt to rebuild the Jedi. When Han, Finn, Chewbacca, and Rey attempt to get BB-8 to the Resistance through Maz Kanata, the First Order arrives to capture them. They kidnap Rey. Han reluctantly returns BB-8 to the Resistance, which forces him to reunite with Leia, with whom he is estranged. Under the orders of the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke, Kylo Ren and General Hux activate a new planet-destroying weapon, which wipes out the last traces of the Republic. While Han Solo, Finn, and Chewbacca work to rescue Rey, the Resistance launches an assault on the Starkiller!

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a film that is packed with both the sense of consequence and the fearless idea that the familiar people from the previous story have aged and developed. Han Solo and Leia Organa had their relationship and it was torn apart by the loss of their son, which is a depth of realism that was noticeably lacking from their prior, flirtatious, relationship. Antagonism is a great way for characters to spark chemistry, but it is not exactly viable for a relationship and Star Wars: The Force Awakens allows Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford to play their characters in a more weighty way.

They are balanced by Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega), who are new characters who are given enough backstory to intrigue and enough character to compel without feeling overly expository. It is easy to make comparisons between Rey and Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Luke, Leia and Han in A New Hope, especially when easter eggs, like Finn picking up the target training droid from A New Hope while on the Millennium Falcon, keep popping up throughout the film. Boyega is entertaining as Finn and Ridley plays conflicted remarkably well for Rey. Throughout Star Wars: The Force Awakens, both characters oscillate between being analogous to Luke or Han, which keeps viewers guessing as to which one will actually be the character who awakens the Force within them!

Despite the title, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is not nearly as much about the rebirth of the ancient religion as it is about the corruption of Kylo Ren and how the First Order has grown in power in the absence of Luke Skywalker. The viewer is completely missing the rebirth and second slaughter of the Jedi; Star Wars: The Force Awakens explores the consequences of that, not the actual events. There is no great confluence of the Force in Star Wars: The Force Awakens; there is just a new New Hope that gets access to the Force.

Director J.J. Abrams does a decent job with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, if for nothing else than not using too many lens flares. There are shots he does that are clear homages to A New Hope, Alien, and Star Trek and most of them are good. However, there are several shots that Abrams does not linger on long enough for the viewer to appreciate or he focuses too tightly on, so the scope or action is harder to discern than it ought to be. But, of course, Greg Gruenberg makes an appearance!

Ultimately, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is more adult, clever and character-driven than the prior Star Wars films, which is a treat for those who grew up on the Star Wars film and wants something weightier than a simple space opera.

For other works in the Star Wars franchise, please check out my reviews of:
Star Wars - Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
The Clone Wars
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 1
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 2
Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Caravan Of Courage - An Ewok Adventure

8.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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As Overdone As Han Solo Figures Are . . . The Echo Base Outfit Han Solo Figure Still Holds Up!

The Good: Decent coloring detail, Good accessories, Wonderful articulation, Great balance
The Bad: Jacket undermines some flexibility, Face mask does not stay on on its own.
The Basics: The Vintage Collection Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) is a decent variant of the familiar Han Solo figure!


As a fan of The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars action figures, I have an unfortunate number of Han Solo action figures, though I don’t mind. The latest one I managed to find was the Vintage Collection Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) action figure and it was, generally, worth the wait in picking up.

For those unfamiliar with the Han Solo, as he appeared at the Echo Base on Hoth, this was one of his first outfits in which he appeared in The Empire Strikes Back (reviewed here!). While Han Solo and Chewbacca worked to fix the Millennium Falcon so it could lift up off the planet Hoth, Han Solo wore a heavy padded jacket and worked with welding tools. This is essentially the same outfit that he would later wear on Bespin, but without the distinctive navy blue jacket and with a long black winter coat instead.

The 4" Vintage Collection Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) was a new Hoth Han Solo figure.

Basics

The Vintage Collection Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) figure stands 3 3/4" tall to the top of his head. The figure is obviously human with the general look of Harrison Ford as Han Solo. This figure is cast with a mix of hard and soft plastics, but looks and holds up remarkably well. This rendition of the Hoth Han Solo features a pretty standard Han Solo head, a molded-on jacket sleeves, and the appropriate boots with the pants tucked into them. Notable details on this version of the Bespin Han Solo include the holster for his blaster that looks remarkable and holds his blaster perfectly and his fingers which are distinct and include both knuckles and fingernails! The real masterwork of molding, though, is in this Han Solo’s belt. The belt is molded to include every buckle, every pouch and every rivet and it looks amazing! The figure’s chest is coated with a soft plastic coat that descends almost to the knees. The jacket is accented by a hood that it textured and colored to look like fur. The coat is just a little larger at the sleeve holes than it should be, so the white shirt Han Solo is wearing beneath the coat is visible near the sleeves, which is ridiculous.

The Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) is colored remarkably well, as good as it can be for a character who is wearing so many solid colors. Despite the monotonal skin coloring on the head and hands, the hair has highlights and the eyes are expertly colored with brown dots with tiny black pupils! The rest of the figure is appropriately monotonal with highlights. The jacket, shirt and boots are solid colors. The brown pants, however, feature the racing stripe on the side, as is appropriate. The lips on this figure are uncolored. All in all, though, this figure looks exceptionally good.

Accessories

The Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) is the Rebel smuggler and comes with his welding tool, face mask and a blaster pistol. This version of the Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) features separate a face mask, which he was seen utilizing as he welded atop the Millennium Falcon. The face mask has a stick that can be held in the figure’s left hand. The face mask does not have a translucent panel and it is cast and painted with monotonal accents. The face mask does not remain on the figure’s head at all. When the figure is holding the face mask’s stick, it cannot actually hold the mask directly in front of the figure’s face.

This Han Solo figure also features a welding tool, which has a long staff that allows him to be away from the welding point. This welding tool is a 1 3/4" tall device that is cast in plastic and accented with white, silver and red accents. The welding tool matches well the rest of the Han Solo figure. He can hold this in either or both of his hands.

The Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) also comes with a pretty standard version of Han Solo’s blaster pistol. It is a 3/4" long plastic gun with dual scopes that fits perfectly in the holster on Han’s right thigh or in his right hand. It does not fit organicallt into his left hand. However, this is an exceptionally detailed accessory with black and silver accents for the various parts. It is actually amazing how much detail Hasbro can squeeze into an accessory as small as this!

Playability

The four inch toy line was designed for play and Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) is exceptional for that. This Hoth Han Solo figure has pretty amazing balance, not tipping over despite being put in very complex poses. In addition, the holes in the bottom of his feet allow him to stand tall on any number of playsets in outlandish poses or attach to pegs on vehicles, including the latest Millennium Falcon toy!

The Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) also has almost lifelike articulation. He has hinged ball and socket joints at the ankles, knees, elbows and shoulders, as well as a ball and socket joint which allows a great range of motion for the head and bust! The groin socket, wrists and waist are the only simple swivel joints. This is the best-articulated Hoth Han Solo yet, despite some of the articulation being inhibited by his jacket!

Collectibility

The Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) is part of the Vintage Collection line that was released in 2010 and he was a pegwarmer at the time. Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) is Vintage Collection figure VC03 and he was not released more than once. As a result, it has barely maintained his value without truly appreciating.

Overview

The Vintage Collection Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit) action figure might be yet another Han Solo figure for one’s collection, but it fits the newer line of well-detailed, highly articulated figures exceptionally well. This is an obscure rendition of Han Solo, but it is well-executed.

For other Vintage Collection figures of characters from The Empire Strikes Back, please check out my reviews of:
VCP03 Boba Fett
VC01 Dengar
VC05 AT-AT Commander
VC9 Boba Fett
VC10 4-LOM
VC11 (Twin Pod) Cloud Car Pilot
VC50 Han Solo (Bespin Outfit)
VC61 Boba Fett (Prototype Armor) Mail-In
VC65 TIE Fighter Pilot
VC95 Luke Skywalker (Hoth Outfit)
VC111 Princess Leia Organa (Bespin Outfit)

8/10

For other Star Wars toy reviews, please check out my 3.75” Star Wars Toy Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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More Of The Same: Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues Still Entertains!

The Good: Very funny, Decent performances
The Bad: Predictable plot and character arcs
The Basics: Cameos and incongruently hilarious lines (along with a surprising amount of social commentary), make Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues a worthwhile sequel!


As we reach the end of the year, I find myself catching movies I missed over the last year. I was actually surprised to discover that Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues came out a whole year ago! I guess that illustrates how excited I was about the Anchorman sequel. My wife, however, is a huge fan of Will Ferrell, so with the release of the trailer to Get Hard, she’s been eager to catch up on the Ferrell films she’s missed over the last two years. We started with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. We opted for the extended edition of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues because what the hell is the point of the theatrical version when you can have half an hour more of Ron Burgundy?!

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues picks up right after Anchorman (reviewed here!) and for those who have not seen the first film, there is almost no humor in the movie that depends upon the first film. In fact, outside the introduction of Brick Tamland, the humor in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues stands entirely on its own. But for those who are fans of Anchorman, while Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is enjoyable, it is largely a continuation of what came before without much new . . . other than the lines. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is funny and continues the humor of Anchorman which worked best as a collection of hilarious lines, more than a humorous narrative. Like the first one, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is the funniest when it is just playing with funny lines as opposed to moving the film in wacky directions.

After the success of Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone working on the nightly news in San Diego, the pair moves to New York City. There, Veronica is offered a position as a major network news anchor and Ron Burgundy is fired. Six months later, Ron Burgundy is working at Sea World, getting drunk, fired and then unsuccessfully trying to kill himself. Offered a position at GNN, a new 24-hour news network in New York City, by Freddie Shapp immediately after his aborted suicide attempt, Ron Burgundy reunites his old news team to take the job at the cable news company. After getting Champ Kind, Brian Fantana, and Brick Tamland out of their current situations, the quartet goes to New York City where they meet their new boss, Linda (where they are shocked by working for a black woman).

Ron Burgundy adapts poorly to working at the cable station where the primetime anchor, Jack Lime, is better-looking and more popular than he is. While Brick falls for a secretary working for GNN, Ron ends up in a fight with Jack. Challenged to beat Jack’s ratings, despite being at the 2 A.M. timeslot, Ron creates soft news (infotainment) in an attempt to win. When infotainment makes Burgundy a national hit, his formula leads him to unprecedented success. He begins to present his own stories – like smoking crack on the air – and the results are awards, women, and even more success. But Burgundy’s new relationship with his boss and his attempts to keep his old family (winning them back) leads him to real conflict that puts him at odds with his oldest friends. When sweeps week puts him at odds with his ex-wife and his news team,

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is, at best, a series of hilarious lines strung together by a thin plot involving Burgundy’s attempt to dominate cable news. As such, the film includes a pretty time-consuming subplot involving Brick and Chani, musical numbers, and otherwise incongruent comedic exchanges (condoms, horse piss, and the shock of working for a black boss). The film is funny, but is actually quite a bit smarter than one might expect.

Loaded with a social commentary that actually explores the degradation of journalism. While Burgundy creates feel-good pieces and ratingsbait, the commentary is actually impressive. Burgundy sinks a hard-hitting piece on how airplane parts are falling off planes and killing people because the corporate sponsors of GNN have a major stock interest in the airline that is criminally negligent. But, to appease the corporate owners of GNN, Burgundy eagerly jettisons the significant story in favor of a car chase. That Ron witlessly does the wrong thing is one thing, but as an audience able to evaluate the work, it is clear that writers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay had something to say.

It’s easy to overlook the commentary in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues amid troublingly blatant jokes surrounding Ron Burgundy’s racism and the ridiculous plot development of Rob going blind. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues starts to feel repetitive for those who have seen the first Anchorman as Ron refocuses his life on Veronica and his son. The film loses some of its focus as it transfers from being a story of an ambitious idiot working his way up the cable news ladder to achieve popularity when it takes a right turn with Ron and his son Walter rehabilitate a shark they find washed up on the shore of the lighthouse Ron moves into after he goes blind.

The performances in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues are exactly what one expects from a Will Ferrell film that utilizes the strongly comedic cast that was assembled for the first film, along with newcomers (to the franchise) like Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, and Meagan Good. Even Dylan Baker, who usually plays straightlaced, powerful dramatic characters, plays Freddie as goofy and hilarious which is unlike any other performance of his I have seen.

The leads in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Will Ferrell, David Koechner, Steve Carell, and Paul Rudd each reclaim their roles from the first film and they manage to make their characters distinct and funny. The film is funny, entertaining, and has more substance and commentary than the first, though it is more repetitive and familiar than it is audacious and originally. Still, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continued is worth watching!

For other works with David Koechner, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Cheap Thrills
Piranha 3DD
Paul
Extract
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
Sex Drive
Get Smart
Let’s Go To Prison
Farce Of the Penguins
Thank You For Smoking
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Waiting . . .

5.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Every Able-Bodied Conservative Working In Hollywood Shows Up To Kick Ass In The Expendables 3

The Good: Decent special effects/stunts
The Bad: Light on genuine character development, Obvious plot, Dull performances
The Basics: The Expendables 3 is exactly what one expects from a lowbrow action adventure movie released during Summer Blockbuster Season.


There are few cinematic franchises I have less interest in than The Expendables. Outside The Fast And The Furious, the “Dragon Tattoo” films, and the forthcoming films based on Fifty Shades Of Grey, The Expendables might be the film franchise that is the most obvious, lowbrow and unimpressive still being produced. While I did see The Expendables (reviewed here!), I had no interest in the sequel. So why did I bother with The Expendables 3?

Kelsey Grammer and Harrison Ford. A few years back, Ford declared that he was only going to appear in one film per year, which should have made him very choosy. I suppose some part of me still lives with that mentality (he has long-since gone back to being a more active actor appearing in multiple films per year), that if Harrison Ford is going to risk his reputation, there has to be some redeeming aspect to the film. As for Kelsey Grammer, after years of being trapped in the role of Frasier Crane (albeit a role of a lifetime!), it is understandable that he is appearing in multiple blockbusters this Summer Blockbuster Season just to make bank for a change. When both Grammer and Ford were announced as being in The Expendables 3, it raised the profile of the film so that it had the appearance of respectability. How and why The Expendables 3 was made (other than raw profit motive based on the success of its predecessors) is something of a mystery. Outside giving the film two characters with enough articulation and erudition to make some lines actually comprehensible, how the franchise got Ford and Grammer is still a mystery to me. That said, more than being truly awful, The Expendables 3 is just what viewers would expect of the lowbrow action-adventure franchise.

Opening with a pulse-pounding soundtrack on an armored prison train, The Expendables 3 finds Doc (Doctor Death) being returned to Denzali Prison. Through the clever use of a military helicopter and steel cable, Barney Ross (Zero), Lee Christmas, Jenson and Toll Road are able to rescue him, though is thirst for vengeance leads him to blow up the prison. Rather than taking him right home, Zero arms Doc and the team heads to Somalia where they drop off bombs with Hale Caesar and Victor Minz. Minz turns out to be an enemy Ross once encountered named Stonebanks, which the team discovers when Stonebanks arrives and fouls the deal, mortally wounding Caesar in the process.

The presence of Stonebanks inspires Trench to lend a hand and puts Ross in front of Operations Officer Drummer. Drummer is determined to find Stonebanks one more time, but he does not trust Ross to finish the job. Ross employs Bonaparte to assemble a new team to take out Stonebanks (and fast). Bonaparte shops the soldiers and psychos Thorn, Smilee, Luna, and Mars to Ross to form the new team. Drummer tasks Ross with bringing Stonebanks in alive, with only a thirty-six hour window to find and apprehend Stonebanks before he goes off the grid again. Revealing to Mars that Stonebanks was once an Expendable, the team arrives in Bucharest where they convince Ross to break into the museum where the latest sale is going down. Apprehending Stonebanks, Ross’s new team is en route to delivering him to the Hague when Stonebanks is rescued by his own mercenaries. The rescue operation leaves Ross’s new team captured by Stonebanks and forces Ross to reunite the old team and rescue them and thwart his old friend.

What is not a mystery is how and why the cast of The Expendables 3 added Mel Gibson and Wesley Snipes to the franchise’s roster. In addition of continuing the trend of casting men who are able to growl all of their lines, the film seems determined to cast every possible aging action star or outsider in Hollywood. With Robert Davi cast as one of the film’s behind-the-scenes villains, one has to wonder if the casting session was simply a meeting of the Hollywood chapter of the RNC! Gibson seems willing to take whatever work he is offered and the role of the film’s primary villain allows him to play dark and angry in a way that at the very least taps into the public’s perception of him easily-enough. As for Snipes, his role of Doc is sufficient to remind viewers that he was once a-list on the action movie circuit and restore him to prominence there. As well, Snipes gets to deliver a cute tax evasion joke early in the film that sets the tone of the tongue-in-cheek nature of the humor for The Expendables 3.

Unfortunately, The Expendables 3 is painfully obvious. Viewers who keep checking the clock (as they are want to do during the mediocre establishing events) will easily realize that there is no possible way that Ross’s team will succeed with his apprehension of Stonebanks. The only question becomes whether or not Ross will be captured with them. In fact, the only genuine surprise in The Expendables 3 is that Stonebanks does not shoot the tech whose bomb fails to go off immediately (director Patrick Hughes telegraphs the potential that that will occur, but does not see it through, which was momentarily interesting). Sadly, everything in The Expendables 3 is only momentarily interesting.

Most of The Expendables 3 aims to appeal to the most simplistic of sensibilities. Even if one has not seen any of the prior films in the franchise, they can come into The Expendables 3 and pick up all they need to know. The Expendables is a largely male cast being ridiculous and saying remarkably little (save Antonio Banderas’s late return to the film), it is hard to imagine that the script had more than twenty pages of actual dialogue to it. We get it, these are manly men. The guy doesn’t need to use a scimitar to shave his face before we understand he’s hard core (as Doc does to go from being the disheveled to recognizable Snipes).

While The Expendables 3 has a massive cast, full of recognizable actors, none of the performers are known for being particularly great actors (save Harrison Ford and Kelsey Grammer). As it is, even the two most-recognized actors do not deliver much to be proud of. Ford smirks his way into the movie, as if he knows that he is augmenting a cast of people whose prior credits were made up of fight movies and actual fights (Ronda Rousey and Randy Couture were very well known for fighting and wrestling entertainment before these films). Grammer’s lines are almost all clichés, so his grizzled character is not one of Grammer’s more memorable ones.

All of that said, outside being painfully boring for its predictability, The Expendables 3 is not bad, just thoroughly underwhelming. The character relationships are obvious, the fight sequences are predictable and the acting is entirely familiar for most of the performers involved. Outside teenagers who suddenly realize they no longer have to sneak into an Expendables movie and people searching for two hours of air conditioned theater, it is hard to imagine what the appeal is for making The Expendables 3 a part of this summer’s blockbuster push.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Horns
The Best Of Me
The Zero Theorem
The Equalizer
The Maze Runner
This Is Where I Leave You
The Giver
Guardians Of The Galaxy
Life Of Crime
Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes
Behaving Badly
Transformers: Age Of Extinction
Happy Christmas
Snowpiercer

3/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Another Disappointing Plush Star Wars Angry Bird: Han Solo Yellow Bird!

The Good: Good stitching? Safe for children, Looks generally like the Han Solo Angry Bird.
The Bad: Vastly overpriced, Low playability.
The Basics: The Star Wars Angry Birds plush Han Solo is a ridiculous bit of merchandising that does little more than market the game.


The Angry Birds Star Wars merchandise has, largely, left me disappointed, though I keep ending up with new pieces of merchandise from Angry Birds Star Wars. The latest of these is the Han Solo Angry Birds plush. This follows in the collection that included the Leia Angry Bird plush (that review is here!) and the Luke Skywalker Angry Bird plush (reviewed here!) and Han Solo is equally ridiculous.

For those unfamiliar with the Han Solo character from Star Wars Angry Birds (reviewed here !), it doesn’t matter; the birds in Angry Birds do not have actual personalities. Instead, this is a parody of Han Solo and a combination with one of the smallest birds, the yellow Angry Bird.

Basics

The Star Wars Angry Birds plush Han Solo is part of a current movement in toys where recognizable characters are changed into something else entirely. This looks only vaguely like Han Solo as he appeared in A New Hope and with his additives – a hairpiece, vest, and blaster’s belt – he only looks slightly like the yellow Han Solo Angry Bird. This version of Yellow Angry Bird Han Solo is a 5” in diameter stuffed character that is essentially a big head with a blaster and white and black vest/shirt that is supposed to pass as Han Solo.

The Han Solo Angry Birds plush does not include any sort of extended costume or body; this is a very pure representation of the Angry Birds Han Solo with embroidered black eyes and yellow skin, a bright yellow beak and the costume sewn onto it.

Accessories

There are no accessories with this plush doll, though the blaster is sewn onto the plush.

Playability

The playability of this Han Solo is severely limited as it is a plush and it does not have a body. Annoyingly, this plush falls over or rolls over constantly, so it is poor for posing as well. One supposes little children may snuggle with it because it is entirely soft, but that is about it.

Collectibility

The Commonwealth Toys Star Wars Angry Birds plushes seem to be a failure commercially, as I never seem to have any problem finding any of them, especially this silly Han Solo plush. One suspects as the current fad for inaccurate dolls and Angry Birds fades, these will rightly become worthless. As it stands now, they are vastly overpriced in the $10 - $22 range. I suspect that the peak price has already been reached and that Han Solo’s value will only go down as time goes on and people wake up to the fact that the Star Wars Angry Birds plush thing is a pretty lousy fad.

Overall

The Yellow Han Solo Angry Bird plush is ridiculous and not worth picking up!

For other plush toys, please check out my reviews of:
Super Deformed Santa Yoda
Ludo from Labyrinth
Giant Microbes Sore Throat

2/10

For other toy reviews, please visit my Toy Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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If It Weren’t For The Outfit . . . The Han Solo Mighty Muggs Figure Would Be Unrecognizable!

The Good: Costume looks more or less right.
The Bad: Dumb animated look, Giant head, Heavy.
The Basics: The Han Solo Mighty Muggs toy continued the trend in Star Wars Mighty Muggs whereby the figure was only really recognizable due to the costume painted on!


Han Solo, despite being vastly overproduced in the main toy line, actually only suffered Mighty Muggs treatment twice! The oversized, animated-in-appearance “figures” cursed Han Solo with the Hoth version (reviewed here!) and the standard, original A New Hope version. The original Han Solo Mighty Muggs figure is an appropriately ridiculous-looking statue/figure that appeals to a very tiny niche of collectors, which might be why there were no other Han Solo’s than the original two!

Mighty Muggs toys look like they might be plush as they feature animated versions of recognizable Star Wars characters. However, the cartoon-like heads atop disproportionately smaller bodies simply revealed that the heads and toys were solid, like ceramic (they are, in fact, made of a super-hard, heavy plastic). This is as true of the Han Solo as it is of other Mighty Muggs figures.

For those unfamiliar with Han Solo as he initially appeared, throughout most of A New Hope (reviewed here!), on both Tatooine and the Death Star. There, Han Solo wore a white and black smuggler’s outfit. It is the vested version of Han Solo that is the subject of the original Mighty Muggs figure.

The Mighty Muggs Han Solo figure is poor and anyone who has seen how Harrison Ford and Han Solo actually looked will recognize this bears little resemblance to Han Solo. This looks like a cartoon version of Han, though the costume is distinctive to the character (though Lando wears the same outfit at the very end of The Empire Strikes Back).

Basics

Han Solo is a human smuggler, seen on Tatooine and the Death Star as he appeared at the beginning of A New Hope. The figure stands 7" tall. Han Solo is dressed in a white and black outfit that is painted solidly onto the puffy body of the toy. There are no rank insignias on the toy, though there are details like the belt buckle and blaster holster painted onto the body of this Mighty Muggs toy.

This toy is a poor sculpt which looks like an oversized, fattened up LEGO figure and the Mighty Muggs has black hair on its head. His expression is a grimace, which is appropriate to Han Solo, but this puffy version looks nothing like the character as Han Solo had a very angular face. The hands are open slightly and this allows Han to hold his ridiculous plastic blaster.

Accessories

Han Solo, scoundrel in debt to Jabba The Hutt as he is, comes with one accessory, his blaster pistol. The two inch long monolithic black plastic firearm fits in Han’s right hand and looks as goofy there as the rest of the figure. This is a very blockish accessory for a very unrealistically-rendered toy.

Playability

The Mighty Muggs toy line was designed for no good reason I can find, perhaps just because someone realized Star Wars fans would buy anything (which turned out to be true enough to make multiple lines of Star Wars Mighty Muggs financially viable!). This heavy toy can be harmful to children and is more intended as a display statue. Sure, it’s a ridiculous display statue, but that’s about it.

Han Solo comes with only five points of articulation, all of which are simple swivel joints. He has joints at the groin socket, shoulders, and neck. The elbows do not extend, so all arm posing is straight-armed. To be fair, the figure does stand up.

Collectibility

The Han Solo is part of the Mighty Muggs Star Wars collection, which no one I know would ever spend money on. The value of these is already declining because it’s a ridiculous concept executed poorly.

Overview

Only the very most devoted fans with far too much money to spend would waste their capital on the Han Solo Mighty Muggs toy.

For other Star Wars Mighty Muggs toys, please check out my reviews of:
Imperial Guard
Plo Koon
Qui-Gon Jinn
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Younger)
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Older)
C-3PO
Luke Skywalker
Hoth Luke Skywalker
Grand Moff Tarkin
Bespin Luke Skywalker

1.5/10

For other toy reviews, please visit my Toy Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Join The Boycott: Ender’s Game Is Worth Skipping Anyway!

The Good: Special effects, Moments of morality/philosophy that are explored
The Bad: Lack of compelling character elements, Mediocre performances, Predictable storyline
The Basics: Ender’s Game is a blasé big-budget, special-effects-driven science fiction movie that is not worth the viewer’s time and attention, regardless of the social issues surrounding its author.


Whenever I review a film, I take great pains to contemplate the work in front of me and only that. Each film (even sequels) is viewed as a standalone project and I try to stick to that, often putting forth a disclaimer in the reviews that the work, if it is based upon a book series, is a pure review of the film alone, if I have never read the book. That is perfectly appropriate with my review of the film Ender’s Game. However, I find myself unable to limit my review to just the film’s content.

Every now and then, I find myself seriously late to the party. As a constant activist for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered rights since my time in high school (over two decades ago), I try to keep abreast of current events, but I tend to be very focused on politics. I have a tendency to ignore celebrities because they say a lot of shit and for me, the politics of equality is usually focused on getting information on Bills, voting records, and key personalities (and, sadly, trying to understand how such dangerous people became so powerful seemingly overnight without the Left either catching them early or breeding a leader of equal or greater charisma and intelligence of their own!). So, it was not until after I screened the new film Ender’s Game that I actually learned of the fairly massive boycott going on in relation to the film’s release. Mark Vaughn wrote a terrific article that I highly recommend to anyone looking for a solid, social reason to avoid Ender’s Game (that article is right here, click now and go there to read it!). Apparently, the author of the book series that began with Ender’s Game and that the film Ender’s Game is based upon is a pretty vocal homophobe with not only backwards, but entirely hateful thoughts that he freely expresses and donates funds to the dissemination of. Vaughn in his article rightly ties the purchase of Orson Scott Card works to supporting hate speech; I wish I had read it before screening the film. In my defense, outside the plea of ignorance, all I can offer is that I did not pay to watch the film and I didn’t even buy snacks at the screening.

Beyond the powerful social reasons not to support Ender’s Game, as a critic, it was remarkably easy not to recommend the film: it’s pretty boring eye candy that is all but ruined by the trailers for the film. The film’s trailers give one an accurate example of the scope and speed of the special effects – which are suitably magnificent – and gloss over how much time is spent with surprisingly dull military lessons and combat jargon. In other words, the exciting parts are in the trailer, it accurately telegraphs the plot and most of the rest of Ender’s Game is just boring.

Set in the future, after the Earth has been savaged by the aliens known as the Buggers, the International Military is desperate to prevent the remainder of humanity from being wiped out. Convinced that the Buggers will return to obliterate what is left of Earth and the human race, children are being trained by the International Military as soldiers to fight the seemingly inevitable next wave of invasion. One of the new conscripts, Ender Wiggin, stands out at Battle School. During his training, he exhibits three-dimensional thinking abilities and a tactical mind that are uncommon. He is tapped by Colonel Graff to progress to Command School.

Guided by Graff, Mazer Rackham, and Major Anderson, Ender becomes the chosen soldier to lead the human armada through the fantastic battle that will decide the fate of Earth and humanity against the more advanced alien aggressors.

The first problem with Ender’s Game is in the tactics. Why the military employs powerful individuals like Graff and Anderson, but seems to have no one on staff who thinks three-dimensionally like a child is utterly inconceivable. The tactic that would be truly different for a less powerful force deterring a more advanced one is guerilla warfare and that type of combat is difficult in space. To be sure, Ender’s Game does illustrate that type of thinking at some points – most notably with the way ships use the asteroid belt for cover – but too much of the combat comes down to brute force; ships firing relentlessly, massive explosions, and a tired, familiar, sense of strategy that does not seem at all like it came from a military prodigy.

Then there is Harrison Ford. Does Harrison Ford have something in his contracts these days where he limits the number of smiles he delivers in a film to three (or less)? Ever since Morning Glory (reviewed here!), Ford seems obsessed with playing the same surly, gruff, growling character in different settings. It’s astonishing to see a man who built his career on possessing and displaying a remarkable innate charisma use none of it, but in Ender’s Game, he just comes across as miserable. If Ford’s Graff is best described as “miserable,” Sir Ben Kingsley’s Mazer Rackham is best described as flat and dull. It’s not been a good year for Kingsley, whatwith his Mandarin in Iron Man 3 (reviewed here!) being reduced to a punchline. In Ender’s Game he does not even get to deliver the film’s joke.

And it’s not a funny film at all. Plodding and serious, the only hope for Ender’s Game is in its philosophical lessons that seem – fortunately – to be divorced from many of Orson Scott Card’s personal beliefs. The International Military is desperate and Ender’s Game has an “ends justify the means” philosophy to it that is presented starkly and oppressively. When director Gavin Hood – who adapted the screenplay from the book for this film – is not beating viewers over the head with how the military-industrial complex will do whatever it has to in order to survive and dominate, he’s flashing big special effects sequences that try to distract the viewer from the rational understanding they have come to about the methods employed by the people fighting. It’s like watching Blood Diamond (reviewed here!) and understanding rationally just how terrible the diamond trade is, but then being shown thousands of images of diamond rings . . . oooh, shiny! But wait, child enslavement, drug peddling to minors, rape camps . . . . oooh, shiny!

Asa Butterfield is unremarkable as Ender Wiggins. Butterfield is an adequate child actor, but as Ender, he fails to capture and portray an underlying intelligence in the reclusive character that makes the viewer actually believe that he could be the savior others talk about Ender as.

The net result is that for politics or entertainment reasons, Ender’s Game is easy enough to pass by. The studio is, no doubt, banking on the press to bolster the idea that the film must be seen on a big screen to truly be appreciated, but they are hoping that it won’t be pointed out that the underlying movie has to be worth seeing regardless of the effects sequences. Ender’s Game is not.

For other works with Abigail Bresslin, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
August: Osage County
Rango
Zombieland
Definitely, Maybe
No Reservations
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Signs

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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