Obi-Wan Kenobi - ROTS - Basic (III 27)

Obi-Wan Kenobi goes to the volcanic lava planet of Mustafar to confront Anakin Skywalker, who has fallen to the dark side. The two friends are now fierce enemies and face off in a climactic lightsaber duel.

In a movie year, Hasbro is going to ensure that they make plenty of different versions of all the main characters. Obi-Wan Kenobi received a lot of attention. He showed up in the basic figure line no less than three separate times. He was released as the opening figure of the Revenge Of The Sith line: the III 1 figure, the super-articulated (and very awesome) III 55 figure and finally this figure. Two-thirds of the Obi-Wan Kenobi releases are riddled by action features and it’s a shame because they are actually pretty decent sculpts. Quite frankly, we don’t understand this version of Obi-Wan Kenobi too much. The description on the packaging sources this iteration of him on Mustafar (and his dirty paint job confirms that), but what is up with his “Jedi Kick” action feature? Obi-Wan Kenobi comes with a “stand” with a tiny platform that sides out. And then you can pull back his body at the swivel hip to release his leg to kick a “post” (what the packaging calls it) to have it fly to the ground. The instructions on the packaging read: Hold body. Grasp left thigh and twist left leg back. Hold left foot and attach foot to post on base for JEDI KICK! What is up with that? It’s hardly exciting and it’s certainly not screen accurate.

Obi-Wan Kenobi looks decent, but he like so many other figures in the Revenge Of The Sith line are far from perfect. But this particular figure isn’t the worst. However, the articulation on this figure is much less obtrusive than the III 1 figure and the paint job is much better overall. The articulation looks smoother and the mix of ball-joints with swivel points offers the collector some options for different poses. The left leg has a swivel boot while the right leg has a hinge-jointed point of articulation. It looks odd (and very similar to the leg articulation on Kit Fisto (III 22)) and yet functional since it needs some looseness in it for the action feature to work well. Obi-Wan Kenobi balances on his right leg and has nearly full 360 degree turning capability on his left leg. It’s quite amazing the angle his body turns and actually a bit alarming. The head sculpt looks very similar to the one used for 2005’s ROTS Obi-Wan Kenobi (III 1) figure, but the figure is all-new from head to toe. This particular Obi-Wan Kenobi figure definitely has a smoother contour than what we’re used to seeing for this character, but the figure’s center looks a bit flyaway and almost in an action pose. It would have looked a bit better in a tamer fashion.

We’d like to come back to the figure’s paint job. When we say that his paint job is superb, we mean it. The dirt looks like it was applied with some sort of gradient. It is even and balanced and looks as if it collects in all the right spots. This “formation” couldn’t appear more real world than it does and it’s almost a shame that Hasbro added action features to it instead of making it a collector focused figure. It would have been fantastic to get a super-articulated version of Obi-Wan Kenobi with this stunning paint job, but alas it wasn’t meant to be sadly. Besides, if we’re honest, the silhouette of Obi-Wan Kenobi is not that aesthetically pleasing. He looks much too boxy and wide and the details on his face could stand to be cleaned up a bit more to make him as authentic as possible. He has a little while to go before this is reached. Besides the accessories needed to work the action feature, Obi-Wan Kenobi also comes with his signature lightsaber. We suppose if you’re looking for pieces to pad a Mustafar diorama, the included display base and post will help add to that, but if setting up dioramas isn’t your thing, there probably isn’t much reason left to pick up this figure. Obi-Wan Kenobi is certainly one of the most popular Jedi in all the Star Wars films, but Hasbro didn’t take this version of him to the limit and he needs some revisiting. In fact, he needs a lot of it.