Mace Windu - ROTS - Basic (III 10)

Mace Windu is a courageous fighter and respected member of the Jedi Council. In a desperate attempt to save the galaxy, Mace leads a daring confrontation against Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

What is up with all of these terrible action features adulterating our action figures? Waiting a long time for a Mace Windu update, 2005’s ROTS Mace Windu (III 10) just isn’t going to be it, folks. Static legs, floppy arms and a bleak expression are only the beginnings of why this figure needs a complete restart. It may be something kids will embrace, but Mace Windu will do very little for collectors, love him or hate him. Before we start tackling what’s wrong with this figure, we wanted to draw your attention to a peculiar trend in the basic figure line. Why is it that Hasbro did not include outer robes on so many of the Jedi figures. There are obvious exceptions of course like the awesome Agen Kolar (III 20) and the pilot version of Obi-Wan Kenobi (III 55), but for the most part the Jedi came sans outer robes. Why is that? Cost-cutting measures? Hasbro didn’t think they needed them? Both Collection 1 and Collection 2 figures have suffered from this oversight. And quite frankly, the same is true for Mace Windu. Had Hasbro included a soft-goods robe, he may have become a little more palatable.

Mace Windu is based on the scene when he confronts Chancellor Palpatine along with Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, and Saesee Tiin. After the latter three Jedi are instantly slain by Sidious, Mace Windu engages him in a powerful lightsaber duel. Anakin Skywalker arrives and Mace believes he’s come to save the day, but Anakin turns on him instead, betrays the Jedi Order and Darth Sidious is able to gain the upper hand and attack Mace Windu with Force lightning. Hasbro may have neglected his outer robes, but they didn’t forget about the Force lightning and they included it as an accessory here. It’s circular and completely enrobes (no pun intended) Mace Windu’s upper body. It’s an unimportant accessory by all means, but it makes Mace very scene specific and many collectors may wish to recreate a diorama of it in their collections. That’s just they way we’re wired. Mace Windu is one of the most powerful Jedi. We learned that from Anakin Skywalker in Revenge Of The Sith. But this action figure interpretation of him doesn’t show strength, but rather weakness by the way Hasbro attacked it for the basic figure line.

Where Mace Windu fails the most is in the sculpt. And it’s really all due to the silly action feature. When you squeeze Mace Windu’s legs together, it raises his arms and throws off the Force lightning. This was designed for the kids. It wasn’t meant to be authentic or accurate (which it’s not). The problem is that the action feature requires his shoulders and arms to be very loose and makes Mace Windu appear very floppy and not too sleek and agile like he appears in the Prequel Trilogy. What’s worse is that his ball-jointed shoulders are so rounded that they actually look fake. Hasbro didn’t exercise the best judgment to assemble Mace Windu in the way that they did. So he has all of this extremely loose upper body articulation (which works great with his lightsaber by the way), and then his legs only have swivel hip articulation. His legs also seem much too short as well. The figure doesn’t offer collectors a wide range of movement to freely pose him. In fact, he doesn’t have the best center of gravity either and you’ll find he wants to fall over any chance he’ll get. Clearly, Mace Windu isn’t the perfect action figure, but he is light years from definitive status. This one you can skip.