Maz Kanata - SW [S] - Basic

Maz Kanata is Sophia Petrillo from The Golden Girls. Too bad she's not nearly as entertaining as the latter. She is also about as relevant to Star Wars as Sophia Petrillo is. A wasted character in every shape and way, Maz Kanata went from being interesting to dull in less time that the scenes she appeared in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Her cameo appearance in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi was even more contrived. Out of nowhere, she was featured in a hologram where she offered advice to Rose and Finn which set them on their trip to Canto Bight. We don’t see her “in the flesh” but as a hologram. And in a matter of a few rushed moments we see her with glasses on, then glasses off, then wielding a weapon, then flying off to fight whatever battle she was fighting. The whole sequence was set at a dizzying pace and when it was over many Star Wars fans questioned what the heck just happened. We are sure that our summary will make us guilty of having a vituperative tone to some, but we honestly never understood why Maz Kanata became a Star Wars character and why they are forcing her to have a role that isn’t needed in Star Wars. She is a poor man’s Yoda at best.

In an almost ironic move, Hasbro has decided to capture the Episode VIII likeness of Maz Kanata for the Star Wars [Solo] line. The Last Jedi version of her is unique to her The Force Awakens appearance because she is wearing a backpack and is holding a big gun. And all of these extra accessories are present here. Sadly, her backpack (jetpack?) is permanently attached to the figure. It’s glued in place, and damage will result if you force trying to remove it. This is an unfortunate thing for this Maz Kanata action figure. It makes her extremely scene-specific, and you won’t be able to utilize her in more ways in your collection as a result. Also, if Hasbro decided to be as screen-accurate as possible, they would have cast this figure in some translucent color to mimic the holographic image of her we saw in the film. We NEVER saw Maz Kanata “in the flesh” in The Last Jedi, so this is technically an Expanded Universe version of Maz Kanata (or just off-screen enough to make you mad). Maz Kanata also comes with a large blaster rifle. She can hold it rather well, but it does feel a bit too bulky in her hands. Also, the gun looks different than the one we saw in the film, but our memories could be inaccurate about that.

We should also note that her tooling is different than the original figure in multiple spots (aside from the glued-in-place backpack). It’s especially evident in her sweater and her hands. And her legs are also positioned differently this time around too. This is what happens when an action figure is revised in any way. Some of the other parts get tweaked here and there a little bit too. The paint operations on the figure are decent, but we think Hasbro got a little bit sloppy in spots. We wish they would have cleaned up some of them before setting in motion the mass production of it. Also included is the Force Link 2.0 technology, but as of the publication of this review still doesn’t work properly. Hasbro has updated their website to let fans know that the full functionality of Force Link 2.0 should be available before May 1, 2018. In summary, we feel strongly that Maz Kanata is a STRANGE addition to the basic figure line at this point. We appreciate that Hasbro attempted to make a different version of Maz Kanata for The Last Jedi. But she is technically inaccurate because we only saw her in hologram form, and not in “real life.” Regardless, Maz Kanata may be a hit for those that love the Sequel Trilogy.