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Review |
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| Sculpt: |
| General Grievous is the "new" villain created for REVENGE OF THE SITH, the cold-blooded Jedi hunter and leader of the droid armies of the Separatists. While much hype has surrounded this character, at this point we still don't even know who will be voicing the character in the film! (John DiMaggio of FUTURAMA voices him in the CLONE WARS animated micro-series.) Grievous reminds me of an abstract sculpture of an alien skeleton, made from metal and actual bone. Considering that there are still not that many reference photos of Grievous to compare it to, I think the sculpt is really good. The head is pretty spot-on, while some of the detailing in the limbs and torso might be a bit off. I'm also not too sure if this figure is to scale, as he's not any taller than the Saga "Darth Vader: Throne Room Duel figure." The removable cape is nice, it plugs into two holes in the figure's chest, and has a fair amount of textural detailing to it. We'll give him a benefit-of-the-doubt rating of 8.5 out of 10. |
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| Paint: |
| Grievous is molded in an ivory-colored plastic, with gun-metal grey paint apps to his body. The ivory sections are weathered by a rust-colored wash. His eyes are yellow, with a maroon "skin" around them. His cape is an ultra-pale lavender, with a deep maroon lining and a gray symbol on the back. 9/10. |
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| Articulation: |
| Grievous has ball-joints at the neck, both shoulders, and both knees. There are standard planer-cut joints at the chest, elbows and hips. The head joint is pretty stiff, and my sample's left elbow was stuck; I used the old in-the-freezer-for-an hour trick to finally loosen it up. Overall, there's a fairly good level of poseability to the figure, although its cape does limit shoulder movement; removing the cape allows pretty decent "battle" poses: 8.5/10. |
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| Accessories: |
| Grievous comes with a lightsaber and a blaster. Although the "Sneak Preview" wave was supposed to come with the standard gunmetal gray interlocking base/figure stands in use since the Saga '04 line, they aren't included. Grievous was initially supposed to come with two lightsabers, but the blaster appears to have been swapped out at the last minute: 8.5/10. |
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| Packaging: |
| The same brand new REVENGE OF THE SITH card that will be used with the rest of the movie line. The card is almost triangular in shape, and is diecut on the sides and top. The figure insert image is now separate from the ROTS logo/figure name insert. The background is a field of molten lava behind the figure, with a stylized Darth Vader mask looming at the top, forming the J-hook. Noticably absent from the "Sneak Preview" cards are the silhouettes of Anakin and Obi-Wan dueling: the dueling figures do appear on the regular movie tie-in cards, however. On the inside of the outer clear blister are "Sneak Preview" stickers. The character insert is a digital image of Grievous, sans cape; the same image is used on the cardback. The character name insert declares Grievous as "Preview: 1 of 4." The "Sneak Preview" cardbacks have images of the four figures in this wave, as well as the "Sneak Preview" Anakin's Jedi Starfighter. 8/10. |
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| Availability: |
| As of this writing, the figure has just appeared at retail, and is packed pretty heavily per 12-figure case, as well as in the Wal-Mart 20-figure endcase display cases: 9/10. |
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| Conclusion: |
| Grievous is probably the most-hyped character in ROTS after Darth Vader himself. While initial images of the character seemed indicate it had a more metallic color scheme, I think the ivory and gunmetal gray scheme actually works well. The lack of the figure stand is disappointing, though, and the cape's limiting of the articulation means it can't be posed in cool "attack" positions while wearing it: 8.6/10. |
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