Star Wars: The Black Series Lando Calrissian (Solo: A Star Wars Story)

 

 

In a little over a month, the second Star Wars anthology film Solo will hit theaters, bringing us details from the early years of the galaxy’s greatest smuggler, Han Solo, whose death in The Force Awakens I am still not over. Naturally, this means new figures, some for new characters and some for new versions of old favorites.

Young Lando here is a stylish fella, decked out in a fancy scarf, bright yellow shirt, and trademark cape, albeit in a different style than the one he will be known for in The Empire Strikes Back. He also has a pretty cool futuristic haircut, which seems to be a combination of a flat top and a ‘fro, but is a distinctive bi-level ‘do nevertheless. It’s like, and this is going to be a fairly meandering aside here, one hundred percent what that unbelievably dumb Jedi Padawan haircut from the Prequels was supposed to be: a recognizable, real world hairstyle, but from THE FUTURE, space-agetacular and wildly exciting despite being recognizable as something that we Earthlings also have right now. But the Padawan style just looked like a horrible, horrible mullet, and this looks like something generally cool, like a Cool Guy would have a cut like this.

But anyway. This younger version of Lando exhibits the standard Black Series articulation and level of detail, things that make articles on Black Series figures harder and harder and harder to sustain. The colors all look sharp, despite one of them being a bright yellow, and yellow not exactly being the most exciting of colors. It’s good that this Lando isn’t wearing the same clothes as ESB Lando, but that is mainly a story positive: these anthology movies are giving us opportunities to see things before or between Trilogies, and that does not have to mean that they show us the same things we see during those Trilogies only younger.

Lando comes with two accessories, one practical and one fashionable. He is armed with a blaster pistol, similar (I think . . . my Black Series figures are still being unpacked from the move, due mainly to a lack of time to do so, so I don’t have a whole lot of them out for reference at the moment. So, this could be totally wrong. –mr) to the pistol that came with the Death Trooper from Rogue One, however with a barrel addition. It’s not clear if this extra barrel part is intended to be a silencer or make the blaster into a totally different type of blaster, as it is removable. The fashion accessory is a soft plastic cape that simply rests on the shoulders instead of pegging into the back of the figure. The cape sits on the shoulders perfectly fine, but it is a pretty small cape, so it does cause some inhibition of posing when in cape mode. The blaster stores on the leg, not in a holster but held by a series of open loops, which hold it pretty securely and allow for its metallic silver paint to pop next to the black of the pants, which adds a fourth color to the total appearance of the figure. The face sculpt is really nice, the details of the clothing are really nice. The cape is kinda plain, and it is a shame that it is molded plastic and not soft goods. That may simply be a personal assessment, but I stand by it. It does wrap around the torso a bit too closely, which leaves little room for arm movement. Arms can be posed, but this means the cape can’t lay flat across the shoulders, so it lifts on one side or the other when the arms are moved. But, it works, so how much of an impediment the cape winds up being is, to some degree, subjective.

 

This time around, with a new Star Wars movie, we are familiar with some of the characters, but may not be familiar with their role in the developing story, or who they are when this movie takes place. We know Lando has a small amount of backstory in The Empire Strikes Back, being the original owner of the Millennium Falcon and a charmer and scoundrel, and thanks to a Marvel Comics miniseries of two or three years ago, we know that Lobot lost his voice during a mission he and Lando pulled to steal artifacts from Palpatine. Aside from this stuff, I at least don’t know much about Lando, so to see him pre-fame, pre-glory days of the Original Trilogy is kind of exciting.

New takes on old characters, or different versions of existent characters, such as young man Lando here, are a mixed bag. Sometimes good, sometimes not, it is usually somewhat risky to try and put a different spin on someone that is established and known. The vast wealth of Expanded Universe material, regardless of whether or not Disney recognizes it as being official any more, has given backstory to so many Star Wars personalities, so fans should be used to the kind of filling in or retconning something like Solo will do, like Rogue One did before it. Young Lando is a great pre-take on an existent character. One looks tells you that this is Lando, and yet there is enough about him that is fresh and different that one does not experience that “it’s Lando” shrugging feeling.