Saw Gerrera

"If you continue to fight, what will you become?" Gerrera is bunkered on the ancient world of Jedha, coordinating a prolonged insurgency against the Imperial occupation. His ailing health does little to wither his resolve to fight. The first character to cross from the animated half of the Star Wars continuity ro the live-action half, Saw Gerrera was introduced in The Clone Wars as a resistance fighter who was being trained by Ahsoka Tano (because the Republic couldn't openly send their army to the planet to assist). His role in Rogue One was originally going to be a new character (who looked like a pink Thanos), but Kiri Hart of the Lucasfilm Story Group suggested they could just reuse Saw, helping tie the two movie eras together. Live-action Saw was played by Forest Whitaker. With hair. Rogue One pretty notoriously went through some big reshoots, with a ton of alternate takes and footage never showing up anywhere except trailers and promo material - in Saw's case, the first trailer showed him as bald, but by trailer two he had this big head of hair. (We were probably going to see more flashbacks of him teaching young Jyn Erso how to fight tyranny.) Gotta say, Hasbro, not including an alternate head for this toy was a bit of a missed opportunity. Saw is presented as an opposite number to Darth Vader: a soldier who came up during the Clone Wars, whose body is now ruined by years of conflict, needing to be held together by mechanical prostheses and direct life support. One tube runs from his chest to a canister on his hip, while another little pod on his belt has a second tube that terminates in the breathing mask hanging up by his neck. He's got a cape and a single large shoulder pad bulking up his upper body. His right shin and foot are mechanical, and he's wearing a sandal, of all things, on his left foot. The armor is a lovely dark blue, with a few lighter patches, and dingy silver panels. Beneath it he's wearing a matching space suit with bright silver rings around the arms that make it look pressurized (though the fact that the pantlegs are torn and tattered would defeat the purpose of that). He gets the Photo Real paint, making sure his lazy eye is done correctly, and the skintone is warm enough to contrast against the dark suit. His cape is cream and orange-brown, with a triangular symbol. Despite being a clunky robot-man who can barely move, the articulation is as good here as on any other Black Series figure. He's got a balljointed head, balljointed neck, pec hinges, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel/hinge elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, a balljointed chest, balljointed hips, swivel thighs, swivel/hinge knees, swivel shins, and swivel/hinge ankles. The shoulder armor limits the arms somewhat, but that's to be expected. Both of the toy and the character. The way the cape plugs into the shoulder means it'll probably pop off when you take the toy out of the tray, and it's a little awkward to get it back into its hole properly, since everything is soft, flexible PVC. By this point in his history, Saw is mainly giving orders, not leading missions, so his accessories are simple: a blaster that fits in the holster on his belt, and a staff/​walking stick. There's not much he could have come with, really; he just putters around his compound, being weird and paranoid. After appearing in Rogue One, Saw Gerrera really exploded as a character. He appeared in Rebels, in Bad Batch, in Jedi: Fallen Order, in the Princess of Alderaan novel... plucking an existing character to drop into the story worked out wonderfully for world-building puposes. This figure costs more than average, due to all the complicated new sculpts and paint apps, but it's good to finally have him in toy form. -- 10/24/22

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