When I first saw The Force Awakens, I was struck by how little there was in the way of costume changes for the main characters. There also didn’t seem to be many background characters. Whereas in A New Hope or Return of the Jedi, the camera lingers a bit more in the Cantina and Jabba’s Palace, The Force Awakens seems to blur through its similar local, Maz’s Castle. After I saw the movie twice, I started composing a list in my head of what figures Hasbro could make for the 3 3/4″ line. At first I thought there were about 25-35 figures that could be made. With not all that many figures already released, and comparing this to the output we had with the last major film release, Revenge of the Sith, it seemed very small.
I’ve seen the film 4 times now, and I’ve had a chance to look over more of the materials that go with the movie to really identify more characters that could have figures. Two major sources for characters came from the Hidalgo “The Force Awakens The Visual Dictionary” and the virtual Topps Star Wars Trader App. These both gave nice color pictures of characters we barely saw in the film. From there, I made a list of figures that could be made based on location and character.
I went on to compare my list of characters as compared to similar characters (screen time and significance of photo) in “The Phantom Menace The Visual Dictionary.” From all of this work, I came up with what I felt was a good list to go off of. I know some of these characters could easily never happen. I tried to go with characters that were visually interesting even though they are barely there in the film (much like the figures that have been made for the Cantina and Jabba’s Palace). I’m also sure there are figures or slight variations that could be added. I wanted a place to start off with, and a visual representation of many of those blink and you miss them characters.
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