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Director Krennic assigning forensic space-profiler Wilg Rahm to solve the mystery of who's been leaking Death Star plans to the Rebels with the help of Dr. Hraitor Lecter.
A brilliant scientist, Galen Erso was coerced into using kyber crystals to enhance energy yields - Orson Krennic then weaponized it to create the Death Star's superlaser.
So, the "fans" who hate that Disney dares to cast something other than white people with penises in Star Wars love to gas on about how much better (read: "whiter") the old Expanded Universe was than the new continuity. They're idiots, of course, but even they would be hard-pressed to stan the old story in this case. In Rogue One, the Death Star's flaw is the result of carefully concealed engineering by a man who was being held hostage and hated his captors so much he'd build in a quintillion-to-one shot that someone, somewhere might be able to find and exploit just so he could clutch the straws of hope that would keep despair from drowning him, thus tying him in personally with the central theme of not just this movie, but the entirety of Star Wars as a franchise.
In the EU, it was because a Wookie had explosive diarrhea.
Galen Erso was played by Mads Mikkelsen, who's no stranger to nerdy properties. But it's not like Casino Royale or King Arthur were getting toys, right? The likeness gets Photo Real printing, but the underlying sculpt needed more work. Like, his head should be longer, with a larger jaw. So this looks sort of correct, but not perfect.
Erso his Imperial science officer uniform, a grey-green number with a white dickie over top and a project patch on the right arm - appropriately, his reveals he's working for the Tarkin Initiative. The torso had to be new, but the rest of the parts come from existing sources: Krennec for the arms, and Bespin Lando for the legs and Beatle boots. The lower edge of the jacket comes from Krennic, too; you can recognize his belt. The hands feel slightly too large for the body, but that may just be a side-effect of the undersized head.
One benefit of the chest being new is new articulation. There are balljoints at both the top and bottom of the neck, rather than just putting a single barbell at the base of the skull. He can't look up and down as well as he could if this were a hinge/balljoint combo, but he can definitely tilt his head to the side better. Other than that, he has swivel/hinges in the shoulders, elbows, wrists, and ankles, balljoints for the hips and waist, swivel thighs, and double-hinged knees. So all the stuff you'd want. The waist feels a little shallow, though.
Galen never uses any accessories in the movie, so it's not like there's anything Hasbro could easily give him - remember,
the 3¾" version came with a grappling hook/zipline thing, which made no sense. But they also didn't want to just leave the package empty, so they made the data drive that contains two halves of a big blue clam the Death Star plans. No, he's never shown interacting with the data tape in the story, but he's a scientist, we can assume he's dealt with them before, yes? It's not like there's anything physically special about this one; it's basically a glorified floppy disk, something he'd probably have dozens of. As long as they were doling out things he never used, why not take a good cue from the small figure and reuse the Mouse Droid mold, too?
Galen Erso is a Target exclusive, along with some other random Rogue One guy, but it's clear who the desirable one in the set is. The figures went up for preorder on June 10, 2021, with an estimated release date of that fall. Obviously some kind of delays happened, because here we are a full year later and the toys have just now showed up; too bad that extra time couldn't be used to fix the Mads Mikkelsen head. This figure could use some more accessories to up the value, because even with a new chest mold he does feel rather underwhelming - especially knowing there's already at least one more major character Hasbro could use these molds to make to recoup more of their investment (Pershing, the cloney guy from The Manadalorian).
-- 08/13/22
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