Please do not repost the following review elsewhere without permission. Wow, so it has been a while since I had a finished Vader piece in my hands, I'm so used to just looking at raw castings. I have to say that clearly there was a lot of work that went into the MR Vader mask. It is a heavy piece and the interior is pretty sweet. So this is the signature edition plaque number 355/500.
The first thing I noticed as was mentioned that the rear part of the neck on both sides toward the bottom were flared out a bit. I was surprised because the curvature of the front part of the neck is actually pretty good. The taper is good from the profile view, the cut is good. It just looks in photos like it is tapered in the trim to more of a point from front view because the flaring in the rear sticks out more.
The mounting platform on top of the mask is the same as the original except for that added circular piece on the center point. It almost looks to me like they just put a round cap on top of the original mounting point. And it looks like it could be pried off...I'd wager the original mounting point is underneath because why waste the time taking that off and then adding the cap?
So, onto the nose. If you look at the U-shaped part of the nose from the front, just to make it easy I'll go against my own convention of using Vader's left and right, etc. and just say looking at the mask from the front....the right side of the nose on the original is a bit thicker than the left. But on the MR, it seems as if they tried to make the left side just as thick as the right (the thicker side), so as to be more symmetrical. Whether this was intentional or not I have no idea, or even if it is just how their master came out of the mold but I doubt it because everything else looks good.
I have to say what is good about this mask. It is faithful. It is really what it is said to be. It really has all the shapes and contours of the original. I have to credit MR for being this faithful to the original and I hope sincerely that kind of attention will be afforded whatever OT helmet comes down the pipeline from eFX, if at all.
Back to the nit-picking
The eyebrows on the MR are a bit softer on their edges...that could partly be due to the type of finishing, which seems almost like a piano finish...quite nice for this kind of piece. So by softer I mean that if you were to look at the eyebrows from a cross section, they would be more tapered and less blunt than the original. But it is really hard to tell the difference unless you look closely.
Those square indentations on the mask, six circumferential and then a single square on either side behind the upper tusk tube...they are really the same as the original...basically the same. However, the side center and rear circumferential squares are a bit more "square", a bit more perfectly square. So just a tiny bit of straightening out there. But very minor. The depth of the squares are all highly accurate, perfect even, with the exception of the rear circumferential squares. For some reason they are shallower in depth than the original. Odd, but I suppose that the mask interior design perhaps necessitated this.
The cut of the teeth is dead on. The depth of the lenses and seating within the eyes is dead on. Lens curvature is good as well, a bit flatter but still very good.
The very ends of the tusk tubes (where the tusks attach) are unchanged. Not shorter, not longer, just right. The tubes themselves are fine with the exception of a slight loss in undercut which is to be expected with that kind of finishing work and a relative lack of undercut to begin with on these kind of tubes. Where the tubes join together on the sides of the mouths, they are a bit smoothed out, and I don't think it is a finishing artifact. On the original the top tube merges with the bottom one more abruptly and that separation between tubes continues to their ends where the tusks are.
There is slightly less undercut in the rear of the mask, specifically up around the mounting plate. But it is less than I thought and relatively minor. It is probably just the result of evening out that edge going from center rear of the mounting plate down along the rear side of the mask.
So on the whole, one couldn't really expect that much more. The differences I've pointed out are relatively minor. The only major difference is the mounting point and the neck flare in the rear but I don't know if that's an account of my mask being a later pull, 355/500 or if it is really commonplace. Maybe it was intentional so that the mask would be easier, with the padding inside, to take on and off for a variety of head sizes/neck sizes. The rear of the mask itself, the undercut section, appears to come out from the sides more than on the original, again it could just be this particular mask or common.
Now to find a dome. Anyone see a cheap one for sale?
Well I already know there are two differences namely the center strip and the angle of the flaring in the front. The center strip is softer and wider on the MR. I think the flaring is a bit more vertical but I'd have to check for sure.
The only other thing I'll mention was a difference in size. Each MR would have ideally come from a mold taken from their master casting, which itself came from the original mold. But the difference I'm seeing is a bit more than I expected even taking into account the finishing. Of course, a difference which to me is noticable probably wouldn't mean much to a collector, as they are similarly sized. But it is like 0.95:1, not 1:1 or 0.99:1. Having the original mold in hand and the original screen helmet for reference, I would have expected a bit more than 0.95.
If I were to rate this helmet on a scale of 1-10 I'd say a 9. It is that nice, I might even keep it....