But the rigid stance *is* posing. And it's less natural looking - it certainly isn't neutral as people just do not stand like that - in the films or in life.
Honestly, for those of you that do prefer the standing at attention pose, what is it that you prefer about it? Is it the similarity to the vintage line? I'm genuinely curious as I just hate the way they look in diorama display or even just standing on the shelf. At the very least, I want my characters to grip their weapon correctly. I can't even put a lightsaber or large blaster in the hand of one of these straight-armed figures as it just looks ridiculous to me. I suppose I could understand it for carded collectors, but I don't understand it for loose collectors. Maybe I just haven't seen a good display of these figures yet.
Probably something to do with the original vintage line, but to me the rigid poses just make the toy feel more like an iconic representation of the character. Once that toy gets locked into an action pose from the movie, then it feels too specific to a particular scene to be iconic.
It seemed counterintuitive, but the less a toy can do then the more broad a representation it is of the essence of the character, not just the scecific movie or scene that the character was in. Since I don't build dioramas, then the ability of the toy to strike a pose seen in the film is irrelevant to me.
If you hate the way they look, that's fine. If you will never understand how anyone could like it, that's fine too. But I definitely prefer the static poses across the board. We got years and years worth of preposed figures going all the way back to the first wave of POTF2 and I've never been a fan of it.