WAR MACHINE

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“When the fate of humankind is at stake, there is no mission too great for U.S. Military officer James “Rhodey” Rhodes, a.k.a. War Machine.”

Just like Iron Man, War Machine gets some slight modifications to his suit every time we see him in the films.  Barring the change from Iron Man 2 to Iron Man 3, where there was some streamlining in play, each subsequent suit seems to bulk him up a little bit from the last one, in contrast to the way Tony’s suits tended to go.  Rhodey got left out of things for Infinity War‘s Legends component, but with two new looks for EndGame, he found his way into the second line-up.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

War Machine is part of the “Hulk Series” of Marvel Legends, which is our second Avengers-based assortment of the year.  He’s one of the three EngGame-branded figures in the line-up (not counting the Hulk BaF).  He’s the odd-man out, as the one figure in the set with no included BaF piece.  It’s okay, though, because this War Machine is based on the final suit of armor we see Rhodey sporting, which shows up during the big final battle.  It’s big and bulky, so no extra makes sense.  The figure stands 6 1/2 inches tall and he has 30 points of articulation.  This War Machine is an all-new sculpt, and a pretty good one at that.  It’s very clean and polished, and does a pretty respectable job of capturing Rhodey’s Mark 005 armor.  Despite its bulky size, it’s actually quite mobile, at least at most points.  There’s a bit of restriction on the elbows, but beyond that, there’s quit a bit that can be done with him, even moreso than his comparatively much sleeker Age of Ultron counterpart.  The only slight complaint I have is that they still haven’t really figured out what to do with the shoulder gun, which is on a ball joint that’s essentially just a cut joint.  It can’t really go anywhere else, and removing it leaves a rather obtrusive-looking brick on his shoulder.  In Hasbro’s defense, we never see the canon anywhere but on his shoulder in the film, and given the overall move to nano-tech on all of the armors by EndGame, I’m willing to bet there’s no easy way to recreate how the movie handled it.  Plus, who’s really going to display him without it.  War Machine’s paint is the one real inaccurate part of the figure.  In the movie, the Mark 005 armor is actually done up in an Iron Patriot color scheme, rather than War Machine’s usual colors, but this figure instead goes with the classic black and silver.  It’s possible that the Patriot colors were a last minute change to the film, but an alternate theory can be provided by the number printed on the chestplate, which erroneously reads “006”.  The 006 armor is the sleeker, more traditional armor that Rhodey wears for most of the film, and its colors more closely match this in scheme, so it’s possible they just had the wrong color keys.  Admittedly, though it may be inaccurate, I like this color set a bit more, so I don’t mind so much.  Additionally, the actual paint, removed from source material, is quite nicely handled, and I dig the little details placed throughout.  Though he doesn’t include a Build-A-Figure piece, War Machine does include the previously mentioned shoulder canon, as well as two wrist mountable guns.  It’s too bad he didn’t also get an unmasked head, but it’s not like he he feels too light.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I missed out on the Civil War War Machine, which I kind of regretted after the fact, so I’ve been waiting for another update.  I was hoping to see him show up in this line-up, and Hasbro delivered.  Yeah, he’s technically not screen accurate, but he’s still a whole lot of fun, and my favorite version of the character to date, plus a strong contender for my figure in this line-up.

Like 99% of my Legends these days, War Machine was purchased from my sponsors over at All Time Toys.  If your looking for other Legends or other toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.