Terminator Genisys: A Movie Review

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Movie Reviews and tagged with , , , , , , ,

I don’t write movie reviews. This is an Action Figure review site, after all. However, I’ve just seen a movie about which I want to write.

The movie in question (hey, that would be a catchy name for a movie review site, wouldn’t it?) is Terminator Genisys. I’m a pretty big fan of The Terminator and I’d probably rank Terminator 2 in my top five favorite movies.  It goes without saying that I was more than a little disappointed by the two films that followed. I’ve never actually been able to get all the way through T3, and most of Salvation left me cold. I had pretty much written the franchise off, and I kind of figured it was more or less dead.

When the first trailer for Genisys showed up, I was surprised. Somehow, I’d entirely missed the fact that another film was in production. It actually looked pretty decent, as if this might be the movie to turn the franchise around. I was optimistic, if cautiously so. I was still pretty excited, so when it started showing Tuesday night, I headed out to see it. Without saying too much, my optimism paid off and I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

THE ACTUAL REVIEW

Spoiler-Free:

First off, let’s address the film’s biggest draw: Arnold. His return to acting was one of the driving forces of getting the movie made, and a lot of the film’s marketing focused on his big return to the role. This time around, he takes up a part not unlike “Uncle Bob” in T2, operating as Sarah’s father figure “Pops.” The film seems to draw from the learning ability of the T-800’s CPU established in the extended cut of T2. Here it’s been in operation for a while, allowing Arnold to play a character with a little more warmth and human understanding. That’s not to say he’s completely abandoned his robotic nature, though; it makes its way to the forefront a few times, generally in the more action oriented scenes, but also in a few humorous moments.

The film has more than a few humorous moments, sprinkled throughout. It feels like they’ve gotten the mix of humor and drama right this time around. Part of what I enjoyed so much about T2 was its seamless blending of humor and serious moments. The movies that followed never got this balance down. T3 went too goofy and Salvation went too dreary and hopeless, resulting in both films suffering. Genisys gets it right.

Humor is one thing, but a movie is hardly a proper Terminator movie without some action. Genisys offers a nice selection of action sequences. There are lots of call backs to older movies (especially in the first battle with the T-1000) but there’s a lot of new stuff too, which keeps things interesting. Some sequences relied a little too heavily on CGI, but it never gets distracting to the point of pulling the viewer out of the film. The newest version of Terminator plays a big part in making the action feel new and exciting. One of my biggest problems with the last two films was the stagnation of the Terminators. The T-1000 offered a significant upgrade over the first film’s T-800, and this movie’s magnetically-charged nanite-powered Terminator felt like a worthy upgrade to the seemingly unstoppable T-1000.

I spoke about Arnold’s performance, but what about the rest of the cast? Well, if there’s a weak link, it’s probably Jai Courtney’s Kyle Reese. The biggest issue is that he really doesn’t look like Kyle Reese. Michael Biehn has a particular look, especially in Terminator. He’s not a clean cut, stacked action hero. Jai Courtney kind of is. His performance isn’t terrible, and he had grown on me by the end of the film, but he still felt a little off. Perhaps if Anton Yelchin’s turn as Kyle in Salvation hadn’t been one of that film’s few redeeming qualities, I’d be more forgiving.

Emilia Clarke, on the other hand, feels like a pretty worthy successor to Linda Hamilton. She plays Sarah with a lot of strength and presence, calling back to the T2 version of the character, but she also manages to still play up a lot of the uncertainty we saw in Terminator, giving us the best of both worlds. She and Arnold Schwarzenegger have a lot of chemistry, which really helped to make the movie work.

Jason Clarke takes over from Christian Bale as John Connor, and is probably the strongest of the re-cast parts. He actually plays the role in such a way that you can understand how this guy could lead the resistance to victory.

Byung-hun Lee gives a good performance as the T-1000, though he feels a little under-utilized here. I’m not sure rehashing the plot of T2 would have been the best way to go, but I felt like he should have had a little more to do.

JK Simmons and Matt Smith both give good performances in their respective roles. Simmons once again feels a little under-used, but the few scenes he does take part in use him pretty well. I’ll talk about Smith’s performance more in the spoiler section.

The film has a running theme of “old, but not obsolete.” This line is said more than once by Arnold’s Pops T-800, and it really
feels like it applies to the franchise as a whole as well. The movie strives to show us that this franchise may be old, but it’s not quite outmoded.

Spoilers after the jump.

Continue reading →

#0619: Superman – Red

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

SUPERMAN – RED

JLA: CLASSIFIED

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Hey, do you remember back about two weeks, when I took a look at Superman Blue? That weird changeup to Superman to help keep him “hip?” Yeah, well, umm, long story short, he got split into two separate beings, and the second one was today’s focus, Superman Red. See, cuz it’s clever, cuz Superman is usually just one guy, who wears red AND blue, but now he’s two guys who each only wear one color. Isn’t that smart? But, of course, they also had slightly different personalities. Can you guess what was Superman Red’s defining trait? If you guessed the incredibly obvious answer of hot-headedness, you win a special no-prize! Good for you! Now, onto the figure!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

SupermanRed2Superman Red was released in the third series of DC Direct’s JLA: Classified line. He directly followed Blue in Series 2. While 2 had a more defined “looks of the 90s” theme to it, Series 3 was a little bit more free-form. The figure is about 6 ½ inches tall and has 13 points of articulation. Like just about every other McGuinness-styled figure, the articulation is mostly pointless, and he’s really only good for a basic standing pose. Superman Red is, completely unsurprisingly, a head to toe repaint of Series 2’s Superman Blue. Seeing as they’re essentially just palate swaps of each other in the comics, you can’t exactly blame DC Direct for just using the same mold. I guess they could have given this one a more emotive face (like Mattel did when they released these two) but it’s hardly a requirement. The head still feels too big for the body, and the arms are still too stubby, but it’s not a terrible sculpt. The paint is the real difference here, though even then it’s pretty much the same, but with red swapped in for blue. The paint does feel a little sharper this time around, and the white details are more properly aligned. Like his blue counterpart, Superman Red’s single accessory is a black display stand with the JLA: Classified logo in blue. Would have been cool to get it in red, just for the heck of it, but I guess they wanted it to be the same as the rest of the line.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Like Superman Blue, Superman Red was from the assortment of figures I picked up during an action figure sale at Cosmic Comix. He was $3. That was most of my reasoning for getting him. Well, that and I was getting Superman Blue. Having both seemed like a good idea. I think Blue is my favorite of the pair, but I like both, and I certainly don’t regret buying them.

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#0618: Agent Venom

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , , ,

AGENT VENOM

MARVEL LEGENDS INFINTE SERIES

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Retail has become an odd place for action figures. Lots of stores are condensing their action figure section, and Toys R Us is really the only toy store game in town. But, in a time where lots of places are cutting back, Walgreens of all places has stepped up to the plate, not only carrying an increasingly wide variety of action figure lines, but also carrying their own exclusive items. Some are just simple repaints, but some are all-new, fan-demanded figures, such as Agent Venom, the subject of today’s review.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

AgentVenom2Agent Venom is a Walgreens exclusive figure, released to coincide with Series 1 of Amazing Spider-Man 2 Marvel Legends Infinite Series. The figure had previously been shown in various con displays, with no real mention of where he’d be showing up. The figure stands about 6 ¼ inches tall and sports 32 points of articulation. He is, of course, based on the initial Agent Venom design, from right after Flash Thompson took over as host to the alien symbiote. It’s admittedly one of the more unique variants of the Venom design, and it makes for a rather striking figure, so it’s a good choice for a toy. The figure uses the Face-Off Punisher body as a starting point, with a unique head, hands, knees, shins, and feet and add-ons for the body armor and belt. The body is a little outdated, in terms of both proportions and articulation. However, the Bucky Cap body would be too small and the Hyperion body would be too large, making this the best fit of the existing bodies. On the plus side, the armor covers the torso, thereby hiding some of the wonky proportions. The movement still kinda sucks, but it’s not terrible. The pieces that are new are all very well sculpted. The head is nice and simple, and the armored pieces are loaded with tons of texture. When fully assembled, the figure is the spitting image of his comicbook incarnation. The paintwork on the figure isn’t quite as impressive as the sculpt. Some of that’s to be expected; the character’s design doesn’t really equate to a lot of painted detail. He’s really just got the white accent lines running throughout. They aren’t atrocious, but they could certainly stand to be a little cleaner. Agent Venom includes two Glocks, an MP5, and a USP handgun, as well as a cool four armed symbiote attachment piece to help him hold them all.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I actually found this figure quite a while before I got one. He was amongst the large selection of figures I found at the Walgreens near Super Awesome Girlfriend’s school while I was visiting some months back. But, there were a lot of things I wanted, and I only had so much money (and space in my bag for the plane ride home) so he got put back. Then I didn’t see one again, so I figured I’d missed my shot. A couple of weeks ago, I stopped by a somewhat out of the way Walgreens while killing time during my brother’s karate lesson. I found this guy back behind several other ML Infinite figures. Venom’s not exactly one of my favorite comicbook characters, but the Agent Venom design is actually pretty cool, and it translates incredibly well to action figure form.

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#0617: Mondo

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

MONDO

GENERATION X (TOYBIZ)

Mondo1

The 90s were a very strange time. I can’t say it enough. Amongst other things, Marvel’s merry mutants, the X-Men were really, really popular. That meant spin-offs out the wazoo. One such spin-off was Generation X. They weren’t “X-Treme” like X-Force, but they still had a very definite 90s flare to them. They were popular for a while, but the team eventually fell into some pretty serious obscurity. However, they managed to get more than one series of an action figure line, leading to a lot of figures that nowadays make people go “Who?” One such figure is team member Mondo. Yeah, I don’t really know him all that well either.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Mondo2Mondo was released in the second series of ToyBiz’s Generation X line. Mondo was the only actual team member in the series, making him the last released in the line (though a ToyFare exclusive version of Synch would be released not too long after. Who’s Synch? Exactly.) The figure stands about 5 inches tall and features a whole 6 points of articulation. Usually, ToyBiz’s Marvel stuff was pretty well articulated, but for whatever reason, the Generation X figures were less so. Mondo’s sculpt was also pretty pre-posed. His arms are somewhat spread at his sides and his legs are in a deep walking stance. Unlike a lot of pre-posed figures, Mondo is actually quite stable and well-balanced, so the lack of movement isn’t really too detrimental. The sculpt is actually pretty well handled; there’s plenty of texturing and detailing, and his proportions are in line with what he looked like in the comics. He’s definitely an angry spud, which seems a little out of character, at least going by the bio on the back of the package. The paintwork on Mondo isn’t super complex, but there are a few more minor details that are handled rather nicely. Plus, there’s not really any slop or bleed over, which is always cool. Mondo included a set of clip on armor pieces for his arms, which help to simulate his “omnimorph” abilities. The right side is meant to be wooden and the left is made of stone. Both clip on well enough, and are decently detailed (though the right is definitely a step above the stone). He also has the standard “X” stand, which was included with every figure in the line. He doesn’t need it, but hey, consistency isn’t bad!

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Mondo is another piece of the lot of figures I picked up from my local comicbook store during a recent sale. I only had a passing familiarity with Generation X growing up, so I never really got many of the figures. I saw Mondo sitting there and, for whatever reason, he called to me. He’s actually a pretty neat figure, truth be told. Sure, he’s not the most standout character of all time, but it’s clear a lot of effort went into this guy, and that always makes a figure better.

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#0616: T1000 – Patrolman

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

T1000 – PATROLMAN

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY REACTION

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Hey! It’s Funko’s ReAction brand! I actually haven’t looked at one of these in like six months. That doesn’t mean they haven’t been releasing a steady stream of the little guys, though. They’re making figures from just about every license under the sun, which is cool, but it also means that not every figure is going to appeal to every collector. So, the last few licenses haven’t really been my thing. However, Terminator 2 is totally my thing, and that’s one of their most recent licenses. Score for me! Let’s have a look at one of the film’s two Terminators, the T-1000, in his Patrolman gear!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

T1000MotorCop2The T1000 is part of the first set of Terminator 2: Judgement Day ReAction figures. The figure stands 3 ¾ inches tall and has the basic 5 points of articulation sported by all the figures in the line. He’s based on the T1000’s second major look in the film, after he steals a motorbike cop’s cycle and assimilates his look. It ends up being the look he has for the huge chase scene leading up to the final battle, which makes it somewhat distinctive, though it’s probably not quite as distinctive as his more basic cop look. That said, it’s still a pretty cool, important look, and it checks a few more of the standard “terminator” boxes than the other look. The figure features a new sculpt, done in the Kenner-style which ReAction replicates. Generally, the sculpt does a pretty good job of replicating the look of one of those figures. It’s not perfect; the torso still suffers from a little flatness, and the arms feel a tad too straight. However, it fits in pretty well with Kenner stuff, and it goes well with the Terminator ReAction figures from last year. The details of the sculpt are simple, but what’s there is pretty sharp, and things look pretty clean. Most of the face is covered, so the likeness is fine. What you can see looks close enough to Robert Patrick’s face to work, so that’s good. It’s not really a bad thing, but there’s a part of me that really wishes that one of the arms had a blade at the end in place of the hand, just to make the figure a little more clearly the T1000. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Paint-wise, the figure is decent, but there’s some room for improvement. The body is generally pretty good, with no real issues with bleed over or slop. The head’s a different story, with the silver of the glasses bleeding onto the nose and the left side of his helmet. Also, the silver band on the visor is really sloppy. Both of these issues are rather distracting, and were present on both samples of the figure that I looked at in the store. The T1000 is packed with an MP5K submachine gun. It’s the gun he’s carrying while flying the helicopter in the chase scene, so it’s a good choice. I do wish he could hold it a bit better, but oh well.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

These figures really ended up sneaking up on me. I think I might have heard about them somewhere along the line, but they weren’t really present on my mind until I came across this guy at a slightly out of the way Toys R Us. They didn’t have anything else I wanted and I certainly wasn’t walking out empty handed, so I got this guy. That makes it sound like I didn’t really want him, but I did. I love the T1000, so my Terminator ReAction stuff just wasn’t complete without this guy. He’s not a perfect figure, and I’d like to see more in the way of actual T1000 stuff, but this guy’s fairly entertaining, and he’s a lot better than Funko’s early output from this line.

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#0615: Wizard

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

WIZARD

FANTASTIC FOUR (TOYBIZ)

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The 90s was a great time to be an action figure fan, especially if you liked Marvel comics. Thanks to animated versions of several of their properties airing on TV, there was a lot of tie-in product to be found. Entire lines of figures would be devoted to one particular hero and his rogues and allies, providing a rather large depth of characters, many of whom had not and would not get another figure. One such character is today’s focus, the Wizard, a slightly lesser-known Fantastic Four foe.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Wizard2The Wizard was part of the fourth series of ToyBiz’s first Fantastic Four line. The character made an appearance in an early episode of the show’s second season, which had just kicked off when this series of figures was hitting stores. The figure stands about 5 inches tall and features 9 points of articulation. The figure features an entirely unique sculpt, which is…odd to say the least. Let’s start with the posture: he seems to be somewhat hunching, with widely splayed legs, and strangely outstretched arms. His head is atop a crooked, flexing neck, and his torso is oddly shifted to the left. Then there’s the proportions: his head and hands are huge, and his torso is far too short. The Wizard has always had a helmet that made his head look a little bigger than it was, but here it’s his whole head that’s huge, which ends up making the helmet look too small by comparison. Then there’s the arms, which start off somewhat normally sized, and then quickly shift into some sort of jacked-up, oversized monstrosity. I actually kind of like the positioning of the hands, but they look like they belong to another figure. And, of course, you can’t look at this figure and not mention the muscle definition. Seriously, most of those are just made up. The figure’s paint is passable, but not really anything outstanding. It accurately represents his garishly clashing color scheme of the comics, so that’s good, I guess. However, the figure has more than a few instances of bleed over, and his belt in particular is only a slight approximation of where it should be. If you read my Medusa review, you’ll remember that Series 4’s gimmick was that each figure had a base with some sort of action feature. Medusa got her hair, which wasn’t bad, but Wizard’s been given some strange disk…thing. I really don’t know what it is. It’s big, yellow, circular, and so goofy. There’s this lever on the right, which he can loosely hold. It doesn’t do anything, though. If you want to activate the action feature, you have to use a second lever, located behind the first, which shoots some blue disk things. That’s fun I guess.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Wizard was one of the many figures I picked up from my local comicbook store a month or so back when they were running a big sale on action figures. They had several, and I’d passed him up several times over the years, so I figured I might as well break down and buy one. I don’t say this often, but he’s really not a very good figure. So much about him is just so off, and there’s no real rationale as to why. And, to make things worse, this is literally the only figure the character’s ever had, which makes it a serious bummer.

#0614: Domino

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

DOMINO

X-FORCE (TOYBIZ)

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Grrrrr! 90s! Everything had to be soooooo X-Treme! And no one was more X-Treme than the X-Men! Well, okay, actually, that’s not true. There was one team than was more X-Treme, by design. They were the X-Force and they were super hardcore 90s. So hard. One of their more prominent members was Domino, who had luck based powers. You know, like a domino!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Domino2Domino was released in Series 6 of ToyBiz’s X-Force line. It’s surprising to see one of the team’s higher tier members not being released until one of the last few series of the line, but, hey, it was the 90s, and we were in the worst dregs of boys thinking girl toys were icky, so…..yeah. The figure stands 5 inches tall and has 9 points of articulation. While she was fortunate enough not to be saddled with the dreaded v-style hip joints that plagued many female figures of the time, she’s completely lacking in neck articulation, and for some strange reason her elbow joints are just simple cut joints. This ends up severely limiting what can be done with the figure, which is quite a bummer. Domino featured an all-new sculpt (though it would see a couple of re-paints later on down the line). It’s…passable. They’ve done a fairly decent job of capturing the design from the comics, which, it should be noted, is her second, non-Liefeld-designed costume. It’s got all the requisite buckles, pouches, shoulder pads, and even a weird head thing! The proportions aren’t the worst thing ever and she has one of the better female faces of the time. That said, she’s rather boxy, especially in her lower half, and I’m really not sure what’s going on with the straps on her torso. They certainly can’t be comfortable configured that way. Also, she seems to have lost a row of abdominal muscles, which ends up making the legs look way too long. The paintwork on the figure is alright.  Nothing amazing, but the colors are pretty good matches for the look in the comics, and there isn’t any substantial slop or bleed over. Domino originally included a set of gun attachments, which hooked into her legs. Yeah. Not really sure why they did that, since she just held the guns in her hands in the comics, but hey, whatever. Mine didn’t have them anyway.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Domino was another figure that I fished out of a box of loose figures at one of the dealer’s tables at this past Balticon. I was never really into X-Force growing up, and Domino never played a prominent role in the X-Men cartoon, so I didn’t really have a reason to get this figure while it was still new. But, it was a dollar. It’s not ToyBiz’s best work, but it isn’t atrocious.

#0613: Ripley – Compression Suit

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

RIPLEY –COMPRESSION SUIT

ALIENS (NECA)

RipleySS1

No movie toyline is every truly complete without a bunch of variations of one of the film’s main characters. Sometimes they’re manufactured by the toy makers, resulting in strange neon colored variations, aimed at capturing the attention of small children (which has been known to work…occasionally). However, there’s been an increasing trend towards variations that are accurate to the source material. NECA is pretty big on these, especially when they get ahold of a major actor’s likeness rights. When they managed to get Arnold Schwarzenegger’s likeness from Predator, they released five variants of the character right off the bat. Now that they’ve gotten Sigourney Weaver’s likeness from the Alien films, and it looks like they’re going to be approaching her figures a similar fashion. I looked at the first version of her the other day, and now I’ll be looking at the second version, from the very same series.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

RipleySS2Ripley was released in Series 4 of NECA’s Aliens line. The series is devoted completely to the 35th Anniversary of Alien, so all of the figures are from that particular movie. The figure stands about 7 ½ inches tall and features 24 points of articulation. The first Ripley figure depicted her in her jumpsuited look, which was her primary look from the movie. This one is based on her look from her final confrontation with the creature, while in the Narcisus. It’s not the look most would associate with her for the movie, but it’s a strong second, being from a rather pivotal scene of the film. As an added bonus, it gives NECA another opportunity to use the compression suit body into which they’ve put so much work. Surprising pretty much nobody, the figure uses the same pressure suit body as Dallas and Kane (she also has the same hands as Dallas). Ripley’s suit was just a slight bit more streamlined in the film, so she doesn’t sport the front piece of armor (not sure what it actually is) and she also doesn’t have the holster strap for the flare gun. The helmet is RipleySS3similarly streamlined, being pretty much the same as Dallas’s, but without the head lamp. Under the helmet is a Ripley sculpt that is completely different from the one on Jumpsuit Ripley. It’s different, but I honestly can’t say if it’s better or worse than the other sculpt. It’s still got a pretty good likeness of Weaver, and the hair has been sculpted to more properly fit within the helmet. This ends up making the figure look a bit more goofy with the helmet off, but she looks great with the helmet on, which is the preferable outcome. Ripley’s paintwork is a little more simplistic than the other two compression-suited figures, but this is once again accurate to the movie, where Ripley’s suit is only used within the confines of the ship. Though it may be more simple, it’s hardly a bad paint job. In fact, it’s probably one of NECA’s best. While the suit is all white, NECA has made sure to include some slight variation in color and finish, providing quite a bit of dimension to the figure. The head also features some incredibly clean work, with no slop or bleed over, and some nice smallerRipleySS6 details. Ripley includes the harpoon gun, which figures prominently into the last moments of the film and has both opened and closed-hook harpoons, as well as another version of the film’s other survivor, Jonesy the cat, this time in a frightened pose.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Ripley is the last piece of the Series 4 set I ordered from Big Bad Toy Store. While I think the other Ripley is still the standout of this set, this version is incredibly solid. Like Dallas, she makes use of the strong compression-suit sculpt we saw on Kane, but doesn’t suffer from Kane’s drawbacks. Also, and this applies to this whole series, the paint here just seems like a huge leap forward compared to the previous three series of figures. All in all, this a fun figure, and definitely a must for anyone who’s an Alien fan.

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#0612: Dallas – Compression Suit

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

DALLAS – COMPRESSION SUIT

ALIENS (NECA)

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While Alien may not be quite up to the same level as its sequel Aliens (at least in my mind), it’s still a tremendously well-made film. One of the greatest aspects of the movie was its incredible design work. H.R. Giger’s main creature design tends to get a lot of the focus, but the film also had some awesome work on the human side of things, such as the incredibly memorable space suits, worn by three of the main characters during the exploration of the derelict ship. NECA first brought the suit design into their Aliens line in Series 3, where it was worn by the ill-fated Kane. Now we’ve gotten another of the trio, with the Nostromo’s well-meaning captain, Dallas.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Dallas3Dallas was released in Series 4 of NECA’s Aliens line. Like all the others in this series, he’s from Alien, and is meant to somewhat commemorate the film’s 35th anniversary last year. The figure is about 7 ½ inches tall, and he has 24 points of articulation. As noted in the intro, Dallas is presented here in his Compression Suit look. It’s a pretty distinctive design, and a few of the character’s key scenes occur down on the planet, so it was well chosen. Rather unsurprisingly, the majority of Dallas’s sculpt is from Series 3’s Kane figure. Seeing as the suits in the movie are just palate swaps of each other and they’re bulky enough to hide the figure of the wearer, it would be silly for NECA not to use the parts they already had sculpted. The re-used parts are just as good here as they were on Kane. The body features a ton of texture and detail, and the add-ons for the armored parts add a nice bit of dimension. Dallas gets an all-new head, and, though you might miss them at first, a new set of hands. The hands are pretty much the same as the ones on Kane, except the poses are reversed. It’s a nice touch and it allows for a neat bit of variety. The head is a fairly Dallas4decent sculpt; the Tom Skerritt likeness isn’t as spot-on as the Sigourney Weaver was, but it’s passable (though, I can’t help but see Tom Hanks in that face. Not sure why.) In general, the head feels a little less defined than the rest of the sculpt. Fortunately this is fairly hidden by the helmet. Speaking of the helmet, it should be noted that it has the same two piece design as Kane’s. The bottom portion is the same piece (though it sits a little closer to the torso than Kane’s does) while the top is a slightly tweaked piece, showing an undamaged version of the helmet. Paint is where Dallas really gets a leg up on Kane. While things certainly aren’t perfect (especially when it comes to the face) the amount of bleed over is a lot lower, and the detailing and texturing looks superb. And the biggest improvement: he’s not sticky! Yeah, Kane was rather tacky is some areas, which isn’t a good thing, but Dallas suffers from none of that, showing that NECA’s really committed to learning from their mistakes. In addition to the removable helmet, Dallas also includes the same flare gun and flashlight that we saw with Kane.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Dallas was part of the set of Series 4 figures I ordered via Big Bad Toy Store. I can’t say the guy was super high on my want list, but I’m pleased to have him. He takes what was good about the Kane figure and improves what was bad, resulting in an overall very solid addition to the line. I can’t help but feel it’s a little unfortunate that he got placed in this series, as I’m sure a lot of people will end up overlooking him in favor of the two Ripley figures he’s packed with. And that’s too bad, because he’s really one of the best figures the line has offered so far, at least as far as quality is concerned.

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#0611: Mega Man

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

MEGA MAN

SUPER SMASH BROTHERS AMIIBO

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I am not the foremost expert on video games. However, I’ve got a decent knowledge of some of the higher profile stuff, and I do have my personal favorites, both in terms of games and the characters within them. Over the winter, my brother and I got pretty invested in the most recent iteration of Super Smash Brothers. One of the new things that Nintendo has added to the game are Amiibo, which are these little figurines of the characters which can be used in conjunction with the game, allowing you to name and train NPC versions of the characters they represent, as well as unlock a few additional things within Smash and other games. Unfortunately, it seems like Nintendo’s kinda terrible at this whole collectibles thing, so a lot of the characters I’d like to own are ridiculously hard to find. That kind of ruins the whole thing for everybody. Anyway, I actually managed to find one of the characters I wanted, thanks to a rerelease. So, let’s take a look at Mega Man!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

MegaMan3Mega Man was part of either the second or third round of Super Smash Brothers Amiibo (EDIT: He’s from the third round!). I know he definitely wasn’t amongst the initial assortment of characters. The “figure” is about 3 ½ inches tall, with the base adding about ½ an inch to the height. Amiibo aren’t designed as actual action figures, and as such, Mega Man doesn’t have any articulation. Sort of a bummer, but it’s not like it’s unexpected. Mega Man’s sculpt is pretty great. It’s sufficiently accurate to the design of the character. It’s specifically based on Mega Man’s appearance in the latest Super Smash Brothers game, with a few little details lifted straight from the game. Of course, his design hasn’t changed that much from prior appearances, so this could certainly stand in for an earlier Mega Man if MegaMan2that’s what you want. He’s sculpted in a fairly in-character pose, with his legs in a wide stance and his buster cannon held high. It’s a good pose, though it might be nice if the cannon was a little further away from his face, just so it didn’t block him. Mega Man’s paintwork isn’t the greatest thing of all time, but it’s better than what lots of other companies are putting out there right now. Some areas, especially the shorts, exhibit a little bit of bleed over, but nothing too bad. I really like the decision to use metallic paint for the darker blue portions; it has a really nice sheen to it, and it makes the figure really pop. Mega Man doesn’t include any physical accessories, but he does have the interface with Smash, which works pretty well. Also, when scanned in for the first time, each Amiibo gets you a small portion of a classic game. In Mega Man’s case, it was the first few minutes of Metroid, which was pretty fun.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I missed out on Mega Man in his initial release, which bummed me out a bit. However, I ended up coming across one at a Toys R Us while I was out with the rest of my family. He’s my first Amiibo, and overall I like him. He works well with Smash, and I like the basic sculpt and layout of the piece. That being said, if you’re just looking for a Mega Man figure, this one might not be the one for you. It’s really more of a display piece and less of a toy.