CALL

ALIEN: RESURRECTION (KENNER)

The Alien movies are neat on a number of different levels, and one of the more interesting aspects of the franchise is that it didn’t really have much in the way of a cohesive vision.  Each subsequent entry in the story being helmed by a different crew of creators made something patchwork, with each entry unique to itself, for better or for worse.  There are, however, through lines on the movies, some obvious ones, having to do with narratives, timelines, and even returning characters, and others less so.  One of my favorite running gags has to do with each entry’s resident synthetic, and the advancing alphabet of their names, starting with Ash, progressing to Bishop, skipping a movie, and then getting to Call.  Heck, they even kept it going with Prometheus, which had David, but then Covenant gave us Walter, and it kind of ruined it.  I don’t wanna talk about that, though, because it just upsets me.  So, we’re jumping back to Call, the focus of today’s entry!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Call is another of the six standard figures released by Kenner in 1997 to tie-in with Alien: Resurrection.  She’s one of two “humans,” though that’s sort of a relative term for both her and Ripley, so I guess maybe there’s actually no humans in the line-up at all?  The figure stands about 6 1/4 inches tall and she has 5 points of articulation.  She’s structurally very similar to the previously reviewed Ripley figure, which makes a degree of sense, them being in the same line and all.  The height of the figure is due to her rather extreme posing; were she standing straight up, she’d be closer to 7 inches, so, I guess if you were so inclined, you could try to slip her in with your NECA figures, what with them not doing a Call and all.  Of course, stylistically, I don’t know that she’d really fit.  She’s got that aforementioned pre-posing, which comes with it a sort of lack of use for the articulation, which mostly is just there for some minor tweaks to help her stand.  And that’s good, because standing can be a bit iffy for her.  Finding that center of balance takes some doing, for sure.  Her pose is I guess sort of similar to Ripley, but just slightly tweaked for variety’s sake.  She’s only got one gripping hand, instead of two, but hers is at least meant to actually hold something, so that’s an improvement.  The head sculpt doesn’t look *unlike* Wynona Ryder.  Certainly there’s some of her in there.  A better paint job might help, for sure, but she’s aided by having hair that actually looks about right, unlike Ripley.  She’s wearing the one jumpsuit she wears for the whole movie, which I suppose does make sense.  She wears a vest over it in the movie, which isn’t here, but it’s close enough, I suppose, and its got some nice sculpted detailing. The paint’s perfectly fine, if not anything to write home about.  Very basic on the head, with some nice accent work on the uniform.  Call is packed with two guns (which she can only hold one at a time), a pair of arm blades (because maybe she’s also a Predator?), a crawling face hugger (which actually makes a lot of sense, since she gets attacked by one in the water sequence), and a chest burster.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The story of how I got Call is, if you can believe it, the exact story of how I got the Ripley figure I reviewed two weeks ago.  I never really sought any of them out, but a few years ago, this pair was donated to the Farpoint Charity Auction, and my dad got them for me.  Both of them have been sitting unopened for a while, but I finally did the thing and opened them.  Of the two, Call actually works a bit better, I think.  Apart from only being able to hold one gun at a time, she does interact with her accessories a bit better, and she’s generally more in line with her movie appearance.  With no other Call out there, this one’s really the only option, if you *really* need a Call, and also, she’s not terrible.