Tag Archives: Faramir

#3603: Faramir

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

FARAMIR

LORD OF THE RINGS (ASMUS TOYS)

Fun FiQ Fact #0082:  David Wenham, who portrays Faramir in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, has been part of two comic book adaptations: 300 and Iron Fist.  Look, he was good in Iron Fist, even if the show around him…wasn’t?

The Lord of the Rings movies were pretty much an inescapable part of the cultural lexicon when I was growing up, hitting theatres during the back half of my elementary school years.  So, I obviously couldn’t really avoid them, and I’ve got my own particular interests within them.  I’ve never been so much a main characters guy, so I didn’t latch so much onto the characters everyone else did.  One of my favorites since pretty much when the movies came out was Faramir, Ranger of Gondor.  I never did get any of his figures growing up, but I’ve been working to make up for that in recent years.  Here’s more to that!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Faramir was added to Asmus’ Lord of the Rings line towards the end of 2020.  There were two versions of him available, with an extra accessory that was only offered with Asmus’ direct store exclusive version.  I’ll touch on all of that a bit later down.  The figure stands about 12 inches tall and he’s got over 30 points of articulation.

Asmus is priced in the same realm as the lines of Sideshow and Hot Toys, so that’s the type of figure they’re aiming for.  That’s certainly evident in the included head sculpt, or at least the intent is.  It’s definitely not quite Hot Toys quality, but I’d put it on par with the average Sideshow sculpt.  The face has an alright likeness of David Wenham; it’s certainly got his glum expression as Faramir down, at least.  The face is perhaps a touch narrow, and I think the nose isn’t quite the right shape, but it’s all pretty close.  Faramir’s hair is sculpted, and it’s a big honking chunk of hair, for sure.  The joining at the front is not so subtle, which I’m not a huge fan of; normal lighting masks it alright, but the photos show it off front and center.  At least the shaping of the hair’s not bad.  The paint work on the head is respectable, if again not quite Hot Toys quality.

Faramir is depicted in his ranger gear from Two Towers and the beginning of Return of the King.  It’s certainly his most distinctive, and let’s all be honest, coolest, look.  The figure uses a mixed media set-up, with a lot of different parts and layers, much like his real outfit.  The sculpted boots are nice enough to look at, but don’t have any sort of posing, which can be rather limiting.  His cloak, outer “jacket”, belt, and quiver, all need to be put on the figure out of the box.  Some of that’s easy, some of it’s less so.  You need to pop the head off to get the cloak on, which gave me no trouble, but I’ve read there were some issues of breakage on the neck joint.  The quiver and belt are both really tricky, and the quiver’s actual assembly looks to just be wrong, so it hangs a little odd.  But, once everything is all assembled, it all vibes together quite nicely, and he doesn’t look too over padded or anything, which is a plus.

The underlying body seems to be pretty basic.  With all the extras on it, it’s not super amazingly posable, but it at least gets some okay poses.  The ratcheted joints were a bit frightening at first, but I ultimately like how they work for holding poses.

Faramir’s standard release (which is the one I’m looking at here), gets three sets of hands (relaxed, fists, and gripping), a diecast sword, five arrows, and a display stand.  Did you notice the mention of the arrows?  And the quiver in the outfit section?  Cool.  Yeah.  Well, the standard version *doesn’t* have a bow.  Nope, that was the exclusive piece.  Sure, let’s just give him the quiver full of arrows, but no bow.  Nothing weird about that, right?  Right.

THE ME REMAINDER OF THE EQUATION

Remember the big epic collection that All Time got that they’re still processing?  Yeah, well there were a lot of Lord of the Rings figures in it.  But it’s okay, because I didn’t need them.  I don’t need much in the way of Lord of the Rings.  I can just focus on the other stuff and–right there was a Faramir, wasn’t there?  Oh, and he’s got that mournful look, right there on the box.  The sort of look that asks me if I wish now that his and Boromir’s places were traded.  You can’t just leave that look behind.  So, umm, I didn’t?  Honestly, I was tempted by this figure when he was new, so getting the chance to snag him was very nice.  I’m annoyed by the bow thing, but beyond that, I really do love him.

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.

#1076: Faramir in Gondorian Armor

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

FARAMIR IN GONDORIAN ARMOR

LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING (TOY BIZ)

faramir1

Hey, remember how I didn’t really have a lot of Lord of the Rings figures in my collection?  Well, this summer I sort of tried to fix that.  Now, I’ve already looked at my favorite of the villains, the Witch-King, but what about the story’s heroes?  I think I’ve talked before of my aversion to main characters.  I gat why they’re there, and I even tend to like them, but my favorite characters are always the ones just slightly off the side of things.  For the Lord of the Rings, my favorite hero is definitely Faramir, brother of Boromir (I was also pretty fond of Boromir, too), and Ranger of Gondor.  Fortunately for me, Faramir got a couple of figures over the course of Toy Biz’s Lord of the Rings line, one of which I’ll be looking at today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

faramir2Faramir was part of the second series of Toy Biz’s Return of the King line (alongside the previously review Witch-King).  This was his second of the three figures he got from Toy Biz.  This one depicts him in his Gondorian armor from the last film in the trilogy.  It’s not his main look, but it got some decent play during RotK’s big battle scene.  The figure is a little over 6 inches tall and he has 30 points of articulation.  Or at least he should have 30 points of articulation.  Mine is down one of is bicep swivels, due to soft pegs and sticky paint, resulting in his arm tearing off on his way out of the packaging.  Fortunately, my handy dandy tube of super glue fixed him up, but now he’s a little more restricted.  As a whole, though, this guy’s a fair bit easier to pose than the Witch-King, which is certainly a pleasant change.  However, on the flip side of things, his sculpt is a little weaker than the Witch-King’s.  On the plus side, his head sculpt sports a pretty good likeness of David Wenham as Faramir.  It’s not as spot on as some of the figures in the line were, but it was definitely better than the Two Towers Faramir.  In particular, they did a good job capturing the slight detailing of his beard, and also avoided making his hair too bulky.  The rest of the figure is certainly well detailed.  The armor is very lovingly recreated, based on what Faramir is seen sporting in the film, and there’s some wonderful fine detail work exhibited by the various layers of it.  This figure’s biggest issue is proportions.  The head and torso are fine, but the arms end up being rather on the large side, resulting not only in them being out of scale with the rest of him, but also in him not being able to put them down at his sides properly.  The hands in particular are huge, and the elbow joints are painfully obvious.  The legs are also rather on the large side, with the feet definitely possessing a clown shoes vibe.  The overall appearance is fine, but it could certainly be better.  He also included an action feature, which is rather similar to than of the Witch-King.  When the button on his back is pushed, Faramir’s right arm swings down.  It works alright, but results in there being a rather obvious button on his back, which is rather frustrating.  Faramir’s paintwork is pretty good.  There are some minor issues here and there (the placement of the eyes being a major one), but he generally looks like he should, and he even has some cool washes on the armor to bring out more of the details in the sculpt.  Faramir included a sword and the helmet which accompanies his armor.  Both pieces are pretty cool, though the helmet is a little larger to accommodate Faramir’s hair.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I never had any of the Faramir figures growing up, which is sort of weird, because I always rather liked the guy.  I do remember this one, but I just never bought him for whatever reason.  I ended up finding back a couple of months ago from Complete In Box (at the same time that I got Tormund).  He’s not a perfect figure by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s still pretty cool, and I’m just happy to have a Faramir.