Marvel Universe: Thor & Enchantress
Since I bought the Marvel Select Thor, I kind of felt he needed a few buddies. After all, I’ve only got the King Thor and Beta Ray Bill. Until we get that Legends 6″ Valkyrie later this year, there’s not much else Thor related. I figured 3.75″ is better than nothing, so I picked up the Secret Wars #11 2-pack with Thor and Enchantress.
I didn’t really have much hope of finding this set. The boards I frequent have been buzzing since wave 3 pics were released. Everyone wanted a Thor. Thor Thor Thor. I knew that as soon as units were shelved, they’d be scooped up. When they hit Toy Kingdom in Megamall, my hypothesis proved out. They were short packed (2 pieces while the other sets had at least 6 each) and gone within an hour of being taken out of the case.
About a week later I stumbled back to Megamall and lucked out. The satellite branch of Toy Kingdom in the department store had just gotten a shipment of Marvel Universe with 2 pieces each of the Thor and Hawkeye sets. This serendipitous occurence convinced me that I had to buy them, decision to quite Marvel Universe be damned.
The bubble pack is the same as most stuff that’s been coming out of Team Hasbro these days; a boring looking card with boring looking product photography with a huge boring Marvel logo in red. Sigh. I can’t believe that these are the same guys who came up with the Sigma 6 packaging. Say what you will about Mattel, but their DC Universe Classics and Masters of the Universe Classsics come in some pretty neat looking boxes. Marvel Universe comes in some pretty blah looking boxes.
But me, I’m a toy collector, not a mint-in-box guy.
First blush… these aren’t very good toys. If we were back in the days before the 25th Anniversary Joes, they would have been amazing. Now there are some glaring mistakes that drop their rating with me.
For one thing, they’ve both got the dullest looking faces I’ve seen on a toy. You’d think they could have gone with a stern, determined look for Thor, sort of a clenched jaw. With Enchantress, given her talents, you’d think they’d given her a more seductive look. Bit of lip. Less tight mouthed librarian. The headsculpts really skew my perception of the two figures, bringing down their scores in my head. They make them look like cheap toys. Believe me, at Php 900 a pop, these 2-packs aren’t cheap.
Paint might have made them better, but what there is of it isn’t all that great. Thor’s pretty much cast in color except for a few details. Enchantress suffers the most, with the aformentioned tight lipped face, mis-matched skin tones and a paint chip or two with some sloppy edges.
Plus her knee ws paint locked.
Thor gets more points, but the doughy face and simplistic sculpt really bring him down. Since this is a classic costume, there aren’t really any details to it, but all the same, he looks… boring.
I do like his boots though. His boots show how even simple costumes like this can be made interesting. They look like wraps, with wrinkled material wound around his shins, and shadows between each length. Nice.
His hammer, too, seems to be given much more attention to detail than the rest of him. It suffers the same shortness that the Marvel Select Thor had, but it’s got a trump card. If you look closely on one of the faces,you can make out an inscription; “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor”
Of course this is 1:18 scale, so you won’t actually be able to read it, but you can tell it’s written there. That’s enough to bring most of us to a nerdgasm.
His cape is also removable, but in this case I would have preferred that they had glued it. It comes off way to easily, since it’s only held in place by two short rubber posts. And Why would you want to display him without his cape anyway? Would you display Superman without his cape? Or god forbid, Batman? That’s sacrilege.
Both of the figures have decent articulation (at least once I fixed Enchantress’ paint locked legs). Thor’s kneepads and Enchantress’ squiggly lines hide the double knee joints well. However, Enchantress is missing an arm pivot. It’s really annoying that she can’t twist to gesture in different poses.
They also have those annoying ball-socket joints that all the Universe figures are using now. They feel like they’re going to fall apart and they aren’t as useful as the old ball post joints. As much as I hate the new Hasbro articulation, I have to admit that at this size, it doesn’t make much of a difference.
All in all, this is one of Hasbro’s worst showings in their Marvel Universe line. If you’re a Thor fan, wait for the single packed figure. If you want an Enchantress… well, just ask one of the guys to custom one.
Transformers Animated:
Activator Class
Starscream & Dirge
The “Activator” Class was a special size/complexity class of Transformer created for the Animated line of toys. They shared the same size as the “Scout” Class figures from previous lines (about 4 inches in height) but with an added action feature; a spring-loaded transformation. You basically pressed a button and POP! they became a robot.
This isn’t a new concept. As early as the 2nd year of the original Transformers (as much as you can say original when talking about toys that were just copies of Japanese lines) line in the 80’s, we saw the Jumpstarters. These were toys with pull-back motors that would zoom forward and at the end of their run, a catch would release and they’d pop up and flip over, landing on oversized feet in their robot mode. It was a hell of a lot of fun until the gears and things wore down.
The Activators don’t have the pull-back motors, but their spring-loaded coversions work pretty well. Some work better than others. Starscream and Dirge fall somewhere in between.
The figures come in an asymetric bubble pack that should be familiar to collectors of the Deluxe Class Animated figures. It’s not the best packaging and it’s a pain to store, but it serves it’s purpose. It’s got some nice cartoon art and some passable product photos that display how the figure transforms. It’s all very easily understood, though if you’re really thick, there are some instructions included.
The toy itself is small (there is a lot of wasted space in these packages) and there are no accesssories that aren’t already permanently connected.,That doesn’t mean it’s not a fun toy. In my view, accessories are what makes something like GI Joe fun, while the transforming process are what makes Transformers fun.
Dirge is just a repaint of Starscream. If you’ve seen the show, then you may be familiar with the episode where Starscream gets clones who each display one of his character traits brought to an absurd conclusion. In his case, the trait Dirge has is greed. There’s a third Activator seeker, Thundercracker, who was Starscream’s pride and egomania. Unfortunately, all of them are pretty hard to find. I got lucky with these two, but I haven’t seen a Thundercracker around.
The figures are boxed in their robot mode, so you’ll need to do some work getting them into their jet mode before you can enjoy the pop-up feature. It’s a lot like the conversion process of the Voyager Class Starscream in that you just need to flip his wings over and most everything else follows suit. Fix his legs in back and his nose cone out front, then make sure his arms are attached to his undercarriage and you’re done. The Jet doesn’t look all close to a real plane, with tons of kibble hanging off, but at this size, I don’t really mind.
Once you have him in the plane mode, you can then go nuts. Press the button on top and snap! The wings flip over and he’s pretty much done. All you need to do is flip over his blasters and shoulder armor, then straighten up his legs.
If you’re a Macross/Robotech fan, you’ll be happy to know that unlike the Voyager Class toy, these can easily mimic the gerwalk mode of the Veritech fighters. Because the arms don’t fold back like the bigger toys, they can hang down below the wing like they’re supposed to. If you can get a few of those transforming Revoltech Veritechs, you can have yourself a gerwalkathon.
These toys are really a joy to play with. Not only are they high quality figures, with strong plastic, breakaway parts and good paint applications (for a mass market figure at least), they are relatively well articulated. The shoulders, elbows, hips and knees are balljoints (though the knee is limited) while the head is on a hinge to let them look up and down. At this scale that’s enough to get them in a number of good poses.
Plus, if you are looking to complete an Animated Seeker army, then you’re probably going to want to buy a few of these. Since they’re small, they’ll be relatively cheaper to purchase and customize.
Value wise though, they aren’t that good a deal. Sure they’re great toys, but when they were first released, they were Php 500+ at suggested retail price. This was close to the price of a Deluxe figure. Even considering the action feature, I don’t think the price is on par with the amount of plastic used here. Towards the end of 2009, Playkit released some stock that it had found in some warehouse somewhere at Php 200. The figures flew off the shelves before the announcement even had time to spread.
You can resort to the bootlegs, but having seen and played with both, I have to say that the original really is better in terms of plastic quality, paint, casting, and the strength of the spring. These days, you’ll be lucky to find them via collectors at about Php 300-500. If you can find them at the low end of that range, I’d say buy ‘em.
Marvel Select Red & Green Hulks
The Incredible Hulk has been one of my favorite Marvel characters since I first saw him on television. Reruns of that old show with Lou Ferigno all decked out in his green body paint, flexing and grimacing like a nut… Now that was good TV.
When I started collecting comic books (I started in the library with real books and had to work my way up to comics), The Hulk was one of the titles that formed the core of my collection. I’ve since sold a bunch of the older ones, keeping mostly the ones from the Peter David, Dale Keown run. If you haven’t read Peter David’s Hulk, go out and find a trade now. It is worth the money, believe me. For that matter, go out and find his original X-factor run as well. Strong Guy. lol.
I’ve slowly been getting back into comic collecting, but having been gone from the hobby for so long, I don’t really know where to start. For one thing, there are only a few real comic book shops here, and selection of back issues is limited. I could probably order TPBs of past story arcs, but I’m a lazy bastard. Plus I’ve heard that since Loeb took over writing chores for the Hulk titles, things have gone downhill. Blatant marketing driven plots, insipid storylines, and weak characters have made the books something to avoid.
But I can’t resist this Red Hulk.
The first I heard about it was when the Red Hulk set of Marvel Legends were announced. I was like lolwhut? Red Hulk? why? Then Marvel started plugging this guy like he was their next Wolverine. We saw 2 more figures of him pop up, some other merchandise, and a ton of comic book covers on the shelf with his face growling at me. I forked over 30 pieces of silver and my right testicle to get myself an exclusive Red Hulk Legends set, then set about trying to procure his diminutive little brother from the Universe line.
The Marvel Select figure was the only one I was on the fence about. If you remember my Thor review, I’m not really a fan of Diamond’s Select line. They’re a lot like McFarlane Toys; sure they’ve got some nice sculpts, but I’m looking for toys, not statues. So when the Hulks first hit Comic Odessey, I wasn’t too excited, especially knowing how in demand they were from the hype on our local toy boards.
I changed my mind several months later when 2Rats brought in a shipment of them. I saw them at Toy Kingdom on a day when there wasn’t anything else on my radar. Figured since I don’t actually have a centerpiece for my Hulk collection (Raging Hulk where are you?), I could get them both as display pieces. They were a little more than what they had sold for at Comic Odessey (Php 1,500 for the green and Php 2,000 for the exclusive red), but at least I got SM Advantage card points. yay.
I won’t go over the packaging again since I covered it in the Thor review pretty well. Suffice to say it is one of the best boxes I’ve seen in my days as a collector, right up there with the Sigma 6 footlockers.
The two hulks are pretty much identically placed in the package. Nothing fancy, just standing there. They remembered to change the blurbs and graphics on the back, which is a plus.
The biggest difference between the two figures is the head sculpt. In fact it is the ONLY difference aside from the paint. The two bodies are made from the same mold, with the veins and bulges all in the same place.
The formost reason I didn’t want to get these two figures is the head sculpt. It’s awful. Really. Even saying that the sculptors were going for a more realistic look as opposed to the cartoony look of the Mcguinness inspired Legends figure, it’s still a fail in my book. Both of them look haggard, with sunken cheeks and eyes. Sort of like some kind of monster drug addicts, strung out and mad as hell about it. Green has the worst of it since the artisans decided to give him that old messy bowl cut.
The heads are connected to the rest of the body by a ball joint. It works pretty well; it allows both of them to look left and right,unlike their Marvel Universe counterparts.
Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing he’s got the smaller figures. The rest of his articulation is as lacking as the 3.75 scale toys. The arms are decent, with a generous range of motion at the shoulder, some at the elbow, with a swivel at the wrist. He has a waist cut that allows him to turn.
But when you go below that, things start going sideways. I don’t know why they sculpt Hulk with these bulbous legs. They aren’t really needed to sell the character are they? Hulk Smash. To do that, he needs his fist. Sure he can jump miles at a time, but does he really need thighs as big as his chest to do it?
Those sculpted muscles really block the movement of his legs, just as they do in the Universe toys. Don’t plan on getting your Select Hulks to do much of anything but stand around and grimace since those hips and knees are virtually useless.
I do, however like the sculpt of the back. The back of this figure is just awesome with big bursting muscle straining against skin. I bet he could knock someone out just by flexing his Teres Minor.
If that’s what floats your boat, you’ll want to get the green one. Paint apps on the green guy seem to be more complicated with more dry brushing. Diamond seemed to be satisfied with a subtle wash on the red one, so you don’t see a lot of the detail.
The only accessories they have is the small relatively flat plastic base. It’s sculpted as an impact crater, cast in red or green, then painted. Compared to some of the other Select stands, it just doesn’t compare, but then the mass of the figures makes the sacrifice understandable.
At the asking price these things go for and with the problems with the sculpt, I wouldn’t really recommend them for anyone other than Marvel Select completists and Hulk enthusiasts.
They’re both big figures, with some nice details, but when it comes down to it, you’re better off spending your money on a nice bust or a good sized statue of th Hulk than these not-so-much-action-as-half-hearted-activity figures.
Thanks to Cibo Marco for the shopped pic.
Adventure Team
By the end of Hasbro’s foray into the 8″ scale, they had two sub-lines being released concurrently with the last of the 2007 Sigma 6 figures; the “Combat Squad”, and the “Adventure Team”. Both shared the same design themes and characteristics of the original line, but branched off in different directions.
The Combat Squad was a set of figures that took Sigma 6’s military themes and tweaked them a bit, making the figures military roles more realistic and accessory assortments closer to what soldiers would carry in real life. The figures themselves still shared the same anime inspired look of the Sigma 6 line (were in fact repainted and retooled from them) and the packages they came in were exactly the same except for some variations in graphic design and the fact that the end caps were green.
The Adventure Team, on the other hand took the line off on a tangent that I didn’t expect; the Joes as treasure hunters.
It was pretty high concept and a pretty bold move considering that we hadn’t seen a diversification like this since the days of the 12″ers. Sure you had the occasional GI Joe member who had a day job (remember The Fridge?) or came from another agency on loan (i.e. Shockwave), but at the end of the day, most of us associated Joes with the military, soldiering. They were supposed to duke it out with Cobra in tanks and jets with red and blue blaster fire passing back and forth harmlessly between them. That was the deal. This whole Adventure Team idea smelled like another “Trukk not Munky” situation in the making.
That feeling was disspelled as soon as people started seeing photos of the toys. The line featured 2 well known characters and 1 completely new one (to the line anyway). Not only did the 3 figures fit in perfectly with the rest of the line, they were given some great accessories (including a secondary toy) and a new package design that not only fit in with the old idea, but took it in the same direction as the toys they came with.
The box itself is a marvel. It’s pretty big. Bigger than most of the stuff I buy. If you were lucky enough to see this in stores, I’m sure you stopped to give it a look, even if you weren’t a fan. It has the same end cap construction as the original Sigma 6 line, but instead of the “metal” boxes, they had beige “crates” on the ends. Once you had the toys out of the package, you could use these crates as storage for the figures and accessories. I can’t tell you how useful this idea was and how much I wish we’d see it duplicated in other lines. The crates are detailed with molded woodgrain and rivets, as well as an Adventure Team “A”.
There are various labels on the panels, touting various aspects of the toy. There’s the KUNG FU GRIP! sticker out front, the big GI JOE: ADVENTURE TEAM on the bottom, and printed shipping labels on the top. The whole thing was seamlessly done and should probably be used as an example of excellent marketing.
There’s a huge window in where the toys are posed in the middle of an action. Normally I hate this because it means a whole lot of twist ties and plastic to get through, and chances of limbs and accessories warping in the package. However, in this instance it’s so well done that it’s worth it. Snake Eyes being spooked by the cobra, the tiger jumping Storm Shadow, and Recondo wrestling with the Crocodile shows off the toy, it’s articulation and it’s accessories in the best possible way. With the sturdy construction of this bigger 8″ scale, there’s less chance of deformation.
In the back there is some of the best product photography I have ever seen. Seriously, these photos are just amazing and I wish I had the equipment to duplicate some of it. Next to that is a description of the “adventure” that particular team member has undertaken and a list of their equipment.
Once you have them out of the box, there’s even more goodness to be had. The backdrop is a separate piece of cardboard with an appropriate setting already printed on it. The artwork is an improvement on the later Sigma 6 figures which were tied into the cartoon. These are more of painted environments that are pretty nice display dioramas if you’re willing to take some time to mount them properly. It’s an excellent include for collectors.
The other include (aside from the instructions, which are always nice and easy to understand) is the “Adventure Guide”. This little 14 page booklet serves the same purpose as those old fold up catalogs you used to get as a kid in you’re Transformer boxes. The ones that displayed all the toys that were slated to come out and the ones you could never find in the store. Rather than just boring product shots, the Guide is done as a mock industry newsletter or magazine, with adverts for gear, classified ads, and articles featuring more amazing product photography.
What is sad though is that you realize that this was meant to be only the 1st wave of Adventure Team figures. 3 more were already on the drawing board; Shark hunting in the Great Barrier Reef, Scorpion fighting in Atacama in Chile and an African encounter with a Gorilla. Sadly, like Scarlett, Wet-Suit, Dusty, and Joe Colton never made it to production (though a couple of test shots were sold on eBay).
The first one I opened was the “Pyramid of Peril”. This was the one that smelled the most like an Indiana Jones movie, with Snake Eyes trying to swipe an ancient jewel from a booby trapped pyramid. It even had snakes, just like the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The window give you a perfect view of the figure without having to peer around corners. If you’re an MOCer, than these will make you happy.
He comes with a pair of binoculars, a canteen, 2 flashlights, a “Fastshot blaster” (a shotgun in layman’s terms), a “Ruin-ripping sword (or machete), a “Raider zipline” (self-explanatory) with grappling hooks, goggles, hood, amulet (this line’s dog tags), necklace and belt (I’m not sure they’re removable), gemstone, sword booby trap, and the articulated giant king cobra.
That’s a lot of swag.
I love the play potential of this set. The zipline is really something since they’ve given you a generous length of string to use. I can set it up at my desk and it feels like Sky Commanders back in the day. You can even string it through his belt an have him climb the rope. Most of the gear can be carried by him via the Sigma 6 ports he’s got around his person, but he has to trade off the canteen with the binoculars or extra flashlight.
The booby trap was fun for a while. It works pretty well; stick the gemstone in the hole, set the swords, and if someone grabs it the swords scissor off their arm. The trigger isn’t really all that sensitive though, so you have to work at it if you want it to snap closed.
The snake is pretty nice. It’s got 5 joints along it’s length and one more at the jaw. The tongue flicks out when you slide the lever at the back of the hood. The lever’s ratchet joints are tight, so the tongue doesn’t so much as flick as it muchs as it snaps out slowly in spurts, but I doubt a kid would notice. I kind of wish he was taller though, so he could properly look Snake Eyes in the eye instead of the foot. He’s also kind of short for a “king” cobra.
About the only thing I don’t like about Snake Eyes is his paint/ color scheme. The drab green seems out of place on some one digging through tombs in Egypt. Not to mention that the black hood doesn’t seem to mesh with the rest of him. If they had colored the hood olive, or given him more black paint applications somewhere it might have improved his look.
I opened Storm Shadow and “Danger in the Jungle” in which he is supposed to capture a tiger whose been terrorizing an Indian town. Again, the package makes this set all that much harder to resist.
More than the other figures, Storm Shadow comes with the most accessories actually related to the story on the back. Sent to capture the tiger, he comes with several ways to trap him.
He comes with a “Gotcha” trap (like a bear trap), a “Tiger tamer collar and chain”, a “Grabber-stapper” (like a polearm with a big circle at the end), and a huge net. In addition, he has 2 “bush-blazing swords” (really 2 halves of a sword), a loop that clips to his back so he can carry the said sword, a GPS device that looks like a cellphone, goggles, and the requisite amulet.
The capture method I like most is the chain. It’s detachable from the collar, so you can use it like he would any other ninja chain weapon. It would go well with any of the other Storm Shadows I have in my collection. You can slide in the dagger end to the sheath on the back of the tiger’s collar and it doubles as a leash for the kitty.
The net is pretty good as well. It’s big enough to cover the cat, and is equipped with a drawstring so that he can pull it closed over him. it’s a nice play feature that I’m sure kids can get into more than I can.
The Grabber-stabber is something I will probably never use. It doesn’t really look like a ninja weapon that he’d normally carry and there’s really no way for him to carry it on his person unless he’s doing so with his hands.
The swords aren’t as nice as some of the ones that have come with previous figures. I’d have preferred a scimitar of some sort to go with the Indian theme, but at least you can split this one in two, sort of like the Power Sword from He-man. That clip thing plugs into his back so that you can use it as a sheath, though I wish they had given him a socket on his belt instead. One less thing to worry about losing in the long run.
There are a few quality control issues with this figure that the others don’t suffer from. It could be the white color of the plastic, but the paint applications on this figure are sloppy. The maroon of his armor in particular spills over and the register lines are all over the place. In addition, the tiger’s head falls off ALL THE TIME as you can see from the picture above. It’s not a big deal since it goes back on, but now I’m hesitant to get the Marvel Legends Savage Land boxset with Zabu. If the cat figure there shares the same problem as this it’s going to suck.
It’s also sad how the chest armor isn’t removable. It would have been nice to have another bare chested Storm Shadow sans the tattoo of the Shouri Crossbow version.
I don’t really know what to make of the GPS tracking system. It seems like something a ninja wouldn’t need. Snake Eyes never needed one.
I literally saved the best for last. I’d seen Recondo and the “Terror of the Swamp” set in reviews many times, but since there were only a few Sigma 6 figures that reached Philippine shores, I was never able to get one. This figure is really the reason I bought the set and he is totally worth it.
Recondo is the only new character in the bunch, not having a counterpart in any of the previous Sigma 6 assortments. I’m sure there’s a reused part here or there, but he feels totally new. There are no mismatched parts here.
You can see from the photo that the croc is HUGE, taking up a lot of the space in the window. It masses almost as much as he does.
He comes with a Croc-handler’s leash, a “Tranquilizer” gun, “Trail-cutter machete” and an “Outback knife”, a canteen, his hat, amulet, and this weird jack. He must be on his way to fix a blown tire back at the highway or something.
The two knives are awesome. Remember that great scene in the geektastic Crocodile Dundee where he says “thaht’s noht a noif…”? Well, Recondo has two of the damn things and can kick Paul Hogan’s Aussie butt.
The “Tanquilizer” gun looks nothing of the sort. It’s a bad ass rifle with all sorts of junk wrapped around it. It’s not one of the high tech ones that any of the normal Sigma 6 members would carry around, but it looks great on him.
Sadly it’s not a modular design like some of the older accessories. I’d love to have seen it built from one of those Switchfire pistols that come with all the Duke figures.
The Croc is probably my favorite among the animal accessories. Despite it’s lack of articulation (8 points total,and all swivels, most of them limited), he’s the best looking. His sculpt is nearest the actual living thing he’s supposed to be. The detail is great, with all the horny scales on back and the row of teeth.
He’s also got an action feature like the snake. If you stick Recondo’s hand (or your finger) into his mouth, the jaw snaps down on it. Ouch! It doesn’t actually hurt, but I had some fun surprising people who came to my desk to visit.
Frankly, Recondo is the best of the trio, outshining the other two without question. He shows the potential of the Sigma 6 and Adventure Team lines to be the best toys of their class. It’s a shame that we never saw the rest.
Sadly, these toys are hard to find, even online. I used to see them all the time for about $20-30 (back when I thought I might actually have a chance at having them shipped here), but locally, they never appeared in any quantity. The only ones I’ve ever seen were at specialty shops and it was usually Storm Shadow.
If you can find Recondo for Php 1500-2000, I’d say pick him up without hesitation. The play value of that set alone is worth the money. The other two I might recommend to a Sigma 6 fan, but the lower quality of those figures skews my perspective on their value.
Hopefully, Hasbro will come to their senses and use some of those production pieces they have an release a few more sometime in the future. I’ve tried the 3.75″ line, but they just don’t comprare in my book to these 8″ figures. While the smaller Joes are always hit and miss with a ton of figures that are awful and useless, there isn’t one Sigma 6 figure that I regret buying.
Not one.
Legion
Post-apocalypse stories aren’t new. Terminator, Matrix, Mad Max, Dawn of the Dead… all of them are about life after the end of everything. No matter how bad they are, end of the world stories seem to make for good box office no matter how bad they are. Just look at Roland Emmerich.
Me, I have a soft spot for a particular sub-genre, the Endtimes story. There are a few of them around in both film and literature. I remember watching Gregory Widen’s The Prophecy back on VHS in 1995 and going WOW!. Christopher Walken as Gabriel and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer… “I can lay you out and fill your mouth with your mother’s feces, or we can talk.”
How can that NOT stick in your head?
It was the first time I had seen angels depicted in such a way. Not benevolent beings that lived in the sky and watched over us, but spiteful, petulant, scorned children. Sure it’s not what they’d have you believe in Catechism class, but it opened up a whole bunch of questions.
I went into Scott Stewart’s Legion without knowing anything about it, but I was surprised to find something similar to that first film. It had a lot of the same themes. Fallen angels, jealousy, children as saviors, violence, etc. It also has a strong ensemble like The Prophecy, including Paul Bettany, Lucas Black, Charles Dutton, Kevin Durand and Dennis Quaid.
The plot involves God losing faith in Man, his most beloved creation and sending down his armies of angels to possess and destroy everyone on Earth. The archangel Michael, tasked with killing an innocent child, falls out of favor. When his brothers try and carry out God’s orders, he tries to protect the unborn child and it’s mother along with the other people who have managed to survive the holocaust. It’s not really all that original, but like zombie movies, it doesn’t have to be.
Stewart started out in effects, and it looks as if he brought that expertise to the table here, doing what he can with what he has to work with. The fights, stunts, and make up look pretty good for the low budget the movie apparently has. There’s some CGI mixed in, but a lot of it is practical apparently.
Cinematography is so so. There are some really frightening scenes that make you sit up, like the toddler with a butcher’s knife, but there’s also a lot of MTV camera work here; slow motion gun fights ad nauseum. I guess it comes from Stewart’s work with John Woo. We all know how that man loves his slow mo. But he’s also worked on Iron Man and Sin City, which gives him some of his cred back.
The acting is good. Bettany seems to be moving from nancy boy drama acting to honest to goodness action hero. Surprisingly, it seems to suit him, and he’s good in almost anything really. I would rather see him as an action star than Vin Diesel. Quaid is Quaid really. He’s like Michael Keaton or Tom Cruise. It’s always the same guy, but you don’t really care enough to notice. That the whole cast keeps a straight face while delivering some of the most heavy handed dialogue I’ve heard in a while probably saved the film for me.
The last 20 minutes are what really tipped me over, though. When Durand comes down as Gabriel, decked out in black armor, black wings straight out of a Caravaggio painting, mace to shame the Witch-king of Angmar in hand… well that is the kind of stuff I geek out about. When he started using his wings as a weapon, spinning around and disembowelling people, I was cheering.
The fight was pretty short, which made me wish that they had focused more on the Gabriel/Michael relationship, rather than these boring human characters. In the end, that’s really what’s wrong with this film; it takes way too long to show you the real characters and then takes focus off of them. Sure there’s that weird Doug Jones Ice Cream Man and the Carnivorous Grandma, but I honestly couldn’t care less about the baby and the survivors. All I wanted was more great costumes, more wicked angel weapons, more wing fights. Bettany and Durand make for a pretty bromantic couple and a sequel with the two of them waging a proper War in Heaven would be very welcome.
Like most geek reviews, take this one with a grain of salt. If you’re one of those guys who watches stuff like Y tu mamá también for ANYTHING but the naked chicks, then you probably won’t like this movie. We aren’t talking Oscar material here. This thing was made for a particular niche audience that is as narrow as the one for furrie porn. If you belong to that niche market, or you’re the kind of movie goer who likes anything with guns and explosions, then you stand a good chance of enjoying yourself. It’s a fairly entertaining way to spend and hour and a half, but you’re not really going to miss anything if you wait for it on DVD.
If you're looking for biased, one-sided views of toys and other assorted geekery, then you're in the right place. If you want objective, you'll need a blog written by someone who isn't an obsessive geek.
These are my views on various toys, movies, places, and things, along with assorted pictures and the the occasional link to stuff I find sufficiently geeky.
Enjoy your stay and leave a comment.
Slangards
I may give you a half-way serious answer.
