Monday News: Spidey vs. Figures of polite society
What? Is February almost over already? I’ve been so wrapped up in judging at these speech tournaments, everything kind of snuck up on me; I’m still failing at my weekly goal for the past 5 weeks, of seeing The Descendants but it’s only because I’m here and I care so much about giving you guys news! Yay!
– Figma continues to make neat designs into great looking figures that I can’t reasonably afford
There’s some nice pictures of Phantas-Moon, the main character of Type-Moon’s 10th Anniversary show Carnival Phantasm up and I have to wonder if it would be too weird for Max Factory to start looking at doing Figmas of the Sailor Moon characters. Phantas-Moon seemed to be absent from a lot of the Wonder Festival coverage but it could be a result of her nearing release. You only get a few real chances to make people unfamiliar with this stuff wonder just how crazy you might be, so keep an eye out for her in the summer. [Source: Tomopop]
– Brick helmer Rian Johnson claims SFX supervisor at Hydraulx was fired for story comments following screening of The Avengers
Johnson thinks that Chris Wells, a special effects supervisor at Hydraulx, was canned for mentioning that the Red Skull isn’t in The Avengers. I do find that a little odd since I thought that the rumour was denied by Marvel back in January, much in the same way they’ve been telling people the Skrulls aren’t the alien race in the film. That’s truly unfortunate for Wells though, and I hope that Marvel had nothing to do with him being let go; it’s not like he revealed the secret behind the not-Skrulls or anything. Hydraulx has a long history of working on Marvel movies, most recently Captain America, so I do wonder if the Strause Brothers had some sort of weird motive for letting him go. Wells just worked with Johnson on upcoming time travel film Looper which I hope lives up to the pre-installed hype any hard sci-fi take on the concept already gets from its first announcement.[Source: Comicbookmovie.com]
– Hot Toys reveals Nick Fury from The Avengers, radio headpiece for standing around and doing nothing included
Speaking of The Avengers, it’s interesting to see that the very first figure from Hot Toys’ line of high-end product will be Nick Fury, complete with walkie talkie so that he doesn’t have to take part in any major action other than firing the rocket launcher they gave him that they hope is a loud enough moment for people to not notice that Samuel L. Jackson is probably a little too old to be doing any of the action set piece heavy lifting. I’m sure they did this as he’s the only returning character without a new look they haven’t already done, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they rereleased Black Widow somehow. As usual, the portrait is crazy realistic and the posing in the picture even indicates how much Jackson’s ignoring his talent and is coasting as an actor by this point; the suitcase with the Cosmic Cube/Tesseract/whatever lighting up is a nice touch, though I’m still very far away from ever owning anything made by Hot Toys. [Source: Comingsoon.net]
– Viral marketing for The Amazing Spider-Man begins in earnest, I try to move past the utter stupidity of the street tagging idea
Various websites have gotten the Peter Parker backpack which kicks off the viral campaign for The Amazing Spider-Man, and the 6 city based events are finished; we’ve now got access to a truly spectacular new clip that shows Peter being foiled by the doorman for the building the Stacy family resides in. Thrilling stuff though I like how John Scurti, aka Lou from Rescue Me, is the unflappable doorman foiling our hero in a way we totally didn’t see happen in the Raimi films despite there not being much of a precedent for that anywhere else. Maybe Peter in the movies just doesn’t get along with the service industry somehow?
Anyway, the whole Spider Symbol graffiti thing continues to be the biggest problem I have with any material we’ve got so far, as it seems excessive in addition to being a lame grift from approximately 15,000 different comics from the late 80’s through the mid-90’s. I get they’re trying to work the whole “urban vigilante” thing but you saw how long that held together in the Nolan Batman films which have obviously inspired Webb’s take on Spidey’s PR activity. I’m still holding out hope that this is going to be decent but for every strong thing I see, there’s about 3 weak ones. [Source: Slashfilm, Mark of the Spider-Man]
– Revoltech Alphonse revealed at Wonderfest, Kaiyodo has slimmer showing than I was expecting
After all the product from Max Factory’s Figma line shown at Wonderfest, including a bunch of pieces I thought were impressive despite unfamiliarity/indifference to their source properties, I was a little letdown by Kaiyodo’s Revoltech showing. There’s going to be a new mass production EVA, finally making up for the scarcity of the last version that had an exclusive variant, and a pair of pieces from Monster Hunter but little else caught my attention. I’m excited for Alphonse Elric but I’m hoping that Edward turns out well before I start making any plans to get the pair; I don’t want them to turn out poorly the way the Kenshin Revoltechs did. [Source: Gundammodelkits.com]
– Famous Belgian cartoon franchise Marsupilami gets live-action film, continuing a trend of adaptations I never expected to see
André Franquin’s enduring comic species, the Marsupilami is getting a relatively ambitious looking film adaptation, which to my huge surprise, seems finished and is ready for release in April. Some of you may remember Marsupiliami from the Disney cartoon he had for a few minutes in the 90’s, but the character actually has been appearing in the Spirou comics magazine since the 1950’s; he’s outrageously popular and the character’s is one of the staples of the Franco-Belgian comics alongside other properties you’ve heard of like Tintin, Asterix, Blueberry, Largo Winch, and Peyo’s Smurfs franchise. The movie has a few familiar faces in it, like Jamel Debbouze who you might remember from Amelie or Luc Besson’s ill-received Angel-A. Do I think we’ll see it here? Nope. Still, it looks like the special effects houses for some of these adaptations are getting better and better as the Marsupilami looks greatly improved over the clips I’ve seen from the numerous live-action Asterix films I’ve never gotten to see. Anyway, check out a few more details here while I hope that most of you guys don’t think I’m a pretentious dweeb-o for going off on a minor tangent on European comics. [Source: Bleeding Cool]
You can see Wong's character is missing in this picture; perhaps because he's encountered THE SPACE JOCKEY by this point?
** WEEKLY PROMETHEUS UPDATE** **WEEKLY PROMETHEUS UPDATE** **WEEKLY PROMETHEUS UPDATE** **WEEKLY PROMETHEUS UPDATE**
Benedict Wong had an interview on Britain’s Peter Serafionwicz Show and revealed he’s going to be a SPACE JOCKEY of sorts in that he’s playing Ravel, a pilot on the ship Prometheus. Outside of that, he talked up the 3D a little but there were few actual mentions of any real details besides fellow castmembers. Sadly lacking in the SPACE JOCKEY department, we can only hope that this is the vital morsel that finally reveals the film as the Alien prequel we all know it to be. [Source: Prometheusnews.net]
Plenty of good pictures there too, especially in the comparisons
– Read about if you should get the S.H. MonsterArts Godzilla in spite the ridiculous prices and the jerk move of packing most accessories separately
True Kaiju maniac Newton Gimmick takes a pretty intense look at the pros and cons of Bandai’s new MonsterArts line, which has created a lot of internal debate among collectors I know. He confronts things like the key issue of these being a very different scale from the Revoltechs of other Toho characters like Rodan and Mothra, something that’s agonizing for those who were hoping for the two to have similar sizes. You can always count on Infinite Hollywood to hardline on their reviews and actually really take a second to think about the price section, something you’re not seeing as much these days; Newton doesn’t pull any punches here so be sure to check out if getting this line will be anything resembling practical. Be sure to read the comments! [Source: Infinite Hollywood]
Gosh, I sure talked a lot about foreign pop culture stuff this week. That was totally unconscious but I guess that’s just how things turn out when you look at a lot of import toys. Once again I’ve foiled myself from getting anything major done though Jaysun’s new top 10 is giving me the first major break I’ve had since we went to daily updates. Enjoy that please, because holy shit, doing most of the site stuff by myself is exhausting.
Have a fun week everybody!
Planned Banter 
Thanks for the plug. I do try to be realistic in my reviews, especially in a piece like that, which is costly. A lot of reviewers seem to be glossing over price these days but that’s a huge factor to me.
Nick Fury’s head looks pretty fat in that shot, but I haven’t looked at any other pics. Hot Toys usually does a pretty good job though. Their Octopus was sweet.
A lot of reviewers don’t really look at the cost factor, but I think there’s reasons for that. As exciting as the S.H. MonsterArts figures are, it’s looking like a year of releases for them is going to cost more than a MOTUC subscription which is the absolute gold standard in extravagant costs these days. $7 shipping per figure for them to take a week to get here? That’s insane.
I think the Fury sculpt is pretty accurate as I enjoy continuing to troll on Jackson doing nothing in any of the movies except glowering and relying on his past roles to lend him an implied gravitas. Fury only seemed like a character in the last bits of ‘Captain America’ but that could just be from them letting him have a moment that let him do something other than try and look intimidating.
Is there no BMF wallet there?
I’m amazed at you and Newton’s ability to ignore me trolling on SLJ. Glad he comes with the earpiece and walkie-talkie though; otherwise, how could he stand up and yell at the Avengers all the way from the Helicarrier?
I’m kind of glad to see somebody like Fury in the line, if only to break up the endless Iron Man repaints. I’m sure there are folks that only collect Hot Toys, and this will be nice for them. (Read that is “I’m sure the Asian market will buy him”)
I concur mostly, though. They are amazing in likeness and detail. The engineer in me is fascinated by the technical side of some of the armored figures. That said, I don’t have any on my want list. I could buy A LOT of GI Joe figures and vehicles for the price of one of these. I kind of see Hot Toys the same way I see the PlaySkool lines. They aren’t marketing to me, just around me. (Now a Nick Fury to put on shelf with some of my Joes, I’d buy…)
Wonfes has always been, and will be the greatest troll fest for me…
I burned my wallet twice a year because of it.