fantastic_four

Another look at the Marvel Legends 12-inch Wolverine next to the Marvel Legends 6-inch Wolverine. The 12-inch is pretty much a scaled-up version of the 6-inch figure; I'm pretty sure they share the exact same 3D model. Every part is identical (I've got bone claws on the 6-inch in this pic, but he also came with adamantium claws), except that the 12-inch has additional detailing sculpts on most parts--textured boots and gloves, scratches and bullet holes on the shoulder pads, extra hair and damage on the mask cowl, etc. Again, the 12-inch version is one of the best action figures I've ever seen. He's just wonderful. If Hasbro had done hundreds of these 12-inch Marvel figures I'd probably be looking for a new, bigger house to display them in.

There's one other issue with Hot Toys--they don't really do comic looks much. Sometimes, but not much. And I generally prefer Marvel comics looks over MCU looks. And it's not like you can't do comic looks with fantastic articulation in sixth scale. Hasbro made a line of about a dozen Marvel Legends in 12-inch scale a few years ago, and they're all really good and have better articulation than any Hot Toys figure ever does. Their Wolverine pictured below in particular is amazing, and until the Haslab Sentinel and Galactus I thought it was the best action figure Hasbro had ever made. It's just spectacular in every way, and the articulation is wonderful. And you can leave him in any pose without worrying about degradation over time.

A significant portion of collectors feel exactly this way, and I usually think it's a majority. And that's totally fine and I used to be exactly like this for decades, but I always come back to the same question--why buy that figure with any articulation at all, then? I would think that vanilla-oriented, pose once and forget it collectors would be much better served with statues. Articulation cuts ALWAYS make figures look worse, so why buy figures with those cuts? Statues look much better since they don't have them. I was a statue collector up until I had kids. Over their first two years I realized how unfortunate it was that they couldn't play with all of these cool-looking statues. I had looked at action figures in the early to mid 2000s, but Toy Biz figures were SO much wonkier-looking than say Bowen statues that they had no appeal at all for me. But once I looked at Marvel Legends circa 2018 and saw the quality improvement and realized that it can be fun to pose figures in different ways to vary up their look in a display I was hooked. And I have consistently cycled my displays for years now. Haven't gotten tired of it at all. I can see myself fading back into a pose-once-and-forget collector in 5, 10, 20, or however many years. Maybe I'll switch back to statues myself at that point.

Because I dumped on Hot Toys yesterday I'd like to clarify I LOVE that company. I respect that they exist and the work they do, and whenever they release any new action figures I'm always interested in seeing them. But I can't buy them due to the bad articulation and poor durability. The Hot Toys figures I've been most on the fence about are the Ahsoka figures. I debated buying those for months. However, that rubbery material that they put over elbow and knee joints that are exposed which you can see on the Clone Wars Ahsoka below crack if you leave the figures in a bent-arm pose. So whenever you see Hot Toys figures in poses flexing those joints hardcore Hot Toys collectors know not to leave them in that pose or the skin will crack. Both figures are also squarely in the Uncanny Valley, although it's highly minimized with her alien look defined by her multi-colored montrals and lekku. I love that Hot Toys is doing what they do in covering joints with skin because it really does improve the look of action figures...but it just isn't working. I hope they eventually perfect it in a durable way.

For those who haven't seen the Hot Toys sixth scale Millennium Falcon here it is. VERY impressive, but nothing any of us would normally have room for. They never sold this and only made one for display. Not sure if they still have it, but I'm guessing they do.

I won't touch Hot Toys for multiple reasons: The materials the figures are made from degrades too quickly. Sometimes it just degrades over time all by itself, but more often it degrades if you have the figure in any kind of pose where the joints are bent. I don't want action figures that I have to pose like statues. Even if you do want to pose them the articulation is absolutely terrible. Most faces are squarely in the Uncanny Valley. A few aren't, but the great majority are. Sabine there looks like she almost avoided the Uncanny Valley, but not entirely. She's definitely better than most and somewhere on the upwards slope out of the Valley on the way towards complete photorealism. They take up too much space. I much prefer the 1:12 scale for the space reason, or for lines where large creatures or vehicles are integral to the brand then the 1:18 scale. Ever seen the Hot Toys sixth scale Millennium Falcon they made for a con a few years back? That thing takes up an entire large room and demonstrates why the sixth scale doesn't work for lines where vehicles are an important part of the line.

I certainly wouldn't sign my digital likeness away if I were Sean Penn. Or even an unknown actor. But I'm not at all clear on why SAG needs to ban even the possibility of a studio including it from all contracts.

That's essentially what SAG is asking for. But why?

I doubt it. It could happen, but the hobby is more likely to die off before it does.

She's talking about the general category of reality television. That's what took off the last time the WGA called a strike in 2007.

Raise your kids to know what "work" is, and let them discover the trades. AI will likely not be able to replace electricians, plumbers, builders, etc - there are too many variables and working conditions in those jobs that can't be accounted for and adapted to - at least anytime soon. I'm not quite ready to relegate humans to all of the manual labor and leave AI to do all of the intellectual white-collar work just yet. But I can't rule that out as a possible direction we're heading in--at least until robotics ramps up. Then we're all screwed! At least for a little while. Life should eventually be great with AI doing everything, but I'm guessing there will be quite a bit of social and political upheaval before we get there. Capitalism can't continue if the value of human labor truly plunges to zero. For most of the last decade my guess was that the next big technology revolution after the Internet would be robotics, but this year I'm not at all sure. AI might be the next one, but it's not clear quite yet.

I still don't get it. Why is it their IP? Do they serve as agents for extras or something? Getty's image library is their IP. I'm still not getting it. Getty owns the rights to the specific images they've paid for, but not the digitization of an actor's look that is then used to create visuals with that actor in different imagery. So why would Getty care about this at all, what's their angle? The studios would have to be using the exact images that Getty has licensed from actors for them to directly care, but I haven't heard that's what the studios are doing or that it's at all an issue with the current beef behind the strikes.

I agree fully with your first two sentences above, as well as your fourth sentence. But I don't know what you mean by the third sentence that I bolded in the quote above. How are studios "sneaking" language into contracts? You're obliged to read anything you sign, so what do you mean? Are they getting signatures and then adding something else in later? How are they "sneaking" in provisions that cause actors to lose the rights to their digital likeness?

Anyone with kids should be at least somewhat concerned by this. There's a list of careers at high risk of getting replaced by automation, and there's another list of careers at low risk. Before plunking down $200K or more on a university I'd much prefer whatever my kids major in is on that list of jobs at low risk of getting replaced. Mostly that's doctors and nurses right now, or really most health care jobs.

Clothing retailers ave been ripping off the big labels for decades. All they need to do, is change the design slightly and they're good to go. Aldi's grocery stores specializes in this and has skirting trademark infringement down to a science. They carry cheap, rip-off versions of every major name brand. Different but similar names and different but similar box art. Here are a few:

What the heck are these? Killer mutant baseball players? And is that one on the left in blackface?

What else can they do? With Star Wars or GI Joe it's all about the vehicles because the characters themselves are just regular humans aside from Sith or Jedi--and when you're talking about Sith or Jedi nobody thinks about vehicles with them, it's all about the Force or lightsabers. Superheroes are different. Vehicles barely matter since the coolness is all about the powers packed into the character. I'm sure they will eventually try a Quinjet or Blackbird, but those won't reach the same numbers as large characters have.

Haslab comic Giant-Man just revealed. Great price at $199.99, and he looks spectacular.

She went into more detail that's more pertinent to exactly what she said about attachment though. She said she saw what attachment did to pull Anakin to the Dark Side and vowed to never have that happen again. That made complete sense to me given all she went through with him. But I haven't seen a moment of Rebels so I defer to your knowledge of her relationship with Sabine. I have to admit I don't fully understand why she's training a non-Force user.

Din Djarin does it in the Mandalorian a lot. Beskar can deflect lightsabers, and "real" Mandalorians always wear beskar armor when they can. If lightsabers are just the fourth state of matter (plasma) then beskar would be a hypothetical metal with a higher melting point than whatever temperatures lightsabers run at.

I still don't get it. Why is it their IP? Do they serve as agents for extras or something?

Had no idea until today that Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Obi-Wan were married IRL...apparently it happened last year.

I agree with Obi-Wan and Anakin in RotS as second. I mostly enjoyed the rematch at the end of the Obi-Wan show, but it's not as good as those first two. I haven't seen that Ahsoka vs. Maul fight yet; I'm still slowly working my way through Clone Wars, almost done with season 5 now. I assume that battle you're referring to is in season 7, that one Disney released within the last year or two. Are you sure the Vader scene in Rogue One where he's cutting through the Rebel soldiers isn't the third best? It isn't a Jedi vs. Sith battle so you may have excluded it for that reason. David Prose as Vader in the original trilogy was also pretty stiff, and it wasn't until Rogue One that I saw how bad-arse Vader could be.

You'll have to explain a bit more about what Getty Images is protesting. I've seen images with their watermarks around the web, but other than that I don't know what they do or what the nature of their protest would be. I agree, actors still own their likeness as digital avatars just as they would their likeness as photographs, videos, or in any other medium. Or at least that's what my educated guess would be as to how courts would interpret how a digital avatar falls under patent laws. I'm also guessing this hasn't gone to court yet to say that for sure, but who knows, maybe there is trial precedent about actors owning their digital likeness. If anyone knows of one please do share. If the studios are claiming that digital actor avatars aren't the actor's intellectual property then that's surprising. Do you recall who said that? One of the studio heads I'm guessing? I'm definitely interested to see if they tried to explain that position. They may be referring to a lack of court precedent establishing that fact as I mentioned in my last paragraph. Either way I can't begin to imagine their lawyers would ever let them use digital actor avatars without signing contracts with those actors, PARTICULARLY any actor that the camera does a close-up on with spoken lines. Maybe they're skipping the contracts with extras since the monetary risk should be extremely small with them since they barely get paid, but even that seems at least somewhat risky if they're not getting them to sign their rights away.