fantastic_four

Marvel Legends doesn't do a true 1:12 scale; it's more like a 1:11.5 scale with the figures being a quarter to a half inch taller than the actual characters should be. Medicom followed suit with Mafex, but Bandai went true 1:12 scale with their S.H. Figuarts line so those are usually too small compared to Legends. Every once in a while Mafex figures are too small for larger heroes though. Their Kirby Thor and first appearance Venom figures are too small for what they should be, but most others are great. All of their Wolverines are also slightly tall and about a quarter-inch bigger than the Legends versions.

LooseCollector does excellent work--great articulation, sculpt, and detailing. I almost bought their recent Red Sonja figure that looks incredible.

I started buying Mafex in 2019, and the main thing that's changed since then is the fan base for them has grown by a LOT. Used to be pretty easy to get them back then, but now the good ones sell out fast. Tiger Stripe Wolverine that just re-released came out in 2019 and peg-warmed the virtual shelves for almost two years, but now people are falling over themselves to get it. I'm guessing the fan base for Mafex is now 3x to 10x greater now than it was a few years ago. It has its own subreddit now that I follow: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mafex/new/

The best Superman to own from Mafex is also the best Superman ever released in 1:12 scale--the Superman Hush figure. The Dark Knight Returns version is sublime perfection as well if you're a fan of Frank Miller's version of the character. Superman Hush is by far one of their best, and they've re-issued it three times already and it sells out instantly every time. It's incredible. Haven't photographed mine in a few years, but he's front and center in the pic below from 2021. Had quite a few Mafex figures already by then in that pic, and I've bought dozens more since then. Barely visible in this pic is the only vehicle Mafex ever made the first year they started making figures--it's the Batpod from The Dark Knight movie behind DKR Batman and Anne Hathaway Catwoman in the pic. Really great vehicle, although it is a bit fragile if you're not careful with it.

The main difference is that Batman Hush has a MUCH larger cloth wired cape than any other Mafex or Mezco figure I own. I heard a lot of people complaining about posing that cape or getting it out of the way, although I love that aspect of it. I have a few other Mafex Batman and Superman figures, and the cape I like best right now is the one that came with the Robert Pattinson version of Batman for "The Batman" film that came out in 2022. It's a pleather cape that has a pleasing feel and aesthetic that I particularly enjoy, but I do like the Hush cape for cape-centric dramatic poses. Not sure how many Mafex I have right now, but it's most of the Marvel ones, a few dozen of the DC characters, a few Star Wars figures, and a few miscellaneous pop culture figures like Terminator, Michael Jordan, and Homelander, somewhere around 60 to 90 total. The only figure I have where the Mafex isn't the best known version of that character in 1:12 scale is possibly the tiger stripe Wolverine figure which coincidentally is being re-issued this month, although it's in such high demand that it's selling out as soon as anyone lists it. Hasbro has done so well with Wolverine in the Marvel Legends line that theirs is almost as good and in many ways better than the Mafex, and their latest Wolverine '97 figure is probably better than the Mafex version.

The Tsalal research mission statement screen capped from one of the episodes. Founded by Lund, i.e. the guy who somehow survived his ice tomb, their hope was somewhat open-ended, but they apparently had some reason to believe it would lead to "the cure for aging."

I've been kind of meaning to go back and watch this because I find the real expedition that inspired it interesting, but you just convinced me not to. I guess I could tell they went supernatural just with the title and it seemed evident in the trailers I saw, and you just confirmed it.

This is also mostly where I'm at, although I'm withholding judgement for now about how short it fell because I still want to know what their research was. The part that turns me off the most is echoed by Danvers throughout the season--I have NO patience and almost no interest in Navarro's supernatural angle. For now I'm ignoring it and chalking it up to hallucinations by her, but I'm afraid I'll never get to Lopez's point by doing that and that once I figure out why she did it that way I won't enjoy it as much.

The most common mistake people make with a puzzle-story like this one is that the writers left plot or story holes. Ummm...yes, they sure did--intentionally. Not because they screwed up, but because they hoped you'd be compelled to fill it in based upon other evidence in the fiction. I haven't read any of the critic reviews of this season, but I know with Prometheus I read DOZENS of reviews by critics who assumed plot holes that weren't holes at all, that critic just didn't realize Damon Lindelof left those story elements intentionally open hoping you'd fill it in with the other clues in the film. Lindelof does that in almost all of his works--he's the reason "Lost" was like that, and it's the reason he adapted "The Leftovers" into a series. I was far more compelled by Prometheus because I LOVE panspermia stories, but Night Country hasn't grabbed me to the same extent yet. If I find something in that research the station was doing I could easily become more interested in this story as well. Has anyone figured out anything specific about what they were hoping that research would lead to? Clark was pretty vague in that last episode about what he was hoping for from it. Some authors just like making stories that challenge readers. Most of us hate Shakespeare's dense language, but it isn't like that because people talked like that in the 16th century--English back then was FAR more similar to modern English than it was to Shakespeare's dialect. He did it to challenge the audience, and it's totally understandable how deciphering his dense style wouldn't be most people's cup of tea. Same goes for plot-puzzles like this one; most people were never going to like this show.

That's the usual assumption about this type of writing, and certainly the vast majority of viewers will agree. I disagree if everything ends up making sense. Some puzzles are simple, and some are difficult. I'm not a fan of the Rubik's cube, but that doesn't mean I think Erno Rubik was lazy for not making a puzzle that was easy for me to solve. As for preference I often enjoy intentionally obtuse stories, but if they're not compelling enough for me to want to solve the puzzle I usually drop it. My interest is high enough this time to keep it going a bit longer, but probably not if someone else in the thread or the other forums I participate in aren't interested enough to keep working it cooperatively.

John Hawkes has already said during interviews about the show that it was his character who did it, i.e. Hank Prior, the dad cop who was shot in episode 5. Issa Lopez has also commented that she wish Hawkes hadn't said that because her intent was for the audience to have to consider several possible suspects and motives for who removed the tongue, who froze it for years, and who left it at the scene around the time of the murder of the scientists. So this is another intentionally vague plot point we were meant to speculate upon.

Did they kill them as revenge for Annie, or was it more because they were intentionally polluting the environment and causing cancer in the local population? I couldn't tell what the extent of their knowledge was or which was their motive, but I guessed without evidence that it was probably both.

Lopez has already said there's both a spiritual (Navarro) and rationally factual (Danvers) explanation for everything in the show. This is still heavily in the hypothesis phase, but my current guess for the "she's awake" stuff is that it has something rational to do with whatever science they were working on. That's also my current guess for how Lund survived the freezing--he had something swimming in him related to their research that allowed him to survive something that should have killed him.

No. Could be, but why? I think I fell asleep halfway through Gangs of New York and never fully paid enough attention to the last half of the film, so I probably need to watch it start to finish again. All I remember is not seeing anything from Lewis in Gangs of New York as iconically compelling as his "I drink your milkshake!" segment from There Will Be Blood, but since my attention got shattered I could easily have missed something great.

They mentioned it earlier in the show because it's visible in that video of Annie being attacked that Navarro and Danvers kept watching to find clues. I think they said it was a whale in that earlier episode, and the reason they show it at all in episode 6 is so that you know for sure you're in the place visible in the video. One thing I got confused about is where they traveled to in finding the caves. How did they not realize it was so close to the research station, i.e. right underneath of it?

You missed a few things in episode 3, although perhaps the picture below will re-associate them for you because you may have just missed that the guy in the hospital was Lund, the one scientist who unbelievably revived from being a corpsesicle. The idea of living with body-wide gangrene is the worst body horror moment for me since the Sloth guy in "Seven." How he could have survived that is one of dozens of questions Lopez intentionally left open because there should have been no natural way for it to happen. I don't have a lot of opinion about the second half of the show yet until I hear good hypotheses for all of the plot and story elements Lopez left intentionally vague. Most television viewers HATE puzzle plots and unanswered questions, so it's not surprising most people don't like the show. Fan reaction is almost universally negative for those types of shows including Lost, Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions, Prometheus, the Leftovers, etc. Sometimes I end up liking those shows, sometimes I don't, and sometimes I never get the open questions answered and end up having no opinion. I'm generally interested in knowing some answers to the questions, but not enough to pursue it vigilantly yet.

We didn't know those things in season 1, either, until the end of the next to last episode, i.e. episode 7. Caring about it by then is a different thing.

Is that villain performance better than DDL as Daniel Plainview?

Wow...Bardem. It'll be interesting to see what he would do with Galactus. He was just awesome as a villain in Skyfall, and I rank his villain from "No Country For Old Men" as the third-best villain performance ever behind Ledger's Joker and Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter. My first thought is I wish they had saved Bardem for someone more complexly crazy than Galactus. But who knows, maybe his take on the character could end up being uniquely great.

Oops...somehow I thought they were a 6-inch scale, but now I see they're 7-inch. That's a deal-killer for me since I prefer to mix lines. I usually put GI Joe figures in as civilians or Marvel SHIELD/HYDRA or DC ARGUS/Kobra agents. I've mostly skipped McFarlane DC stuff due to the 7-inch scale. Hasbro continues to kill it with the Classified Series. LOVE their recent release of Mutt and Junkyard, picked it up this week mostly for the dog and it's just awesome. Don't care for Mutt, but he's perfect for a random soldier or someone for heroes to punch in the face due to that great scowl.

Do you have the Hasbro Classified Series version? I'm curious how they compare. Hasbro has done SO well with the Classified Series that I've been wondering if Super7 can really do any better at double the price point. Usually smaller toy companies can't manage the articulation range that Hasbro and Mattel often get, and that's particularly true with the Classified Series since it features some of the best articulation Hasbro has ever done across all lines.

DANG that is disgusting! Yep. I admire NECA's engineering and design, but man, I hate displaying grosso things like that. Same with zombies...don't really want those in action figure form.

Does Sony even have a consistent producer of their Spider-films anymore? It used to be Amy Pascal both when she worked at Sony and later after she left, but she wasn't on the list of producers for this trainwreck or Morbius. All I see are people who like 99.99% of producers appear to have no idea what to do with superhero film properties, or on Morbius Avi Arad who we already 100% know has no idea how to have any influence on making a good superhero film. The more of these we get the more likely it becomes that Sony sells back to Marvel. So bring on lots more cruddy Spider-flicks ASAP, please! Can't wait for Venom 3, Black Cat, and a live action Miles Morales starring Jaden Smith.

Looks amazing, can't wait.

That Timber is the best articulated dog I've seen to date. Really, really nice with both snarling and calm swappable heads. There's another new GI Joe 2-pack with a rottweiler, and that dog is also awesome.