fantastic_four

Giancarlo. Has "Force healing" been part of the extended universe before? I know it hasn't been in the films and I'm unfamiliar with it. Don't think I've ever seen a TIE fighter land with its side panels collapsing before, really cool! Abrams showed them docked in Episode VII, but the side panels weren't collapsed.

He hit him from behind completely by surprise, didn't he? Not sure how he would have avoided that.

They never said but you'd assume it was Veidt. But I don't know why he would have crash landed in some semi-random location.

Why was Jon stuck in that cage, exactly? He's been shown creating physical objects many times before...he couldn't create objects and hurl them through the cage walls to shred them? It didn't seem to inhibit his powers since he teleported people from within it, I assume it just kept him in. But I don't get why he couldn't have reduced the cage to rubble.

In the Mandalorian he's using his real voice; it was in Game of Thrones where he was altering it to have a Spanish accent.

Great episode, much better than the last two. Fun to see Clancy Brown and Bill Burr in it.

Yes I know how it works just not why knowing the outcome of everything could prevent you from doing something different. If he has no free will what's controlling what he does? I can't conceive of such a concept, seems bizarre.

Almost every Marvel Legends figure ever made that I wanted. Just started collecting them last December, and this year I bought somewhere between 150 and 200 from the entire 20-year history of the line. I think I've got almost every one I wanted. Certainly every major character I've ever liked I got, so any I get now are new releases or characters that I didn't know I would like that I learn about. An example is Taskmaster from the upcoming Black Widow film...I decided I like the character so now I'm looking for a figure of him. Oh, wait, you were asking for a top 3. I'll give it some thought, not sure. Since I've cherry-picked the best Marvel action figures ever made throughout the year, my top three pickups this year really are just what I consider the three best Marvel figures ever made: A tie between the 2019 Marvel Legends 1:12 scale Wolverine from the "Love Triangle" 3-pack where he was bundled with Cyclops and Jean Grey along with the 2017 Marvel Legends 1:6 scale Wolverine. Both are the best action figures I've ever seen in terms of articulation, sculpting details, and accuracy to the character, and they're almost identical except for scale as shown below. I pick the Love Triangle Wolverine over the 2018 Apocalypse wave Wolverine only because they're basically the same figure except the Love Triangle version also comes with bone claws in addition to metal claws, two extra heads, and a folded mask to go around his neck along with the unmasked head. They're both EXCEPTIONAL figures, and I'm not even sure which scale I like better, I love them both! The 2011 Marvel Universe 1:18 scale Galactus. Just an awesome depiction of one of the most iconic villains ever, plus it has a dozen or so voice sayings that are all great when you press the button on his chest. Fits in just as well with 1:12 scale figures as it does with 1:18. The 2019 Marvel Legends 1:12 scale Hulk from the Hulk/Wolverine 2-pack shown below getting blasted by Galactus. Best articulated Hulk ever and an absolutely PERFECT rendering of his classic look. Incredibly fun to play with and pose, and he looks gorgeously spot-on no matter what angle you look at him.

I also bought a Mattel Colossal T-Rex figure that's in roughly a 1:12 scale. He's slightly big for that scale and is probably closer to 1:10 or 1:11 scale. It's not part of the Mattel Amber line and has rather poor articulation, but the jaw, legs, and arms articulate, and that's enough for him to look bad-arse in a display. Not my pic because I haven't gotten him yet as Best Buy has been slow to ship him, but here he is below posed with 6" DC figures that illustrate how well he scales with them. He's got two features my kids will find fun--he roars when his mouth opens, and he has a 2" hollow space going from his mouth, through his stomach, and down to a trap door at the base of his tail that lets you "eat" other figures and "poop" them out. I've seen people demonstrate sliding 6" Marvel Legends and DC Multiverse figures down through him without any issue. His entire stomach is hollow and you can supposedly fit 20+ small 2" dinos in there if you want to. He first came out in mid-2018, but he must have sold relatively well because I noticed that Target recently re-stocked this figure and every store near me has three of him on the shelves. He's been EXTREMELY popular in toy and dinosaur forums since then because it's the largest widely-available t-rex that has ever been made, and his sculpt detail is fantastic for a mass market children's toy. Target sells him for $50 with no roaring sounds, but Best Buy has him on clearance for $30 with the sounds: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/mattel-jurassic-world-battle-damage-roarin-super-colossal-tyrannosaurus-rex/6376568.p?skuId=6376568 . If you' have a Best Buy card they also have a 25% off of one toy member deal going on so I got him for $23.

For decades I've wanted to have some sort of dinosaur figure display, but I've always avoided doing it for one overriding reason--the scale of figures is ALL over the place. One of the biggest dinosaur figure producers is Papo, and the scale of their dinosaurs is wildly inconsistent. Scale is almost everything for me with dinosaurs. If I'm going to have a t-rex on display, I want it to be appropriately larger than a utahraptor or smaller than an apatasaurus, and if I stick a human in the display I want them all to be appropriately sized in relation to the human. But I've never found enough product in a consistent scale to achieve that, so every few years I look at what's out there, get disappointed, and give up. Well I went through this again last week and while scale is still a HUGE problem, Mattel may solve both that issue AND the lack of articulation with figures all in one swoop with their Jurassic World Amber Collection line of toys. They're making characters from the films as well as dinosaurs from the films in roughly a 1:12 scale all with great articulation. So far only they've only announced a handful of figures, and the only ones out now are Jeff Goldblum and a velociraptor, but they've also teased Dennis Nedry (i.e. Newman from Seinfeld) and a dilophosaurus for next year as well. If the line does well they will hopefully continue to build more of them. My dream is that they get around to a fully-articulated t-rex. I bought their velociraptor last week and LOVE it. The articulation and look of this guy is absolutely fantastic. This isn't my shot, but here he is posed with the other recent highly-articulated dinosaur line that recently started, the Beasts of the Mesozoic version of a velociraptor that's far more true to the current look that paleontologists believe they had. Spielberg made his velociraptors far bigger than velociraptors actually were and chose not to depict feathers because he thought they didn't look as good that way, so while the figures below look about the same size, the Jurassic World one is 1:12 scale but the Beasts of the Mesozoic version is 1:6 scale since velociraptors were thought to be sized about as big as a modern turkey. The Mattel figure has an articulated jaw, neck, hands, arms, legs at every joint, an articulated killing claw, and a bendy-wire tail that can be posed in a huge variety of ways. LOVE this guy. I'm planning to pose these 1:12 scale figures along with Marvel Legends figures.

Almost every Marvel Legends figure ever made that I wanted. Just started collecting them last December, and this year I bought somewhere between 150 and 200 from the entire 20-year history of the line. I think I've got almost every one I wanted. Certainly every major character I've ever liked I got, so any I get now are new releases or characters that I didn't know I would like that I learn about. An example is Taskmaster from the upcoming Black Widow film...I decided I like the character so now I'm looking for a figure of him. Oh, wait, you were asking for a top 3. I'll give it some thought, not sure.

Why would Hasbro lose the Star Wars license? I realize that sales on toys have fallen over the last few years, but is Hasbro to blame for that, or is the faltering popularity of the films with hardcore fans to blame for that? I can't see what Hasbro has done wrong to make Disney want to look for a new company to make Star Wars toys; the figures themselves are certainly of a quality that I haven't seen other companies do better with. People have been speculating this with Hasbro losing the Marvel license continuously throughout the year, but as far as I can tell it's mostly paranoia from fans who enjoy the Hasbro figures. The only way I can see Hasbro losing the Marvel license is if Disney decides they want to produce their own toys. If they move Marvel to Mattel or McFarlane it'd be a REALLY bad move. Mattel's recent DC figures are MANY years behind the refinements that Hasbro has now achieved, and McFarlane's recent action figures have been even worse.

So Hasbro gets a cut of all NECA and Hot Toys figures? What about the Japanese companies that do licensed Marvel and Star Wars figures like Mafex, S.H. Figuarts, and Revoltech, do they pay Hasbro too or is Hasbro's license limited to the US market?

Almost every Marvel Legends figure ever made that I wanted. Just started collecting them last December, and this year I bought somewhere between 150 and 200 from the entire 20-year history of the line. I think I've got almost every one I wanted. Certainly every major character I've ever liked I got, so any I get now are new releases or characters that I didn't know I would like that I learn about. An example is Taskmaster from the upcoming Black Widow film...I decided I like the character so now I'm looking for a figure of him.

I'm unclear on exactly what rights are held by any toy company because MANY companies release MANY toys for both Marvel and Star Wars, not just Hasbro. For example, Mattel releases Barbies that are both Star Wars and Marvel themed and Funko and Egg Attack release figurines for both properties. Do the exclusive licenses perhaps only apply to very specific types of toys such as articulated action figures? What's the Mattel Baby Yoda toy, is it a plushie or something? I've only recently begun to collect action figures, but I've already seen periodic speculation about company X losing license Y throughout the toy forums I participate in (thefwoosh.com and Reddit), so I've started to ignore all of it until there's compelling evidence of it happening.

You don't need to understand everything. It's less stressful. As is incontinence...I'll embrace it when it comes.

I can't tell what political agenda you're pushing here so I deem it off-topic.

No, he's not dead, he's captured. And whatever they're doing here is a new idea by Lady Trieu we'd have to assume Veidt hadn't thought of.

Will it rain next week, or won't it?

The cape is actually a clue AGAINST it being Fett. In the films we saw him in Fett never wore a long cape, he wore a short one that cut off roughly at the mid-thigh level, whereas the guy in last episode had a cape that went all the way down to his feet. That's just as circumstantial as the jangling sound though since he could wear any cape he wants.

That could be. Guess we'll see by the end of next episode.

Don't know, that's what confuses me. And it's not just that he TRIES not to alter events, he explicitly says to Angela there's nothing at all he can do to alter events--and I don't understand why, at all. There's an infinite number of things he could have done.

Who do you think was at the end of the episode? That little jangling sound they played at the end of the episode matched the jangling sound Boba Fett made in Empire Strikes Back so you've got to assume it's him.

Yes, he experience all times at once. But if you can experience the future from the past, why does that preclude you from taking different actions? The entire idea of that makes no sense to me. It wasn't a plot hole for the past/present conversation to take place because he's experiencing them all simultaneously, so he can talk to his future/past self at any time and his future/past self will immediately know what the other version said.

I guess they called it a tachyon device of some sort, not a quantum one. I probably had quantum on the brain from Endgame.