Not a photo of mine.
You can probably guess by the lack of awfulness.
To start, hey look, my first post of 2014! Hope everyone had a safe New Year's.
Anyway - as time passes, I find myself growing more and more irritated with Man of Steel, as seems to be the prevailing feeling amongst interweb dorks like myself. This is the big problem with the tone and aesthetic that Christopher Nolan has bequeathed to Warner Bros.' nascent DC cinematic universe: when every character and place is presented as cold, severe and super-duper-serious it prompts the audience's thoughts to linger on the ideas and questions raised by the story rather than just relax and let oneself be moved by the flow of the film. That's fine if you've got a tight grip on the tale and know exactly what points you want to get across, but if you don't - if the questions you're raising clash with the overall 'point' of the film, or if you're simply not elaborating them well enough - then all you're doing is giving viewers more time to chew over the film's problems. And hoo boy did MoS have hefty problems delivering its themes.
Despite that, I still bought the damn blu-ray just so I could gawk at Faora-Ul in glorious HD. That plus the hilarious sight of Michael Shannon's misshapen beanpole body being pushed through military-grade workouts in the special features was worth the asking price. Thus my Faora crush remains strong, albeit ill-served by the movie's merchandising. Sadly there's still no sign of a Hot Toys 12" $200+ wallet-killer fig of the lady (I remain hopeful - HT's Roadblock figure still hasn't been released and G.I. Joe 2 came out last March) and Mattel did their usual hopeless job on the main toyline, resulting in this disappointment with its cartoon face, borked joints and oddly squat physique. Luckily, though, DC's licensing deal with Square Enix covers both comics and movie properties, and so the MoS subline of the Play Arts Kai range has stepped up to fill the void and maybe give Faora the toy she deserves.
Box exterior.
My camera's flash may have accidentally lens-flared it.
Box interior.
Admire the prettiness.
"Faora-Ul is a genetically designed warrior, extremely talented with knives and hand-to-hand combat. Fiercely loyal to General Zod, she played a major role in the rebellion on Krypton and mutiny aboard the Black Zero. Although she appears savage and sadistic, her real desire is to do what she truly feels is best for the Kryptonian people. Her genetically-imposed duty is to find a new Krypton and she will stop anyone who gets in her way."
...so says the inside-cover blurb. There's some iffy grammar in there but it gets the point across. Anyhoo, Play Arts figures have always boasted fairly nice packaging and Square seem to be improving them all the time. Faora's box is wider than the ones that carried my Tekken Tag 2 PAK figs by about a full inch but retains the same 'window book' style, with the figure and accessories held in a plastic tray inside a box with a cellophane panel, which is then covered by a hinged...erm...cover, that locks shut through the magic of velcro patches. The inner and outer covers, as well as the back (not shown), are decorated with artily shaded promo pics of the toy against a dark background suggesting outer space. The 'window' is printed with a decorative mural using the House of Ul shield at its centre, which is a lovely bit of artwork created entirely for this toy.
Tried taking these photos in the conservatory rather than my gaming room.
Not sure if it was worth the effort, really.
Free from her plastic entrapment, Faora-Ul stands around 9 inches high, which puts her fairly well in-scale with other Play Arts figs - she's about a full head shorter than my PA Solid Snake, and that looks about right if you factor in the platform heels on her boots. Compared to other PAKers, her proportions seem closer to life; her waist-to-hips region is exaggerated to give her a more pronounced hourglass figure, but she's neither too skinny nor too bulky, and despite being the product of Japanese sculptors her armoured bustier remains more or less the size it was on-screen. After my experiences with PAK Jun Kazama (who has a little too much T&A going on) that's a welcome change.
The sculpt impresses in the fine details, too. Where Faora's black undersuit shows through, the figure retains the crosshatched texture seen in the film, while the armoured components are raised enough (and smooth enough) to look like extra add-on parts, which of course they are/were. The armour retains its Shredder-esque spikes and curious asymmetrical design*, with each line and curve matching the source near-perfectly, save perhaps for the serrated 'fin' on her right shoulder, which seems larger than it was in reality. That might just be me, though. Her cape is solid rubber, though it has just about enough flexibility to be bent out of the way if need be, and is moulded to swish dramatically to the left.
Closer shot of the head,
taken during a brief moment when her laser-like glare wasn't aimed my way.
The facial likenesses on the PAK range - at least those based on real people - are never likely to win awards; Square have always tried to keep the whole range fixed to a consistent style, which means all the toys wind up with a sort of anime 'softness' to their facial features. Nevertheless, this fig's head does pass the squint test as recognizably Antje Traue. Her chin dimple's missing, but the lines of her nose, jaw and cheeks are on point, and they've even added a hint of bagging under her eyes, which is very impressive! Of course, they've also sculpted her pixie-cut 'do very well, with so many individual lines you could almost count the hairs one by one if you were feeling a bit mad/had a lot of time on your hands.
Colouring in a character that's deliberately...uncolourful must be a massive pain, but the paintwork on display here is laudable. Naturally the 'undersuit' is charcoal, though there's some lighter areas on the abs and elsewhere to denote musculature, which is subtle enough to not be distracting but not so subtle as to be lost altogether. Faora's armour is of course gunmetal all over, but it can't be stressed enough just how well the extra black wash over the top works to dirty it up some. This is battle gear, after all, not her ceremonial dress uniform (please god let there be a toy of that too someday) so it shouldn't look fresh from the dry-cleaners. Her hair has a few differing shades of brown in it to make it pop, and her eyes and lips are the right shades of blue and red respectively. One thing that might bug you is the dark paint around the edges of her jaw; this is supposed to simulate how shadows fall across the face, and is a common feature amongst PAK figs, though I confess I don't know why they bother. It's at least done fairly minimally here, compared to some of the horrors I've seen before (the aforementioned Solid Snake permanently looks to be suffering from the worst possible hangover).
Dat ass.
Dat yellow sun-energised, bulletproof ass.
Just because you don't see Faora's back much in the movie (and will likely keep her cape on) doesn't mean that Square decided to slack off on the reverse side. Her belt, shoulders, popped collar and bustier maintain just as much detail around the back as they do on the front, and the paint is up to the same standard too.
Proposing? Probably not.
According to the back of the box, Faora sports 'over 26 points of articulation'; I'll take their word for it because counting that many would be a faff. Suffice to say that Faora features double ratcheted hinges in her knees, swivel-hinge ankles, impressively dextrous hips, two separate ball joints in her torso, swivel-hinge elbows, separate bicep swivels, hinged wrists and at least three distinct joints in each shoulder, so her range of motion is wonderful. If you can think of a pose, it's near-guaranteed she can pull it off.
Up, up and away!
On the downside, her head is limited to a basic ball joint so she can't really look upwards to any degree; I wouldn't complain except that Hasbro have done a great job adding extra hinges to their Marvel Legends 6-inchers recently to allow for that, and this is a much more expensive fig, so. Additionally, while the pauldron on Faora's left shoulder is mounted on a hinge so it can be moved to not restrict her arm's motion, the right shoulder has no such feature, albeit for a reason I'll get back to in a moment.
Look! Bits!
Faora doesn't come with an accessory haul to rival Hot Toys figs, but she's got what she needs. Firstly, she's got the fairly-recent PAK display stand, a multi-piece monstrosity with actual goddamn screws in it (!) and two different sized gripper claws. It can be adjusted to multiple different heights and the grip can be swivelled into all sorts of angles (such as for the 'flying' pic above), and so long as you keep the screws tight it's robust enough to hold the figure aloft without collapsing. Faora has two sets of hands, one pair of relaxed palms, the other giving her a clenched left fist and a weapon-grip right. Her dagger is a separate piece that slots comfortably onto the sheath hanging from her waist; the grip has a nice swirling pattern and a hint of brown paint to give the illusion of a wooden/bone handle. Additionally, the aforementioned right shoulder pauldron can be removed, in order to facilitate swapping out the back-armour pieces, for cape or no-cape looks.
In Nina's infuriating absence, Faora asserts herself
as Queen of Iron Fist.
Is PAK Faora as good as I wished? Not quite. I mean, I wished for perfection, which is perhaps a tad unrealistic on my part. But then, she is missing the rebreather helmet she wears for what feels like 75% of her screentime, something that the filmmakers probably should've warned their licensing partners about before releasing a bunch of promo photos of miss Traue on set without the finalised CGI, hence why the only Faora toy to be properly domed-up is her Lego minifigure. That said, this plus the expected feeling of fragility ('adult collector' toys almost never feel like they're going to hold up to stresses like mass market stuff does) are my only real complaints, and in every other way this is a triumph worthy of the 'Tigress of Zod'. A 9.5 out of 10 figure. Now get back on the Tekken license, Square.
Our tree's still up, so here's Grumpy Fairy Faora.
A good present is its own reward.
* - Fanwanky nonsense theory: I find it significant that Faora's right arm carries more armour plating (not to mention the big shoulder fin) than her left, especially since it's her dominant hand. Note it's the hand she draws her knife with in the movie. Also consider how knife-fighting works - with a blade much shorter than a sword, the wielder must lunge forwards and put their striking arm within their enemy's reach in order to connect...so bolting as much metal plating to said striking arm is a pretty sensible precaution. Unless of course being under a yellow sun makes you basically invulnerable. Then it's a waste of time, I guess. Like this paragraph. :(
No comments:
Post a Comment