Grave Considerations: So, That Happened. . . .

I had a run in, ever so briefly, with the anti-Last Jedi crowd on Twitter, and I kind of felt the desire to talk about it. They apparently have a whole hashtag movement going on, lashing out not only at Star Wars, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well, driven further to madness apparently by “Captain Marvel”. I’m fairly certain that this was my first personal encounter with this crowd, where I've actively interacted with them, and not just laughed at them from afar. 

A night or so ago, I got involved in a Twitter spat between one of these anti’s (which is what I’ll call them in lieu of anything more solid, since I don’t really know what they’re against, since it seems to be everything –mr) , and by ‘got involved,’ I mean I made a stupid comment against one of their responses. This was liked by another Twitter user, and when I checked out their timeline, I found out they were one of those fans. I responded to a tweet that they’d retweeted, and suddenly I was pulled in to a whole bunch of pretty disturbing stupid. I know, I know, it was my doing to reply to a tweet, so we can all say I brought this upon myself. But fuck that, you know, because I am who I am and sometimes that means I’m a lot smarter than my temper allows me to be.

Star Wars: Archive Pilot Luke Skywalker

 

The Archive series is a thing that has been hotly anticipated around here, offering reissued Black Series figures from earlier portions of the line that people such as I had missed the first time. Excellent. The first Wave is comprised of the three other Empire Strikes Back bounty hunters and pilot suit Luke Skywalker, all of which were missed the first time.

Unique Toys Ordin: O-01 Troll

 Back in October, I had decided that my TFCon 2018 hunt list would include members of the Unique Toys Abominus team, named Ordin. Mere days before the convention, I found and won an eBay auction for the entire set. So, that was pretty easy. Let’s take a look at the first figure in the set, Troll, a Third Party version of Terrorcon Blot.

Grave Considerations: C2E2 2019

This past weekend marked the tenth anniversary of C2E2, which bills itself as “the funnest weekend of the year.” That claim is never too far off, as the yearly sign of Spring’s arrival is met in our household with great anticipation and excitement. We only attended Friday this year, because Star Wars Celebration will grace our fair city in the next three weeks, and in the interest of finances for that far rarer and far more personally important convention, we made the unhappy but totally correct decision to limit our C2E2 temptations to a single day.

Star Wars: The Black Series Rebel Fleet Trooper

 If there was a let down about this figure, it would be the most obvious thing about it: this is an army builder background character, a guy that literally stands in the background of scenes unless he’s being directly murdered by Darth Vader. But, that one rogue point may not be a bad thing per say, but rather a new hopeful glimpse at the direction of the line in general.

Viewing Hours: Bumblebee (2018)

To say that I have a complicated relationship with the live-action Transformers movies would be something of an understatement. Quite literally exploding on to the scene in 2007, the movies started out acceptably before taking a very sharp, very fast nose dive into the trash, culminating, for now, kind of, with 2017’s abysmal The Last Knight, a movie that took an already exceptionally loose narrative and tossed it on top of some totally nonsensical pabulum, creating a movie that I honestly do hate. Bumblebee is the first spin off/reboot/recalibration for the franchise, depending on what Hasbro is thinking this week, and in full disclosure, I had no interest in seeing it at all. I know, as my wife will be quick to point out, that I’ve said that about the last three live action movies, and yet we have seen them all, The Last Knight at my wife’s urgings, as it was a summer afternoon and we had nothing else to do. How does Bumblebee fair? I guess the first main difference is that we saw it on a winter afternoon where we had nothing else to do.

Perfect Effect: Beast Gorira

 

This figure represents a couple of Coffin firsts. It is the first figure from Perfect Effect that we’ve ever looked at; and, it is the first Third Party Beast * era figure to make its way into the Coffin collection. And let me tell you, it’s just a prime example of how good such a piece can be.

Beast Gorira is a pretty gigantic Third Party version of Optimal Optimus, or Transmetal II Optimus Primal, from beloved Transformers series Beast Wars. An updated official figure for the character was released in the Power of the Primes line last year, but even photos of that toy prove that it can’t compete with this. Beast Gorira is exceptionally screen accurate, and is also very accurate to the original Hasbro toy from the late 90’s, as well. A quad changer, the figure can convert between robot, gorilla, car/tank/truck thing, and jet-type vehicle. It comes with one accessory, a nicely molded and painted blaster, and has no other removable parts, which basically means that it lacks the missiles and removable forearm armor that the Hasbro original has. That is absolutely fine, as 3P figures rarely come with missiles and the arm armor was basically just partsforming kibble anyway.