Toy Collecting Reaches a New Level of Excess with Gentle Giant's Six Foot Kenner Stormtrooper Action Figure

Last year, I posted two rants (click here and here) about Gentle Giant's release of "Jumbo" 12 inch replicas of 3 and 3/4 inch figures from Kenner's Star Wars toy line that was released during the late 70s. I couldn't--and still can't--comprehend the appeal of buying a larger scale replica of an action figure at a price point that's ridiculously higher than the original.

Of course, leave it up to me to underestimate the power of the toy collectors market. Since my 2012 rants, the 12 inch Jumbo line has expanded to include replicas of many Kenner figures from Empire Strikes Back (including the Wampa) and it looks like it will go on to include many Kenner Return of the Jedi figure replicas as well. With the Jumbo series proving to be a hit, Gentle Giant has decided to get even giant-er by releasing a limited edition six foot tall replica of Kenner's Stormtrooper action figure (complete with removable blaster), which will be released in 2014 for $2,300. To put it in another perspective, Gentle Giant is making an expensive six foot version of a toy that was originally less than four inches high and sold for a few bucks. The original Stormtrooper action figure can sit in Kenner's Star Wars vehicle toys; the giant Stormtrooper action figure can sit next to you on your couch.

Yes, really. (Photos courtesy of Galactic Hunter.)

If anything, the giant Stormtrooper action figure replica is a textbook example of geek exorbitance. I can understand releasing Alien action figures based on the scale of Kenner action figures, or releasing classic Battlestar Galactica action figures based on the scale of Mego action figures. But an action figure replica that literally towers over the demographic group for which the figure was originally designed and costs more than most home appliances? Seriously?

The Future Remade: A Terminator Reboot is Scheduled for 2015

I consider myself to be a huge fan of the Terminator franchise; thus, I have been closely monitoring what is going on with the franchise and what it might do next. Way back when this blog first started in February 2010, I did a post about how the rights to the franchise were up for grabs to the highest bidder. Now, over three years later, Paramount has announced that the Terminator saga will be rebooted into a new, stand-alone trilogy of movies, with the first film scheduled for June 2015.

As with most reboots, the new Terminator trilogy could be just what the franchise needs to stir interest in a new generation of fans, or it could be the final nail in its coffin. Read on for some thoughts about the reboot--what could go wrong and why, as well as what needs to be done to get the Terminator series back on its cyborg feet.

The current owners of the Terminator franchise are Megan Ellison, who runs Annapurna Pictures, and her brother David Ellison, who runs Skydance Productions. (Paramount will be handling the distribution of the Ellisons’ Terminator movies, but I don’t know how much creative input Paramount will have--if any--into the films’ scripts.) From what I’ve read since the Ellisons purchased the rights to the franchise, they planned to make more Terminator movies before the rights revert back to the franchise’s creator, James Cameron, in 2019. To me, this situation with the Ellisons is a bad news/good news type of situation:

The Bad News: The obvious reason why the Ellisons purchased the rights to the Terminator franchise is to make more Terminator content, which will in turn make money and contribute to the reputation of Annapurna Pictures and Skydance Productions. However, the problem with such a plan is that both C2 Pictures and the Halcyon Company both had similar plans and now both companies are defunct due to their poorly executed attempts at continuing the franchise. In particular, Halcyon produced Terminator Salvation with the intent of making a new trilogy of movies--just like what the Ellisons plan to do with their reboot.

It’s possible that the Ellisons could avoid the mistakes made by C2 and Halcyon. On the other hand, news surrounding the next Terminator movie under the Ellisons has so far included the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the possible involvement of director Justin Lin (Fast and Furious), the possible return of Terminator alumni Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn, and a script set during the 1950s with a Terminator hunting down Sarah Connor's parents (!). With so many conflicting and inconclusive news stories surrounding the next Terminator film, I’m wondering if the Ellisons’ really have any plan at all for the franchise other than making money from it.

The Good News: Computer technology has come a long, long way since The Terminator appeared in 1984, so a reboot would allow the franchise to explore a completely new set of techno-fears. With recent news about military drone strikes and computer-based surveillance of civilian populations, the rebooted version of Skynet (Skynet 2.0?) could assert its dominance over humanity through deception, surveillance, sabotage, and surgical military strikes instead of through a global nuclear assault. New Skynet methods of attack could include nanotech-based weapons and Hunter-Killer units designed to imitate insect flight, heirarchy and locomotion. Given the heavy involvement of computers in genetic research, the rebooted Skynet could create Terminator units with a wider selection of biological capabilities (e.g., faster skin regeneration, the ability to host and transmit pathogens that are fatal to humans, etc.). The possibilities for a new Skynet are endless, and I hope that the Ellisons understand that and take full advantage of it.

Of course, the rebooted Terminator series would allow the Ellisons to avoid the franchise’s most egregious errors. I’m hoping that they’ll keep a focus on the human side of the story, and that we won’t get a different actor playing John Connor in each of the new films. I also hope that whoever plays the time-traveling Terminator in the first movie of the reboot trilogy doesn’t become the center of attention in the remaining two films. I've already argued why making Schwarzenegger such a prominent part of the franchise ultimately led to its downfall, so it would be painful to see the Ellisons make the same mistake again. When a franchise’s villain becomes more important than the franchise’s hero, you've got a serious problem on your hands.

If the Terminator reboot doesn’t work out, we’ll still have the original movies, novels, comic books and TV show. Furthermore, there’s also Continuum--another saga about a war for the future waged by technology-enhanced time travelers--and that TV series was just renewed for a third season.

Nerd Rant: Is it the Beginning of the End for Home Video Game Consoles?

While I consider myself to be a gamer, I only play video games that fit within my disposable income budget, a budget that has been quite modest as of late. Thus, I have only been gaming within my financial means, playing discount or used games on a Nintendo Wii console that I bought a few years ago and playing older games on my PC. I've tried to play newer PC games, but my computer has an integrated graphics card that causes newer games to stutter; thus, I can’t play new PC titles until I can afford a new PC, and that won’t be for a while.

With my current financial limitations, I can only watch what’s currently happening in the video game industry from the sidelines. Nintendo’s latest system, the Wii U, isn't selling nearly as well as its predecessor, and the upcoming next generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft are causing concern among the gaming community due to their new restrictive features. For example, Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox One will require an Internet connection and a user account to play games--even single player games--which will limit the opportunities for gamers to share titles with their friends.

Another tidbit I've read is that the development costs for high-end titles for the game consoles are skyrocketing, while development costs for video games that are available for cell phones and tablets are cheaper and in turn are earning more revenue. In fact, the reason I've heard as to why the Wii U offered so few launch titles is that Nintendo management underestimated the cost and resources involved to make games for its new system and thus had to focus what it had available on the production of a handful of titles just to meet the scheduled launch date. The general consensus among many writers who cover the game industry is that the newer consoles are aiming to offer more than just games (e.g., Blu-ray disc playback capabilities and high-def TV viewing features) in order to convince consumers to buy them; in other words, in order to keep up with the new digital entertainment landscape, gaming consoles have to be more than just gaming consoles.

Being a gamer whose first home console was an Atari 2600, this has been fascinating to watch. In previous console wars, competing console companies only had to worry about each other because no other devices could do what their consoles could. Now, consoles have competition coming from the Internet, cell phones and digital tablets, mediums that can provide entertaining and addictive games at a fraction of the cost for a home console game. If this trend continues, home consoles could disappear altogether and high-end video games that are based on expansive virtual worlds and complicated game play mechanics could become limited to PCs and PC-based gaming services such as Steam. This reminds me of what happened to home video rental businesses such as Blockbuster in recent years: What used to be brick-and-mortar businesses have been replaced by online services and vending machines, venues that are cheaper to provide and sustain.

It should also be noted that many of the video games that are being offered in the alternate venues of the Internet, cell phones and tablets are following the design aesthetic of video games that used to populate the video game arcades of the 80s: simple, colorful and addictive instead of complex, detailed and immersive. I remember a time when arcade video games provided the quality standard that the home consoles aimed to emulate; now, the home consoles are being beaten by games that would have fit perfectly in an 80s-era arcade.

While video games will never go away as long as digital entertainment remains a profitable industry, I am disappointed to see the gaming consoles disappear. I am very satisfied with the gaming experiences I've had with the Wii and its motion-based controls such as the Wiimote and the Balance Board. Sure, many Wii games failed to creatively utilize the console's unique controls and instead only provided the notoriously irritating “Wii waggle” as a control system, and Nintendo itself provided limited support for its upgraded MotionPlus feature. Nevertheless, when Wii titles did something genuinely innovative with the hardware provided--titles such as Wii Sports Resort and Red Steel 2--the experience was rewarding and memorable. The Wii’s unique control system breathed new life into older games such as Bully, Resident Evil 4 and Okami, and it provided opportunities for video gaming to enter the realm of physical fitness with titles such as Wii Fit.

I’m convinced that devising new and creative ways to play games are just as vital to the video gaming experience as the production of quality titles, and I don’t see how anything other than a dedicated game console can provide new systems of play. Likewise, I’m hoping that Nintendo can turn things around with the Wii U and turn it into something other than a larger version of its handheld 3DS system. Yet while I would hate to see console-based attempts to make video gaming something more than just sitting in front of a screen with a controller go by the wayside, I don’t know how this can be avoided until game production and sales costs go down.

Nerd Rant: Batman and the Dead Robins Society

News came out early this week of an upcoming plot development in DC's Batman comic book series: Batman's sidekick, Robin, is going to die. Again.

"Dammit! Alfred, fetch me another Robin from the orphanage!"

The latest dead Robin is the fifth Robin in official Batman continuity--sixth if you include the Robin from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. (Then again, DC has rebooted and ret conned its superhero universe so many times, what really is "official" continuity anyway?) This will also be the third dead Robin, after the second Robin, Jason Todd, was blown up by the Joker back in 1988, and the fourth Robin, Stephanie Brown, was killed in 2004 after being tortured by Black Mask. (Check out the official Robin-torturing Black Mask action figure here.) However, the current dead Robin is the only officially dead Robin because Brown was brought back in 2008 and Todd was brought back in 2010. To paraphrase Adam West, "Some days, you just can't get rid of a Robin!"

According to what I've read, this Robin will be killed while he is saving the world, by an assassin cloned from Robin's own DNA. (Doesn't this qualify as suicide?) How long this particular Robin will stay dead remains to be seen, providing that DC doesn't have some kind of unwritten rule that there must now be at least one dead Robin for Batman to mourn over at any given time. You know, for ready-made pathos that doesn't involve Batman's dead parents.

It's been said frequently that death doesn't last long in superhero comics, which is all too true. However, there's something unintentionally and morbidly hilarious that Batman's kid sidekicks die and then return from the grave on what now appears to be a regular basis. Keep in mind that the character of Robin was originally created in the 1940s as a surrogate for kid fans of Batman, that he enabled child readers of the comics to imagine fighting alongside the Caped Crusader himself. Now, they can imagine themselves croaking and then cheating death too with Batman by their side--providing that Batman himself isn't dead, lost in time, having his back broken by Bane, or some other inconvenience that will inevitably go away within a few issues.

If this isn't enough shark-jumping for you, just take a look at the details behind the killed character in question. The new dead Robin is Bruce Wayne's biological son, Damian Wayne, who Wayne had with Talia Al Ghul, daughter of Batman villain Ra's al Ghul--although Wayne didn't know about it until ten years later. Then it gets weird. As Vaneta Rogers for Newsarama writes:

"Talia had her developing fetus genetically perfected and grown in an artificial womb. Then as Damian grew up, she made sure he was trained by the masters of the League of Assassins. ... Not only did he become an expert in martial arts, but his childhood was a life of cold-hearted competition, a matter of "kill or be killed." ... By the time Talia handed the boy over to his father -- in an apparent attempt to disrupt Batman's investigation of one of her villainous plots -- Damian Wayne had grown into an unfeeling, barbarous, uncontrollable killer. ... the bratty, spoiled, deadly Damian Wayne was immediately a problem for Bruce ... Originally, the kid came across as an almost humorous addition to Bruce's story, because the super-cool Batman was getting frustrated with his inability to control the little bugger. But when Damian went out on his own and beheaded a criminal to "help" his father fight crime, the problem got a little more serious. ... "(Damian) means well but was raised wrong," Batman artist Tony Daniel told Newsarama after the character first debuted."

Robin no. 5 (a.k.a. Damian Wayne), working out his frustrations

over having a crowbar instead of a machete.

Supposedly, the death of this particular Robin is supposed to "redeem" him. You know, to redeem an unfeeling, barbarous, uncontrollable, bratty, spoiled, deadly 10 year-old little bugger who has his own pet Bat-Cow and knows a thing or two about beheading people.* I think it's safe to say that Damian's own death won't involve decapitation, even though he'd get his head back anyway when he returns from the dead and someone else occupies the Robin coffin in his place.

(* Damian Wayne is not to be confused with Cassandra Cain, yet another youth who was raised by a parent to become a deadly assassin but was then taken under Batman's wing for the sake of redemption. Cain briefly assumed the mantle of Batgirl, although the last time I checked I think that Cain was kicked out of the official Batman timeline during the last DC reboot. I guess there can only be one homicidal-yet-redeemable youth in the Batcave at a time.)

Batman writer Grant Morrison says,"Batman will

ultimately always have a partner."

Nerd Rant: Is the Alien Franchise's Game Over in Aliens: Colonial Marines?

The long-awaited Aliens: Colonial Marines video game has arrived this week for Xbox 360, PS3 and PCs, and it looks like the wait was a bust. According to review totals calculated by Metacritic, Colonial Marines has gotten abysmal reviews from all over the Internet. From what I can tell, the game's main weaknesses are bad AI, subpar graphics, repetitive and oversimplified game play, poor plot and scripting, a complete absence of suspense and terror, and a wide assortment of technical glitches. The more generous reviews describe the game as an average shooter that might have been impressive ... had it been released a few years ago.

One of my favorite review quotes is from the one by Ben Kuchera on the Penny Arcade site: "The aliens, or xenomorphs as they’ve become known, are supposed to be one of the most brutal and vicious opponents in modern science fiction. Here they run around like clumsy men in suits, and they often swipe at you and then take a step back to either make sure you’re okay, or to give you time to shoot them. ... The combat itself is like being inside a haunted house and not playing along with the actors. What are they going to do, hit you? The aliens don’t seem to know what to do if you don’t kill them all the second you see them. They like to run around each other, only attacking human characters on occasion. You’ll sometimes find them just kind of hanging out with their heads butted up against walls."

I haven't purchased a copy of the game (thankfully) so I can't comment on it myself. Nevertheless, I'm disappointed to read just how bad this game is after everything that was done to hype it as a canonical installment in the Alien universe. Gearbox, the company behind Colonial Marines, has heavily promoted this game as a "true" sequel to Aliens that explains some of the narrative gaps between Aliens and Alien 3. It also released many articles and videos that emphasize their developers' love of Aliens, their in-depth knowledge of Aliens trivia, and personal meetings with key figures from the Alien franchise such as Ridley Scott, Ron Cobb and Michael Biehn.

So, with the critical and technical failure of this latest entry in the Alien franchise's long list of video games, I can only ask one question: Just how much longer can video game developers rely on the franchise's Colonial Marine characters and weapons to create new games? Read on for my complete face-hugging, chest-busting, acid-bleeding rant.

The major selling point for Colonial Marines is that it's a first-person shooter that allows players to explore familiar Alien saga environments (e.g., LV-426, the U.S.S. Sulaco, the derelict space jockey ship, etc.) and kill hordes of Aliens by using Colonial Marine weapons and technology (e.g., pulse rifles, motion trackers, flame throwers, Power Loaders, etc.). The problem with this selling point is that there have already been eight Alien video games that featured this same selling point since the 90s, when first-person shooters appeared on the video game scene. Here's a list of arcade, PC and home console games that are similar to the game play style of Colonial Marines:

* Alien 3: The Gun (arcade, 1993)
* Aliens vs. Predator (home consoles, 1994)
* The Alien Trilogy (home consoles and PC, 1996)
* Aliens vs. Predator (PC, 1999)
* Alien Resurrection (home consoles, 2000)
* Aliens vs. Predator 2 (PC, 2001)
* Aliens: Extermination (arcade, 2006)
* Aliens vs. Predator (home consoles and PC, 2010)

More recently, there was Aliens: Infestation, which was released in 2011 for the Nintendo DS and was also developed by Gearbox. Infestation is similar to Colonial Marines--same locations, same weapons, mostly the same plot--but it's a 2D side-scrolling shooter, not a first-person shooter.

I have played the Aliens vs. Predator PC game from 1999 that I listed above, and I think that it's one of the better franchise games. It doesn't have much of a plot to it, and it takes place in between Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection. It also utilizes quite a few ideas from Dark Horse's Aliens comics; this felt appropriate, since Dark Horse was the company that originally came up with the Alien/Predator crossover idea, and the extra details add some richness to the game's overall content. Much of the game's appeal stems from how many of its levels are modeled after locations from the movies: one level takes place on a cargo ship similar to the Nostromo from Alien, while another level takes place in the Fiorina 161 prison colony from Alien 3. Yet because the game's human campaign casts players as a Colonial Marine, most of those levels are modeled after locations similar to those in Aliens. A few levels take place in a military ship similar to the Sulaco, while a few other levels put players back on LV-426 over 50 years after the events of Aliens in a colony similar to Hadley's Hope--a Weyland-Yutani research colony built around the derelict space jockey ship. Aliens vs. Predator is a fun game to play, but I'm dismayed that here we are 14 years later and game developers are essentially making the same game all over again and with so many glitches to boot.

I love Aliens. It's a great movie, it's a great sequel to Alien, and it shows how talented Jim Cameron is as a director. But the franchise as a whole has so much more to offer than just Aliens. If video game developers can't--or won't--take advantage of the wider range of possibilities that the Alien saga provides, then I think that the franchise's valuable contributions to video game entertainment have come to an end.

Nerd Rant: Arnold Schwarzenegger Will be Back for Terminator 5, But is That Really a Good Thing?

According to the box office totals from last weekend, The Last Stand, Arnold Schwarzenegger's first starring role since his stint as the Governor of California, has performed below expectations. I won't go as far as to call it an outright flop--after all, films like this can be quite lucrative overseas and in the home video market--but it was handily beaten at the box office by a ghost movie, a gangster movie, a film noir movie, a Quentin Tarantino movie, a musical, and a godawful Marlon Wayans comedy. For a one-time king of action movies, this could hardly be called a "comeback". With such a dubious return to acting, Schwarzenegger has recently announced his involvement in the upcoming Terminator 5, a move that he apparently feels will better help to restore his acting career.

I understand the logic here: A familiar name like Schwarzenegger wasn't enough to promote The Last Stand, so combining a familiar name with a familiar franchise should logically do better. It’s Hollywood logic, and I think it’s a horrible idea. I've written before about how it's a mistake to regard Terminator as Schwarzenegger's franchise (click here to read that particular rant), so I think that linking the next movie's production to a washed-up action star's campaign to become a box office champ once again is going to be a disaster. Remember, Schwarzenegger thought that The Governator, a cartoon about Schwarzenegger playing himself becoming a superhero, was a guaranteed comeback vehicle too. He was also willing to write and promote a tell-all book about his extra-marital exploits--less than two years after he split from his wife--as a way of staying in the public eye.

But another thing to consider here is that Schwarzenegger's acting career, for the most part, was built on a shtick--a goofy Austrian bodybuilder shtick. People didn't watch films like Commando, Red Heat or Twins for their plots--they went to see these films because a goofy Austrian bodybuilder they liked was in them. I would even argue that Terminator 2, the most profitable film in that series, achieved its popularity because Schwarzenegger's shtick still appealed to large audiences at that time. Yet in the years since Schwarzenegger's acting career faltered and first ended, ask yourself this: When was the last time an action movie star was able to keep a career going based only on shtick?

The problems here are twofold: Not only is the Terminator franchise all too capable of telling great stories without anything remotely resembling Schwarzenegger at its center (case in point: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series), but the action-adventure genre has moved on from the era when big muscles, big gimmicks, big stunts and big budgets were all you needed to make a name for yourself. Maybe this was because of the import of Hong Kong action movies during the last two decades, or that more talented writers, directors and actors have entered the genre with increasing frequency. It could also be that the influence of filmmakers such as Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez has encouraged the genre to embrace its pulpy, grindhouse roots, which in turn have produced action movies that are grittier, smarter and wilder than their over-muscled Reagan era counterparts. With that in mind, it is quite fitting that 2010's Predators, the most recent sequel to Schwarzenegger's 1987 movie Predator, was produced by Rodriguez.

I can't begrudge the action genre's influence on the sci-fi genre, because I have a feeling that many sci-fi films wouldn't have been made at all if there weren't components of action and adventure in their scripts. Yet if Terminator is going to continue as an action sci-fi franchise, it needs to remove Schwarzenegger from its production line. It won't matter what new kinds of killer robots the next sequel will create or what kind of ground-breaking special effects it will use to bring them to life; Schwarzenegger has become the obsolete model of action filmmaking, and he doesn't have the talent or creativity within himself to change that.

"Alas, poor Arnold! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of 

infinite ego, of most excellent biceps ...."

Nerd Rant: Is High-Definition Technology Killing Practical Special Effects?

At the end of this week, theaters across the country will debut The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the long-awaited film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's prequel story for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. While the film itself is getting positive reviews, I've noticed that many of the critics have also commented on one of the film's technical aspects--namely, the visual effect has resulted from the film being shot at 48 frames per second (fps) instead of the traditional 24 fps. The film's director, Peter Jackson, chose this new format for the sake of giving his film better image definition; some critics think that Jackson has achieved his goal in spades, while others think that the movie looks much more artificial than had it been shot at the normal frame rate.

In particular, Andrew O'Hehir's made this observation about the 48 fps format when he saw The Hobbit: "(F)or me ... this cinematic innovation apparently meant to create an atmosphere of magic realism makes the whole thing look immensely more fake. Mountains and fortresses that are presumably digital creations look like painted backdrops; humanoid figures of hobbits, dwarves and wizards appear just as artificial as the goblins, specters and trolls. ... Personally, I found the Thomas Kinkade-like glow of The Hobbit’s images both fascinating and disconcerting, and felt that it accentuated the movie’s other flaws."

I've noticed before on Blu-ray how higher definition can make multi-million dollar film productions look cheaper than they actually are, as if they were shot for television instead of the silver screen. Granted, this doesn't happen on all Blu-ray transfers--for example, the Blu-rays for Jaws and the Alien series look fantastic--but I've noticed it happening with enough frequency that I can only wonder how things will further change when and if the 48 fps format becomes the industry standard. In short, here's my question: Can practical special effects still be used if high-definition technology exposes their artificiality, or will only high-definition CGI special effects technology be able to keep up with the new fps format?

Essentially, special effects involve the creation of celluloid-ready optical illusions in order to enhance the audience's experience of watching a movie. In some ways, special effects are like stage magic: Just as magicians have to carefully control what a live audience can and cannot see in order to make stage tricks appear magical, special effects artists have to control what a movie audience can and cannot see in order to maintain their suspension of disbelief. The effects can be a complicated as stop motion animation or as (relatively) simple as forced perspective shots, and many special effects techniques have deliberately exploited the shortcomings of film as a medium to keep the audience unaware of the effects' artifice. So, what happens when special effects artists are forced to contend with a film format that is intended to show everything in such high detail?

Of course, filmmakers want fake things to appear real for the purpose of capturing the audience's imagination. Yet film projects that are heavily based on special effects--scale miniatures, animatronic costumes and puppets, complex applications of makeup, etc.--shouldn't look too real, because if they do they'll look exactly like what they really are: fake. Will practical special effects still have a place in 48 fps movies, or will the 48 fps format serve as another damaging blow against the usage of practical effects and further promote the usage of CGI special effects in their place?

Nerd Rant: Darth Vader Goes to Disneyland, while Terminator Remains Lost in Time

Everyone knows by now that George Lucas has sold Lucasfilm and all of its creative properties, such as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, to Disney for over $4 billion. This is big news for both Star Wars fans and sci-fi and fantasy fans in general, so I thought that I would contribute a few of my own thoughts as to what this means for the future of Star Wars and sci-fi/fantasy film franchises in general, as well as how it compares to the current status of the floundering Terminator franchise. Read on ...

I'm kind of torn about Lucas selling Star Wars to Disney. It's not much of a surprise that he would do this, since he's worked closely with Disney before on other Star Wars projects. In fact, the last time I visited Disney back in 2007, it was during one of the "Star Wars Celebration" weekends at the park (events that were held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first Star Wars) and people were getting their photos taken with actors dressed as various characters from the Star Wars universe. This was before the recent renovation of the Star Tours ride at the Disney parks, a renovation that completed in 2011.

The rationale I've heard Lucas provide in interviews is that Disney will provide a safe environment for the future of his creative properties. I can't argue with that logic, because I think that Star Wars will do better under the ownership of Disney than, say, Star Trek has done under the ownership of Paramount. The same could be said about the relationship between Marvel and Disney in comparison to the relationship between DC Comics and Time Warner; in other words, given its creative roots in fantasy storytelling, Disney will be a safer, more supportive environment for fantasy franchises such as Marvel and Star Wars than a less niche-focused media company such as Paramount or Time Warner.

For example: Two of the four Star Trek spin-offs, Voyager and Enterprise, were put into production for the sake of attracting the Trek fan base to provide a steady supply of ratings for Paramount's fledgling--and later cancelled--United Paramount Network (UPN). This was a revival of Paramount's original plan to launch its own TV network back in the 70s and use a new Trek TV series, Star Trek: Phase II, as the new network's flagship show. That plan fell through and the Phase II pilot script later became the script for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but that didn't stop Paramount from using the Trek franchise (twice, no less) to help establish and sustain the non-Trek project that was UPN. Given Disney's long-established system of media production and distribution, I doubt that Disney will put the Star Wars franchise into the same kind of awkward and ill-conceived situations.

All that has been determined so far for the immediate future of Star Wars under Disney is that a new trilogy is in the works, the long-rumored Episodes 7, 8 and 9 of the saga. Episode 7 is currently in pre-production and is scheduled for release in 2015, with the sequels following every two or three subsequent years. The Star Wars: 1313 video game is still scheduled for completion and release. As far as I can tell, everything else about the franchise has yet to be determined. I still don't know how many more episodes of The Clone Wars series will be produced and how long it will remain on Cartoon Network, a network that's owned by Time Warner. I suspect that Cartoon Network's recent rescheduling of The Clone Wars from its successful Friday night slot to a Saturday morning slot was probably based on the pending sale of Lucasfilm to Disney--in other words, Cartoon Network's relocation of The Clone Wars to a less successful time slot could be a signal of its near cancellation--but this is only speculation on my part.

Where I feel uncertain about Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm is in light of how much else Disney owns right now--it's currently the largest media conglomerate in the US--and how much more it will go on to own after the profits from Star Wars are added to its collective revenue. In addition to Lucasfilm, Disney also owns Pixar, Marvel, and The Muppets Studio; the combination of these companies' creative licenses amounts to an enormous piece of pop culture real estate, along with all of the creative licenses that Disney already has by itself. This doesn't even include the other assets that Disney owns, such as ESPN, ABC, Touchstone Pictures and Hyperion Books. Sure, the creative side of the Disney media empire may do wonderful things for the Star Wars franchise, but I'm not very comfortable with the corporate side of the Disney media empire using Star Wars revenue to gobble up even more chunks of domestic and international media--something that is inevitably going to happen, unfortunately. How future sci-fi and fantasy film franchises can achieve success in a media landscape that's dominated by Disney remains to be seen.

Bringing things back to a more geek-centric level, I'm also hoping that Disney's ownership of the Star Wars franchise will not prompt it to abandon its own Tron franchise. The Tron Uprising series is a fantastic show and the franchise as a whole has a lot of potential, so I would hate to see Disney completely ditch their cult fan favorite in exchange for the more well-known and much more lucrative property.

Concerns aside, the transition of Star Wars from Lucas to Disney is a good example of a well-maintained franchise that will see more success under new and proven ownership. Say what you will about what Lucas has done with his franchise since its inception, at least he made sure that there was always someone at the helm to manage the Star Wars universe. The same cannot be said for the Terminator franchise, which is currently struggling to break free of its current state of limbo. For as much as I love the Terminator franchise, I'm still shocked that it has made it as far as it has without a consistent leadership figure such as James Cameron--or anyone else.

As of now, the Terminator franchise is currently owned by Megan Ellison and her production company Annapurna Films, but the rights to the franchise will revert back to Cameron if a new movie is not made by 2018. Some rumors suggest another sequel, while others hint at a complete reboot. Personally, I think that the franchise made its worst mistake when it associated its success with the bankability of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a mistake from which the franchise may never recover.

Terminator 2 was a big hit in 1991 and the most profitable film in the franchise, but I think that most of its success was due to Schwarzenegger's peaking popularity during the late 80s and early 90s. (Then again, T2 is the most positive and optimistic movie in the series, which might also have something to do with its appeal to a larger, blockbuster-sized audience. As film critic Sean French observed, the violence and anti-social nature of The Terminator were sanitized by Cameron himself in T2, essentially transforming the franchise that started as a gritty, violent, grindhouse-style low-budget sci-fi movie into a sleek, high-tech summer blockbuster movie with a then-popular leading actor.) Utilizing Schwarzenegger to produce a successful sequel was a shrewd decision on Cameron's part, since T2 salvaged his own career after The Abyss tanked at the box office in 1989 (without T2, there never would have been True Lies, Dark Angel, Titanic or Avatar), even though this decision would ultimately cripple the Terminator franchise.

T2 led many to regard the Terminator franchise as strictly a Schwarzenegger vehicle, even though his creative input to the movies is negligible and his character was the most disposable one in terms of the franchise's overarching narrative logic. The Schwarzenegger connection was further reinforced by the T2 3-D: Battle Across Time ride in the Universal Studio theme parks--in a story which depicts Schwarzenegger's T-800 character as the triumphant vanquisher of Skynet and recasts humanity's post-nuclear savior, John Connor, in a secondary and superfluous role--and by Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003. Schwarzenegger appeared in T3 under the direction of Jonathan Mostow, after years of saying that he'd only do another Terminator movie if Cameron directed it. Schwarzenegger hoped that T3 would do for his career what T2 did for Cameron's; it didn't, and I don't think a Terminator 5 would either.

As any devoted Terminator fan knows, there are plenty of Schwarzenegger-free, universe-expanding Terminator stories to be told through the narrative rules established in the movies. For example, the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series explored the Terminator universe in entertaining and character-driven ways that the movies never had time to do, all without involving a cyborg that looked and sounded like an Austrian bodybuilder.

I enjoy Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation for what they are (as well as the Terminator novels connected to those sequels), but I think that Josh Friedman's involvement in the franchise through his creation of the Sarah Connor Chronicles series was the last real chance to get the franchise back on stable creative ground. This chance was lost between the writer's strike during the show's first season and the Fox network's dwindling support of the series during the second. Alas, the association with a faded campy action star, the lack of behind-the-scenes leadership, shifting ownership of creative rights, and an unstable production schedule and distribution venue for its TV series have all combined to terminate the Terminator's chances of significant continuation into the future.

The Schwarzenegger-Terminator link is inescapable by now, and how his future, post-political film career fares will determine what the Terminator franchise will do next. If the poor sales of his recent tell-all book and his god-awful Governator cartoon series proposal are any indication, Schwarzenegger's blockbuster days are long over and the Terminator franchise will move on without him--that is, if it ever moves again at all.

Nerd Rant: Gentle Giant's Jumbo Star Wars Action Figures Jumbo-Size Kenner's Toy Gaffes

Last April, I posted a rant about Gentle Giant's line of Jumbo Vintage Star Wars Action Figures, wondering how this line could keep going when all it is is a series of expensive enlarged action figures--no extra details, no extra points of articulation, nothing.

Then again, what do I know? The line is still running strong, with recent releases including jumbo versions of the Lando Calrissian and Yoda figures from Kenner's Empire Strikes Back line and a jumbo Gamorrean Guard figure from Kenner's Return of the Jedi line. I kept thinking that there has to be something more to what Gentle Giant is doing other than just making small things bigger, and I think I finally figured out what it is. Gentle Giant is not only re-releasing Kenner's original figures on a larger scale, they are also re-releasing every variation that's possible for those figures as well. Read on....

Anyone who grew up with Kenner's line of Star Wars toys like I did knows that there are plenty of goofs and inconsistencies hidden within the products. I still remember being baffled over how some of the Star Wars toys pictured in Kenner's mini-catalogs would look different than what was actually released on the toy store shelves, completely unaware at the time that Kenner was putting pictures of the toys' prototypes in their promotional materials instead of pictures of the finished products. (I still have no idea why they did this--time constraints, perhaps?) Thus, Gentle Giant is taking advantage of Kenner's quirks by reproducing them in a larger, more expensive scale. Here are some examples of which quirks Gentle Giant has jumbo-sized so far:

* Vinyl caped and cloth caped Jawa figures:

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* Large-headed and small-headed Han Solo figures:

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* Large blue and small red Snaggletooth figures:

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Along those lines, Gentle Giant has recently reproduced one of Kenner's most notorious goofs: a Boba Fett action figure with a rocket-launching jet pack. Boba Fett was the first mail order figure that Kenner sold as part of its Star Wars line, and kids everywhere were disappointed to get a figure that didn't have the rocket launching feature that Kenner promised in its mail order ad. Kenner pulled the feature due to safety concerns, but that isn't stopping Gentle Giant--it even includes Kenner's original ad as part of their jumbo figure's card back.

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It should also be noted that if nostalgia is enough to get Star Wars toy collectors to pay for over-sized, over-priced replicas of Kenner's goofs, then Gentle Giant is also applying the nostalgia effect to over-sized, over-priced replicas of what was originally very cheap Star Wars merchandise. Case in point: the Cantina Adventure Set, a flimsy, cardboard-only playset that was a Sears exclusive back in the late 70s. The difference is that even though both sets are made out of cardboard, the original Sears set cost $8.77 and came with four action figures while the Gentle Giant version of the set doesn't come with any figures but costs $89.00.

Obviously, there's a market for these kinds of Star Wars collectibles. The only question is: How much is nostalgia worth to you?

Nerd Rant: Robotech Toys, Then and Now

I was surfing around eBay the other day looking for affordable deals on horror and sci-fi collectibles, when I noticed this picture for one of the listings:

The listing was for a lot of five Ride Armor action figures from the short-lived anime series, Genesis Climber Mospeada, and that these action figures were made back in 2008 by a Japanese toy company called CM's Corporation. Mospeada was later redubbed in 1985 to become the third act of the Robotech saga known as either "The New Genenration" or "The Invid War", and the Ride Armors were renamed in the Robotech dub as "Cyclones". (For the sake of this post, I'll be using Robotech terminology and character names.) These are not the first Cyclone toys to be made, but these are the first--and so far only--Cyclone toys that have been made for 3 and 3/4 inch action figures and that actually transform from motorcycles to battle armor that can be worn by the figures.

From what I've heard, the CM's Cyclone toys have their own problems and they certainly aren't cheap. Yet the impressive details and features of toys of such a small size can't help but to evoke some comparisons between them and the Robotech toy line came before them in mid-80s courtesy of Matchbox. Read on for a more detailed comparison, along with some pictures for detail and scale.

I was around when Matchbox launched its small and short-lived Robotech line back in the mid-80s. It did two things right: It imported and repackaged a few transformable, die-cast metal toys from Japan, and it released toy versions of different alien mecha--Battlepods, Bioroids and Invid Troopers--that were previously unavailable anywhere else. Unfortunately, everything else that Matchbox did with the Robotech line was a disappointment. The action figures were poorly sculpted and of the vehicles that were produced for them, only one of them transformed--and even that transformation was partial and fell short of recreating its animated counterpart. How Matchbox though it was a good idea to release non-transformable vehicles under the toy license for a cartoon that's known for human-piloted combat vehicles that transformed into robots remains a mystery to me.

Fast forward to today, when many toys have become instant collector's items due to their new levels of detail and articulation. Looking at the gap between 80s era Robotech toys and the Robotech toys of today is absolutely astonishing, and CM's Cyclone toys are a perfect example. It's also worth noting that while Matchbox only produced a small number of action figures for the New Generation characters, CM's selection includes four major New Generation characters in battle armor and transforming Cyclones, as well as two more non-major-but-still-armored characters that also have transforming Cyclones. The CM's line includes armored figures of Scott Bernard, Rand, Rook Bartley, Lancer, Sue Graham, and a Robotech Expeditionary Force (REF) soldier.

In contrast, Matchbox only produced five figures for the New Generation chapter of Robotech; of those five, only the Scott Bernard figure wore battle armor, and that armor sculpt was both inaccurate and of poor quality. It also didn't help that the Matchbox Cyclone toy for the action figures didn't transform.

To be sure, CM's Cyclone toys are far from perfect and are much better suited for static display than anything remotely resembling play. According to several reviews, the action figures don't fit on the Cyclone cycles, and transforming the cycle to wearable armor is excruciating to accomplish and parts tend to fall off in the process. This level of quality doesn't match the toys' price tags. The cheapest stand-alone CM's Cyclone toy that I've found is $40, while the eBay listing I mentioned above currently comes in at $600, essentially over $100 per one 3 and 3/4 inch action figure.

Matchbox made a lot of missteps with its Robotech line, but one can only imagine how it would have done better if it had the level of detail and amount of features that the CM's Cyclone toys had. Even if Matchbox had to sacrifice a few details to make the toys more durable, action figures that can fit into the vehicles and have transformable battle armor is much more impressive than what they provided during Robotech's run on TV. Below are some pictures of a CM's Cyclone with two similarly scaled Matchbox-produced toys, an Invid Shock Trooper and a (modified) Hover Tank.

Click here to read Mospeada/Robotech toy reviews at the CollectionDX site. Click here to read the review of CM's Cyclone toys at the Scorched Earth Toys site, and click here to read Scorched Earth Toys' review of CM's Mospeada character figures.

Nerd Rant: Somewhere Out There, a Comic Book Supervillain is Missing His Face

I don't read monthly comic book series anymore. They're too expensive for my budget these days, so I have reduced my comic book intake to stand-alone graphic novels and multi-issue compilations. I stay informed of what DC and Marvel are doing through comic book reviews and news updates, so I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when I found out that the Joker had his face cut off at his own request a few months ago. Yes, really:

Can you read this J-J-J-Joker Face?

I heard about this plot development a while back but I didn't pay much attention to it because of the other stuff that DC had been doing at the time with its company-wide reboot of all of its characters and their respective comic series. Batman series writer Scott Snyder has been touring the news outlets as of late to promote his upcoming story arc involving the Joker called "Death of the Family", which will begin in October. As part of this arc, Joker will be sporting a new look à la Leatherface, with his removed face attached to his head as a sort of mask.

This wouldn't be the first time that Batman has dipped his toes into giallo/slasher territory. Even though their origins pre-date Italy's golden years of giallo and America's slasher movie craze of the 80s, Batman villains such as Two-Face, Mr. Freeze and Scarecrow have backgrounds that are very similar to giallo/slasher villains. In fact, Snyder's recent Batman arc, "Night of the Owls", was clearly influenced by the giallo/slasher subgenre of horror, from the masks worn by the killers to the dramatic unmasking of one of the key villains. Read on for more thoughts about the Dark Knight's repeated flirtations with horror and how they never go anywhere in the long run.

The "Night of the Owls" arc and the faceless Joker come on the heels of four new additions to Batman's rogues’ gallery: Professor Pyg, The Absence, Flamingo, and the Dollmaker. Here are some tidbits about each of these villains, courtesy of Wikipedia and the Batman Wiki:

* "Professor Pyg has an obsession with making people "perfect", which he accomplishes by transforming them into Dollotrons, a process that bonds false "doll" faces to their own, presumably permanently. Professor Pyg uses cordless drills, hammers and ice picks along with the "doll" faces in the process of converting his victims into Dollotrons. It appears the operation he performs involves brain surgery or a form of lobotomization and possible gender realignment."

* The Absence is one of Bruce Wayne's former girlfriends. After surviving a gunshot wound to her head (which has left a permanent hole through her cranium--seriously), she stalks and kills Bruce's other former mistresses.

* "Flamingo is a psychotic hitman. He was lobotomized by the mob and was recruited by them. Despite his name, as well as his pink uniform and vehicles, he is a sociopathic, mindless, killing machine, nicknamed "the eater of faces", a title he has lived up to."

* The Dollmaker is a "Gotham City Serial Killer who creates "dolls" out of the skin and limbs of his victims. ... His mask is partially made of skin from this deceased father." The Dollmaker also has a "family" consisting of disfigured, sewn-together minions. The Dollmaker was also the same character who removed the Joker's face (a face that I'm assuming that the Flamingo will not eat).

As a horror fan, I love when superhero comics feature story lines that are strongly influenced by pulp horror; thus, I would really like to believe that the Batman comic book series will finally commit to becoming a horror comic. Heck, with new villains like this, now would be a perfect time to put Batman in a crossover miniseries with the characters from Hack/Slash.

Yet in light of previous attempts by DC to make Batman "grittier" (read my previous posts about Batman's so-called grittiness here and here), I'm certain that all of these new characters and the now faceless Joker are just more gimmicky and forgettable look-at-how-insane-Gotham-City-has-become-THIS-time stories, something that DC has been trotting out regularly in its Batman titles since The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke during the 80s.

No matter how psychotic and grisly Batman's villains get, the status quo in Gotham City will never change in any significant way (just ask Jason Todd). Such predictability makes DC's attempts at providing grindhouse-style shock and gore through its most popular superhero character feel anticlimactic and feeble. If DC really wanted to be edgy, it would add figures such as Removable-Face Joker, Face-Eating Flamingo, Disfigured Dollotrons, and a Mix-and-Match Dollmaker Family to Fisher-Price's Imaginex DC Super Friends toy line for the ages 3 to 8 demographic.

Look--here's a Fisher-Price Batman play set with a Bane action figure. So where are 

the Broken Back Batman and Paralyzed Bruce Wayne (with Wheelchair) action figures?

If someone from DC Comics is reading this, please take this message to heart: Stop teasing us horror fans like this! Either commit to making Batman a horror comic, or put your new deranged villains into a horror title of their own and not a superhero comic. Anything else is simply a cop-out. Furthermore, DC, in case you're still wondering why Batman doesn't seem to fit so well with the rest of your universe, it could very well be because Batman is busy fighting cannibals, serial killers and sadomasochists while every other character is just being a superhero, like they're supposed to be. In other words, if you make having superpowers seem unremarkable in your comic book universe, then your superhero characters are going to be unremarkable too.