MARVEL

Disney Toybox Figures Epic List

My current obsession. I don’t normally post about things that aren’t books, TV, or movies, and I’ve got a few TV Pilot reviews to write and post, but I just love these figures. I originally posted this on my Tumblr but thought I’d share the posts over here too. Enjoy!

With Disney Infinity no longer a thing Disney decided to take the adorable art style and make straight up toys. As someone who always loved the DI figures I’m very happy with this decision. So far I only have one of the figures, but it is well made, with several moveable joints, a great facial expression, and a removable item. Since, I’m choosing to just sit it there and marvel at it’s wonderfulness I do wish they’d included a stand, Princess Leia ends up leaning against my speaker.

The Disney Toybox toys are in four different collections, currently. Though the above picture only shows three. There is Star Wars, Pixar, Marvel, and Disney. They seem to be coming out in waves, and each figure is numbered specifically for their collection.

With a $12.95 price tag they are a bit pricier than a normal child’s toy so it’s obvious that Disney is banking on the collector market with these. They are a quality toy, but even with the Disney brand attached they are still just a toy, so I find it difficult to believe that many parents are buying these for their children.

Here is a list of the released figures for all those, like me, who wish to collect them, I have also included Amazon links at the bottom when I can, just click on the picture of the figure you like. (I will try to keep this list up to date as my obsession continues):

Star Wars Toybox

1. Kylo Ren

2. Rey

3. First Order Stormtrooper

10. Yoda

Pixar Toybox

7. Dash and Edna Mode

Marvel Toybox

1. Thor

2. Hulk

3. Spider-Man

14. Miles Morales Spider-Man

Disney Toybox

All four collections have several announced figures that are not currently available and I wasn’t able to find a release date at the time I’m publishing this. Right now, though, the announced and not released figures are:

Stich

Minnie Mouse

Hulkbuster

Spider-Man and Dunebuggy

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

Director:

Peyton Reed

Starring:

Paul Rudd

Evangeline Lily

Michael Peña

Michael Douglas

Michele Pfeiffer

Laurence Fishburne

Hannah John-Kamen

Plot:

As Scott Lang balances being both a Super Hero and a father, Hope van Dyne and Dr. Hank Pym present an urgent new mission that finds the Ant-Man fighting alongside The Wasp to uncover secrets from their past.

Review:

Clearly the person to see here is the Wasp, Evangeline Lily. Sure Ant-Man, Paul Rudd, is the known hero, but come on, Wasp is where it’s at. She kicks ass, keeps her cool in all situations, makes the right decisions, and is smart enough to keep up with her genius father. She is the total package.

Ant-Man who?

Oh yeah, Paul Rudd, America’s sweetheart, a man who is both hilarious and attractive (though sadly no ab scenes in this movie), the man my husband has a crush on, one of the titular characters of the movie. The hero that’s on a first name basis with Captain America, Cap, Steve Rogers. The adorable father or an impossibly precocious little girl.

Ant-Man.

Together the two work well. Wasp is the brain, Ant-Man the heart. I did feel that Ant-Man wasn’t as smart as he was in the first movie. He’s not an idiot, but he’s definitely outshone in the brains department and they didn’t really give him an opportunity to display his smarts.

Michael Peña had an opportunity to tell another story, which I loved and it was great to see the other side characters from the first movie have their moment. I love Hannah John-Kamen from Killjoys so I was happy to see her here.

SPOILERS!!!

What I liked most about the Ghost was that her ending is really unknown. Like Nebula from the Guardians of the Galaxy, she’s still alive and her future motivations are unclear. Is she going to return to being an assassin? Is she never going to be seen again? Is she going to be a hero now? We don’t know! It’s nice to not end the movie with killing the villain.

I do wish we’d had more of the beautiful and talented Michele Pfeiffer, and with that first end credit scene we have no idea what’s going to happen and if we’ll see her again. She has powers, she’s smart, who knows??

That first end credit scene…damn. I’m more excited than ever to see what happens next in the Marvel universe. They have been on a roll lately and while Ant-Man and the Wasp wasn’t amazing, probably not in my top five favorite Marvel movies, it’s still a solid addition to the series and brings me a female hero that I absolutely love.

4.5/5

Black Panther (2018)

Black Panther (2018)

Director:

Ryan Coogler

Starring:

Chadwick Boseman

Michael B. Jordan

Lupita Nyong’o

Danai Gurira

Martin Freeman

Plot:

T’Challa, the King of Wakanda, rises to the throne in the isolated, technologically advanced African nation, but his claim is challenged by a vengeful outsider who was a childhood victim of T’Challa’s father’s mistake.

Review:

There is no way I can do this film justice in my review. I’m just not skilled enough and I’m still surfing on a buzz of awesome, but I’ll try.

T’Challa, Chadwick Boseman, is now not only the Black Panther but he’s king. Well, he will as soon as he completes a traditional ritual that involves fighting anyone that challenges him.

This is an incredibly technologically advanced culture and yet they are still able to honor their traditions, it was really quiet lovely. Embracing one did not, necessarily, take away from the other. However, it did end up causing some problems and they might want to think about a change in the future.

Anyway, as king he makes a vow to finally capture the colonizer that killed so many of their own decades ago. He’s given a chance, but is blindsided by a new player and loses his opportunity. This angers one of his friends and ends up providing an opening to the true villain, Killmonger, Michael B. Jordan.

Marvel is really winning on the villain side of things lately. They had a horrible, lets please forget the movie ever exists, misstep with Age of Ultron but got things right with Thor: Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Doctor Strange. They’re on a real winning streak which has me really looking forward to all the future movies.

Anyway, back to Black Panther. Killmonger could have very easily been not evil enough. He was incredibly empathetic, you could easily see how he’d become what he had become. He’d suffered and seen his people suffering all the while knowing that there was an entire country where they weren’t. Where they advanced beyond anything in the rest of the world. If he had stopped there, pleaded his case to T’Challa and tried the more humanitarian route that Nakia, Lupita Nyong’o, wanted to go then the movie wouldn’t have been as good. He went further and in so doing nearly destroyed what Wakanda stood for, but he also forced T’Challa to really see what life was like for those outside of his country and also see that his father wasn’t perfect.

Villains that make the hero change, to see other perspectives, are the best. Black Panther was a great hero, he was everything I like in a super hero. He was a good man, that strove to do the right things and make the right decisions, even when it wasn’t always the easiest route. Without Killmonger, though, I don’t think the movie would have succeeded so well in my eyes.

The supporting cast in Black Panther was also incredible. I freaking loved General Okoye, Danai Gurira, she was so freaking awesome. That red dress billowing in the breeze while she destroyed shit around her. So cool! Then you’ve got T’Challa’s sister Shuri, Letitia Wright, who was hilarious. It was so much fun to see her interactions with T’Challa. I also enjoyed how Martin Freeman’s character, Everett Ross, was the token white guy. He wasn’t killed in the first few minutes, he was actually given something useful to do so that was nice for him.

Black Panther is my second favorite Marvel movie, it was so good, and I hope that everyone is able to go see it.

5/5

The Punisher (2017-?)

The Punisher (2017-?)

Network:

Netflix

Starring:

Jon Bernthal

Amber Rose Revah

Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Ben Barnes

Jaime Ray Newman

Daniel Webber

Deborah Ann Woll

Plot:

After the murder of his family, Marine veteran Frank Castle became a vigilante known as “The Punisher” with only one goal in mind, to avenge them.

Review:

The Punisher is an antihero that chooses to kill anyone he perceives as a bad guy. He starts off by going after the people that killed his family and it goes from there. He’s a ‘hero’ that when I was young I thought was super cool. Just bypass the system and take them out, but now that I’m older I just can’t get behind that method of justice, if the laws are broken then we need to fix them not just go around killing people. I guess I’m more Superman/Batman brand of justice and for whatever reason I can’t put that aside when I watch a Punisher that’s purposefully placed in a realistic environment.

I wasn’t planning on watching this series, after Iron Fist and Defenders I’ve almost given up on Marvel. Pair that with the fact that I just did not want to watch a show that tried to make me sympathize with a man like Frank Castle, Jon Bernthal, I had planned to sit it out. Next thing I know several friends are telling me I have to watch it, that it doesn’t try to make my empathize, that it does a great job of showing a different side of things, that it’s just the best thing ever and I broke.

One of the main complaints for the Marvel shows on Netflix is that thirteen episodes is too long. I personally didn’t feel that way with the first season of Daredevil or Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, because I really liked the characters and what was going on. I felt every minute of some of these episodes of The Punisher, though, and not in a good way. There was lots of dragging, lots of inactivity, and too much effort put into making The Punisher sympathetic.

The side story that followed Lewis Walcott, Daniel Webber, as he dealt with reintegrating into society was more interesting than The Punisher side for a while. I can see what they were trying to do, show a parallel between The Punisher and Lewis and how they reacted to trauma and coming home. However, they decided to push Lewis over the edge and then kept calling him a coward and trying to say that The Punisher was better. In the process they made Karen, Deborah Ann Woll, sound like an idiot because she refused to acknowledge the similarities.

David ‘Microchip’ Lieberman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, was also another heavy handed parallel to The Punisher. He faked his own death and left his wife and two children alone to think he was dead. Naturally he spied on them with multiple cameras all over his old house. He was very willing to use The Punisher for a means to an end but acted like he was better than him. My main problem with Microchip, which has nothing to do with the story, is when he’s finally reunited with his wife, Jaime Ray Newman. After some time when she’s been understandably angry with him, they hook up in the bathroom. He finishes superfast, they laugh, he says he’s sorry, she says it’s okay, end scene. Why couldn’t they take two seconds to just show him slipping his hand down her panties? Why did he get to finish, but not her? Why couldn’t they have him saying he’d take care of her? Something? We’d already watched the whole awkward scene why did the wife get nothing?

Which brings me to my main complaint with the series, and something I already knew would be the case going in, but I was convinced it wouldn’t be this way by others. The Punisher is just male fantasy erotica, female fans of the Punisher get almost nothing from this series. Karen is made to be stupid. Dinah Madani, Amber Rose Revah, sleeps with a man she basically only originally talked to because he had connections to Castle and the criminal investigation she’s obsessed with, then of course develops some feelings for him, and is nearly killed by him. Microchip’s wife relies on her daughter for common household issues, then the Punisher as he comes along, and is just a damsel in distress. She at least protects her children as much as she can, but she allows her son to just walk all over her and kisses Castle because he’s of course the only man she’s come in close contact with since her husband has passed.

Tons of bullets flying, bad guys getting beat up, sex with hot women. I like action movies, but this was basically all my least favorite parts rolled up into one.

2/5

Side Note: I wasn’t able to pay 100% attention to this show, I just couldn’t, it would annoy me and I’d distract myself with something else while it played in the background.

The Defenders (2017-?)

The Defenders (2017-?)

Network:

Netflix

Starring:

Charlie Cox

Krysten Ritter

Mike Colter

Plot:

Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist team up to fight crime in New York City.

Review:

I was excited for this to come out, even after the horrible Iron Fist that I was unable to complete. If I had known just how much of the plot revolved around Danny I would have tempered my expectations. Instead I spent most of the series rolling my eyes, ignoring large portions, and wishing someone would just kill him already.

What I noticed first was the different filters for each character. It was at best distracting and worse down right annoying. I’m not sure who thought that was necessary but I thought it was stupid.

By far the best part of the series was Jessica Jones, they did not deserve her. Her character was funny and I enjoyed it every time she was on the screen and allowed to talk. I feel like her part was the smallest but I’m not positive about that and would like to see a breakdown of the amount of time each character had on screen.

I enjoyed Luke Cage and Daredevil to a lesser extent, and again absolutely hated Danny. I’m not really looking forward to The Punisher and after this I’m concerned that they’ll find a way to screw up the second season of Jessica Jones. Time will tell, but once I watch Wet Hot American summer with my husband we’ll probably be canceling Netflix again.

The only reason I’m not giving this a one star is because there were more than a few instances of everyone treating Danny like an idiot and I appreciated that.

2/5

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