Tag Archives: disney+

March 20, 2024

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Jean Grey

By Joe
After getting short-changed by toy manufacturers for decades, Jean finds herself with two animated versions in the span of a few years.

If you are reading this the day it goes live then Happy X-Men ’97 Day! Today is the day the long-awaited sequel series to X-Men debuts on Disney+. Rather than fast-track a review of the first two episodes to this blog, I decided instead to do what I most often do: review an action figure! It was in 2020 that Hasbro announced a subline of Marvel Legends based on the 1992 animated series which were released throughout 2021. Arriving in attractive VHS styled boxes, the X-Men line was more dud than hit. I wanted to love it, but it was hard to shake the feeling that Hasbro was just phoning it in. Despite that, I still bought them all and I continue to buy some of the tie-in figures since Hasbro decided not to deliver the full team. That’s why when the first wave of X-Men ’97 action figures arrived last fall I used it to supplement my existing roster of characters by picking up Magneto, Rogue, and Gambit. The figures had an animated look, though they lacked the cel-shading of the VHS line, but were close enough. Just in time for the debut of the series is wave two. It’s comprised mostly of new characters like Goblin Queen and X-Cutioner as well as some redos in the style of X-Men ’97. As a result, it’s a less attractive wave for me since I don’t want letter of the day Magneto and the VHS Cyclops was one of the few figures I actually liked. However, there was one figure in the line that intrigued me even though I had the VHS version: Jean Grey.

The new figure has a bit of a dead eye going on, but it’s better than the old which looks like a duck-faced Sharon Stone.

I’m not sure which figure was my least favorite in the X-Men VHS line from Hasbro, but the fact that Jean is in the running should probably say enough. The figure is dated and Hasbro couldn’t even be bothered to get the color of her costume right, but more than anything, I just hated the portraits. The figure was a re-release of an existing figure with a new paint job as that’s basically all of the effort Hasbro could muster when it came to the line. She had a ponytailed portrait, but it looked nothing like the version of the character from the show. They also included her down hair portrait, even though she never sported that look in that costume during the entire show’s run, and it was a release that just left me all sorts of grumpy in the end. The only positive I could lay on it was that the cel-shading was actually done pretty well given the standards of the line.

I know there are a lot of people who dislike cel-shading on their figures, but this costume needs something because the design is rather plain.

Jean gets a redo with X-Men ’97, and like most of the characters in the show making a return, she still sports a look that’s very similar to her ’92 counterpart. It’s a costume based on the look Jim Lee gave her and based on some of the promotional artwork I’ve seen it looks like she’ll have the ponytail some days, and let her hair down on others. The figure itself comes in the usual blister and Jean has her hair down look on the card despite the default portrait being the ponytail one. The figure stands approximately 6.25″ to the top of the head. Her costume is basically now a pale orange and dark blue. The figure is mostly orange plastic with a V-shape of blue on the front of the torso and a more rectangular one on the back. The shoulder pads are little cuts of blue plastic pinned into the top of the joint. The belt is still separate from the body, but it fits quite snug to the crotch piece. Paint is largely reserved for the face, X logo, and the blue parts of the arms and hands. The blue on the torso appears to be plastic that’s been plugged into the orange portion. The legs have a lot of sculpted details to the costume, but zero paint which give the figure an unfinished look to it. It’s obviously a limitation to some degree of the character design, but some linework in the grooves cut into the legs would have added a lot.

New Jean seems to scale smaller, but I like that. The smaller head relative to the body is a better fit for the source material as well.

The main draw of this figure for me is simply the default portrait. Jean is sporting a very neutral expression to the point where she looks almost bored. The face and ears are at least painted okay, though it’s a little messy around the right ear. The blue trapezoid shape on her forehead is just painted on and lacks presence since it blends in with the dark blue cowl. The hair is a separate piece of bright, orange, plastic. The sculpt is fine, but Hasbro missed a paint hit as her forehead is visible between the top of the cowl and hair and it’s just left blue. Her part is going in the right direction though and her ponytail isn’t stupid long so I consider it a win. Her eyes are also blue this time, which is consistent with the animated series. The prior release went with the comic green eyes. Most of the colors match with the only one being off the crotch piece which is a darker orange. It’s more noticeable in pictures than in person.

Looks like they missed some paint on her forehead. As far as I know, this is true for all of the figures.

The portrait isn’t a homerun, but it’s a solid double and a vast improvement over the VHS figure. And if you’re like me then I have good news as the size of the ball joint on both figures is the same. If you want, you can put this head on the VHS Jean body and the only blemish is the dark blue cowl which should be shaded black. It’s not enough to bother me and since the cel shading was executed well I do think this will be my preferred Jean going forward. I do think the forearms on the new figure are a better match for the original series as well when it comes to the gauntlets she wears, but they’re the wrong color and I don’t know how easy it would be to swap the arms. The shade of orange wouldn’t be an exact match either, but someone more committed than me could definitely kitbash the hell out of these two figures.

She does seem even smaller when put next to Rogue and Bishop.

As for the actual, new, figure, it does some things better than the old while also creating its own issues. For additional accessories, we get the hair down portrait. Swapping is easy and the hair looks fine, but will lock the head down and cut out almost all articulation at the neck. This portrait has a slight smile to it, but it’s again another lifeless face. She looks like a mannequin. Aside from that, it’s at least painted well and the hair hides the ears. The only other accessories is another set of hands. She comes with a right fist and an open left hand. The second set is a style pose pair that are open and very similar (if not the same) as the open hands that have come with past Jeans.

“Look, mom! Double elbows!”

The articulation is an area where this new Jean differentiates itself from the past ones the most. As far as I know, we’re dealing with all new sculpts here. The head is on a double ball peg instead of the hinged ball peg the other Jean has. It’s an improvement, though once again Hasbro buried the lower ball too deep in the neck needlessly limiting the range. She barely has any range looking down and only a little looking up. Rotation and tilt are fine, but Hasbro needs to figure these joints out. The shoulders are standard hinged pegs and she can raise her arms out to the side a full 90 degrees from the body. There’s a biceps swivel past that, pin-less double-jointed elbows, and a swivel and hinge at the wrist. The elbows will bend well past 90, though it’s not the most attractive joint. This Jean can at least get her hands to her forehead though.

Aside from the cowl being a little off, I think this looks pretty good. Certainly an improvement.

In the torso we have…nothing. It’s almost bizarre to see no articulation cut into a torso even though it’s theoretically a cleaner presentation. Instead, we get a ball joint at the waist. It goes forward and back a bit and offers full rotation and tilt. This is in comparison to the prior Jean which had a ball joint in the diaphragm and nothing at the waist. It should be both! Why can’t we have nice things, Hasbro? The hips will go out to the side past 45 degrees, but shy of full splits. Jean can kick forward about 90 degrees, but not back at all due to the shape of her buttocks. There is a thigh twist and the double-jointed knees are pin-less and work fine. The ankle hinge bends back all the way, but not forward very far. The ankle rocker is pretty steep, but there. Lastly, the ponytail just pegs into the back of the standard head and can rotate.

Yup, this is how she’s going to live on my shelf.

Is this new Jean an improvement on the old? Yes and no. There’s a softness to the sculpt, and when combined with the lack of any articulation cut into the torso as well as no paint, it gives the figure a very plain appearance. The softness does appear to at least resemble the animation, though I’m sure the show will feature shading of some kind. I don’t know why Hasbro didn’t get her a ball joint in the diaphragm as that would have really added to the articulation, but instead it’s just mediocre. It’s nice to see the arms updated with double-jointed elbows and I prefer the sculpted-in forearm gauntlets, but not enough to display this figure in place of the VHS version. Instead, I’m just taking this new head, slapping it on the old body, and calling it “good enough.” I just wish I didn’t have to spend another 25 bucks to get my Jean figure to this current state.

Get your X-Men fix right here before you check out the brand new X-Men ’97:

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Jean Grey

For some reason, Jean Grey has never been treated well by toy makers. Back in the Toy Biz days, Jean had to wait several years to finally show up in the X-Men line of action figures, and once she did, it was in some gimmicky line in a costume that looked made-up. Her first, good,…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Bishop

We’re going to keep this Marvel/Mutant Monday thing going for one more week! After taking a look at a trio of figures from Hasbro’s new X-Men ’97 line of figures in its Marvel Legends catalog I’ve decided to do one more: Bishop. The first three figures I looked at were basically all missing pieces to…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Rogue

Previously, on X-Men reviews we looked at Magneto from the upcoming series X-Men ’97. The animated series may have been delayed into 2024, but the action figures from Hasbro are already here. And if you were collecting Hasbro’s line of figures based on the animated series from the 90s, this new line offers a chance…

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by Joe

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May 24, 2022

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

By Joe
The Rescue Rangers are back, but maybe not as expected.

Nostalgia is an easy thing to market and sell, so when a piece of media comes around that’s really going hard after the nostalgia market I feel like it’s my duty to weigh-in. And when it comes to 90’s nostalgia, I am as qualified as anybody to talk about it and such is the case with the new Disney+ movie Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers.

If you’re reading this, I can probably go ahead and assume that you’re familiar with the television show of the same name which premiered in the late 80s and ran into the 90s. Just in case though, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers was one of the inaugural Disney Afternoon cartoons and it starred the characters Chip and Dale from Disney’s classic collection of shorts and paired them up with some newcomers in Gadget, Monterey Jack, and Zipper. As the theme song informed us, they basically solve the crimes and help those who are not being helped by the usual law enforcement operations out there. It didn’t really make much sense for the characters of Chip and Dale to star in such a program, but the same is easily said of the classic characters utilized in most Disney Afternoon shows. It was just a way for Disney to leverage its own intellectual property and sell shows that at least had some familiar faces in them. And it seemed to work rather well. While I will say the show Rescue Rangers doesn’t really hold-up when viewed as an adult in 2022, it’s at least quite gorgeous for a TV show and no one would question the production values. Plus that theme song is still a banger.

In this universe, Rescue Rangers was an actual show like it is in “the real world” and all of the characters were played by living, toon, actors.

It was announced some time ago that Disney wanted to bring the show to the big screen as a live-action/animation hybrid which is all the rage these days. It turned out, Disney was actually aiming a little smaller as the film was ticketed for its streaming platform Disney+ pretty early in the reveal. Unlike a lot of recent films, I do not believe this was kicked to the streaming service because of COVID. The film was written by the team of Dan McGregor and Doug Mand, two guys mostly known for their work in television. With Akiva Schaffer as director and Andy Samberg onboard as the voice of Dale, the title basically started being referred to as The Lonely Island Rescue Rangers. The third member of The Lonely Island, Jorma Taccone, is also here doing some small voice roles too. Given their presence, I found myself quite curious how this movie would turn out. It was obviously going to be a comedy, but the initial trailer also revealed it was going to set its characters in a world inhabited by toons and real people like a certain famous 80s film about a rabbit. Inviting such a comparison is almost a death sentence because how is a film in 2022 with a streaming budget going to measure up to the classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It’s a fool’s game to try to match that film, Disney can only hope this one proves it’s worth existing.

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is neither a reboot nor a sequel to the television show. It actually views the characters from the show as actors who played those roles. Early in the film we’re shown how a young Dale (Juliet Donenfield) met a young Chip (Mason Blomberg) at school and instantly became friends. From there, they became a comedy act that was eventually given its own show making these versions of the famous chipmunks quite different from the characters in the theatrical shorts. Much of the movie is set in the present and centers on Dale (Andy Samberg) as he tries to recapture his glory days after a falling out with Chip when the Rescue Rangers show came to an end.

The setting established by this film is one in which humans live side-by-side with animated characters from various mediums (and owners beyond Disney) with seemingly little in the way of conflict between the two.

It’s when we catch-up with Dale and eventually Chip (John Mulaney) that we see how this world sort of works. This isn’t a lore-heavy film like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Toons exist alongside humans and over the years toons have changed. Dale at some point got surgery to make himself look like a CG generated character, while his co-stars did not so they’re presented in a more traditional manner. Cartoon stars are basically all real and much of the film relies on that. The general plot is that Monterey Jack (Eric Bana) has gone missing and Chip and Dale fear he’s been caught in a bootlegging ring. For a toon in this world, that means he’s going to be modified surgically so that he only resembles his old self and shipped off to somewhere in Asia to star in bootleg films against his will, which sounds pretty horrifying. The rodents will work with a human police officer in Ellie (Kiki Lang) to try and find their friend before he’s presumably sent out on a boat which is expected to take roughly 48 hours making this the Chip ‘n Dale version of The Frist 48.

An older, less cute, Peter Pan is one of the film’s villains. Some feel his portrayal is in poor taste given the real world tragedy that was Bobby Driscoll who voiced Pan in the Disney film. I personally don’t think any malice was intended and feel the character works as an imagined future Peter Pan that aged out of a role not unlike many child actors.

The plot is surprisingly high stakes if you place any sort of value on the life of Monterey Jack, but despite that the film is squarely a comedy. Chip and Dale play-off of each other with Chip being the straight ‘munk and Dale the more carefree. It’s admittedly odd to hear the two voiced by actors who aren’t being pitched way up to do the squeaky voice. That is canonically revealed to be an act from the old show and just a funny voice they did. Their interplay is fine and mostly amusing, but things slow way down whenever the plot has to involve Ellie. There it becomes a poor man’s cop show where little of value takes place. Working against is the performance of Lang as Ellie because she comes off as wooden and distant. Working with actors who aren’t physically present is a skill, and maybe that’s the reason for it. The script also isn’t very interested in making her into much of a character so that’s not helping matters. Aside from the pair, the movie relies quite heavily on references to generate laughs. This means the film is a case of diminishing returns from the start as most viewers will likely be charmed by the cameos at first, but come the second hour the novelty has largely worn off. The film is definitely intended for an adult audience that grew up on the Disney Afternoon, so if you loved Rescue Rangers there’s a bit of payoff towards the film’s climax, but this film is largely a riff on that show which might rub some the wrong way.

This is the type of film that wants you to pause it frequently to try and catch all of the easter eggs in the background.

The entertainment value derived from the humor and references can only take the film so far. Unfortunately, what doesn’t add a whole lot are the visual effects. The CG characters, like Dale, look fine. Dale’s model is not on par with Disney or Pixar feature films, but I suppose he looks no better or worse than the chipmunks from the Alvin and the Chipmunks films. The 2D characters, on the other hand, mostly look pretty unimpressive. There’s no attempt at shading them to make them plausible as 3D beings, but they’re also clearly not hand-drawn. For some characters, like Gadget oddly enough, the model is too obvious and the character ends up looking like a cel-shaded model from a PlayStation 2 game. I got some real Sly Cooper vibes from Gadget and I’m not sure why it is that her model suffered the most. Maybe it’s the hair? Either way, the 2D characters just don’t impress, but we are talking about a film with a streaming budget so it’s not surprising to see. I am left to wonder if the film would be appreciably better with more money attached to it. The other aspect of the film’s production that might rub some the wrong way is the inconsistent casting choices. Tress MacNeille was allowed to reprise her role as Gadget, but few others were granted the same opportunity. Jim Cummings is in this film voicing some cameos, but for some reason was recast as Monterey Jack. Zipper was also recast to Dennis Haysbert basically for a gag, but I can’t say that bothered me too much since it fit with the choice for Chip and Dale. And I suppose there are folks out there who would have preferred them to have their chipmunk voices and I don’t know if I’m one of them. I definitely would have been fine with that approach, but I didn’t hate Mulaney and Samberg in the roles and I actually adjusted to them much easier than I expected.

The film has its moments when it comes to the brand of humor it’s going for, but mostly I found myself wishing it had a bigger budget so that it would look better than it does.

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is the sort of vapid, of the moment, streaming movie designed to be digested, meme’d for a weekend, and then mostly forgotten. It doesn’t really do anything unexpected and is mostly smart to keep the running time under 2 hours and to lean heavily into nostalgia-laden jokes and cameos. How much you’re amused by the cameos and references will influence how entertained by the film you are. I would even go so far as to say, for adult viewers, you need to be familiar with the era the original Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers aired during to get much out of this. For kids, that’s probably not necessary if my own children are a reasonable barometer as they seemed to like the film quite a bit. As for me, the film was fine. It was no better or worse than I expected, though actually if I’m being fair it was better than I initially expected when I heard a Rescue Rangers movie was in development. I definitely do not want or need a sequel or reboot following this, nor do I really want to see other Disney Afternoon properties get the same treatment (unless it’s with a much bigger budget). If you go into it wanting a poor man’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit? that’s more interested in meme culture than celebrating classic era animation then you’ll likely not regret the hour and a half spent. If you’re expecting something more sincere or on the same technical level as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? then prepare to be disappointed.

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