I don't expect much from the costumes, but their classic costumes are so simple, that Ii can't see them messing that up. Having said that, I'm proud to say that I own zero MCU HT figures. I'm kind of glad too. The designs and costumes just don't do it for me.
I don't have any as of now either. Well, only the Endgame IM, but that's because he's the closest I'll get to a Modular. I try to be selective, but sometimes I break down because I just "need" to represent the character and close the chapter. The MCU costumes are pretty ugly these days, which makes me worried about the X-Men, but I worry about the casting more. Honestly, I'm scared about the prospect of X-HTs. It's a rabbit hole you can easily fall into and it goes deep. X-Men is a weird property for me so I'm walking on eggshells everytime. I love the concept and many of the stories if I take them in isolation, but as the years have gone by I've grown to dislike the characters and "message" (whatever that message is at this point beyond "it's okay to blow up schools yaaaaas mugga slaaaaaay"). At the same time I can easily see myself just buying things out of sort of nostalgia and coolness.
Generally I'm getting tired of trying to keep up with it all. Figures, Omnibuses/Absolutes, etc. I've drawn up a list and I'm trying to stick to it. So far it's going good, but I still have so many stuff I need to play catchup with. Mostly it's the grind of it all. There are stuff I'm absolutely looking forward to, but most of my Cape buys are a case of just getting it to have it. There's no real attachment, it's my OCD wanting to close the chapter otherwise I won't be able to forget it. But it's hard to keep track of it all. Mostly because if you start with one, then where does it end? Fine, you've got your favourite X-Men in 1/6th. You've spent ~2K on them. Then what? Dou you get their multiple costumes? Do you get the Prime 1 Statues? The XM ones? Where does it end? I can make room and say "you know what, I like Doom and X, Y, Z enough to buy the statues as well" and have a select few pieces. I want to one day have the Sith in 1/6th and get those Sideshow Mythos statues. I genuinely love Tron enough for some reason to want to build a dedicated shelf to it at some point. But if I go about collecting everything about anything, I'll never finish. Even in a hypothetical scenario where I have infinite money and space. Between the character, their comics and collected editions, the figures, the statues and the scales, you'd need a room for every single one of them. It's too much to deal with.
I PO'd the Mezco F4 set, but who knows, by the time it comes out, I might cancel it. I wish they were wearing the blue and white uniforms instead, because those are my favorite costumes. I'm also afraid that I'll buy the current set and that they'll re release it with the blue and white costumes.
Personally I prefer the White & Black look. The classic ones just look too simple to me. I'll probably skip it, but the fact that you can get it with installments on ToysWonderland tempts me. I don't know, I have 2 figures on PO from Sideshow that are supposed to ship on Q1-Q2 of 2022. Then I've got a Tommy Shelby on PO from Big Chief, and I'm going to PO Patrick Bateman. And that's without new things that get announced that might be on my list. If I order from TW, it'll cost me around 500 euros and that's just too much for something I'm not that interested in. It's basically two HTs. I'll probably only get their Doom(s) and wait for the MCU HT FF. I'm just hoping the casting is good...
For starters he's a literal Balkan Dictator. For sympathy points Kirby made him a gypsy who rebels against the evil baron. It's essentially a story about how us Euros are all evil and gypsies are misunderstood heroes. They do it constantly. Doom, Wanda & Pietro, Magneto, and so on. It'd be like making a Black Panther flick where the Wakandans are evil and the hero is a white guy who overthrows the evil monarchy and then goes on to become their king. At the same time, Kirby's Doom was genuinely an evil and sadistic villain, who had more in line with the average Nazi pulp villain than some enlightened monarch. But people liked his schict, and he started getting more morally grey. The point is, instead of making it a simple class issue where the lowly peasant rises to be king after getting rid of the corrupt monarchy, Kirby added an unneeded racial element, so now you have half the writers writing him as a mixture of Hannibal Lecter, Stalin and every other evil Nazi from the past century, and the other half writing him as some misunderstood guy with a tragic backstory. The thing is, for six decades now the man's been drawn as a Euro (ranging from Western to Southern to Eastern) and his name is Victor Von Doom, even though that's an amalgam of two languages, German & English, and the country's supposed to be in the Balkans. And he's a gypsy so he'd never have that name. Nothing makes any sense.
The MCU has three choices. One, find one of the three actors who have some gypsy ancestry (and all that I could find on the 'net are basically average Slavs that had a gypsy grandma) and lean on some ******** minority allegory. Two, make him a Sokovian who tries to rebuild his country and becomes a Dictator and renames it Latveria, thus angering the twitter crowd. Three, go the Ultimate route and make him a EuroNoble who's a descendant of Dracula and again, anger the twitter crowd, but also make him the token evil white guy who tries to colonise Wakanda. I don't mind him being a villain, I just want to see him do cool stuff and be cast properly.
Personally I've always liked him because he was essentially a hammy villain who was both a mad scientist, AND an evil wizard, AND a philosopher warrior king, AND he had a cool look to boot. Over the years he developed a pretty interesting personality by capeshit standards, and he has history with many of my other favourite characters. He was Iron Man, Batman, Doctor Strange, Lex Luthor and Darkseid thrown into a blender. The backstory was always contrived and I mostly enjoyed his antics. If they politicise him too much, then it could turn out to be a pretty big mistake. Americans romanticise gypsies too much without having a clue about what they're like.
The Balkans are a very delicate issue, considering every country hates every other country around these parts. Then you add class and racial issues and it just becomes a huge mess. Personally, I'd just go the Ultimate route and make him a disgraced noble with ancestry from Dracula and then just play it straight. If I wanted to tie it with the MCU, I'd make it so that he uses the Sokovian incident as a way to anex the land, which was alluded to in TF&WS from Zemo, saying that it's being broken up. There's no need to tackle such sensitive issues, just give us a technowizard in a cool mask.
But really, the most likely scenario is that they'll make him a German, cast someone like Cristoph Waltz, and pit him against Wakanda for extra twitter points for the colonization allegory, while racebending the F4 because they're the good guys. Even if they're adamant about making him a gypsy, I'd swallow it if they cast a Latino like Pedro Pascal or something and call it a day. **** it, I'll even take Dev Patel, the only Indian guy in Hollywood. But if I see Gus Fring governing the Balkans as a guy named Victor Von Doom, I'm burning up my collection and never touching anything pop culture related again.
As for my personal fancast, I'd be fine with lots of people, really. ATM, I'm rooting for Javier Bardem, but there's tons of others.
Fassbender, Dan Stevens, Viggo, Adam Driver, Rami Malek, Nikolaj, Cillian Murphy, Luke Evans, Rufus Sewell, and the list goes on.
on the chest. I'm tired of seeing him in jeans and a vest.
