Tuesday 14 March 2017

Minifigures - Storm (Film Version)

As a character introduced some forty years ago Storm's had a chequered career; ups have included being a black female superhero of considerable standing and minimal stereotyping and long stints as X-Men leader (including some of the finest stories of the eighties); against that there have been some disappointing moments such as a random regression to a child which went on far too long, the indignity of getting dropped down to X-Treme X-Men along with all the other unfashionable Chris Claremont characters and being pensioned off to marry the Black Panther on the grounds that she was African. She's also not had the best time in the films either, where she was initially played by Halle Berry. Despite Berry's standing being (inexplicably) high at the time and for a few years afterwards she never really did much and is mainly remembered for spouting one of the outright worst lines in cinema history courtesy of Joss Whedon. For X-Men - Apocalypse, which I have yet to see (my watchlist is a complicated and masochistic affair) theere is a kernel of hope, however, with the character recast and played by the young Alexandra Shipp, who couldn't really be any worse than poor old Halle.


Apocalypse again received a Lego blackout so as not to dilute the dollars Disney were reaping from Civil War sets but again customisers and bootleggers came to the rescue and have put out most of the main cast. Storm had enjoyed an official Minifigure previously in a retro-themed 2014 set that's largely faithful to the seventies look but the updated version is entirely unofficial. But it looks great, based on the excellent look of the Shipp version - but without the teenage thing as all Minifigures generally look roughly the same age. It's always a good sign when Storm has a mohawk anyway and it's nicely rendered here even if the rest of the costume is nothing like the fantastic eighties New Wave look Ororo had.


It's not uninteresting either, well-rendered in black with silver highlights, it just fits into the whole problem with the Fox X-Men series of most of the costumes being a bit similar without anyone having the guts to go for the full-on uniforms seen early in the title's life or under Grant Morrison. The permanent snarl is also perhaps a bit much but sadly there are very few black female characters with Minifigures to do a headswap with. Overall though it's an interesting figure for the visual variety of the punky head on a female character compared to all the traditional shoulder-length styles and a well-rendered version of the live action look.

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