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Terminator 2 Sarah Connor and T-1000 as Sarah
Connor
Hot Toys
"The
following is a guest review. The review
and photos do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Michael Crawford
or Michael's Review of the Week, and are the opinion and work of the
guest author."
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Jeff is checking out some of
the latest Terminator goodies from Hot Toys - take it away, Jeff!
This is a 2 for the price of 1 review, as Michael has already focussed
on the standard Sarah Connor (SC) figure HERE I figured I would
just touch on her, whilst making a comparative observations between the
two sets.
The T1000 in SC disguise was originally to be a convention only release
available at this years SDCC, but due to demand (I think that extra
T1000 doughnut head was the thing that made her irresistible to many)
she ended up on general sale through the Sideshow
site and in fact only sold out recently. The Regular version
is still available through them and both had an asking price of
$149.99. As you will see by reading Michael’s review you got pretty
much all you needed in that set for ‘most’ of the iconic looks that SC
sported in T2, but a few key ingredients were missing. And so it gave
HT a chance to release a second version. Based on the scenes at the end
of the movie when SC is pretty beat up and the T1000 is steered to the
edge of the molten metal in the industrial foundry.
In an attempt to lure the young John Connor out of hiding he disguises
himself as John’s mother and beckons him out, but when John is
confronted by two versions of his mother he knows something isn’t quite
right!
Most fans of the movie or indeed general geeks will be aware that the
scenes featuring two Sarah Connors didn’t use any blue screen work to
place her in two places at once.
How?
Well, Linda Hamilton has an identical twin sister Leslie, and she was
used as a double for many scenes, including this one. However, as we
all know, even when twins are identical there are a few points that
usually differ (to people who know them anyway). And it has been
spotted by some eagle-eyed fans that because of Linda’s punishing
fitness regime when filming T2 she was leaner in the face and her upper
arms had more definition. The reason for Hamilton’s physical
transformation was to show how Sarah had been forced to adapt to her
surroundings and prepare for the future, a future she wants to prevent
from ever happening, if that is even possible.
The character of Sarah Connor is truly put through the mill over the
span of the first two movies. We see her progression from naive young
women without a care in the world, through to the near psychotic
creature that her destiny forces her to become. Driven to edge of
sanity by a world that simply can’t believe in a scenario she knows to
be true. But at what point does the human mind give up, succumb to the
medication and therapy and just accept what it’s being told?
When does the brain accept that something it remembers from its past
might not have ever actually happened, accept the possibility that
those memories might be the product of a psychotic episode?
Well, luckily in the case of Sarah Connor, never!
She keeps the faith, and when preparation meets opportunity (luck
doesn’t come into it) she is ready to act, and with the help of a
modified Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, the very machine that devastated
her life in the first place, she gets a chance to even the score… and
she is not found lacking!
But back to the figures, it goes without saying that your T2 display
would look a little lacking without at least one representation of
Sarah, lets face it, she’s the mother of the resistance, so the
question is, which will it be?
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Packaging - ***
The T2 line of packaging continues to leave me just a little cold.
There’s nothing actually wrong with these boxes, I just find them a
little uninspiring. I have no doubt that Hot Toys decided that using
photographic stills from the movie was going to prove far too costly,
but I still find the monochrome packaging a bit flat and lifeless. And
although the metallic silver stock that the boxes are made from is
attractive, it does mean that the definition of the black and white
images printed onto it loses much of its contrast.
Just like with the T800
we get a slip over sleeve but with a closed top, inside this is a
second box with a large window on the front showing the figure
alongside the accessories. Open this inner box and you will find the
figures are held by the usual vac-formed tray. Sadly my T1000/SC had
quite a ding to one corner of the box when in transit, but the contents
were all absolutely unharmed, so whatever one thinks of the graphic
design, the physical construction does its job well.
Sculpting - Regular ***1/4, T1000
***1/2
Linda Hamilton… and indeed Leslie Hamilton have quite striking faces,
not what one would call ‘classically’ beautiful but still very
attractive. The regular head has a more stoic; determined expression
while the T1000 version is slightly more relaxed, perhaps even
quizzical. As far as sculpting goes then the regular face was my
favourite of the two when fresh from the box, but having lived with
them the T1000 has taken the lead. Both of these are the work of Yuli,
a young lady that continues her incredible track record with Hot Toys,
and even though these aren’t my absolute favourite sculpts from her,
they are still wonderful work, and the strong portraiture is
unmistakably a Hamilton twin from any angle!
Where as the regular sculpt pretty much only fits angry determined
Sarah (OK, I know she spent 87.6% of the movie angry and determined, so
that’s no real bad thing), but the T1000 version fits a lot more poses
and seems to manage to encompass a broader range of emotions, I also
find that the rooted hair helps to soften the shape of the face
slightly, it can even be tied back to approximate the look when wearing
the hat, which incidentally fits this head better than the one it was
intended for. I am also very impressed by the level of detail achieved
on the partially open mouth, the teeth are visible through the gap but
the observations not only in sculpting them with a slight overbite, but
also in the painting which is so perfectly executed it had me puzzled
as to how they had done it so very well. But after close, and I mean
very close inspection I realised the teeth had been inserted inside the
head, giving the detailing much more clarity and greater depth. Only a
small detail, but when viewed up close it is bloody impressive!
And on the regular head, although I was more impressed by the rooted
hair over the sculpted on this occasion, I was still pleased to see a
small bit of articulation where the ponytail joins the head. It can be
tilted slightly from side to side, and as there is some great
articulation in the neck, it means that when tilting the head to one
side you can gently move the hair to mimic gravity making it fall in
the right direction, a small detail, but a nice one.
Both also come with a selection of hands in various positions to
interact with the accessories. I will go over the T1000 head in more
depth in the accessories section.
Paint
- Regular ***1/4, T1000 ***3/4
For the last few Hot Toys figures I have reviewed I kind of got used to
just giving pretty much all of them a full score for paint, and
deservedly so. But no full score here… why?
Well there is nothing at all really wrong, I just feel that having seen
such a strong run of impressive figures, then these didn’t give me that
WOW factor I usually get. I hope I’m not getting too hard on this
category because it really is close to perfection. The eyes have that
usual JC Hong glint in them; the eyebrows are gently feathered, even
remembering the slight scar/gap in the left one.
The only thing separating them is that the T1000 has slightly more
subtle and detailed job. The eyebrows are softer; the eyes are slightly
lighter in the iris area while the pupils are slightly less dilated.
The lips have a slightly richer tone, but again the edges have a more
subtle edge. And of course there are the visible teeth. Although I
liked the overall job done on the Comedian
figure, looking back the teeth might have been even better if
they had been handled more like Sarah’s here, as the effect is very
convincing.
Lastly she also has the scratches applied to the face, That’s pretty
much it as far as the paint job goes, both are impressive, but the
T1000 wins by a slightly better painted nose!
I shall also cover the doughnut head T1000 paint apps in the
accessories section.
Articulation
- ***
The Hot Toys female base
figures look good and the articulation is on the whole impressive, but
sadly those rubber coated arms utilised here, end up making her
difficult to pose convincingly with either the rifle or shotguns. So
for me its going to be a cigarette holding pose with the assault rifle
nonchalantly hung at her side for the regular version, fully kitted-up
in shades and hat. While the T1000 version will be on the morphed
flooring base, with the bullet wounds, unarmed.
I’m still rather tempted to go for Sarah as she appeared in this end
scene with the shotgun (sans shells on top of course) but I feel I
really need to use that cool base!
There’s a good low-down of the classic female TT body HERE, but be aware that
that review from Brandon covers the standard female TT, Sarah here has
the rubber coated arms, so the articulation is hampered somewhat. It is
however worthy of note that Yulli sculpted these particular arms to
suit the character specifically, even including the scar at the top of
the left arm… every cloud has a silver lining!
Outfit
- ***3/4
These two figures have exactly the same outfit apart from the hat that
comes with the regular version, consisting of combat boots, BDU cargo
pants, a webbing belt, skin tight singlet and a multi pocketed tactical
vest.
The boots are sculpted and are a nice enough job but being sculpted of
rigid material we lose virtually all ankle articulation. The pants,
like every other part of her ensemble are black, with working pockets
throughout (I did find both the left side, rear pockets had raised
flaps on mine, not sure if that is intentional or a bizarre
coincidence!). The wide webbing belt fits through the belt loops, but
beware as you will have to slide one side out to fit the knife sheath,
always a fiddly job, and I have to admit it’s a job I would have liked
to have seen done at the factory. It’s all doable of course… but can
get a little frustrating at times. The singlet is ultra skin-tight, it
leaves the arms and neck area bare, exposing a rather elegant clavicle
and the tell tale scar on her upper left arm. Over this she is fitted
with the tactical vest, this has some great details and is fabricated
beautifully. It fastens up the front with plastic buckles, while the
shoulder panels are on adjustable sliding straps and the back has laced
up areas at either side. All four of the side-mounted pouches can open
for storage and have Velcro tabs. It’s easily the most impressive part
of the outfit, but to be fair as an approximation of what was seen on
screen then all the contingent parts work well, and for me I fail to
see how at this present time anyone could improve on it. It would have
been cool to get a hat with the T1000 version, but I guess each release
needs at least a few unique items to keep them more desirable.
The funny thing is that the hat is a better fit on the T1000 version,
but doesn’t look 100% convincing on either of them. I have to take
slight issue with Mike’s verdict here as I still maintain the Aldo
Raine hat looked pretty good when futzed, as does this one, but I found
this one took a whole lot more futzing and it was tricky getting the
peak to look right, especially when worn on the regular version which
is a very tight fit.
So for me this outfit was almost as good as it gets. Sure I’ve seen
more complex outfits from Hot Toys, but this is a solid representation
of what we saw SC wear in the movie. And had the hat been a slightly
better fit and construction, and had the boots had a little more
flexibility then she’d have got a full score.
Accessories
- ****
These two figures share a good number of the same accessories, but
differ on some key elements, so in a nutshell we get-
Regular SC-
- Sunglasses (these are only 1/6th Matsuda’s… Yeah baby!)
- Extra hair fringe for cap (yes fringe… a bang is a loud noise!!!)
- Peaked cap (cloth construction)
- Cigarette
- Assault rifle with silencer
- Shotgun with folding stock (shells separate)
- Pistol
- Combat knife with leather sheath
- 4 extra hands
- Spare wrist pegs
- Classic figure stand
T1000 SC-
- Cigarette
- An additional T-1000 bullet damaged doughnut head
- Environment base (mimicking industrial flooring that the T1000 morphs
to)
- Shotgun with folding stock (shells already attached)
- Pistol
- Combat knife with leather sheath
- Liquid metal bullet holes with attachable magnets
- Four extra hands
- Spare wrist pegs
I have to admit the regular figure has many of the key items that would
make me come down on her side if only having one of them was the issue.
One of my favourite accessories are the tiny Matsuda 2809 sunglasses,
I have to admit to being something of a fashion victim back in the
80’s, and I often coveted many pairs of Matsuda specs, but
like many others I made do with Ray Bans.
If you could even find a pair of 2809’s for under $800 today you would
consider yourself lucky (though you could easily spend over $1500 for a
mint pair with the case). So even if the only option now is to own a
1/6th pair, it still gives me a slight kick! And it certainly helps
that they fit the figures so well and look so well scaled. Of course
she also gets the peaked cap, but even with it’s issues it is still an
essential part of the whole look for when she goes off on her own to
take out Miles Dyson. Another essential part of her kit for those key
scenes is the assault riffle, and as we have come to expect this is a
beautifully put together gun. The CAR-15 (with collapsible stock) is of
course something of a modern
classic and all the details here are well observed, we get an
adjustable scope, a removable magazine, an adjustable carry strap plus
a swappable flare suppressor and silencer.
Oh, and of course we get the classic black figure stand, complete with
movie logo and character name, but once again mine didn’t even make it
out of the box.
As far as the ‘exclusive items’ for the regular version goes, that’s
it, now we are onto the shared elements.
We get the hands, four of them in a selection of poses with two spare
wrist pegs (mine swapped over fine though). Then we get the knife and
scabbard, you need to undo the belt buckle and un-slot the webbing belt
to fit the scabbard. It’s an easy enough job and only took me about 5
minutes per figure, but that’s a full 10 minutes I would have rather
were carried out in the Hot Toys factory, rather than by my sausage
fingered hands.
Next up is the rather cute cigarette… I say cute because in these
increasingly fascistic times it’s rather nice to see the fact that
cigarettes ever actually existed acknowledged quite frankly. Now don’t
get me wrong, I’m not saying we should all spark up and take a deep
satisfying drag (I am a non-smoker), but denial of the past in any form
is a baby step to fascism. So here we have a small but all important
detail of the character well represented. These ladies also share the
automatic pistol. It has a removable magazine, a sliding cocking
mechanism and also a cockable hammer.
Next up is the pump action shotgun. I’m glad to report the pump action
does actually have a pump action, and not only that it has a fold out
stock and removable shells from the slide–in cartridge holder on top of
the stock.
Now we have the exclusive items for the T1000 version, and they are
sweet! The standout item, and the one that initially had people
snapping this figure up is the extra T1000 doughnut head. It’s another
cracking sculpt of Robert Patrick to add to the two cool portraits we
got with the regular T1000 figure. Again, like the two in the regular
release the portrait is by Jeon Young Tae, quite where Hot Toys keeps
finding all this amazing talent is a constant source of wonder to me,
but find it they do. So here we have the classic doughnut headed
version, it’s been done by everyone from McFarlane and Minimates
through to Sideshow at 1/2
scale, but once again, even at the diminutive 1/6th scale,
the new Hot Toys version takes the lead in terms of accuracy of sculpt
(and indeed paint apps). This a great accessory, that ironically has no
‘useable’ impact if you were to only own this figure, it is fully
intended to be used with the T1000 figure, the neck post on the fem
base body doesn’t even fit this head. The portrait is just beautifully
rendered and the paint compliments this fantastically. The ‘bullet
wound’ passes straight through the head but the evenness of the mercury
like surface is smooth and even throughout, showing the ripples that
occur as it starts to repair itself. And the paint app where the
transition between flesh and metal occurs is deftly handled as always.
I actually prefer this head to the ‘split’ version we get with the
regular T1000 by quite a big degree.
She also comes with 2 ‘liquid metal’ bullet holes that magnetically
attach to the body at various points on the chest and abdomen, these
work well in approximating the look of the shiny wounds as seen in the
movie, with their rippled radiating surface. Her last exclusive
accessory is a section of industrial flooring that the T1000 (while
disguised as Sarah) starts to morph into. It would seem in the movie
that constantly getting shot, frozen solid and blown apart does
eventually take its toll on the ability to shape shift on this
particular Cyberdyne model. And of course this slip up helps the young
John realise which is which between his mother and the impostor.
This is a pretty cool item and the sculpting of the flooring graduating
up the boot is handled very well, we also get 4 triangular sections
that clip around the edges, making an even larger floor section to give
even better stability when displayed, especially in ‘bullet time’ poses
where you mimic him/her leaning back being shot.
So that’s it, both have a great array of goodies, but to get the
ultimate SC you do kind of need both… and to get the ultimate T1000 you
need her as well. However there are still plenty of bits being parted
out on eBay, but that T1000 head is already going for anything north of
$100
on its own!
Value
- Regular ***3/4, T1000 ver ***1/2
Of course if basing the score on the prices in the aftermarket, one
would have to say the T1000 version was a bargain for $150, but I’m
not, I’m looking at it based on the contents of the box. As such you
shouldn’t have too much of a problem picking up the regular version for
between $130 to £150, but the T1000 version is now mostly upwards of
$170 (but if you act fast and use the link below to the Fan Boy
collectibles site you may score one for the RRP).
Both have a good selection of accessories, with the regular having the
slightly more iconic pieces, but the T1000 doughnut head accessory
supplied with the exclusive is such a nice sculpt it will end up
swaying a lot of people, and seeing the extortionate price it demands
on its own as a parted out item, then it makes a lot of sense to just
get the full set while you can.
Fun
Factor - Regular ***, T1000 ***1/2
As a stand alone figure Sarah might look just a little lonesome on the
shelf, but when she’s backed up with the T800 she comes into her own.
As far as actual fun goes, then as I said above you’ll find yourself
having to tease some of the best poses out of her by working with the
limitations of her articulation. But if you persevere you’ll find there
are plenty in there waiting to be discovered.
I have to admit I did have a little more fun playing with the T1000
version. The hair can be arranged into anything from ‘office temp’ to
‘crazy mad demon woman’ and the inclusion of the environment base meant
I had ball doing some crazy ‘limbo’ poses.
It is also worth mentioning, that even if your daddy is a Greek
shipping magnet, and you think nothing of splashing $100+ on an action
figure, THIS IS NOT A TOY, well, not a kids toy anyway.
If you want something for the sandbox go and buy Barbie, dress her in
some BDU’s and give her an assault rifle… I bet Ken will look at her in
a whole new light.
Overall-
***3/4
For me the SC head sculpt with rooted hair we get with the T1000
version is just a little nicer, my wife however disagrees with me,
proving this might be a tough call for many people to decide on a
favourite. I also find that no photos I’ve seen to date do either of
these sculpts total justice, as in hand, turned this way and that in
differing light conditions they both come alive in ways that
still photos just can’t convey.
However
on this occasion Yulli hasn’t 100% captured the perfect likeness of
Linda Hamilton in either of them. They are still however fantastic
portraits and are unmistakably her (or her sister), and the work
carried out is to my eye the best representation we have had of the
character to date. It does make me realise that we really really need a
figure of her son John to complete the line up as soon as possible,
without him there is something very much lacking in the series!
So,
to choose a favourite, the problem is that I love the shades, rifle and
hat that come with the regular version, but I prefer the exclusive
Sarah head sculpt and the T1000 accessory head sculpt is an awesome
piece of work, no two ways about it.
So
they end up level pegging in my books, and it would be a tough Sophie’s
choice to decide on which one to keep if I could have only one.
However, I guess if push came to shove then I’d go for the exclusive
T1000 version (but I’d have to pick up the hat and Matsuda's from eBay
to make her feel complete).
Where to buy
Both were availale from Sideshow
for the RRP of $149.99, but now they only have the regular left in
stock.
Urban
Collector has the regular for $134.99. And Fan
Boy Collectibles has the regular for $134.99 and …
wait for it, wait for it… the exclusive
T1000 version ‘in stock’ for $149.99 (go, go, go, go). And Ozzie
goods has the regular version for $210 (Aus) or you can prowl
eBay where prices are quite frankly all over the place!
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This product was provided free for the review by the manufacturer.
Photos and text by Jeff Parker.
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