Intro:
Hello
there my fellow Cybertronians and True Believers, we’re back with another Marvel
review, and today we review the 2nd of the Marvel Universe
Masterworks series – Sentinel.
Marvel
fans, especially fans of the X-Men will recognize the Sentinels as formidable
adversaries for the mutant heroes and mutant communities in general. Created by
one Bolivar Trask, the Sentinels are technologically-advanced mutant hunting
robots that have a wide-variety of abilities, and are led by a huge “mother
sentinel” called Master Mold.
The
Sentinels are almost exclusively featured in all X-Men related media, with the
most recent of these being the X-Men: Days of Future Past.
There
are two variants of the Sentinel, i.e. classic colors (as per commonly depicted
in the 1990s X-Men animated series), and of course, the variant that we are
reviewing right now – the blue-grey variant.
I
have to admit, I kind of wished that they could’ve released a figure of the
Master Mold instead, but I guess it’s okay. To make any diorama more realistic,
it makes a lot of sense to at least have two or three of these Sentinels, as
they are commonly depicted as such in most media.
Anyways,
let’s not waste any time and let’s get on with the review.
Package:
The
Sentinel is similarly packaged as Galactus.
The artworks are
fantastic as well. On the inside of the front flap, it depicts one of their
battles against the X-Men, i.e. Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Wolverine and
Cyclops (he is off-screen, but you can still see his Optic Blast).
The back of the
box depicts yet another battle scene with the X-Men, also involving the same
X-Men characters.
Just
like Galactus, Sentinel is HUGE, and as a bonus, he is packed along with
Wolverine in his Jim Lee outfit.
Wolverine:
Well,
apparently we are presented with yet another version of Wolverine, and this
time, in his Jim Lee-created outfit.
I
have to admit, various variants of the character have been released so far, way
too many times, and if you’ve been reading other reviews as well, there have
been a lot of complaints about Wolverine being a package companion to the
Sentinel.
However,
I, for one don’t have much complaints because, 1) I like this outfit the best;
and 2) I don’t have this Wolverine variant.
Articulation-wise:
the head is on ball-joint; the shoulders are on universal joints; the elbows
bend; the wrists rotate; there is an abs-crunch; universally-jointed hips; the
knees bend and the ankle rotate.
 |
| Other Wolverines in NPC's Collections |
Ol’
Canuckle Head do not have any waist articulation, and apart from that, I see no
problem with this figure.
Sentinel:
Just
like Galactus, this Sentinel is a HUGE figure! If you already have the Galactus
figure, you’d probably noticed that a lot of the Sentinel’s parts have been
reused from Galactus, such as the basic torso, the arms, hands and upper legs.
As
such, the articulations of these two figures are almost a duplicate of one another.
In fact, at some point, I kind of feel that most of the articulations works
better on Sentinel than on Galactus! For example, the hip joints tend to work
better here, mainly because of the lack of the “skirt”.
 |
| Sentinel & Galactus |
As
big as Sentinel is, he’s still a little bit shorter than Galactus, mostly due
to the over-sized horns on top of Galactus’s head.
Sentinel’s
head sculpt is good – kind of like some scary robotic look and is very synonymous
with the robot. No wonder most mutants are terrified of the Sentinels.
The
shoulder pads are made from soft rubber. Great details there, and apart from
the “001 14” numbering on the pads, which probably the numbering of this
particular Sentinel, there are a whole lot of claw marks all over it. And I guess
you could probably thank ol’ Canuckle Head for it.
 |
| Great details... |
The
legs of Sentinel kind of remind me of Rockman a.k.a. Mega Man. Go Google it if
you don’t believe me.
 |
| Sentinel & Wolverine |
The
whole figure is hefty and feels very, very solid.
 |
| Sentinel vs X-Men (Marvel Girl, Professor X, Longshot, Rogue, Psylocke, Gambit, Beast, Wolverine, Angel, Colossus & Cyclops) |
You
can have a lot of fun with the Sentinel, especially if you have the rest of the
X-Men with you and you might be able to recreate some scenes from the comics,
or at least the exact same scene from the back of the box.
Gimmicks:
Just
like Galactus before him, Sentinel comes with light and sound gimmicks as well.
This is operated by a well-concealed button on his chest, covered by his vest,
powered by three AAA batteries.
There
are basically 18 different recordings available, each are activated by the
button on his chest, and with it, the light piping on his eyes and helmet would
glow red. The recordings are as follows:
1)
Halt, Mutant!
2)
Sentinel power core breached.
3)
Purge power core.
4)
Beta Level mutant detected. (back-dropped
by some engine sound effect, followed by blast off.)
5)
System meltdown
6)
Power core failure in 5… 4… 3…
2… 1…
7)
Ejecting power core (followed
by sound effects).
8)
X-Men must be detained.
9)
Mutant life form detected.
10) Halt!
11) (Scanning sound effects) Fugitive mutant detected.
12) Destroy. (followed by blasting sound effects)
13) Stop!
14) Sentinel under attack!
15) (Laser shooting sound effects)
16) Halt, fugitive mutant! (followed by shooting sound effects)
17) System breached.
18) Alpha Level mutant detected.
Summary:
The
Sentinel would be a very good addition to your Marvel Universe collection, even
more so if you’re fans of the X-Men. Of course, at the end of the day, it’s really
depending on which variant of the character that you like better. But either
way, he’s still that damn good.
Highly
Recommended.
Final
verdict, 9.5/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment