From this summer's surprise foreign-film darling, Edith et le Douroucouli, comes the star himself!
Peter Parker enfile un costume améliorée pour
affronter de nouveaux défis et de nouveaux ennemis.
Sadly, I don't know enough French (or anyone who does and would be willing to translate for me) to keep this joke running for the length of the entire review. But you've got to admit, "Edith & the Night Monkey" does sound like it would be some kind of weird genre fiction creation, doesn't it? Like Amelie, except instead of unbearable tweeness, she combats ennui with the help of a mysterious fuzzy creature who only appears when the sun has gone down. And then we find out the Night Monkey used to belong to Edith's grumpy old landlady when she was just a girl, but she outgrew the sense of wonder required to interact with it, and now Edith has to reunite them. Throw in some shots of the Eiffel Tower and a little CGI moster that will catch the attention of English-speaking audiences, and you've got your Best Foreign Language Oscar all wrapped up!
This is the MCU take on Spider-Man's black costume,
and it works much better than previous efforts. (I say, as though anyone other than Sam Raimi has attempted it.) Since Sony already has a standalone Venom film that proved you don't need Spidey to explain the symbiote, they were free to just drop Pete into some black clothes without needing an explanation other than "secret identity" and without having to find an excuse to put a big white spider on the chest. This is a true stealth suit, something you could see any SHIELD operative wearing. As long as they were on a cat burglar mission, anyway. The outfit has sculpted straps and seams, plus a little bit of simple body armor.
The costume keeps the "Spider-Man" feeling by giving him a full
face mask with a pair of silver-lensed goggles that simulate the look of his usual mask. In the movie, the goggles can flip up to reveal his normal eyes; you may recall that when Mattel was presented with a similar situation, they made two variants; Hasbro has just given us alternate heads, like a sensible company would do.
Night Monkey moves at the ankles, knees, thighs, hips, waist, abdomen, wrists, elbows, biceps, shoulders, pecs, neck, and head. That's right, there are butterfly hinges in the chest, giving him the best poseability possible. Mine were a little stiff, but they're moving now. The figure doesn't include any accessories, just an alternate pair of thwip hands.
However, because the toy is so small and the extras are so sparse,
he gets to come with a gigantic piece of this series' Build-A-Figure: Molten Man's left arm. Normally an arm wouldn't be that big of a piece, but this is a weird BAF, so the arm is bigger and heavier than the figure it's included with.
I wasn't too sure about The Night Monkey, only getting him because of the BAF part. But between the time I ordered him and the time the figures shipped, Far From Home opened, and the Stealth Suit was more than just a silly gimmick. It was something cool. So I'm glad to have him.
-- 08/06/19
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