The Lost World Series 1: Cyclops Velociraptor

Year of release: 1997

Accessories:

-One piece of capture gear

Description: unlike most other TLW dinosaurs, this dinosaur stands in a very active pose, with its legs in a walking mode, left arm outstretched and right arm held back, its head raised upwards and its mouth opened, and the end of its tail bent to the left. The animal takes an attack posture and looks ready to jump on an adversary with an agitated overall look. It has seemingly every right to be agitated since its body shows numerous signs of near misses with larger carnivores: it has scratches and scars all over his body, some small and hardly noticeable, others large and plain in sight. The largest scars look like claw marks and can be found on its back, its tail and its upper left leg. Other noteworthy signs of abuse are the end of the tail, which isn’t just bent, but looks more like the bone has been broken and caused a deformity, as well as the left eye, which is all white and undoubtedly doesn’t work anymore, hence the nickname ‘Cyclops’ attached to this figure. Additionally, this figure has rather large feet to keep it from falling over (though it often does so regardless). Its sickle like claws are a bit small and the toe they’re on is stuck way too much towards the back of the foot.

The animal has a very simple attack action which has little to do with its attack posture. When the tail is moved from side to side, the head swings along (as well as the other way around) as if the animal is making snapping movements. The animal comes with a single long piece of capture gear (coloured silvery metallic grey, like most pieces of capture gear of this toy line), which can be attached to the right leg on one side and applied around the jaws on the other. Swinging the tail around should cause the animal trashing off its capture gear, though it’s harder to accomplish that than one might think at first.

The animal sports a somewhat unconventional paint job as far as Raptors go; it’s not brown or red like most other Raptor figures. This Raptor is mostly dark green and this colour can be found on its flanks, head, side of the tail, arms and legs. The underside of the creature (belly, throat, lower jaw, underside of the tail) is painted in a sort of yellow colour. Similarly, the upper parts of the animal (back, upper tail, neck, upper part of the head, as well as in a semi-circle around the upper legs) sport a beige paint job with stripes sticking out of it and running along its tail, flanks and neck. Its claws are painted white, its normal eye is brightly yellow with a red pupil, it has a large red tongue, and small white teeth. Additionally, a yellow JP Site B logo can be found on its right upper leg, marked with the number .13.

Analysis: though this figure has an interesting design, it has some major flaws. The paint job is very un-Raptor like and not overly appealing either. It’s feet are ridiculously large and it’s a shame its mouth can’t be closed. The attack action isn’t very impressive (though original enough) and looks a bit silly, but is quite fun to perform though. The dinosaur-breaks-free-of-restraint-gear action doesn’t work properly, since the head swinging usually lacks the force to actually trash of the restraint. Also, the gear is badly designed, since in real life a Raptor would get it off easily (it probably would use his arms to pull it off since they’re not restrained).

Still, the history one can think up for this animal is quite interesting. How did this poor Raptor get so beat up and utterly ravaged? Is it an older Raptor who’s had a lot of run-ins with larger predators and so far was lucky to got out of it alive? Or is it an under appreciated member of the Raptor pack which has been abused by its aggressive brethren because it has an odd colour? You decide for yourself what this battle scarred carnivore’s background is.

Playability: not too great. Though he has the usual moveable body parts, as well as a moveable head and tail, the pose this animal takes on stands in the way of good playability options (like with most of Hasbro’s JP toys). Also, it’s annoying its mouth can’t be closed. The single piece of restraint gear doesn’t add much options either.

Realism: this Raptor doesn’t look much like the Raptors seen in TLW, mostly because of the difference in colouring. None of the Raptors in the movie (or any of the movies) had this amount of scarring, though it would be interesting to see in a future JP movie and is certainly a credit to the creativity of the designers. It’s not entirely anatomically correct: like most Raptor toys as well as the Raptors seen in the movie it’s oversized compared to the humans, since real Velociraptors were about half this size. This Raptor also has incorrect feet and the inside of its mouth looks rather phoney.

Repaint: no. However, this dinosaur would be repainted several times: once for JP Dinosaurs 1 (including capture gear), a second time for JP Dinosaurs 2, and lastly, a third time for the JP III Wal-Mart exclusive Dino Tracker Adventure set.

Overall rating: 6/10. The scarring design is undoubtedly the great redeeming feature, since besides that this figure hasn’t got much to offer apart from a funky action move. This figure isn’t hard to find in the USA, but wasn’t released in other territories overseas where it is substantially harder to locate. Usually Ebay provides the solution, though at mixed costs. You decide for yourself whether it’s worth the effort.

Titans versus Gods: round two

Wrath of the Titans: **/*****, or 5/10

A classical education can be a real pain in the ass at times. Sure, it helps you get a basic understanding of most major European languages and supplies you with an ample fondness for the riches of Greek and Roman mythology, but it makes mindless action movies based on said myths that much harder to swallow. Case in point: Wrath of the Titans.

Two years ago, the remake of Ray Harryhausen's final masterpiece of stop motion photography Clash of the Titans unfortunately made some money. The reason for this is still unclear, since it wasn't a very good movie and remains one of the most textbook examples as to why 3-D post-conversion is a bad thing, considering the piss poor 3-D effects that made the hair of the protagonists seem to float around and the digital FX that much more obviously pixelized. At least it delivered a decent amount of man versus monster battle action, but that's where the enjoyment ended. At the end of the movie, the demi-god Perseus (Sam Worthington) finally defeated the terrifying Kraken and settled with his new lover Io (Gemma Arterton) for a peaceful life, declining an offer from his father Zeus (Liam Neeson) to join the gods at Mount Olympus. Seems like a fairly conclusive ending, but when there's a potential for more money to be made Hollywood usually overrules common sense and demands a sequel, regardless of whether people asked for one, or whether there's more stories to be told with the characters. Wrath of the Titans oh so cleverly avoids the latter obstacle by reducing the need for a plot to a minimum and focusing first and foremost on the creature action. Ignoring the orginal realm of Greek mythology completely, Hollywood now makes up a few more adventures for Perseus, taking elements from various other beloved classical myths and mixing them together in an awkward pastiche of largely action driven setpieces.

A decade has passed since the previous movie, and Perseus (still the overly butch Sam Worthington with his outrageously ill placed Aussie accent) now lives the simple life of a fisherman together with his son Helius (John Bell) after the death of his wife Io (Gemma Arterton undoubtedly did the right thing by not returning, though it makes the obnoxiously obligatory romance with Andromeda in this movie ever so convoluted). Of course this will not do for an action flick, so Zeus (Liam Neeson, still fairly regal, but definitely on auto-pilot), his estranged father, warns him trouble is stirring in Tartarus, the monster dungeon of the underworld: the Titans are breaking loose, and he would like his son to join him in vanquishing this evil (sounds familiar? It should, since both the recent Immortals and Disney's Hercules were centered around a suspiciously similar plot). Perseus once again tells him to sod off, having little interest in the affairs of the immortals with which he has little affinity despite his blood ties to them, so Zeus departs without him, accompanied only by his other son Ares (Edgar Ramirez), and his brothers Poseidon (Danny Huston) and Hades (the ever reliable choice of villainy Ralph Fiennes, whose heart, like Neeson's, doesn't really seem to be in all this), trying to keep their imprisoned father Kronos in check. The latter turns out to be a towering behemoth of molten rock and lava: apparently, this is the sort of thing to happen to gods locked away in hell for too long.

As is fully predictable, Hades again double-crosses Zeus, this time in league with Ares. For some reason, the god of war is utterly jealous of Zeus' relation with Perseus, even though it's blatantly obvious in this film and the last that Perseus has little love for his father and ignores his divine descent as much as possible: even in this film father and son have all too brief exchanges of dialogue, revealing that whatever relationship they have, it doesn't warrant jealousy at all. This makes Ares' motivations feel out of touch with reality and generally poorly conceived, but if there's a story need to make a bad guy out of an Olympian god, in the general contemporary mindset of oversimplified 'good versus evil' the god of war is the 'go-to guy' nevermind the reasons, as is Hades as the god of the afterlife. And so these two rogue gods capture the ruler of heaven and chain him in the depths of Tartarus, in such a way that his life essence flows to his enraged father Kronos with whom they have made a pact to regain their immortality after his plans to destroy the gods have been carried out. As if...

Now it's up to poor Perseus to rescue both his father and mankind from Kronos' imminent rampage that will wreak total havoc upon the world, and he is sent upon yet another quest to obtain items that will stop the big bad guy, along the way encountering various characters and computer generated creatures as he moves from setpiece to setpiece, with little a break inbetween since this movie runs for only 99 minutes and there's gotta be as much action as possible to detract attention from the fact the (supposed) writers simply regurgitated the previous' film overall plot to save money on cramping in as much pixels as possible. So we see Perseus and his ragtag band of warriors – including compulsory female empowerment in the presence of Queen Andromeda (this time around played by Rosamund Pike, since former queen Alexa Davalos, like Arterton, also felt she could spent her time in more useful ways) and unsuccessful comic relief supplied by Poseidon's lowlife son Agenor (Toby Kebbell) – face Chimaeras, a family of Cyclops, a Minotaur and Siamese twin Machai warriors in the build-up to the ultimate epic battle with the film's gargantuan antagonist Kronos (in essence, Perseus' grandfather; not that he seems to care for this fact).

The creatures are the film's most redeeming feature and provide for the film's only memorable scenes: in fact, it comes as no surprise the whole film feels constructed around a string of interchangeable fights with monsters randomly taken from every corner of Greek mythology. At least some effort was put into making sure the beasts look good on the big screen. They do, with the exception of the Minotaur, who's just a guy in a suit making ample use of shadowy lighting to hide the fact he looks like a guy in a suit. It's nice to see a break from CGI here, but this particular creature feels totally out of touch with the others and delivers a rather ridiculous performance in a fortunately short fight scene. Apparently a labyrinth, even an ingeniously designed specimen with moving corridors and an ever changing layout, always needs a man/bull hybrid to feel more authentic, even if the budget can't afford for him to look convincing or menacing. The other monsters fortunately fare better action wise, and make for some respectable eye candy to make up for the Minotaur fiasco. And after all of them have been subdued, it's time for Kronos to get his comeuppance in another grandiose climactic end battle, one that however fails to amaze as much as the Kraken fight that concluded Clash, considering Wrath simply exchanges a huge water monster for a huge lava monster. More could have been done with an ex-god, especially one related to the king of gods, who also happens to be the protagonist's grandfather, than make a big beastie out of him and having the hero simply kill him off.

And speaking of gods, what happend to the rest of them? Only five Olympian gods (Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Ares and Hephaestus (Bill Nighy) made it into this film, despite the presence of more of them in Clash of the Titans. One could say the story didn't allow for all of them to be incorporated in the final film, but it makes the movie feel incomplete. Zeus desperately asks Perseus for help against Kronos, but not the likes of Apollo or Athena? Surely a goddess of wisdom and battle tactics would have come in handy, plus it would have provided for more compelling female presence than armour clad Andromeda joining Perseus in his valiant quest but not adding worthwhile to it overall, except getting his tongue in her mouth for little apparent reason when the dust of battle has settled (zero chemistry here between Worthington and Pike). Adding other gods to the mix would have made sense, but they probably would have needed to much screen time, taking away from the monster acton Hollywood feels this movie is all about. Probably all for the better, considering the messed up relations of the gods we got are petty enough.

When you turn a blind eye to the monsters, Wrath of the Titans is basically nothing but a terribly soapy family squabble. Kronos was rejected by his sons Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, who afterward started arguing amongst themselves; Ares feels rejected by his father Zeus who himself is largely rejected by his own son Perseus; Ares and Hades team up with Kronos against their family but succumb to in-fighting too; with Ares eventually using Perseus' son Helius against his half brother. Oh, and Agenor rejects his father Poseidon too. Io did the right thing by dying before this movie started so as not to get involved in all this petty bickering. It's really tiresome to hear 'my father', 'my son' or 'my brother' after every line of dialogue, especially amidst battle scenes, just to make sure audiences will remember who's related to who.

And that's the main problem of this movie: it fails to anticipate audience intelligence and therefore relies solely on delivering fight scenes instead of fleshing the family arguments out into something less convoluted, as if Greek mythology was all about heroes dispatching monsters. That might be what people remember most about such myths, but it wasn't simply the single element driving them. Last year's Immortals made this perfectly clear by refraining from the use of creatures completely, instead centering the action around the differences between gods and humans directly, which still resulted in ample action and digital effects. Wrath of the Titans however doesn't feel the need to enrich itself by adding anything worthwhile to its simple action oriented take on classical mythology. If you've grown up with Greek myths like I have, you will undoubtedly leave the theatre with a profound sense of lacking: if you care only about seeing cool creatures running around killing people and being killed, this movie is made for you, since that's all it offers. And apparently this simpleminded approach sells like crazy, considering a third Clash is already in the works... are there any monsters from Greek mythology yet left for senseless slaughter?

And watch the trailer here:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/wrathofthetitans/