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When Green Lantern Classics 2 was solicited, all the figures but one were shown: that finaly figure was only a black silhouette, promoted as a Sneak Peek Movie Figure. Yeah, well, "sneak peek" doesn't mean much when the movie opened last week, but hey, you can pretend we held off reviewing them until the movie was out. Yeah, that's the ticket!
G'Hu is a humanoid being from the prison planet Takron-Galtos. He was invited to join the ranks for the Green
Lantern Corps after displaying great courage during a massive riot on his homeworld. His unique physical features and dexterity in the field make him an unpredictable opponent.
G'Hu is a real character, not just one invented for the movie. He's not very well known, though, because he was only created in 2006. The bio on the back of the card barely brushes the surface of his origin: he was a prison guard who was taken hostage as a bargaining chip when the inmates started a riot; trapped and alone, he still managed to subdue his captors by the time the other guards came to "rescue" him, and was just waiting for the door to open. It was that act of bravery that drew the attention of the GL Corps when it was time to choose someone to patrol Sector 2937. Now that he's a GL, his ring constructs generally look like prison equipment: bars, cages, manacles, etc.
This figure is a prime example of the Green Lantern movie aesthetic: take a character from the comic who's
basically humanoid, and "alien" him up a bunch. Seriously, look at the comic's design, then look at this. We'll leave it up to you whether or not that approach to characters is good or bad, but at least it's different from the Star Trek style. Below the neck, Comicbook G'Hu was differentiated from humans by his hands and feet - all Movie G'Hu has in common with us is the fact that he's got two arms and legs stuck on each end of his torso. The limbs start out scrawny, then get big and armored as you move out. Each hand has three fingers and two thumbs, and his feet are raised tripods. There are two vestigial hooks near his collar.
The figure's skin is metallic purple, and his face is decidedly non-human.
He's got two eyes and a mouth, but he's got no nose. [Then how does he smell? --ed.] Like plastic. The
version in the comics has bright pink skin and a normal face, so this just fits with the "make him more alien" mandate. Rather than two lekku like the comics, the movie version has eight.
Since the body design is unusual, the articulation is as well. The neck, torso and collar-hooks are balljointed, and the shoulders are swivel/hinges. The elbows, hips and knees are all swivel joints, which is particularly odd. It makes sense that he has no ankles - not with those weird feet - but the lack of wrists seems like an oversight. And we don't get any accessories, either. Come on, Mattel, make more ring constructs!
G'Hu comes with the right arm of the Green Lantern Classics Series 2 BAF, Stel. It's a nice robotic piece, and since it's so big, the Green Lantern ring on the middle finger is large enough that you can make out the shape of the GL logo in the center.
When Movie G'Hu was revealed, everybody just thought he looked like a total mess of a character (mainly because nobody knew who "G'Hu" was or what he was supposed to look like). If you look him up, though, you can see how this is a fairly quote/unquote "accurate" copy of him, by the movie's standards. He's a lot more interesting to look at than a comicbook version would have been, that's for sure. Still, unless you're building a movie Corps, you may want to skip this one - the style of figure just doesn't blend with the actual DC Universe Classics. So ask yourself: "will that bother me?"
-- 06/26/11
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