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Let's keep this Kree train a-rollin'!
Sent on a mission by Thanos to recover the mystical entity
known as the Orb, Ronan discovers that the target he seeks is in fact an all-powerful Infinity Stone. Ronan uses the stone to destroy the Nova Corps’s fleet, but is ultimately destroyed by his own greed when the Guardians of the Galaxy take the Orb back and use it to entirely obliterate him.
This may not technically be a Captain Marvel toy, but he is in the movie (back in happier days, before he got into his goth phase), and this figure has kept getting pushed back in the review order (it was the first tenth anniversary release I got, and yet all the others have been reviewed before it), so let's throw it in!
An avid loyalist to the Kree whose family was killed by the Kree-Nova War, Ronan agrees to a partnership with Thanos
in order to take down the Nova Corps on Xandar once and for all.
Ronan is an Accuser, which is basically the Kree version of a lawyer, if lawyers were also required to engage in personal combat and lead military missions. In the comics, he's a space racist, feeling that, as a blue-skinned Kree, he's superior to the pink-skinned ones; yes, the Kree have space-apartheid. It's not clear whether the movie version feels the same way - he's clearly radically opposed to the Xandarians, but who's to say if he feels that way about every other alien race out there, too? After all, he works with the Sakaarans, but that could simply be a case of the "how can I be racist if I have black friends" defense. Maybe he's constantly seething that he has to work with these lesser beings.
Ronan was played by Lee "The Pie-Maker" Pace. He's blue and black (unlike in The Hobbit, where he was white and gold), with the... makeup? Mud? Dried blood? Whatever that stuff is on his face. His little servants paint it on him, so we know it's not a mask or natural markings, just something to make him look more intimidating. It works.
His costume is not very much like it was in the comics -
the important thing is that he's wearing a hood, and they definitely got that right (even if the hood and shoulder pads are a single molded piece attached to the head, and thus they turn when it does). There are small square plates of metal running all the way from his clavicles down to the tip of his skirt, and he has some larger protective panels on his arms and legs. His clothes are all dark grey, but there are smears of red across the chest. What is that? We know it's not blood, because Kree blood is blue and Xandarian blood (or whatever flows out of one after you crack him in the head with an electric mallet) seems to be black and viscous, so what's he been rubbing on himself? Was he eating ribs, and just wiping his hands on his shirt? You're a Public Accuser, Ronan; use a dang napkin!
Other than the aforementioned head issues, Ronan moves at the shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. One of the elbows was slightly stuck on my figure: it seems
to have gotten a little bit of glue when the elbow pad was being attached, so I had to get in there and pry it free. Now it works! Yay! The right wrist is hinged to go side-to-side, while the left is up-and-down, for help in better displaying his accessory.
The accessory is, of course, his Universal Weapon, which is basically a big hammer and oh my gosh, I just this second realized what Jack Kirby was going for with Ronan's design: he's a judge! He carries a giant gavel, and his hood thing is taking the place of a powdered wig. It's actually clearer here than in the comics, since judges do wear black and not green. In the comics, the Universal Weapon can manipulate matter and energy, cancel gravity, and allow for intersteller teleportation, which really seems like a lot of things the Infinity Gauntlet can do, as well. And speaking of, the Power Stone is jammed onto the side there, marking this as from near the end of the movie.
It was always annoying that Ronan didn't get a figure when the Guardians of the Galaxy line was out - Hasbro could have done a second series and made him the BAF, but no one predicted what a massive success GotG was going to be. (For comparison, look at Black Panther: it took a full year to get a second series of toys based on that movie, and it had to be 70% repaints just to get out that fast.) So really, the First 10 Years line is made for characters like Ronan. And now that they have the molds, they could release a Captain Marvel version, dressed in green.
-- 03/09/19
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