Author: Ron

VeeBee continues his seemingly endless Mattel first looks with the Dark Knight Movie Masters Jail Cell Joker.  The Dark Knight series continues as Mattycollector.com exclusives for $20 each.

I’m not sure when the Joker will go on sale – originally Mattel announced that they would be selling one Dark Knight figure each month starting in September, with the Jail Cell Joker coming in December.  However, the first figure, the Bank Robber Joker, was pushed back from September to October.  When I find out more I’ll let you know.

The sculpt of this figure is very, very nice (if you haven’t figured out that the Horsemen have a knack for doing amazing sculpts, now is the time) and the likeness in the head sculpt is by far their best effort. At this scale, it is amazing how close to Heath Ledger they came. We have seen some very strong likeness to real people lately with Egon and Ray but they really nailed this one. In fact, it kind of makes the old figure obsolete. The expression, the hair, everything is just spot on this time around, and you really need to have him in hand to see just how nice it is. So with the head sculpt being as purdy as it is, it is easy to miss something like the hands but they are really well done as well, with lots of lines and folds to them. The one spot that I would fault the overall sculpt/engineering of the figure is that his head looks down a little too much for my liking. It is not terrible but he does not have a lot of movement in the neck joint (something that we have been seeing quite a lot of lately).

However, perhaps the area seeing even more improvement than the sculpt is in the paint department. Wow. The paint on the face is what really makes this figure in the end, I think. I still believe that the original Movie Masters Joker has a great head sculpt too but is got a bit lost with the thick white paint they used for his make-up. This time they really got it though, especially with the white and black grease paint. You can see past it to flesh and it is really messy, just like in the move. It also works very well in bringing out the nuances to the face sculpt instead of hiding them. The on spot people might take issue with is the red lip make-up, but it has come a LONG way since the previous figure. The paint on the hair is really well done too, it looks ratty and shabby this time instead of like a big green wig. Finally, the paint detail on the Joker’s shirt is unreal, I mean, they hit it pattern for pattern and some of the dots and lines are so small, they had to have had one heck of mask in order to get them all right.

via First Look – Movie Masters Jail Cell Joker | thefwoosh.com.