“The Iceman cometh!”
Arnold Schwarzenegger served up a heaping helping of cheese in 1997’s Batman & Robin. He dished out one cold line after another, fully embracing his role as Victor Von Fries, better known as the villainous Mr. Freeze. Freeze partnered up with Poison Ivy in an attempt to steal enough diamonds to fuel his research to save his dying wife. As loud and dumb as this film was, Schwarzenegger managed to put quite a bit of heart into the role of Mr. Freeze, making him something of a sympathetic villain.
McFarlane Toys’ released a four figure wave based upon Batman, Robin, Batgirl, & Poison Ivy from the Batman & Robin film, and if you collect all of them all, you can assemble the Build-A-Figure of Mr. Freeze as played by Schwarzenegger in the film. He’s a really cool-looking figure that is definitely worth the cold, hard cash that I put up to get him.
Here’s a rundown of which pieces come with each figure in the line:
- Batgirl – head, pauldrons, freeze gun
- Poison Ivy – torso
- Robin – arms and ice accessories
- Batman – legs and ice accessories
The figure was easy to assemble, with all of the pieces locking into place with a nice “snap.” The freeze gun fits well into Mr. Freeze’s right hand. The left hand can be used to hold the vertical grip on the front of the gun. The figure’s articulation is pretty limited, with the pauldrons preventing full range of motion on the shoulders and the legs having fewer POA compared to the other figures in this line. Plus, Mr. Freeze is bulky, so he can’t move too well even if he wanted to do so.
As far as the design of the figure goes, it’s a bit lacking. The face looks really great, but the matte blue/grey paint applications can’t compare to Schwarzenegger’s shiny, silver look from the film. All of the parts of Mr. Freeze’s suit that light up in the film are simply painted with light blue coloring. I would have preferred it if McFarlane would have used translucent plastic on these parts like they did with the top and back of Mr. Freeze’s head. The details on the suit look decent, but a ton of detail was left out and probably with good reason, as the suit in the film has a ridiculous amount of detail. I also wish that McFarlane would have gone with silver paint on the suit instead of the molded grey that is used on the figure.
I’m still really happy with this figure overall, and hope that McFarlane will release an updated or alternate version of it at some point in the future. He looks awesome on my shelf, especially when he’s surrounded by the rest of the figures in this line. My dream figure from McFarlane of Mr. Freeze would be him in his smoking jacket, complete with polar bear slippers and a cigar. If McFarlane is reading this, please consider this release!!!!! Pretty please?!?!?!?
This brings my review of all of the figures in the Batman & Robin Build-A-Figure wave to an end. I hope that you enjoyed these reviews and I thank you for reading them! See you soon!