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Meat and Potatoes; 5.0
Perks; 5.0
Homer Factor; 5.0
The figure is approximately 7" tall and has Li Mu-Bai in his traditional Wudan robe, right-arm straight to hold a fencing sword, left arm akimbo so that he can hold a sword behind his back in a ready-stance, as he does through the film.
The piece comes with extra hands, Wudan sword, bamboo stick (The one he embaraces Jen Yu with during their first encounter), and a bamboo tree stand that requires some assembly.
Like 'The Matrix' the license bug hit late since no one expected this much attention. Fortunately, following 'The Matrix', Art Asylum knew there was an army of Gen-Xers waiting to get their hands on the key characters of this film. Hey, Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh rock. Fortunately, Art Asylum went on hyper-drive on this one, and created a figure fitting the film
Meat and potatoes are amazing, over all. The sculpt is a beautiful likeness of Chow Yun-Fat, capturing the stern visage of Li Mu-Bai. What's very amazing is the sculpting on his Wudan robe.(So THIS is where the Jedi got part of their fashion statements.) Most figures with sculpted robes like this tend to be composed of a very stiff plastic, which holds the 'folds' but isn't very flexible. The plastic used for the 'robes' on this figure are surprisingly flexible. No, they don't 'drape' like cloth, but the flexibility gives it a better sense of realism.
Articulation, over-all, is very good, at least from the waist down. The hips have ball-joints to give a full range of motion and even the ankles are gimbaled, just like a real ankle. This is a HUGE help in posing the figure. A nice touch is that there is more of that flexible plastic sculpted to look like leggings covering the gimball-joint on the ankle. Rather then looking at some nasty joint. Unfortunately, the arms don't have as many points of movement. Since the figure is duplicating the 'draped' look, there are large folds of 'robe' hanging from Li's arms, so it's not very feasible to put an elbow there. However, the shoulders do come on ball-joints, so the arms move reasonably well.
Perks are awesome as well. The figure comes with extra hands, of course, a bamboo stick, Wudan sword, and a very cool bamboo-tree base. Unforutnately, the directions are rather vague as to what branches to put in what hole, but you can figure it out ok.
Homer factor is very high here. Hey, the movie was VERY cool, and Li Mu-Bi would make even Obi-wan a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitle nervous about crossing swords... or light-sabers. And Art Asylum has a good reputation for creating great work.
End result? Ooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Did you like the movie? You gotta get it. Do you like action-figures? You gotta get it. Hmmm... there's a recurring theme here..... Hehehehehehehehehehehe.