Yes, these have been out for a minute now but honestly I’ve had a tough time finding them. As per the usual, the cars come in cases of 8, leaving room for a few re-releases to be peppered in. Our newcomers are:
Different versions of Black Widow have existed throughout the years, mostly involving small changes of color. The almost all matte black version in this case caught my eye at first, however, the previous version from The Black Widow film is exactly the same and I never have counted it as “new” so it’s all a it up in the air for the moment.
Anyway, moving on to what we’re sure of, we finally get a Scarlet Witch Character Car! I have been waiting for this thing for years, literally. I still remember when cars were trickling out on the heels of Civil War and one night out of the clear blue my kid spotted cars for Vision and Winter Soldier. With these 2 under our belt, we were just 1 car away from the 6-on-6 fight that was Captain America 3: Civil War…all we needed was Scarlet Witch to be that sixth leg on Team Cap.
(In case you forgot (sometimes I do) the battle lines were thusly drawn: War Machine, Black Widow, Black Panther, Vision, & Spider-Man were with Iron Man and Falcon, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, & Winter Soldier sided with Captain America.)
And so we waited, fairly confident that she’d drop somewhere during Infinity War’s run, but no. Then came Endgame and we’re all like “hell yeah!” but no no no, we got freakin’ Pepper Potts’ 13 seconds of flying around as Rescue! I had all but given up and then on a whimsical search for new character cars she popped up…
I was surprised to see her in her more X-Men-era garb but I will certainly take what I can get! She comes to us on the heels of WandaVision, a limited-run series on Disney’s Disney+ streaming service. I have to wonder, if not for this, would we have ever gotten her…??
Well, we definitely (probably) wouldn’t’ve gotten white Vision without WandaVision. This is a version of Vision without his memories and emotions, so while that doesn’t exactly spell “bad guy,” it certainly moves him away from Wanda and his other comrades.
I do like the new paint job on the car though. Vision always had one of the coolest shapes, and while it would’ve been easiest to just paint it all white, there’s lots of bits of shading and the pastel aqua on the fenders and that very bizarre silver top on the back half of the car. It’s not even just straight silver, it’s got faint white designs and that beautiful wave of rose that looks more like a trick of the light than a deliberate part of the paint job.
Coming from another Disney+ series, The Falcon and the Winter Solider, we get “Captain America”, or at least the post-Steve Rogers Cap. I don’t have a problem with Falcon changing his name or the mantle of Captain America being passed along; what feels supremely weird to me is giving Falcon a new “Falcon suit” with the Cap color scheme and now calling him “Captain America.” They applied this exact same strategy to the Character Car.
What we have is Sam Wilson’s Falcon car with a fresh, shiny Captain America paint job and voila this is now Captain America. I wish they would’ve updated the design just a little and maybe worked the shield in somehow. And I get that they’re trying to maintain a “Captain America” persona and define him as a symbol and not any one particular person but damn, for the sake of confusion can we pleeease do something with regards to a name change…? We’ll already be relegated to saying something like “Steven Rogers Cap” or “Sam Wilson Cap” (assuming people can remember Steven Rogers and Sam Wilson), or more likely “original Cap” versus “used-to-be Falcon Cap”, so just give us a snazzy update to the name instead.
Note: I dunno if anyone remembers, but way back in like 2015 there was a nifty 3-pack of Character Cars exclusive to ComiCon, featuring what were essentially repaints of Iron Man, Falcon, and Spider-Man. These “repaints” were used to represent completely different characters, and so we had, officially, Superior Iron Man, All-New Captain America, and Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man, respectively. As far as comic lore goes, I really don’t know how or if this fits into what’s going on now in the MCU, though it seems kinda similar – someone who was Falcon takes over the role of Cap while still maintaining a degree of Falcon-ness. Obviously this set was made to represent certain moments in actual comic book history whereas this latest car is celebrating a development within the MCU but I have to wonder if this “All New Cap” and “Falcon becomes Cap” are essentially one in the same. Thoughts…?
Now we move on to this Shang-Chi guy. I’ll be honest: what an out-of-left-field IP for Marvel to drop a few million on. I know they want to beef up the popularity and recognition of some of these lesser known characters, but why not pull them in on the heels of someone else well-known instead of just cold-dropping an entire film based on a guy most of us have never heard of? Call him in for an assist in the third act of a Spidey flick, let him help out a couple of supporting characters in the B-plot of the next Guardians movie, you get the idea.
Anyway, the car is painted like the clothes the dude wears…what more can I say? He doesn’t have any special features or accessories or anything, at least not in all the promo stills I’ve seen. The spoiler on the car looks to be made out of a bo (bō) (a staff, like Donatello’s weapon) but I only see a couple of pics of Shang-Chi with something like a bō and they’re all taken from comics.
As the titular character of a movie, I have no problem with Shang-Chi getting his own car – in fact I’m 100% for it. But if anything, it exacerbates this problem with marketing and recognition…we just don’t know this guy enough to icon-ize him as an inanimate object, nor can we convey something very basic and visceral that’ll stick with us despite minimal marketing. All I think is “10 rings” and I don’t think I’ve even seen 1 damn ring.
Yeah that was kind of a rant-y entry to talk about some cars, eh? Oh well. Variety is the spice of life. Enjoy!
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