Toy Review: The Dark Knight In Plastic — McFarlane DC Multiverse BvS Batman

There’s two things you need to know about me. First of all, collecting action figures was frankly a bit more of a casual hobby of mine until about a year ago. I’m still not a hardcore but I’m getting into it more. Secondly, I’m not the biggest Batman guy. I mean, I like him, but he’s not even in my top five of favorite DC characters.

When I started collecting a little bit more, I promised myself one good Batman figure. I broke that almost immediately in getting both the Batman: Speeding Bullets figure (who is frankly more of a Superman figure, if you’re familiar with that story), and a Batman: The Animated Series figure. I later found the Batman design from Hush and despite a few flaws decided it was my Batman.

Then I saw the Batman figure from Batman Versus Superman: Dawn of Justice was going viral in online collector circles. I was curious — this was a reissue of a 2021 figure from a 2016 movie. Why were figure fans going nuts for it? Naturally when I found it at Target a few weeks later, I had to pick him up. 

I’m not even a fan of getting movie likeness figures for comics characters. The only two characters I’m willing to do that with are Superman and Spider-Man. On top of that, I’m fairly neutral about the DCEU and the Snyder-Verse. But still, I had to try it.

And immediately, I get it.

Right out of the box, this figure had amazing articulation. One of my big gripes about action figures is when they can’t move like even just normal people. Yes, I’d love to get Spidey and Batman in comics-style poses, but even just normal people poses are a must. That is not a problem here. The figure moves like you’d expect Batman to.

His balance is good — even standing without a stand in a couple more unusual poses- and his joints were all easy to move. Even better, he has a cloth cape. Though a wired cloth cape would have been incrementally better, this cape rules. It makes the poses and “play” with the figure even better.

There are two small quibbles I have. First of all, Affleck’s Bat-costume was a little bit thicker in the neck, where the figure is slightly more slender. More than one fan online has pointed out that a quick mod- replacing the longer “barbell” neck peg with a shorter one- resolves this problem. Outside of that, the likeness is fantastic!

Secondly, McFarlane is one of the few figure producers that consistently includes stands. This figure did have a flat stand, but frankly, it would have been about ten points higher with a flight stand. As soon as I borrowed one from one of my Superman figures, this figure went from good to great in my eyes. (Unfortunately for Batman, I’ve almost always got to pose my Supermen in flight, so I had to leave him in a “lesser” pose.)

If you’re a Batman fan, or an action figure fan in general, I definitely recommend this one. It’s a genuinely great action figure for any collector.