Legends Of Tomorrow Season 2, Episode 6: Outlaw Country

This week the Legends return to the Old West and visit with their old pal Jonah Hex again.

I don't have a lot to say about this episode. As always it was fun to see the Legends tromping around playing cowboy. I enjoyed Jonah Hex's appearance in last season's The Magnificent Eight, but he didn't seem quite as fun this time around. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he spent the entire episode grousing about having to take orders from an dumb old girl. That got old real quick. And Jeff Fahey's welcome to pop up as a guest star any time he wants.

This episode should have been titled Gravely Voice Challenge 2016! Heat Wave, Jonah Hex and Quentin Turnbull all seemed determined to out-growl with their increasingly raspy voices. Jesus, guys, take a sip of water before you hurt your throats!

I'm sure the fact that the Legends returned to the Old West this week couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that the country's currently obsessing over HBO's Westworld series. Nope, totally a coincidence. No network would be that blatant or manipulative. 

Sadly, Legends Of Tomorrow's ratings are reportedly tanking this season. That's too bad, because now they they finally jettisoned the restrictive Vandal Savage storyline and get rid of the Hawks, the show's improved greatly. I'm enjoying this season quite a bit.

In an effort to shore up the sagging ratings, The CW is moving Legends to Tuesday night, right after The Flash. Let's hope the move works and the show gains some of The Flash's viewers, or there may not be a Season 3. Jesus, Tuesday nights are gonna be murder on my butt. I'll be parked on the couch the whole night watching The Flash, Legends and Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. 

SPOILERS!

The Plot:

In Liberty, Colorado in 1874, a time pirate is using a tricorder to search for a nearby mine. The pirate runs into the villainous Quentin Turnbull, and tells him he's searching for a substance more valuable than gold, and he'll share it with him if he lets him go. Naturally Turnbull kills the pirate, takes the tricorder and claims the mine for himself.

On the Waverider, the time-quake alarm goes off, indicating there's trouble in the Old West. White Canary orders Gideon to take them to 1874. While dressing in period clothing, Atom notices Steel's been sketching out costume ideas for himself. Professor Stein begins having severe headaches, along with flashes of a woman he doesn't recognize. He shakily begs to sit out the mission.

The ship lands in 1874, and the Legends just happen to stumble across their old friend Jonah Hex, who's being hanged by Turnball's men. The Legends save him and chase off the outlaws. Hex is grateful to be saved, but less than enthusiastic about encountering time travelers again. He's especially dismayed to see that Rip Hunter's gone, and a lowly female like Canary is now the Captain of the Waverider.

Back on the ship, Steel discovers that history has changed (even though they all still remember the original version) and Turnbull will somehow soon control the entire country west of the Rockies (!). The Legends aim to find out how this is possible and stop him. Canary sends Heat Wave and Vixen to Turnbull's saloon to distract him, while Atom, Steel and Jackson pose as tax collectors and visit his business office, to find out how he plans to conquer the country.

The boys bluster their way into Turnbull's office, but are quickly surrounded by his men. The Legends quickly dispatch the men and take their clothes (?). Now disguised as outlaws, they wander into Turnbull's mine. Inside they find a large deposit of dwarf star alloy, the substance that powered Atom's suit.

In the bar, Heat Wave confronts Turnbull, and the two end up bonding over drinks. Back on the ship, Hex can't stand it any longer and ignores the plan. He leaves the ship and marches into the bar to confront his nemesis Turnbull. Naturally an Old West bar fight breaks out. Turnbull ends the fight when he fires a special dwarf star bullet from his gun. The bullet blows an impressive hole in the wall, and looks mighty spectacular doing it (too bad it doesn't make a lick of sense though). Canary, Vixen and Heat Wave run out of the saloon, where they're met by Atom, Jackson and Steel. They all high tail it back to the Waverider. 

Well, except for Heat Wave. For some reason he stays behind to fire on Turnbull. He runs out of ammo, and Turnbull fires a dwarf matter bullet at him. Just then Steel jumps in front of Heat Wave and takes the bullet for him. Unfortunately the special bullet doesn't bounce off him, instead piercing his steel hide. Heat Wave carries him back to the ship.

Inside the Waverider, Steel's placed in the advanced medley, but Gideon only gives him a 51% chance of survival. Meanwhile, Jackson asks Stein if he's OK. He says he keeps having visions of a woman he doesn't know, but feels he's in love with her. He worries that all the time travel they've been doing has somehow altered his past, and new memories are overwriting his old ones. Hmm. Maybe the Flash's time travel shenanigans are affecting the Legends too.

Canary scolds Hex for not sticking to the plan. He says he couldn't help himself, as he wants revenge against Quentin Turnbull, and infodumps his backstory. It seems Turnbull was harassing a little town in Oklahoma called Calvert (which we've heard of before). Hex tried to defend the town, which made Turnbull angry. He rounded up Hex and the townspeople in the local church, boarded it up and set it on fire. Hex was the only one who escaped, and bears the facial scars to prove it. From that moment on he swore to kill Turnbull. Canary thinks back to Damien Darhhhk, and says she understands his thirst for revenge.

Meanwhile, Atom figures out how Turnbull's going to rule half the country. He plans to fill a train with dwarf star alloy and detonate it in Summit Pass, which will completely cut off the West from the rest of the country, leaving him free to rule it. That sounds like a sketchy plan to me, as there're surely other ways to access the West, but let's just roll with it.

Canary worries they won't be able to stop him. Stein's out of commission, meaning no Firestorm, Atom no longer has a suit, and Steel is on the injured list. Just then Steel appears and says that despite Gideon's grave prognosis, he's fine. Maybe he got a look at Gideon's bill and leaped out of his hospital bed!

Heat Wave and Vixen sneak into Turnbull's mine with dynamite, planning to seal off his access to the dwarf star alloy inside. Canary, who must be a fan of Return Of The Jedi, pretends she's captured Hex, bringing him to Turnbull for a reward. Turnbull's fooled at first, until he gets a close look at Canary and has a Return Of The King Eowyn moment, saying, "You ain't no man!" In the confusion, Hex battles Turnbull and is about to kill him, but at the last second decides to knock him out instead and let him face justice (and of course give him a chance to return in a future episode). 

Atom, Jackson and Steel try to stop the Turnbull's train, but have no idea how they're going to go about it. Steel, um... steels himself, and rides off toward the train. He gets in front of it, jumps off his horse and stands in the middle of the tracks. The train plows into his armored form and he pushes back, eventually stopping it after a mile or so.

Back on the Waverider, Atom presents Steel with a costume just like the one he sketched. Suddenly Canary rushes in and says, "Our friends in 2016 need our help!" Start the big four part crossover event!

Thoughts:

• Professor Stein does the opening narration again this week.

• This issue pops up over and over in the series, but it's worth repeating— once again we see the Waverider zoom through the sky, come in for a landing, and THEN activate its invisibility cloak. Wouldn't it make much more sense to cloak BEFORE landing? Especially if they're in an era when the sight of a massive time ship flying through the sky would cause a commotion.

I suppose you could argue that the cloak requires a lot of power, so they can only activate it once the engines are disengaged. I suppose you could say that, but I don't know why you would.

• Quentin Turnbull really is Jonah Hex's nemesis in the comic. He was a plantation owner who swore vengeance after Hex caused the death of Turnbull's son during the Civil War.

In the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad 2010 Jonah Hex theatrical movie, Turnbull was played by actor John Malkovich of all people, who really ought to know better.

• Great confusion seems to surround the matter of how Jonah Hex got his horrific facial scar.

In the comics Hex was raised by Apaches. It's a long, LONG story, but much later, one of his former Apache friends challenged him to a tomahawk duel. Hex was accused of cheating, and the Apache Chief branded his face with the "mark of the demon" as punishment.

I wonder… was his comic origin just too complicated for TV, so they simplified it? Or more likely, did our current Politically Correct Hellscape Of A Society not want to depict a Native American as a ruthless villain, so they changed Hex's backstory?

In the 2010 movie, Quentin Turnbull forces Hex to watch as he kills his wife and son. He then brands Hex by carving his initials in the side of his face. Later Hex removes Turnbull's initials by searing his face with a heated tomahawk (!). 

In this episode, Hex says that Turnbull trapped him and the townspeople of Calvert inside a church and set it on fire. Hex survived the blaze, but his face was horribly scarred in the process.

I said it last season, but it bears repeating here— doesn't it seem like Hex's facial scars would look about a hundred percent less horrific if he just snipped that hunk of skin in half and trimmed it back a bit?

• Obviously this is a comic book world, so the laws of physics have no place here. That said, the concept of Turnbull's dwarf star bullets is a bit silly.

OK, white dwarf stars are actually a real thing. They're formed when a small star exhausts its fuel and collapses in on itself, forming an incredibly dense ball of matter. According to scientists, a single teaspoon of dwarf star matter weighs about fifteen tons!

So a bullet is roughly the size of a teaspoon, maybe a little less. This means that Quentin Turnbull was not only able to carry a gun containing six dwarf star bullets, but was strong enough to raise it up to chest level and fire it. Now that's a powerful arm!

Of course even if you could raise such a gun, no amount of gunpowder would be able to budge it through the barrel. And even if it could, a fifteen ton bullet would plop to the ground the second it was fired, forming an impressive crater in the ground below.

Maybe Turnbull actually used normal bullets, and just coated them with a light film of dwarf star matter. Even then, the extra weight would significantly affect their trajectory.

• The scenes of Steel stopping the train reminded me a lot of Spider-Man 2. I guess there are probably only so many ways to film a man stopping a train with his bare hands.

• Professor Stein fears his past has been changed, and the memories of his old life— including those of his wife Clarissa— are being overwritten by new ones.

This episode reminded me of something I bet the writers hope we all forgot about— all season long Clarissa has been sitting at home by herself while Stein's gallivanting through time. 

See, at the end of last season Stein decided to leave the team so he could spend time with his wife, Clarissa. She told him he'd never be happy unless he completed his "mission," and gave him her blessing to return to the team. This was apparently done as a lame attempt to make us forget all about Clarissa. In reality all it does is make Stein look like the worst husband ever.

Maybe this is the writers' way of eliminating this nagging little plot thread.

• After Turnbull's defeated, Atom thanks Steel for saving the dwarf star alloy from the train. He says he now has enough to power twenty Atom suits.

Good! Now maybe he'll finally quit whining about the loss of his suit and build a new one already.

• Early on in the episode, Atom finds a little sketch of a costume idea Steel drew for himself.

At the end of the episode, Atom presents Steel with a brand new costume, based on his sketch. Awww, they're bonding.

By the way, this scene was very reminiscent of the Wasp suit reveal at the end of Ant-Man. Same suit in an alcove, same camera angle, same everything.

So about Steel's new suit— just when the hell did Atom have time to build the goddaamned thing? The episode seemed to take place over the course of a day at most, and Atom seemed pretty busy playing cowboy the whole time. Plus I don't recall him ever spending any time alone on the ship. 

Did he actually construct the suit himself, or did he have Gideon make it? She obviously has the ability— earlier in the episode we saw her 3D print a cowboy hat for Steel. Maybe Atom just held the sketch up to her camera and she whipped it up real quick?

So if Gideon can make a suit for Steel, why can't she make an new one for Atom?

Legends Of Tomorrow Season 1, Episode 11: The Magnificent Eight

This week on Legends Of Tomorrow the cast gets to play Back To The Future III as they travel back in time to the Old West.

I was very much looking forward to this episode the minute I heard it would feature Jonah Hex. For some reason I've always liked the character, and hoped the show would do a better job with him than the dreadful 2010 movie of the same name. Fortunately this version of Hex was much better, and actor Jonathon Schaech did a pretty darned good job (even if it did seem like he was trying to out-gravel Heat Wave in the vocal department). In fact I wouldn't mind if Hex became a regular part of the Waverider crew next season. He's already aware of time travel, and it might be fun to have a Legend who's not from the same period as the others.

On the original Star Trek, whenever the crew travelled back in time they would do everything in their power to avoid changing history. Not Legends Of Tomorrow, baby! This series has completely dispensed with the notion of protecting the timeline, as every character consistently stomps all over history and grinds it right into the rug. Even worse, time travel "expert" Rip Hunter seemed powerless to stop them, offering only token objections to his team's history-altering actions.

Last week the Legends got into a moral argument over whether it was right to kill a child destined to become the next Hitler. They ended up letting him live and he grew up and killed millions of innocent people. This week Hunter thinks nothing of gunning down the leader of a gang that threatens a tiny western town. So letting a kid grow up to murder millions is just fine, but an outlaw who kills forty or fifty people must be stopped at all costs. Got it. 

Brandon Routh continues to impress me as Ray Palmer, aka the Atom. He gives the character a sense of decency and earnestness not unlike that of Superman. That's not really surprising as he played him in 2006's Superman Returns. It wasn't Routh's fault that the movie stunk on ice, as he was easily the best part of it. I thought he was a worthy successor to Christopher Reeve, and it's too bad he didn't get another shot at the character. Fortunately he's been given a second chance at playing a superhero here.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:
The Waverider travels to the Old West town of Salvation in 1871. According to Rip Hunter, Salvation is a "temporal blind spot," which will allow them to hide from the Hunters until they figure out what to do. Naturally the Legends don't want to stay put in the ship and pass up an opportunity to screw up the timeline. Against Hunter's objections, they venture out of the ship to explore the Old West.

Their first stop is a saloon, or course. Hawkgirl runs into an older woman who seems familiar to her. Professor Stein surprises everyone by playing poker with a few rough looking locals. He manages to piss them off by consistently winning. When one of the toughs pulls a gun, Captain Cold shoots him dead. A barroom brawl then breaks out (of course) between the Legends and the townsfolk. It's broken up by Jonah Hex, ex-Confederate soldier and cowboy.

Hex turns out to be much smarter than he looks, and figures out the Legends are time travelers. He surprises them further when he says he needs to talk to Hunter. The Legends take him back to the Waverider. There Hex greets Hunter, and says his old jacket looks good on him, implying the two are old friends. Hex tells Hunter that Cold killed a member of the Stillwater Gang and they'll be sure to take out their revenge on Salvation. Atom, who turns out to be quite the fan of Westerns, volunteers to stop the Stillwaters.

Meanwhile, Hawkgirl decides to ride off and find the mysterious woman she met in the saloon. White Canary goes along with her. Atom and Hex go to the jail, to discuss the Stillwater situation with the Sheriff. Inside they find he's abandoning his post, as he hands his badge to Atom (!). Eh, I'm sure something like that couldn't possibly change history, Atom! Stein returns to the saloon to get info on the Stillwater Gang. While there he sees a woman crying, and she tells him that her young son Bertie is dying. Stein goes with her to visit Bertie, who has consumption. Naturally Stein vows to help them, which again, couldn't possibly alter the timeline.

Jeb Stillwater and his gang enter Salvation. Atom tells them to leave, and when Jeb pulls his gun, Cold shoots it out of his hand. The Stillwaters leave, as the townspeople cheer. Again, more potential history changing there. Hex warns them that they Stillwaters will be back, and the Legends won't always be there to protect them. He tells  Hunter that Salvation could become another "Calvert." Curious, Stein looks up Calvert and finds it was a small town in Oklahoma. Hunter once stayed there after becoming a fan of the Old West. He protected the town for a while, but as soon as he left it was attacked by outlaws, and all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Pretty much the same situation as Salvation.

Stein throws temporal caution to the wind and has Gideon synthesize medicine for Bertie. He injects him with the drug, which seemingly cures him in minutes. Um... that's not how medicine works.

Hawkgirl and Canary find the mysterious woman's cabin. She's none too happy to see them, threatening them at gunpoint. Hawkgirl realizes that the woman is really a previous incarnation of... herself! Old Hawkgirl relents and tells Young Hawkgirl about herself. She says in this particular life she met Hawkman in 1830, but he was killed by Vandal Savage some time later. She says she tried to find love again, but could never get over Hawkman. She warns Young Hawkgirl to not even try hooking up with anyone else. Uh-oh! That doesn't bode well for her relationship with Atom.

Meanwhile Hex tells Atom he knows where the Stillwater Gang's camp is. Atom and his posse, which consists of Cold, Heat Wave, Jackson and Hex, ride into the camp and capture Jeb Stillwater. As they ride out, one of the Stillwater boys captures Jackson. Atom and the others are forced to leave him behind.

Back on the Waverider the Legends try to figure out how to get Jackson back without returning Jeb. Hex suggests a duel with Jeb. Amazingly Hunter volunteers. I guess he figures at this point the timeline is irreversibly hosed, and killing a guy a few decades earlier won't make any difference.

Hunter and Jeb Stillwater face off at high noon. Both men draw, but Hunter's a little quicker, and kills Jeb. Now leaderless, the Stillwater Gang slinks away. Just then the Hunters arrive. You know, those dreaded living weapons of the Time Masters. They fire on the Legends, who use their powers to attack and... completely destroy them in the space of about thirty seconds. That was easy! Before dying, one of the Hunters says the Time Masters are through dicking around, and are sending The Pilgrim after the Legends.

With the treat of the Hunters gone, the Legends can leave the temporal blind spot. Hunter says goodbye to Hex, while Bertie thanks Stein for saving his life. Stein discovers Bertie's real name is Herbert George Wells. Oy.

On the Waverider, Hunter warns the others about The Pilgrim, who specializes in going back in time and assassinating her targets when they're kids. We see her appear in 1990 and apparently kill a young Heat Wave...

Thoughts:
• The comic book version of Jonah Hex first appeared in DC's All-Star Western #10 in 1972. He was created by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga.

Hex was raised by Apaches and was eventually rescued by the American cavalry. When the Civil War broke out, he joined the Confederate army. Eventually he decided he didn't care for slavery, and surrendered to the North. The Northern Commander tried to get him to betray his Confederate comrades, but he refused. He escaped custody and tried to warn his friends, but the Northern Commander followed him and slaughtered Hex's former Confederate outfit.

Later he went back to his former Apache tribe, and was challenged to a tomahawk duel by a jealous rival. Hex was accused of cheating, and the Apache chief branded his face with the "mark of the demon" as punishment. After that he became a bounty hunter.

Even though Hex disagreed with the Confederate army's philosophy, he must have liked their uniforms, as he incorporated elements of them into his personal look.

Amazingly in the 1980s, Hex was briefly transported to a post apocalyptic future and became a Mad Max-style hero. Man, the coke must have been flowing freely during the Me Decade…

• In this episode we find out that Jonah Hex and Rip Hunter have a history (heh) together. Hunter's even wearing one of Hex's old coats! This probably also explains why Hunter's weapon of choice is a ray gun that looks for all the world like a six shooter. 

• Jonah Hex is always drawn with a trademark strip of skin stretched over his mouth, the result of an enemy maiming him.

Doesn't it seem like his injury would look about a hundred percent less horrific if he just snipped that hunk of skin in half and trimmed it back a bit?

• In the saloon, Professor Stein plays poker with a couple of rough looking cowpokes. He wins several hands, which surprises Cold. Stein explains that his father was a gambler and a hustler, and taught him a few tricks on how to win at cards. 

Note that he says all this at normal volume as he's sitting directly across from the increasingly angry and disgruntled cowboys. There's no possible way they can't hear his smug boasting. Does this seem like a good idea?

• Heat Wave must be the world's biggest lightweight when it comes to alcohol. In the saloon, Canary tells him she could drink him under the table any day. He growls, "Line 'em up." Naturally a fight breaks out in the saloon, and literally two minutes later (I counted!) we see him passed out on the bar, dead to the world. That was quick!

• Ugh. During the brawl a man's thrown over the bar, and we hear him utter the infamous Wilhelm Scream. As I've said before, it was a fun little Easter egg or in-joke the first 47,000 times it was used, but its expiration date ran out on it long, long ago. 

If Donald Trump promised to outlaw the Wilhelm Scream in movies and TV shows, he'd have my vote. That's how much I'm starting to hate the Wilhelm Scream.

• Suddenly in this episode ALL the Legends are expert marksmen. Even Jackson, who I have to imagine has never fired a pistol in his life, manages to shoot a gun out of the hand of one of the Stillwater gang. Impressive!

• Atom introduces himself to Salvation's Sheriff as "John Wayne." I'm betting this was a shoutout to Back To The Future III, in which Marty McFly adopts the name "Clint Eastwood."

• There's a business on Salvation's main street called Kubert's Barber Shop. That's no doubt a nod to legendary comic book artist Joe Kubert. He drew a series of covers for one of Hex's various comics.

• Stein meets a woman named Sarah Neal, whose son "Bertie" is bedridden with consumption, aka tuberculosis. This entire sequence is a goldmine of illogic, poor writing and historical inaccuracy.

First of all, Sarah tells Stein that the boy's doctors have given him only a day or two to live. Note that they discuss this just a few feet from Bertie's bed, while he lies listening to them. Once again, Stein's got a big mouth!

Stein refuses to let the boy die, and has Gideon synthesize streptomycin to cure his TB. He brushes aside Hunter's very legitimate concerns that he's polluting the timeline by curing a child with a medicine that's not from this era. 

Stein then injects Bertie with the drug. Literally a few minutes later the kid's out of bed and even eating! I don't know a lot about tuberculosis, but I'm betting it takes more than ten minutes to cure it.

At the end of the episode, Sarah and Bertie thank Stein again for his help. Bertie reveals his name is really Herbert George Wells. Yep, that H.G. Wells, author of The War Of The Worlds and many other early masterpieces of sci-fi literature. Wah-wahhhh.

It's supposed to be a cutesy scene, but as you might expect by now from this show, much of it is woefully inaccurate. H.G. Wells was born in England in 1866, which would make him only five years old when the episode takes place in 1871. His father, Joseph Wells, was a shopkeeper and profession cricket player, and struggled throughout his life to support his family. It's unlikely they would have been able to afford to send Bertie to the U.S. just because he "always wanted to see the American West." In fact there's no evidence that Wells ever visited America as a child, and he certainly never had TB.

They did get a couple things right though— Wells' mother was really named Sarah Neal, and she did call him Bertie. 

By the way, I'm not some Wells scholar— I found out all this info with about thirty seconds of googling.

• By the way, the subplot of Stein traveling back in time and interacting with a famous author is VERY similar to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Time's Arrow. In that episode Data's accidentally sent back to 1893 and meets Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain.

• The creators of this show really need to decide how they feel about altering the timeline and stick with it. All through this episode Rip Hunter grouses at the other Legends, warning them that their careless, history-changing actions will have dire consequences. He especially butts heads with Professor Stein, who refuses to let a young boy die when he has the power to save him.

But it turns out Stein was right. If he'd listened to Hunter and let history take its course, then H.G. Wells would never have grown up to write his influential novels, and the world would be a much different place.

Changing history's either good or bad, guys. Pick a side and go with it.

• 1870s Hawkgirl says that her version of Hawkman went by the name of "Hannibal Hawkes."

There was a Western hero in DC comics called Nighthawk, whose real name was Hannibal Hawkes. Supposedly Nighthawk was the reincarnation of Prince Khufu, aka Hawkman! 

Nighthawk had a female partner called Cinnamon, who was the reincarnation of Princess Shayera, aka Hawkgirl. 

On the left is the comic book version of Cinnamon. On the right is what I have to assume is supposed to be the TV series' version of the same character. Um... apparently life in the Old West is very hard on the human body.

The writers on this show many not know how to google Bill Gates or H.G. Wells, but by god they know their DC comic history!

• Welp, the Hunters sure turned out to be a huge fizzle! 

Last week Heat Wave ominously warned the Legends that the Time Masters were dispatching the Hunters, their most ruthless and unstoppable assassins, and the only sane thing to do was run.

This week they show up and the Legends kill all three of them in the space of sixty seconds! That was certainly anticlimactic!

It didn't help matters that the Hunters all looked like really bad cosplayers.

• Heat Wave says the Time Masters are through screwing around, and have activated the Omega Protocol. This means they're sending The Pilgrim after them, and she aims to kill them all in the past, before the became Legends.

At the end of the episode we see The Pilgrim sneak up behind a boy mesmerized by a house fire. So... did The Pilgrim just kill Heat Wave? How many times can this show almost kill him?

• As usual, Captain Cold wins the Line Of The Week Award.

In the saloon, one of the cowboys accuses Stein of cheating and pulls a gun on him. Luckily Cold shoots the cowboy dead first. Stein says, "You... killed him." Cold replies, "You're welcome!"

Ad Fail: Shorthanded

Take a look at this poster for the upcoming Jonah Hex movie:

If you can manage to tear your eyes away from Ms. Fox's pushed up decolletage for a few seconds, you might notice that something about Jonah seems a little... off. Mr. Hex seems to be a little skimpy in the arm department. He's either a world class contortionist, or he's got the right arm of a twelve year old boy.



I took the liberty of superimposing an anatomical figure over the poster. As you can see, his arm is a good eight to nine inches shorter than it ought to be in the real world.

Obviously the artist shortened his arm in order to fit it to the proportions of the poster, and hoped moviegoers wouldn't notice. Once you see it though, it's impossible to unsee it. That tiny arm is also a bit unsettling.

There's more than enough room at the left of the poster to simply bend his arm and still fit the gun above the title. Why they felt the need to shrink his arm, I have no idea.

Shrinking body parts and objects to fit the poster is nothing new. The first time I noticed it was way back in 1983, on the Return of the Jedi poster:

Luke's lightsaber blade was always a good three feet long in the movies. This stubby, economy-size poster version barely clocks in at two feet in order to fit. Maybe we've caught it in the act of powering up?