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by Jamanticus
Ahh, seeing pics of the piece in hand tell me this is one of those film props (or something made out of the same thing by the same people who made the thing from the same molds as the real thing) that's kinda low-quality compared to e xp ectations.
I'll just talk about the mace, since I try to ignore the axes at all times because the design just puts me off- this is a piece that would look absolutely fine on film. It would even look great in closeups, most of which would not focus on it or stay on it for long. But when it's not on the screen, it turns mundane and you can suddenly see every wart and imperfection and it loses its magic.
I guess there are two extremes a maker can go to when reproducing something. They can go all the way to one end of the spectrum and idealize the heck out of it, change materials, tooling, even change the design, only reproducing the prop in spirit (and not putting any weathering on it, ick!). Or they can go in the other direction and reproduce the original prop as closely as possible, warts and all, to make effectively a duplicate piece. This is going to make one part of the market, a very niche part, absolutely happy. But the rest of consumers get shafted when they see the material it's made from, the paint, the cast-in-plastic nature of it.
I'm sad that this turned out to be the case with the replicas, Khal- on the plus side, they do look like they'd be great on a display.
EDIT: However, I do believe they are fully worth the cost to buy them. There is a very present prestige factor of having the maker of the original also make the reproduction, and the time of those original makers is very valuable, and I don't think you overpaid a cent for these.
Last edited by
Jamanticus on Mon Oct 08, 2012 3:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Losto Caradhras, sedho, hodo, nuitho i 'ruith!