Retaliation Ultimate Roadblock

By KansasBrawler

Ultimate Roadblock was a tough figure for me. I really liked the Battle Kata Roadblock from Wave 2 and I wasn’t really clamoring for a screen-accurate Roadblock. BK Roadblock was close enough for me. Ultimate Roadblock also initially didn’t look like he was getting the Battle Kata equipment and was just going to be toting around machine guns. I have enough machinegun-toting Roadblocks, so I thought Battle Kata Roadblock was the better figure simply because he was at least doing something different. Then, later photos started showing that not only was Ultimate Roadblock getting all the Battle Kata gear, but also a pair of great machine guns, both of which he used at some point in Retaliation. That’s when I knew that BK Roadblock had been replaced. There aren’t a lot of differences between Ultimate Roadblock and his Battle Kata cousin, and I think that shows that the Hasbro folks really did get pretty close to nailing it the first time around. However, the changes they made to Ultimate Roadblock really do make him the ultimate version of the movie Roadblock look.

Ultimate Roadblock shares most of his body with Retaliation BK Roadblock, but the one small change (shorter sleeves) does bring him more in line with the Roadblock we saw through most of the movie. I was surprised at how much of the mold was actually reused. According to YoJoe, the only new pieces are his upper arms. His legs thankfully lose the chunky battle kata blaster holsters in favor of a standard pistol holster on his right leg and a pair of pouches on his left leg. The look isn’t that different, but it really does look a lot more like the promo images we saw of Roadblock during the long wait we had for Retaliation. I mistakenly thought that Roadblock got a slightly different head sculpt, but apparently he and BK Roadblock also share that. Like most of the rest of the figure, the real difference comes in his paint work. Sharing so much with BK Roadblock does make a nice figure, but there are a few wonky points of articulation that I wish they would have addressed. The lower arms aren’t the best for carrying either of Ultimate Roadblock’s great machine guns. They work excellently for the battle kata weapons, but he does have a little trouble maneuvering his arms around to hold the larger weapons well. His ankles are also a little funky. The articulation is good on them but their design is a bit different than what we’re used to and I’m still not sure what I think of the different ankle construction.

When you’re a glorified repaint, you have to do something special to get my attention and Ultimate Roadblock really does bring some nice new things to the table that help make him the best Retaliation Roadblock we’ve gotten. BK Roadblock wore a uniform that was a bit more suited to jungle warfare, which was odd considering how much promo footage showed Roadblock in what I would term more desert camouflage than anything else. Ultimate Roadblock puts this mold in more appropriate desert colors, and even though I think desert figures have the potential to be as boring as arctic figures, the paint team (and the movie’s costume designers) managed to make him look interesting even with the muted desert colors. His pants are a greenish tan while his shirt is just a simple tan. The two colors offset each other nicely but still have a distinctively military vibe. The shorter sleeves also allowed them to give Roadblock his proper tattoo. BK Roadblock had the Arashikage symbol on his right arm for some reason. There was no Arashikage tattoo on Roadblock’s arm in the movie, so I’m not sure why Hasbro decided to have BK Roadblock join Snake Eyes’ clan. However, Roadblock did have an impressively detailed tattoo on his left bicep. The tribal design is very faithfully replicated here though the placement seems just a little off to me. On mine, it appears to be just a little too low in the back. There’s a bit more of a gap between the sleeve and the tattoo and having seeing Dwayne Johnson’s bare arms both in the movie and in his previous career as a professional wrestler, what we see peeking out from under the sleeve is just the tip of the iceberg. With the slightly off kilter placement of the tampo, it looks more like a band than the full shoulder piece we know it to be. I’m willing to give Hasbro a bit of a pass for this because it is a hard detail to replicate in this small of a scale, but at the same time, I question the wisdom of trying to replicate it if you can’t be certain you’re going to make it look right. The detailing on
the tattoo is amazing, but the placement issue on mine is a bit of an issue. From what I’ve seen, placement does vary from figure to figure, so it’s something you might want to keep an eye out for if you see one on the pegs. Ultimate Roadblock’s vest (also shared with BK Roadblock) also benefits from some new paint apps to make him look a little more screen accurate. The first offering was just a straight black with one white sheath. This time, the armor plates have a bit of a metallic sheen and the plate over his right pec has “R” stenciled on it. The original BK look wasn’t bad, but they really stepped up the game here and made his vest look like they took it off Dwayne Johnson, shrunk it down and put it on a little version of him. However, for me, the most drastic and most impressive paint change came on Ultimate Roadblock’s head. Dwayne Johnson, no matter what role he’s playing, shows a lot of emotion through his face.

Unfortunately, the paint job on BK Roadblock left him with a rather neutral and disinterested gaze. Thankfully, Ultimate Roadblock has a lot more character painted into his face. Honestly, had YoJoe not told me that they were the same mold, I wouldn’t have believed that it was the same piece. The paint job, with the cocked Rock eyebrow, the determined gaze and the slightly fuller beard with some five o’clock shadow (as befits a guy on the run) really helps this great head sculpt shine. There’s a lot more character this time around and I’m going to have to credit the paint job for that because that’s the only difference between BK Roadblock and Ultimate Roadblock.
Of course, you can’t talk about Ultimate Roadblock without looking at his gear. Roadblock has always been a figure that is made by his weapons and this version is no different. First off, he is packing all the Battle Kata gear. Initial photos didn’t make it clear whether he’d have this gear or not. I really like the Battle Kata equipment and I’ve talked about it at length in my Field Report on Battle Kata Roadblock so I’m not going to rehash it here. The Battle Kata equipment was a neat design idea and I just wish it had been featured a bit more in the movie. I think Roadblock could have had some good moments fighting a crowd of Cobras and having to swap out weapons on the fly to keep fighting. In my head, I think would have looked pretty cool. That said, though, Roadblock just isn’t Roadblock without some heavy firepower and this time Roadblock has two different, massive machine guns to open a can of firefight with.

Starting off “small”, Roadblock can carry around an M-249 SAW. It’s got a built in ammo can and a bipod for stabilization. It definitely looks like its real world counterpart and I’m glad they went the extra mile to do that, but it doesn’t feel very Roadblock to me. Roadblock carried one in the movie and that’s a great nod, but when I think of Roadblock, I think of a huge, .50-caliber machine gun. Thankfully, Ultimate Roadblock has us covered there with a second, even larger machine gun. It’s your classic .50-caliber design with a forward handle for Roadblock to grab on to so he can fire it from the hip instead of needing a full-fledged gunnery position. The large post on the bottom gives you another option to use it. Roadblock’s .50-cal can plug into the Tomahawk gun positions as well. That’s a great addition and if I had Roadblock crewing my Tomahawk, you can bet that this would be taking the place of one of the Tomahawk’s standard machine guns. Roadblock also gets your typical modern-era Joe ammo belt for the .50-cal and it does plug in. It’s just something I’m not all that excited about. I have a lot of these ammo belts
that I don’t use already. Rounding out his gear, Roadblock also comes with a small pistol to fill his holster and an additional standard knife, but let’s be fair, if Roadblock is being displayed with either of these weapons in his hands, you’re using Roadblock wrong.

While I felt BK Roadblock was a good enough representation of Retaliation Roadblock for my needs, Ultimate Roadblock really did take everything that was great about that mold and dial things up to eleven and make him even better and turn him into a fully movie-accurate figure. Changing up the paint scheme really helped not only make him look more like the movie version and brought out the great details that were already in the head sculpt. I was glad to see that Ultimate Roadblock looks more like Dwayne Johnson than his Battle Kata predecessor and really the only change was in the paint job. That’s a testament to how good the sculpt was originally and how important the paint work can be on a figure who had a real world likeness. Again, I don’t think this is what I’d want for an “ultimate” Roadblock because the original Roadblock is a pretty classic look, but if we’re taking ultimate to mean the most faithful representation of a specific look, then this is definitely the ultimate Retaliation Roadblock. I didn’t think I’d want an Ultimate Roadblock, but between the high quality of the figure and Dwayne Johnson’s performance as Roadblock really winning me over, I’m glad to have him sitting alongside the rest of my movie Joes.