NECA Aliens Series 8 Weyland-Yutani Commando Review

If I were tasked with constructing a top five characters or things to make toys of from Alien 3, I’m pretty sure the Weyland-Yutani Commando would likely not make the cut.  It’s a fairly inconsequential character that shows up about ten minutes before the end of the movie.  Shockingly NECA went all in with this guy, constructing an entirely new sculpt to bring it to life.  It’s one hell of an effort for somebody who had so littlr screen time. I’d guess that they expect fans to buy more than one in an effort to recreate the final scene of the movie.

The Weyland-Yutani Commando is part of the eighth Aliens series from NECA, sharing the wave with Alien 3 Ripley and two different color shades of the dog alien. If you want to see what the dog alien is all about check out the review I did way back when it was first released.  The commando comes packed with two eye plates, a knife, pulse rifle, and a pack of stickers.  Instead of making the eye panels a permanent fixture that flips upward, they included two pieces to represent the open and closed position.  Originally, when I opened the figure it confused me as to why it came with two eye fixtures that looked exactly the same.  It took me a good while to figure out how exactly they plugged into the head.

The knife is a bit of an anomaly to me.  The commando doesn’t have any places to store it, and on top of that neither of his hands are made to hold it.  I’ve been able to fudge it a bit and rest it between the fingers on his right hand, but it certainly isn’t a permanent solution.  His pulse rifle is great and he’s able to hold it with both hands.  The sticker sheet confused me at first.  Mostly because I didn’t know it existed and was taped to the bottom of the plastic tray the figure is held in.  I almost threw it away!  Once I got it I realized it was to personalize the figure a bit.  There aren’t many clear stills of these troopers from the movie, so I’ll just put a couple of them on his backpack and call it a day.

While the design definitely takes some cues from the Nostromo Suit, there aren’t any shared parts between the two as far as I can tell.  I’m not really sure that covering your body in blankets is going to do much to protect you from a Xenomorph attack.  I suppose I can give them the benefit of the doubt since you never actually witness any of these guys being killed by Aliens. I also question the effectiveness of a face guard that only covers half of his face. It must have been designed by the same person who thought “Snake Armor” should have one fully exposed shoulder! Looking past the questionable effectiveness of Weyland-Yutani’s armored guard, NECA did an amazing job capturing their look from the movie.

The articulation is about what you would expect from a NECA Aliens figure.  I’ll always stump for additional range of motion with a figure’s joints, but the commando is pretty good for a heavily armored character.  I do wish that the face guard was removable because it does block a lot of the neck movement.  It is a softer plastic allowing you to warp it a bit to get into some poses.  If you look closely into the eye-holes, there actually is a face under there.

The Weyland-Yutani Commando is something I never expected to be made into an action figure before a Charles S. Dutton or even Charles Dance!  There are quite a few Charles in Alien 3, aren’t there?  As usual NECA made a pretty neat action figure out of something I would not have even thought to ask for.  I’m curious if they will go back to the Lance Henriksen pool and make a Michael Bishop or any of the Weyland-Yutani scientists from this scene?  Of course those would require likeness rights, so the answer is probably “not likely.”

These commandos are currently available along with the rest of Aliens Series 8 on Amazon.  If you are looking for the entire set of four, Entertainment Earth has a great price, as well.

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