Kopaka25

Yes, I was about to say that we have only the same 3 (or 4) sets in wide release so far. Very strange - I don’t think anything like this has happened before. I wonder if supply issues are part of the reason behind this?

Those particular sets are marked as exclusive on the Argos website, and I haven’t been able to find them available from any other retailer, online or otherwise (excluding LEGO.com)

Looks like the Crystal King, Jay’s bike, Cole’s cruiser, Kai’s raider and the Ultra Dragon are all exclusive to Argos in the UK, at least for the time being, which is pretty bizarre. Hopefully other stores get these sets eventually. Would make it harder to find them at a discount if not.

Interesting to note that Golden Nya’s hair piece pretty closely resembles the early concept design for her hairstyle in the movie (as seen in the making of book).

I think it was a good call cutting that out. It would have just needlessly complicated the story, and there's no need to make everything link up. Plus that would mean Echo Zane would be dead now for no reason.

I have a suspicion that these remakes will be exactly that, due to the the early seasons' continued popularity on streaming services like Netflix. I imagine a lot of kids have got into Ninjago through there and never got the chance to get any of the corresponding sets. In which case the character designs might be the same as S1-2. That could explain the TV show only getting a few specials in 1HY, and a full season when we get sets based on new material in 2HY. I might be wrong and the story next year could just revisit old places and scenarios, or maybe both might be true.

There's definitely still plenty to enjoy this season, I just feel that some interesting aspects, namely have been thrown away.

You've summed up my thoughts on this pretty well. So yeah, I feel like a lot of great potential has been squandered in one episode. This really was one of my favourite seasons up to now :/

So episode 92 is out.

I didn't realise the Docks wasn't a D2C. That's good, means more chance of catching it on a discount!

Trailer for Season 9 is out!

For any Bionicle fans still around - Ninjago City Docks has a map of Mata Nui in the mapmaker's shop!!!! https://images.brickset.com/news/LEGO_70657__Jouets_de_construction@@1sslkn25_5.jpg

Can't say I agree with you that self-aware humour was the problem here. The property of Ninjago is inherently fourth-wall breaking due to the fact that the characters are represented as LEGO minifigures in all media. On top of that, the latest season of the TV show has upped the self-awareness and is all the better for it. Self-aware humour and subtle fourth wall breaking can be great when done tastefully. Whether the humour worked or not in this movie I feel is a different question. If you're referring to a particular scene in another movie, I thought it was pretty funny and worked fine with who the characters were, but that's unrelated. I've only seen the movie recently due to the late home video release in the UK. It did have lots going for it. They assembled a great cast, the animation was beautiful and the soundtrack was great (though I did find the use of the songs 'Heroes' and 'The Power' to be a bit jarring, among others). But overall the movie was a disappointment. I thought the script was messy and unfocused, most of the characters were paper thin, and it lacked much of the charm that I've come to associate with Ninjago. The whole thing screams 'great big wasted opportunity'. From reading the 'Making of' book it can be seen how interesting this movie might have ended up being, but we've ended up with something painfully uninteresting. The use of all this 'Fellow kids' humour wasn't great either. I cringed way too much while watching this thing. I have a suspicion that the movie may not have gone through the easiest production. I remember early on that a single director was attached to the project. At some point that changed to 3(!) directors (perhaps that's why the whole thing felt so bland). Combined with the fact that there were 13(!) combined story and screenplay credits, which could mean that there was some difficultly had in actually writing this thing. The early concepts for the way the story went are vastly different to the result we actually got, which isn't indicative of much, but perhaps indicates again that putting the story together wasn't a straightforward process. On top of that, so many clips and shots from the trailers, especially the first didn't make it into the final film, or were changed for no reason. (In fact some jokes worked better in the trailer than in the movie itself!) Maybe the movie was reworked in post production? Might explain the choppy editing in the final release. Again, nothing concrete, just food for thought. I really wanted this to be good. I'm a big fan of the LEGO movies and of Ninjago so really wanted this to succeed. It's a shame then. At least the new Ninjago city design and DB are being used in the show so they don't have the shadow of this ultimately sub-par product lingering over them.

So I guess it's time to play "Guess who's the mystery samurai!" for the third(?) time now. Not only that, but a bit of the development Kai had in the earlier seasons was about accepting that he isn't the chosen one. Making him some special golden dragon master might cheapen that. Regarding the sets, it looks like Jay's new dragon has taken inspiration from Lloyd's movie dragon, which is nice to see. The tiny 'wings' look a little odd to me, but I really like the dark blue colour scheme with yellow highlights. I can't find images of any other sets in good enough quality to form any opinions on them. Shame about Toyfair. Also, slightly unrelated, having seen the first episode of SoG, I don't know what the point of the new face design for Zane is. They are just using his old one, and the new face doesn't match any expression the TV Zane ever makes. I don't mind the design changes on the whole, but the facial expressions on the figs seem to bug me irrationally. Maybe after a while LEGO will put out faces with the new designs with more accurate expressions.

Well, his dad is back and is also a master blacksmith. After S7 I thought it would be cool to see Ray make some new weapons for the team. Anyway, that trailer looked great! Was that the movie DB I saw? I wonder what the deal is with this whole Ninjago royal family is. I hope is done for a better reason than movie brand synergy though.

If you look closely you can see that Lloyd is the only one whose spinner contains the movie suit. The others all have new suits similar to the one Lloyd wears in a larger SoG set. Also only Lloyd’s spinner is branded ‘Ninjago Movie’. The others all have the original ‘Masters of Spinjitzu’ logo, even if Zane looks like his movie version on the packaging. It’s all very confusing at this point...

An image of SoG Cole is floating about. It uses exactly the same face print as movie Cole, without the green scar, which is a disappointment.

Wait - the Vermillion were originally going to be Garmadon's army in the movie?? Was the movie's delay the reason why they were used in the TV show instead? EDIT: You've definitely convinced me to pick up one of these books now.

Looks like The LEGO Ninjago Movie will make around $22M this weekend behind both Kingsman and IT... that’s really bad Well below what I had hoped for and below most predictions EDIT: For comparison, The Emoji Movie made $25M on its opening weekend.

The more I think about about, the more I realise how perfect Garmadon's original goal would be for a LEGO movie. If you remember, in the show he wanted to recreate the world in his own image. That could be taken super-literally in a LEGO movie! Imagine Garmadon destroying parts of Ninjago and rebuilding the bricks to make something dark and twisted instead! It would also drive the point of him being this massive narcissist, and maybe tie into the message of the movie by realising his greatest creation was always his son (or something a bit less cliché). Instead he seems to be a more generic 'Conquer the World!' type villain in the movie. I don't know why they changed it.

If the movie is compelling enough to attract new kids to the show, then the redesigns will have been worth it. Though with the way things are going I doubt it will be attracting that many new fans. I do like the movie designs for the most part, so I’m still fine with them being used in the show.

This. For me, the ideal outcome was for the movie to propel Ninjago into nearly household name levels of recognition and ensure the theme would last for years to come, as well as provide incentive for LEGO to further develop their in-house properties. Not that it's impossible, but at this point it's looking unlikely. Instead I'm starting to worry that this movie will do more to harm the perception of the Ninjago IP rather than strengthen it. Nobody likes a cheap cash-grab, and even though that might not be the case, it could be seen as one. Of course, I'd like to judge the quality of the movie for myself and see how well it does at the box office. I could be worrying over nothing if the movie's a hit. (At least we got some wonderful sets out of this)

Out of any license, I would love to see a LEGO Justice League Movie, which isn't looking too unlikely seeing as WB already have an all-star cast for a bunch of JL members in the LEGO Movieverse. I rarely buy sets from licensed themes however, so I would love to see a movie based on an original theme do well (which this one still might, fingers crossed).