Kdapt-Preacher

I don’t think anyone thinks that. They think there’s going to be a midi-scale Falcon associated with the Cantina, like there was a Slave I with Cloud City and Vader’s TIE with the Death Star. I hope they’re wrong, but it isn’t an unreasonable guess based on past patterns with these sets.

Like the Death Star playset, which was such a flop they released a second one as soon as the first retired and have kept the sets around for twelve years so far? Many people didn’t like Assault on Hoth (although I did), but the overall reaction to the MBS series has been very positive, and clearly they sell well enough for LEGO to keep making them.

I was thinking that too, but looking back at ANH, I think the problem is that the actual Ponda Baba just looks really weird. The figure’s accurate, it’s just a screwy character design that works in the cantina because the lighting in there is terrible.

The one thing that concerns me here is how many new molds they'd need to do a good job representing most of the cantina denizens. There are more than enough random humans in there to fill out the set, but most of the iconic aliens would need new heads at least. Many of them could be represented by standard minifig heads, but LEGO's tendency recently has been to go with custom pieces for most aliens. We've got Bith and Ithorian heads already, and they've made werewolf heads that would work well enough for the Shistavanen, but Ponda Baba probably needs a new mold, and so would the Givin, Gotals, Arcona, Devaronian, Chadra-Fan, Talz, Siniteen, and maybe Abyssinian and Duros (although they used a regular head for Cad Bane), and that isn't even all the ones I'd consider notable, so it seems unlikely that we'd get all the prominently-featured aliens; there aren't going to be that many new pieces in one set. Especially since, as TeufelHund suggests, this would also be a likely place to include Garindan or some of the other notable Mos Eisley folks who haven't shown up before. This thread has pointed out several times that Star Wars has gotten far fewer new molds in 2020 than we have in previous years, so the most optimistic view would be that this set will make up that deficit, but I'm not sure I'm that optimistic.

All of Star Wars disagrees with you, LMAO. Every throwaway line and background character having a fully-developed three-novel backstory is one of the defining points of this franchise.

I’m much happier about a cantina set than I was about the shuttle. The previous shuttle is still pretty recent—ten years isn’t that old for a UCS set—and it hasn’t aged nearly as much as the Falcon and ISD had; it’s on the other side of the stylistic shift to more detailed sets that happened around 2007-9, so it still looks basically modern. Whereas the Cantina is one of the most iconic locations in all of Star Wars, and I don’t feel that any of the small incarnations we’ve had so far have really done it justice.

Look at the top posts on this page, though--everyone there is talking about a new rumored cantina set. That's exactly the problem with cryptic hints; people take them to mean more than they say because they don't say anything useful.

I know we love our leakers, and everyone here is grateful that the people who have information choose to share it here, but I don't think I'm the first on this forum, and maybe not even the first in this thread, to remark that cryptic hints aren't particularly useful. They're frustrating for everyone involved and they inevitably lead to misinformation being spread, as it is here already with a page of discussion on a cantina set that none of us knows anything about.

We know nothing, and it’s not certain at all; the earlier rumor that it would be the Death Star II is no less credible. It’s better not to start speculating about details, because people routinely take speculation here as fact that transforms into ‘confirmed leaks’ on Instagram.

I promise LEGO is not intentionally sabotaging the sales of its own products.

Disney is reportedly looking at casting a few of the Rebels characters for live-action. At least one of the rumors is definitely for season 2 of The Mando, but some of the others might not be. There's no rumor regarding any content of the show, or even any real evidence that there will be a show, and if there is it won't launch until some time after both the Cassian Andor series (2021) and the Obi-Wan Kenobi series (2022), so it isn't much to get excited about at this point.

For context, here's the degree of size and shape variation in previous AATs (2000, 2008, 2015): https://imgur.com/a/rCrzTaM You can compare those to the blueprint 2maxwell posted above. Sources for the proper dimensions of the vehicle are harder to come by, since a) they're almost all based on the movie version, which is very differently proportioned from TCW and b) the official length has changed with the switch to the new canon; it used to be 9.75 m but now it's only 9.19 m. The 2008 AAT is the largest, but also by far the shortest, so it isn't any longer than the 2000 version even though its width and height are so much greater that the set is almost twice as heavy. The 2014 version is just small. As best as I can tell from the new one, it looks like a reasonable compromise. Which isn't to say that it's good, because again this is just a bizarre vehicle to start with, but it's definitely not worse than we've had before.

The problem with the AAT, fundamentally, is that the vehicle itself just looks really weird. It's an odd shape, with odd proportions, and any reasonably accurate model of it is also going to look weird. And the issue is compounded by TCW having stylized it more heavily than most of the other vehicles--they made it significantly shorter and fatter, in particular with a wider cabin, than the movie version is. I think the new set looks awful, but I think it's actually more accurate to the TCW version than the previous one was; it's the tank itself that looks bad, not LEGO's rendition of it. The 2008 version was massively oversized; this one might be a little bit small, but it's closer than they were before. I do think, though, that it needs the blue stripe up the front. The coloring looks completely wrong with just that isolated blue hatch. It's a small change, but it totally changes the look of the vehicle. A+ for the 332nd clone, though! No strong opinion on Grievous's fighter or the ETA-2. I don't think either of those needed to be remade, since I have both previous versions, but there's nothing wrong with the new sets. They haven't changed much, but they were both in a pretty good place before, so that's fine. I rate those sets as bland but unobjectionable. I like the Night Buzzard. I think that's pretty much what everybody was expecting it to be, which is a competent take on a new vehicle. Good that they included both the other Knights of Ren; there would've been an outcry if they hadn't. Have to see what the interior looks like, but it's a solid set. Final Duel is very disappointing. It's exactly what they did with the UCS Death Star playset a few years ago--technically not the same set, but for all intents and purposes a rerelease, with slightly updated figures. This was a bad choice for it, since the previous Final Duel was one of the worst-received sets of the last few years, if I recall, as it was terribly overpriced and entirely uninteresting. This doesn't look any better. All I can hope for is that they've at least updated some of the other figures--if Palpatine is literally the only new one this set will truly have nothing to recommend it. I love the ITS. I have no idea why they chose to make it, and I agree with some other people here that it wouldn't have been my first choice for a new ship, but I'm absolutely never going to complain about LEGO releasing a good-looking model of a vehicle they've never made before, especially with completely new figures. The recent counterpart to this is Vader's Castle, for a set based on an obscure property that came completely out of left field, and I loved that one too. Let's see more of these!

The original AAT, back in 2000, had the torpedo launchers printed onto the curved pieces rather than using a sticker (like 2009) or omitting them completely (like 2015). If they went back to using large printed pieces, that might justify the price hike.

You can see green ones at 2:00 and 5:20 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f38a6pYL_jE There aren't that many clear shots of them, but they're definitely in there.

Yes, it finished filming early last month. It may well still get delayed, given how things are going, but it won't be because of that at least.

The one in Duel on Mustafar, which came out just in January, has a regular face on one side and Sith eyes on the other.

The phase 1 clones may be bad, but TIE pilots are by far the worst. Look upon it and weep!

I understand what you're getting at here, but a lot of the things you're pointing out are differences between the TCW and RotS armors that the figure is representing accurately. Those two lines on the right breast aren't present on the animated troopers, and neither are the circle details on the ab plate; and while I agree that the proportions on between the chest and abs on the older figure look better, LEGO is right that the TCW armor has the chestplate mounted higher and not overlapping the belt. They've taken that a bit too far, but given that the proportions of a minifigure are already nightmarishly wrong, I have a hard time finding much fault with them there... I agree with you that the helmet print isn't as nice, though. I see what they were going for with the deep shadows on the cheeks, since they often are depicted like that, but it's too far, and the proportions of the visor and mouth aren't as good as on the other one (although they're still an improvement over the 501st troopers from 2013). But wow, they really need blue arms. I know the actual arms are more white than blue, so technically this might be closer in terms of pure area of color, but it looks wrong. Luckily that'll be easily fixable.

I tend to agree. It's technically right, but going for that level of accuracy only emphasizes how wrong the proportions on a minifig are. They had white hips on clones more recently than that (albeit not much), in the original AT-AP in 2007, and I think those look better than these recent ones because they don't have so much printing on them, so it doesn't produce such a seam. The biggest problem with these clones IMO is how the plain hip interrupts the belt and everything. With the black it looked like a continuation of the belt or something, but now it's just a gap. If they'd printed the bottom of the belt onto the hips, like they did with the stormtroopers in Imperial Inspection, it might work better, but it's like running Minecraft with a 4K texture pack--painting loads of detail on doesn't help anybody since the underlying shape is still just a box. The stylized look with less dense, literal detailing is always going to age better. That said, I love the set and will be getting several.

That 501st jet trooper is the first fully new clone we've gotten since the Phase 2 gunner in 2017. All the other clones since then have been updates to variants that had already been made. And the P2 gunner had been the first in a long time, too--the jet trooper and the gunner are the only new variants released since the Kashyyyk and Utapau battle packs way back in 2014. It's been a long six years since TCW ended! It's fantastic to start seeing new material from the Prequel era again.

The Star Destroyer was also a weird one, since it seemed like everyone pretty much agreed that the next UCS was likely to be a Star Destroyed months and months before it was really confirmed. I don't think I remember any specific moment of confirmation, even. Probably somebody 'formally' leaked it before the official announcement, but by that point people had figured it was coming for ages.

There were pictures of Bail Organa out by March 3 last year. The photos of the Tantive IV itself didn't show up until April 10, but it had been confirmed to be the next big (albeit not UCS) set for a long time by then. It's definitely unusual that we don't know for sure what the May the 4th set will be yet. The 'most likely option' rumors that start up months before any kind of confirmation have been right for the last couple of years (at least with the Tantive IV and the Star Destroyer), and that general consensus seems to be that an A-wing is the safest bet, on the basis of some vague hints and a general impression of the pattern of filling out the other OT starfighters? But I agree that it's surprising that nothing concrete has shown up.

Shop At Home, the sales part of LEGO.com. IE, buying online directly from LEGO rather than at a physical store.

You did, in the spaceport in Chapters 1 and 3. But it still has, like, ten total seconds of screen time across all its appearances. That never would've gotten a set except that there are about five total vehicles in all of TFA, so LEGO was scraping the bottom of the barrel already.