Mandalorianknight

I mean I did actively say that I don't know who it could star where people won't root for doom... Not so much his most memorable as "the two worst moments he had"... I doubt more people remember falcon from ant-man than TWS. And I thought he was a solid character beforehand he just doesn't work as a Captain America. From what I've heard unlike some other recent movies Harrison Ford actually tries in this one so I get why they wanted to market him, especially with the mixed reception of TFATWS, but yeah, marketing your "villain" more than the hero isn't a great move 99% of the time, and this is definitely one. Honestly I think it's the other way around, I think if those fail they're gonna want Secret Wars out as fast as possible both to get some guaranteed cash out of the cameofest, and to reboot everything and start again.

I'm somewhat skeptical they'll be in doomsday. I have high hopes that they end up being a team the audience likes, but it's not like the 4 years between guardians and infinity war- they'd have to make that decision before Thunderbolts releases, and I'm not sure Marvel's that confident. That said I have no idea who Doomsday can realistically star where people won't end up rooting for Doom. Spider-man? The F4 if they end up breaking the adaption curse? I think we've seen conclusive proof that people aren't going to be all that hyped for Captain Falcon leading various replacements and peripheral characters into battle. I think that's pretty solid and about as close as we can realistically get- I've been considering the sith officer from the sith trooper battle pack's torso, because it's got a red stripe, but it's also just one stripe so it's a trade-off.] Definitely using that for RG, thanks for the idea. We get a mix of MCU and comic sets, no reason a single year couldn't include both the Doom Rex, Thanos Copter, and some Thunderbolts sets. I honestly don't think it's gonna go the way of the eternals. I think it'll be a reverse to the current box office estimates for BNW. It might have a lower opening weekend, but if it's as good as the trailers are making it look, it'll have good word of mouth and staying power. I still can't get over the fact that John was the best thing to come out of the show. It's so hilarious and at the same time unfortunate for Sam, the writers really haven't been doing him any favors since he got the shield. Or Australians.

At the end of the day Suicide Squad 2016 was still PG-13 and the other two are R-rated. (Plus I mean we did get wolverines in 2024). And as much as I love Daredevil I think they did say in a bugle interview that his R/TVMA association is strong enough lego'll only let them put him in 18+ sets. (And even then it's a classic comic variant.) With the Brave New World reviews I'm just putting more and more hope on Thunderbolts to give the MCU a new team people care about. I've been on a John Walker kick since the super bowl trailer and I think one of the reasons he's so interesting of a character to me where Sam falls a bit flat is because John explicitly doesn't live up to Steve. If you put a normal guy in Steve's shoes yeah he's gonna have a breakdown and crash out. Even down to his correspondingly imperfect shield- I love the idea of a Cap facsimile who's homemade, normal-steel shield gets folded and crunched during fights. And what's most annoying is he's probably the hardest character to make with official parts at the moment. Bucky and Yelena can be more or less Kitbashed, the official taskmaster only needs a more skull-like head, and while hard to get there IS an official red guardian figure. Ghost isn't super easy either, but ironically, the often over used invincible iron man helmet would work fairly well, and exists in unprinted white from a snowman iron man. But John has no good options for his torso, and nothing great for his cowl, although the Ultron helmet in dark bluish grey wouldn't be the worst thing for it. TLDR lego should've made a thunderbolts set and I'm going to continue complaining about this until the movie releases. And if anyone has any suggestions for a purist custom John Walker please let me know, he's the only one I can't figure out. (A cheaper torso for Red Guardian wouldn't be unwelcome either.)

I am going to Red Hulk out on the lego group for making a brave new world set but not a thunderbolts set. Whoever made that choice is getting a free reenactment of the Invincible/Omni-Man fight. To be fair, 2 out of the 3 of those weren't getting sets. The only film they've skipped so far post-endgame that isn't against their brand rules to actually make sets for is Thunderbolts. It's still an absolute crime that CA4 got a set but thunderbolts isn't. Only silver lining is we might end up having some pretty cheap BL prices for the characters, while not super likely it'll get this low there definitely is a timeline where the set's sitting at discount retailers and I can pick up a Rulk bigfig for like $8.

You have to remember the designers aren't necessarily the ones choosing what sets to make. It sounds like there's more leeway in the superheroes theme (and also like DC just doesn't care whatsoever about what lego does with the license) but we've generally heard that lucasfilm is pretty hands on here, and regardless it's likely higher-ups in the company making a lot of these broader choices, not designers. But it certainly is possible that it's a factor. One way to get some evidence for or against it would be to look on brickset and see if the clone sets generally have the same designers and OT sets generally have other designers. I'm not going to do it right now but I may check later. Accurate. I have some faith in the Filoni movie but that's more copium rationalizing itself as "but he's a high up in the company!" I also think the Levy movie probably happens if they get Ryan Gosling, but either they were REALLY good at keeping the outcome of those talks under wraps, or it's not looking too good. I mean to be fair we've had potential movies since the sequels were coming out. Boba Fett, the Rian Johnson trilogy that some people still pretend is happening, Rogue Squadron, the Taiki movie, the Feige movie, etc. I do think there's an extent to which lego may consider the death star as "making up" for the fact that there isn't a single OT system set this entire year- I've certainly seen it argued that the death star's size and rumored fig count somehow events out the fact that the rest of the year is clone dominated- but I really don't think it makes sense logically. I generally don't spend anywhere close to $1k on legos a year. It's normally more in the $300-400ish range, although this year due to the lack of sets I'm interested in and some other reasons it could be as low as $35 total. Even in a year like this where there's not many sets I'm interested in, I'm still not gonna drop a grand. And aside from the fact that I think there's a lot of primarily OT fans out there who aren't casually dropping $1k/year on lego star wars, there's probably also a lot of people who do spend $1k/year on it but don't want to drop it all on a single set, or don't want/have the space for a 2ft diameter grey sphere in their house, or what have you. Like, if instead of battle packs the clone fans got a $1000 UCS dropship and AT-OT with 36 troopers and 4 pilots, and that was it for the year, would they be considering that a good year? Would any of the kids who follow the grey baseplate youtubers get their hands on that set?

I love those guys, but I feel like I somehow either forget or just miss enough of their articles that I'm still regularly surprised by pieces that have been out for more than a year. Yeah I mean like the mandalorian alone could eat a CMF or two. Muddy variant of Mando, more accurate Cara, a S3 Greef, some generic mandos, Bill Burr (perpetrator of the greatest acting in star wars TV history), the Client, Pershing, etc. That is true. I wasn't really thinking about him because he's more of a rogue agent in clone wars than separatist aligned, but yeah, he works with the trade federation in TPM and regardless assumably we'd count Boba as an OT villain so Maul would probably count as a clone wars era villain. Yeah exactly. It's a nice solve to both issues. (Plus they could do this for a clone battle pack, put like one clone of four major legions (shiny, 501st, 212th, coruscant guard), do alt helmets, and then maybe we don't need every other battle pack to be a clone one. There is a Stormtrooper in the Andor set. That's it. Yeah I don't know why we're pretending that lego has the ability to do so. If they could, they would. No I mean it's definitely not that the designers just like the CW more, it's perceived demand, my issue is just that I think too much of that demand they see is the youtube moccists and grey baseplate builders (people who would make displays at brick con) and not so much, you know, the overwhelming majority of children. There might be a statistically significant enough amount of youtubers and their followers army building to get the battle packs to do just fine*, but I think a full clone-dominated year is going to provide some evidence as to if it's really a clone frenzy among the majority of lego buyers or not. *though I noticed a pattern where all the clone battle packs sell out and then are on permanent sale about 9 months after release, signifying frontloaded demand. The mando battle pack, on the contrary, is a set that I don't think sold out day 1 anywhere, but I also haven't seen on sale anywhere. It's anecdotal of course, but at least in my experience, the clone sets have initial high demand but hit significant sales after 9 months to a year, whereas most other star wars sets I see don't have that initial rush, but also are less likely to hit sales. I think in my area the Boarding the Tantive IV is frequently put to $44 for a bit and then returned to $55 when a few sell, but other than that I can't think of any sets on sale besides the born-for-clearance YJA sets. And again, I don't think anybody's saying "clones bad we shouldn't get any clones", it's "we don't like that almost every set this year is clone/PT based"

I don't think so, he's not lanky, and not taller than the other F4 in the movie, he's just bulkier. I get why- it has a captain america and a hulk, whereas the other is mainly lesser-known characters, but after seeing those reviews, I'm pressed that we live in a society where CA4 got a set but Thunderbolts won't.

No, no, no, he's in the skiff! He's just in disguise. That clearly justifies how horrendous it is to get the OT main cast at the moment. It's actually not as bad for the prequel era's main heroes as I assumed it would be- Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan are all availible in sets under $50 (Padme's is $140 but that's more of lego's Padme aversion than general main character availability. Impossible to get any villains, of course, though at least we'll have Ventress this summer. For the sequels it's of course currently impossible to buy Kylo or normal outfits for any of the big three (unless you buy the UCS falcon. So, nine-year olds who are growing up watching the sequels, you got $850 from your allowance? No?). This is why we need some sort of A-level / long lasting set collection. Put sets we get frequent remakes of, like the X-wings and jedi starfighters, out there with the main cast of each trilogy and just keep producing some number of them for 5-7 years. Even if retailers wouldn't want to stock them that long, just keep them on the lego website.

Yeah, those would both be good ones as well. Brickheadz Shockwave would be really interesting considering his unique head design. Nice MOCs, but man, Jazz can't catch a break, ripped in half even in lego form. Is it some sort of twisted karma for him and cliff surviving the 86 movie that cliff must always die and Jazz must always lose limbs?

That's actually Han Solo, Iron Fist of K'un Lun. The photos on the box were taken shortly before he shouted "Qi Guan Chang Hong" and started punching and kicking with so much force he started flying through the air faster than iron man and proceeded to beat him until KO. The Armory is our first Rivals tie in set.

This is a certified Aslume classic, but if on the off chance this is a legitimate theory: No. Absolutely not. The title of the movie is Thunderbolts*. The asterisk is a marketing gimmick. They aren't going to prevent all merch for the movie because of a marketing gimmick. Falcon and the Winter Soldier still got action figures and funkos even though the title was "Captain America and the Winter Soldier" at the end. I get why they aren't doing it- lack of faith in the MCU, especially characters who weren't real players in the Infinity Saga, a more mature tone, "we all just punch and shoot", etc. But I don't think the designs are at fault (and completely subjective but I totally disagree on the thunderbolts designs being worse. I would consider Ghost's outfit an upgrade as well as Taskmaster's like you said, Yelana's a sidegrade, and then RG and John are basically the same outfit. The only one who I'd say is 100% a downgrade is Bucky and that's just because he doesn't have a super suit in this, assumably for lore reasons which yeah doesn't entirely excuse it but that's still 1/6.) While the lighting is dark in the trailers, if you look at stuff like the wheaties poster you'll see that RG and Taskmaster are red and navy blue respectively and while wearing a black suit John's still got fairly vibrant red stripes along the torso. The only ones who really lack any color are Bucky, Yelena, and ghost (although I think having an all-white mask still makes her stand out at least a bit), and Bucky and Black Widow having all black costumes isn't new. Agreed on your second point- I think this film has potential to ACTUALLY save the MCU. The nostalgia well of NWH and Deadpool and Wolverine can't keep the overall franchise alive, and Guardians was a sendoff to an infinity saga team. If Thunderbolts is good and well liked, it gives people a team they care about, one almost entirely comprised of newer characters.

Yeah, we've known about these for a few weeks now, it is very exciting to see them in more places. They're up on the lego website for $20.

CORRECT I've gotten to the point where I just bricklink search the piece when I think it's new and invariably find out it's been around for half a decade. I still look at the 1x2 rounded plate with open studs as if it's only been around for a year. I'm confused as to why people think lego wouldn't want to do a star wars CMF, especially after the Harry Potter and Marvel ones. The amount of characters people are clamoring for is much greater than 12, and much greater than lego's realistically going to put in sets anytime soon. They could run three rounds of the series and not make a dent in the amount of minifigures that would borderline sell sets themselves.

That would be a little ironic given the marketing's essentially directly stated who isn't making it out of this one, but yeah, it does look like this is across the board. I think that would be cool. In the heyday of the theme this could have been a mini wave. Just from what the marketing's shown: Winter Soldier Chase ($29.99): Red Guardian's limo, and Bucky's motorbike with an explode feature on the limo. Comes with Red Guardian, Yelena, and Bucky. Thunderbolt Showdown ($49.99): Lab/death trap room with turntable play features and a play feature to launch fire down into the room. Comes with Yelena, John, Taskmaster, Ghost, and Bob. The Watchtower ($89.99): partially void-consumed Avengers Tower build with references to the avengers movies on the lower levels, a room with Loki's scepter, and Val's bar area up top. Comes with Yelena, John, Red Guardian, Bucky, Ghost, Void, and Val. Yeah. Failing to have Johnny in flame-on form would be more of a lego DC move than a marvel one. I can't think of a time lego dropped the ball on minifig selection that bad- it'd be like if we got an iron man tie in that only came with Tony and no suits. I definitely don't think it's impossible, especially if Thunderbolts turns out to be a sleeper hit- most of the projects that have had little to no coverage since Endgame have coincidentally also been the ones that bombed or were poorly received. Lego has gone back and done sets for movies that released before they got the license, so it's not impossible. You are definitely right on Sentry not being the reason though. Even if putting Void in the marketing was a late-stage decision, we've had "the thunderbolts fight eachother in a room with a fire play feature" and "Bucky attacks the thunderbolts in their colorful car" so you can definitely have conflict in a set without the villain.

I highly doubt he's involved with that. I've been very clear that I dislike how much power he has with the DCU and that he only seems to be able to make one type of superhero movie/show, but aside from the fact he's- to my knowledge- the head of the DCU, not DC comics, I haven't seen any evidence that he's... someone who would enjoy that comic. (Because let's be clear, it's not "haha potty humor funny", because it's not aimed at little kids. They know what they made and the type of person who'll be buying it.) Like I said, I don't like the guy, but I despise often people mix up disliking someone with "they must be every bad thing because they disagree with me", and I won't fall into that trap. Steel 2 when. Actually, you know what, Shaq as Absolute Superman.

TANALORR IS MINE. IT WAS MY DISCOVERY, MY HOME, AND THEY JUST EXPECT ME TO THROW IT AWAY? Yeah, one of the benefits of making so many super obscure movies/shows is that most of them don't seem to be directly related to stuff like Superman. They can afford some flops without it tarnishing every project. (I mean, if superman doesn't do well it's still essentially over for this iteration of the universe, but it wouldn't necessarily destroy their profits on whatever was already in production.) It physically pains me that something like that made it through production. The fact that some comic writers are degenerates is nothing new, but this is an actual comic they're releasing. Somebody high up approved it. Somebody fairly high-up needs to be fired for approving it.

To be fair they had almost no information to go off of and there was a lot of hype around the avengers all wearing identical suits. There's a reason it's one of the only MCU movies where most of the sets made for it (at least the ones made before the movie was out) don't represent stuff that was actually in the movie. I can't imagine Doomsday will be kept secret to the same extent- unlike endgame, which had pretty much a guaranteed $2bil just by saying "it's an infinity war part two" , they're gonna want to be showing everyone all the cool stuff in doomsday to get people back into theatres. There is zero chance they put the marketing in full swing like they have, with only three months until release, and it's secretly R-rated. That's not gonna happen. They have nothing to gain from hiding something like that. (Plus a reliable leaker apparently said it was PG-13) Exactly. They literally cannot build an avengers roster right now with more than 1-3 characters I'd be remotely interested in who aren't actively part of other teams. And even then Moon Knight and Shang-Chi aren't really prime avenger material. (AND I'm being generous with MK too, he's more of a Midnight Sons/Marvel Knights kinda vibe) I legitimately can't remember if I've seen The Marvels. It's been bugging me since the last time the movie got brought up here. And this is another thing that's burned them- they sat on the Eternals sets for awhile only for it to end up flopping. A lot of us here are excited for the Thunderbolts but I get why lego didn't want to take that same risk.

We don't know the exact details but c'mon, you think that if lego was legally able to just sell minifigure packs for star wars, they wouldn't be all over the place? They could do a $7.99 CMF for star wars and it'd probably be a bestseller. Unfortunately it is pretty consistent with the last MTT but yeah it's sad. Even after they become paper (still all plastic around me) I'm still calling them Polybags, paperbag sounds pretty bad in comparison.

Not a bad trade off all things considered. I like my coin and ingot but if it was them or enough points for a $10-15 set or whatever they set the GWP value as on the website, I'm taking the set. Actually I don't think so. It's not exactly diamond engraving. I could definitely see it being significantly cheaper to subcontract out "hey, can you make us some coins" or "hey, can you make us some rectangles" than a new figure polybag. Remember, it's not making a new print that's expensive, it's setting up the new production line in their factories.

Very few people are saying every post endgame film is bad, but I think it's pretty clear things have gone down hill. You named three misses in a decade. We've had a number of projects people would consider worse than those in half that time. The issue isn't that they're only putting out bad movies, it's that instead of 1-3 pretty good projects a year and nothing else it's become pretty much 1 good project a year and a number of low-quality ones. Look at the projects that people have really liked- NWH, Guardians 3, Deadpool and Wolverine, and they're all feature either major Infinity Saga players or non-MCU characters. That's the other major issue. They can still put out a hit or two based on older characters and properties, but most of their new characters and setup-heavy projects haven't done well. Always cautious at this point, but I also am looking forwards to Thunderbolts. John and Yelena are probably my favorite post-endgame characters*, so a team with them alongside Ghost and Bucky is awesome. (I don't care about Red Guardian as much, he's funny but I'm not all that invested in him, but also, like... I don't have any insider info here, but c'mon. The trailers could not be making it more clear where his story is going. And regardless 4/5 being some of the few people I'm still excited to see in the MCU is pretty stellar for me.) *I love Moon Knight but honestly the more of his comics I've read the more I dislike the direction the show went, and I also liked Shang-Chi more than most people but they kind of just forgot he existed. Yeah, I don't think this is even arguable. The eternals wave shelfwarmed to an extent lego probably didn't consider possible for MCU sets, and we've had enough bombs now that lego's probably pretty cautious about anything that isn't featuring A tier iconic characters. For Thunderbolts specifically we also have the issue of "so what we all just punch and shoot?". I think the movie'll be good, but it doesn't exactly have a lot of colorful costumes. Yeah. I think the 2020 sets were mainly because lego wanted to keep avengers products out there post-endgame, and while the game certainly bombed I don't think the loose tie-in sets did terribly. At the end of the day Cap/Iron Man/Thor/Black Panther/etc are pretty iconic regardless of the specific suit designs. Ironically, Rivals is pretty much built for lego. Everyone's suit is bursting with color, there's plenty of vehicles (Spider-Crawler, Thor's Chariot, Fantasticar, etc), every location-based set they could do has built-in play features given the terrain destruction mechanic, etc. I liked Shang Chi but the general opinion seems pretty mixed. I don't think people are ignoring the hits, but it's moreso how many misses we've had in a short time. We still might get a good project or two every year, but it's not alongside a larger number of pretty rough ones. The MCU's lost it's sort of seal of quality- You used to be able to go in and it was pretty much guaranteed the movie would be good, where now you're really rolling the dice. And like I said, just as critically, the projects that did the best and people liked the most were the ones like Guardians where it was pretty much just closing out some major infinity saga players, or NWH/D&W where a major thrust of the movie is past characters not even from the MCU. The vast majority of the new characters they've tried to set up to replace the avengers just haven't worked. They appear to have finally figured this out, although instead of "maybe we need to make new characters people actually care about", the solution seems to be "let's just try to do a phase where we just bring back all the old characters since people like them", which isn't gonna get them more than another hit or two.

... I mean... I would have to say the one who headlined the story in the comics would be more qualified. Not to mention that while sure the movie could be different, in the comics it's not "US versus other countries", it's "Tony vs most governing bodies, including the US government and Shield." Sure, you could, hypothetically, do armor wars without iron man. And without 99% of the villains having been set up. Objectively speaking Riri replaced Tony for a few years in the comics. After Captain Marvel beat him into a coma during Civil War ll she took over as the person in the iron man suit. I mean sure, feel free to disagree, but for the GA at the end of the day it's a pretty similar concept, a project about someone in an iron man suit who isn't iron man. I've been on the side of "disney needs to stop putting out so many MCU projects if they can't keep the quality up" for awhile and scrapping projects that clearly are having some behind-the-scenes issues and aren't exactly fan-favorites or major installments seems like a pretty easy place to start. Now I don't think RDoomJ is the correct answer either, but that's a separate issue. One thing that is doing quite well, and I'd like to see in lego, is Rivals, which has had remarkably low player dropoff since launch. The designs are all very bright and colorful and would be great to have in lego form. Full sets anytime soon are unlikely, but I don't think it'd be impossible for lego to start slipping a figure design or two into the generic comic sets as early as january 2026. A new Spider-man here, a gold-accented black panther there, maybe some of the more dynamic redesigns or new-to-lego characters...

I'd love to have seen it... with Tony... in 2017... and ideally with at least some of the villains set up or at least SEEN beforehand. I guess you could throw Hammer in there but Tony had a bad habit of putting his enemies 6 feet under so there aren't a ton to bring out. Ironheart will be a good litmus test as to whether "basically iron man" will draw in audiences. Personally I don't think it's enough- it probably would have worked during the infinity saga, but the GA is much wearier about MCU productions now. Just gonna add here I think Vision Quest gets cancelled too, for similar reasons. Much like Rhodey, I think Vision's had some great moments in more recent stuff, but don't think he can effectively be the main character of a project. Yeah, I didn't mind it in the bugle since it came with plenty of new prints and I think they were used well, but a more comic-accurate Gwen would be nice. (I mean with a headband, not dead, just so we're clear.)

I maintain that the naming convention works perfectly fine in context. (He was able to get in the building but getting the Andor set was as far as he could go- he had to make him and K2 clones to even get that one out) I do think we have a nonzero chance at a defender if next year the pendulum swings to an OT dominated year. Realistically the only other TIE option would be an Advanced, so I could see a TIE Advanced V Y-wing and a standalone defender both being on shelves. Obviously as cool as Thrawn Trilogy (any of the three) sets would be, we won't get them. We're assuming they're resurrecting the normal mold for the nightdeath troopers. If it's a new mold with the jaw damage included, it makes more sense as to why they wouldn't be in the Andor set. I think everyone agrees if we're only getting one set the hypothetical best for 5 figs would be something like Cassian/K2/Dedra/Luthen/Mon, but we all also know it's unfortunately unrealistic.

If it doesn't come with death troopers, I'll be OK with it so long as that means the nightdeath troopers' helmets are molded to expose the figure's jaw. Range troopers would be awesome- they're stupid expensive due to only being in that one solo set that I don't think I ever even saw on shelves. They've been one of my favorite trooper types since release and I'm glad they're going to be in a star wars project again. I can exclusively confirm- Cassiaan Andor, K-2S1, and 2 TK troopers.

Yeah, unfortunately I don't think we see anything like that, but I don't think it's impossible the summer wave introduces a new base design. It's been awhile- obviously not as long as the 2012 design lasted, but still, after the 2019 design only lasted a couple years I had some hope we'd start rotating designs out every now and then. We've been hearing for awhile that they realized their approach wasn't working and that, for lack of a better term, they actually needed to make their projects good. Daredevil should be the first litmus test of whether or not they actually can do that as it started under the old approach but allegedly they more or less scrapped it and completely restarted. (I know CA4 is sooner but I believe most of it was done before they started the shift from quantity to quality, and while some of the trailers do seem pretty good, I'm definitely waiting until an independent reviewer covers it before watching. The days of MCU movies being must-watch for me are long gone.) That's a tough one for me, I gotta say they're more or less equally bad. One dropped the ball on one of the best comic book villains of the 21st century, the other dropped the ball on the MCU's attempt to make a new Thanos. (Not... not that Kang being good in quantumania would have saved the Kang situation....) One made one of the Young Avengers pretty unlikeable, the other took a character who used to be funny and made him unlikeable. One was overly comedic for a story about murdering gods and a protagonist with cancer, the other was overly comedic for a story trying to set up a Thanos. (I will say my favorite part of Love and Thunder is Chris Pratt seemingly being the only person on set who could see how the movie was going to turn out. Rewatching his scene you can almost feel him warning the audience.) A friend of mine used to say his superpower was "being friends with Iron Man". He's had some good character moments, but I don't know that a war-machine led movie or show would work super well. And if Marvel Studios tried for years and ended up deciding it wouldn't work, with some of the projects they HAVE released over the past few years, I'll certainly take their word for it.