Retro Brick Reviews

...Are you teasing about the Dial of Destiny sets, or just commenting on how the leaked remake sets are pretty mid?

"Ep. IV scene" as in just the ending ceremony, or do you mean from the movie in general

You say that, but remember that after the initial 2002-03 Attack of the Clones sets LEGO avoided that movie like the plague for the next decade. Not to mention how as soon as they finished with Rise of Skywalker there have been no sequel sets in years...

Hobbit went on for two more years (the duration of the trilogy, which is all it was meant to), and the only Dwarf beards/hairpieces they brought back were Balin and Dwalin.

If anyone's interested, Brick Depot just uploaded a speed build of Rivendell, which I believe is the first in-hand showcase of the set available online.

...On a similar note, who else is planning on giving Boromir reddish-brown hair when they get the set? Imo dark orange was always way off and still is.

Just looked at several pictures of the four Hobbits, and it really depends on the lighting. Sometimes Sam looks ginger, sometimes not; sometimes Merry looks ginger, sometimes not. In all honesty the dark orange doesn't fit either of them, the most accurate option would be to just give them both medium nougat or (in an ideal world) for LEGO to have recolored it into nougat ("flesh") for one and kept medium nougat for the other. ...That said, I'll be in the camp of displaying mine with the 2012 hair colors, since all four Hobbits having very different hair color is good for visual distinction even if a little inaccurate, and ginger Merry is what I'm used to.

Eowen is a must-have (and would also make sense for the mythical Minas Tirith set), but we already got a pretty perfect Galadriel in one of the 2014 Hobbit sets. A remake would be great, but on general principle I prefer getting new characters and variants over updates of old ones. ...Why can't we 'ave some meat?

No, just include Second Age figures, and give you the option to build Barad-dur with or without the Eye of Sauron. (I personally would just break canon by displaying it with the Eye but the prologue battle playing out down below anyway.) I suppose realistically they could include both Second Age and Third Age figures (Sauron, Elendil, Isildur, Elrond, 4 Second Age Elves, 4 Orcs (work for either age), Frodo, Sam, Gollum), which would be ideal if perhaps a bit wishlist-y. UCS Aragorn's Broken Toe

I understand the marketing value of the pretentious "Adults Only" style, but it does look really dull. Imo all 18+ boxes should be designed like the Winnie the Pooh box, where the set is shown against a relevant backdrop which fades to black around the edges, creating a box that's thematically appropriate, visually striking, AND pretentious. I mean, with the beard attachments at the neck the Dwarves are already taller than Hobbits by a 1/2 plate or so, even with short legs. Considering that this summer the LEGO Harry Potter team is releasing an actual UCS Dobby's Sock... yeah, LEGO definitely reads Eurobricks forums. Perhaps a little TOO much. Imo I'd prefer a Barad-dur set just focus on the prologue entirely. There aren't any figures from the present story of the movies that couldn't come in other sets, meanwhile a full minifig selection based on the Second Age with Sauron, Isildur, Elendil, a new 2nd Age Elrond, Elven Warriors and Orcs would be absolutely incredible.

Last I checked, the $500 Rivendell WAS the collector's item.

Nope, that's the Rivendell GWP. Sure, it's a bit lame (they could've at least picked one of the two GOOD Lotr Brickheadz sets), but I think it'd be way worse if it was some cool small LOTR set that was only available to people who bought a $500 set day one. Imo the ideal would be for LEGO to quit the whole "this promo is only available if you buy the one set specifically in the first few days specifically" and just stick with "spend this much on any theme this month and get the freebie" promos, but if they're going to exclude 99% of LEGO fans I'd honestly prefer the promos are either not exclusive or, if they aren't available anywhere else, have no exclusive parts.

Okay, retail/playscale LOTR wave, here we go! First is the diorama: "The Bridge of Khazad-dum" ($80). The set would have a build for the bridge with a backdrop of Dwarven architecture, and of course a large buildable Balrog. Minifigures will be Gandalf the Grey in the center of the bridge, plus Frodo and Boromir off at the far end. Now for the regular sets. For Fellowship, I'd love a remake of the Attack on Weathertop for around $50, same as the original. It's the first real fight scene of the trilogy and works perfectly for a medium-sized playset (probably remove the noncanon play features from the original and repurpose those pieces for more detail up top). Minifigures are Frodo, Aragorn (as Strider), 2 Nazgul, and a white "Spirit Nazgul" (Idk if there's an official name). For Two Towers, with how far big LEGO mechs have come in the last decade I'd love a $70-ish Treebeard set, paired with an Orc ballista for it to battle. Figures could be Merry, Pippin, Saruman, and some Orcs. For Return of the King, this might be controversial but I'd like a $150-ish set based on Minas Tirith (Imo a D2C should be nanoscale of the whole city, but a more affordable playset as well would be ideal). Would feature the Citadel, Tower, and the courtyard with the White Tree of Gondor. Figures would be based on the coronation at the end of the film (Imo it's more interesting than the Siege and would fit the Citadel better), and would include King Aragorn, Arwen, Faramir, Gandalf the White, Frodo, Sam, etc. Lastly and perhaps leastly is the Hobbit, for which I'd want a remake of the Barrel Escape set - similar to the old honestly, it was a great price at $40 and looked pretty good too. Figures are Bilbo, Thorin, Bombur, Thranduil, and Legolas.

The face I'd expected them to reuse is the face for Pattinson Bruce Wayne / Tom Riddle, which appears in all 3 "The Batman" sets and the Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets. Eyebrows are a little thick, but I think the cheekbones are pretty spot-on and the main expression would work really well for Legolas imo. I have the og Legolas head so I'll be using that, but I think I'll use the Pattinson head for the generic masc elf (I dislike the Draco/Kaz face).

Oh, that head looks PERFECT! Hopefully we'll see it in future Tolkien sets, it's honestly a shame they didn't have it ready for Rivendell. On the topic of the leaked HP Advent Calendar figs, hopefully in the future we could get a calendar for LOTR. Obviously not this year, but I think a calendar set in the Shire or Rivendell could make for great minifigs and some really cozy builds.

You do realize that euphemisms don't rewrite reality, right? I could say that (as a forum-relevant example) "Sauron isn't evil, he just has a different point of view to the Fellowship that wants to cancel him because he has strong views on enslaving all of Middle-Earth", but it doesn't change the abhorrent (fictional) reality of Sauron's beliefs any more than your euphemism changes the abhorrent reality of Rowling's beliefs. In any case, commentary on Rowling's intense misogyny (toward both trans women and cis women) does not belong in a LEGO forum, or at least not one based on a far-superior fantasy bookseries. In any case, the actual point of Rowling's being brought up in this forum was because of how her beliefs have negatively affected the reputation of the HP franchise and, to an extent, every company that associates with it, and that negative effect is inarguable. ...Getting back on topic, does anyone know if Pippin's face is a reused head or a retooling of a previous design (like Elaine from Seinfeld having an edited version of Chandler's back face from Central Perk)? Pippin's head looks super familiar to me, but I couldn't find any record of it being released prior.

It is literally the same hair as Gloin and Gimli's. They all use the 2018 Dumbledore hairpiece. No.

Good point. If they ever decide to do LOTR quote dioramas, that scene should be near the top of the list (Bridge of Khazad-dum is #1, of course).

Nvm

The obvious answer is an eventual D2C Helm's Deep. After all, while they might start with one set per book, if these continue to sell well they'll continue to make sets and there's an abundance of iconic locales to make as huge D2Cs. I could see a $300-ish Helm's Deep coming in to replace the Lion Knight's Castle in a few years when that retires.

I think it's fairly likely in the next few years, since a D2C Bag End has been one of the most desired LEGO Tolkien sets for years and that set would work much better themed after The Hobbit.

Valid.

Good catch! I never would have noticed it had you not pointed it out, but there's the back braid, clear as day! It's really cool that the Dumbledore hair goes over it - It's about time a minifigure takes advantage of the big hollow that hairpiece leaves between it and the torso.

The small roof has 88 tiles (44 on each side), and the main roof plus the side section has around 450. How'd you get 700?

I've seen that in discussing value a lot of people are bringing up the amount of tiles used for roof decoration, with some very... exaggerated numbers. I decided to do some math to calculate a rough estimate of how many tiles there actually are, and it is *roughly* 500 1x1 tiles, give or take. That's a bit under 1/12 of the total piece count, which means that (if all 6167 pieces had equal value) about $40 of the set's cost goes toward 1x1 tiles. Feel free to factor this into your arguments for how fair the price is.