NovaBricks

My problem with this is I feel that Wayne Manor is sort of like the X-Mansion in that the building is iconic because of who it's home to, not because of anything interesting about the house itself (outside of being on top of the Batcave and Cerebro, respectively), and there are too many varying designs in media to make any singular portrayal instantly recognizable as being either manor. And if we take the X-Mansion leak to be true, then LEGO feels the same. Sure, you can point to things like the Daily Bugle that also aren't really noted for their inside, but LEGO was able to meme-ify that set enough to where it didn't really matter. I have a hard time seeing them putting a two-story gothic manor on top of a Batcave and keeping that price (or combined price) under like $800. Maybe they could do what they did with the Home Alone set and make the manor like half as deep? But then what footprint does that leave for the cave? I guess at this point LEGO isn't afraid to get nutty with their prices and sizes, so it isn't entirely unreasonable. But I still think it's very, very unlikely.

I mean, in this scenario I'm assuming we'd get like a small fraction of the manor, not an entire house. No, there was certainly effort, but Gringotts is clearly on a whole other level.

I've always thought the manor on top of the Batcave would be extremely difficult to pull off considering how inherently boring the former is compared to the latter, but after seeing Gringotts I'm convinced they could do it. If 1/10th the effort that went into Gringotts went into the Batcave I would've bought it day one.

I suspect you're right. Some of the initial bad press seems to have died down after people got their hands on it. I'll still wait for a sale as the Tumbler is a higher priority right now assuming it retires this year.

D2C Arkham is the way. DC needs its own Daily Bugle with an abundance of villain figs and the current Batcave simply ain’t it.

Bingo. The problem for Marvel (and I say problem lightly as it made two billion dollars), is that Endgame truly marked the end of something, not only in terms of story but the faces of their franchise in Downey and Evans (and sort of Scarlett Johansson). They basically told people "hey show up for the showdown to end all showdowns, especially as it will be the last for our big name stars", gave a sense of closure, and then were like "ok now it's time She-Hulk and Ant-Man 3. Like, of course people weren't gonna care as much.

Spider-Man and Batman will always put butts in seats, but other characters will be hit hard by the fatigue. In a time when quality is slipping, both Marvel and DC have decided they need to turn it up to 11 instead of just coming up with quality stories with characters people care about. You *can* make money on Ant-Man or Shang-Chi or The Flash or whatever, but they have to be quality stories. Audiences will be more forgiving of a mediocre Batman or Spider-Man story than a mediocre Flash story. I think the mutiverse concept might have worked five to six years ago, but people were already kind of starting to get burned out and I don't think the right way to course-correct was to make things more confusing to the average viewer. I've heard so many people go "yeah I'm not gonna watch (insert generic Marvel movie) because I didn't see (insert two different Disney+ shows)."

It's partly that. Part superhero fatigue. Part being part of an existing cannon that's about to wiped out.

It's been on sale for a week and we have literally no insight into how it's doing. It would not be on sale yet regardless of sales performance.

My opinion of the cave has gone up *slightly* after seeing it in person, although it takes an insane amount of space in the open position. I still think it looks cool closed, but it just ain't a $400 set.

Brick Clicker has it as 2024, and even has a piece count. I would count it as a 2024 set until something proves otherwise.

I mean, I doubt we get more than one D2C, and at this point the BTAS skyline is the odds on favorite to occupy that slot. I'm with you that a large Arkham is the dream and I'd probably be able to never buy LEGO again and die happy if we got one, but that seems to be 2025 at the earliest.

Schumacher sets would do well. Completionists and DC freaks like us would buy regardless of our feelings on the films. And the designs are so whacky looking they’re basically already comic sets that kids would like because of the bright colors and interesting batmobiles.

Lol I was just making a joke about how lazy LEGO is.

BTAS is the logical choice, although they'll probably do '66. BTAS looks very similar to the Burton one so maybe they'll want something visually different to juice sales. I don't think '66 would sell well at that scale but who knows.

That's probably getting used in the BTAS skyline.

Ummm…for this exact reason?

My local target has Dr. Strange, no Batman yet though

Would have to imagine if the BTAS set does well that we’ll see a UCS style Batmobile from that universe at some point. LEGO just can’t resist expensive sets right now. I would like to hope some play sets as well; if LEGO is so averse to comic based things, BTAS is as close as we can hope to get.

The thing that I still can't figure out is the need to base this on Keaton. Think about it; is someone who is liable to purchase a $400 set based on a movie sequel from 30 years ago going to turn their nose up at a comic-based one? Of course not. Those people are likely already Batman superfans like myself. However, there ARE plenty of people for whom the opposite is probably true; they would buy a $400 generic Batman set with a ton of figs, but have no particular attachment to Batman Returns. If LEGO wanted to target the Batman Returns superfans, why did they go so low effort on the figs? At the end of the day I do still think the cave is a really tricky build regardless of how you approach it. And they actually did a pretty decent job here with some elements. But this theme still needs its Daily Bugle and I fully believe the only realistic way we'll get that is with an Arkham. It's also wild that next year's big set is also a gimmicky set. It'll probably sell well because its BTAS based, but man LEGO is making some bonkers decisions by going with shadow boxes and art sets at $300+.

I like this set a lot better closed. I don't care for it in the open position. The Batmobile looks great, but outside of Bruce and Alfred the figs are TERRIBLE (why does Schreck look like Scrooge? Why is Catwoman Black Panther and not TLBM Catwoman?). I will grant them that getting Devito's Penguin right is nigh-on impossible, but it looks so strange without the hair. It's such a weird mixed bag. The piece count and price are obviously wildly inflated by the need to make it a shadow box, but it looks better in that position, so I don't know. It's way too big when open to display well, and the Batmobile platform doesn't look great (it should extend and float out in the open/rotate). Will hold final judgement until I see the light elements but yeah, this will be a pickup when it goes on sale.

I can't decide how voting with my wallet on this one will be taken by LEGO lol. On one hand I want to support the Batman theme and want a comic Arkham somewhere down the road, and on the other hand I don't want to spend $450 on a $200 Batcave and reinforce the notion that everything needs to be this big and expensive.

Well...choices were certainly made.

Perhaps because the set was known as “Flash Chase” and was branded with DCEU stuff long after it was apparent that the DCEU is some of the hottest garbage known to man. I don’t think anyone woke up at LEGO HQ last year and was like “you know what, it seems that the DCEU is actually bad and we should change that Batmobile” Also, despite the others selling poorly, LEGO knows this would have sold well regardless of the branding because it’s Keaton.

I've got to say, I find every decision LEGO has made regarding The Flash to be baffling. Regardless of what you think of the Esra Miller 2021/2022 World Tour, LEGO really misjudged how the whole thing would play out. At this point the movie is coming out, and every other manufacturer is making toys based on it. LEGO would catch 0% blowback over releasing a set, and even less over having a reference or two to it in the Batcave set. I'd like to think all of this is just a result of the Superhero theme going through a re-organization to a Marvel+Batman theme.