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brickbride

Eurobricks Knights
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Everything posted by brickbride

  1. I greatly dislike horror and I loved Agatha so I wouldn't classify it as a horror show. MoM was about borderline for me, Agatha is not like that. Just give it a try! If only someone were putting together a team consisting of younger versions of the old Avengers characters.
  2. Something like that, maybe? The first one's Disney (Moana's Flowerpot), the second Wednesday (The Black Dahlia). Just exchange the flower for some steam or bubbles and you're good. :-)
  3. As to your first idea: I'm not invested in the Samvengers but some of them would be a lot stronger than your average Thunderbolt. Like, say, Kamala or Billy. Thor if he's still around. Hulk has been established as pretty much unkillable. And Sentry is by far the most powerful of the Thunderbolts. So, what - Doom somehow kills or subdues all the powerful opponents, and then the remaining Thunderbolts eventually defeat him by kicking and punching? I'd absolutely watch an entire movie about John Walker, but it sounds unrealistic to me. As for the second paragraph, go watch "Agatha All Along" immediately! It's great. I also enjoyed "Hawkeye" for the most part (by which I mean the parts that were actually about Hawekeye as opposed to shilling Yelena and Echo). "Agatha All Along" also made me go back and watch "WandaVision" which I hadn't originally caught, but I was pretty disappointed by that. I don't think the TV gimmick has aged all that well, and frankly I was more invested in the agents on the outside than in anything Wanda and Vision did. Agatha is also much more fun in her own series. Again, I can definitely recommend that one. I'm probably the only person here who genuinely liked "The Marvels", and even I don't like Monica, LOL. Honestly I'd be surprised if they bothered with a follow-up to it, or even acknowledged it in any way. "Thunderbolts" already had its entire plot based on how there are no more Avengers and therefore no more heroes to help people while disregarding all of the established heroes, many of them (former) Avengers, currently residing on Earth - including Carol -, and I don't really expect continuity to become better than that. Another thing - does anyone think we'll ever learn what happened to any of the remaining Eternals? Or will their entire movie be reduced to the "There's now a Celestial Island" plot point from "Brave New World" with no follow-up? It's a theoretical question for me since the only Eternals I really liked were Druig, who's more of a secondary character, and Ikaris, who's dead, but I'm wondering. Also the entire Dane&Blade thing, will that ever come up again?
  4. Here's Wanda's life decisions in a nutshell: - blaming Tony Stark for something he has no part in (yes the missile was Starktech, but there's no reason to believe Tony sold it to the Sokovians in the first place let alone knew what it was to be used for) - willingly joining Hydra - willingly working with Ultron (and only turning on him when she realized that he was going after her home as opposed to anywhere else), and traumatizing Tony Stark in the process, apparently just for fun - somehow becoming an Avenger despite her complete lack of morals - mindcontrolling an entire town in order to play Happy Families with her made-up husband and kids (and stopping when random strangers asked her to which to me is a far bigger out-of-character moment than anything in MoM) - killing a shitload of Kamar-Taj wizards who were just doing their job - repeatedly trying to murder a child (America), and actually murdering at least one alternate-universe version of Strange - repeatedly mindcontrolling an alternate-universe version of herself and trying to steal her children (and only stopping when she found out that it wouldn't work) For short, these are not the life choices of a good person let aloen a hero. Yes she's had a hard life (but name me one Marvel character who hasn't), yes she was traumatized at a young age (again, not uncommon in the MCU), yes she's lost loved ones (again, this is the MCU). And she's not the first or only person in the MCU who's made mistakes, but most people don't make the same one - by which I mean: chosing her own gratification about everyone else's life and freedom - over and over again. If Wanda is considered Avengers material the bar must be very low indeed. I was sort of on board for her sacrificing herself in order to destroy the Darkhold as a send-off in which she finally did a decent thing for once, but apparently that wasn't even permanent. I can absolutely not see that. Whatever else you can say about Strange, he always serves the public good and Wanda usually (almost always) does not. Yes he can be an arrogant jerk about it, and yes he goes to extremes (like giving away the Time Stone, or reading the Darkhold and accidentally causing an incursion, or Dreamwalking into a dead body) but his INTENTIONS are good. And that makes all the difference. A person who's read the Darkhold and is willing to do everything in order to steal someone's children is not on the same level as a person who's read the Darkhold and is willing to do everything in order to protect his planet. And what do you mean, every Strange variant across the multiverse ends up going bad? Our Strange doesn't. America's friend (Zombie Strange) didn't. The Strange that was murdered by the Illuminati made a mistake (a huge one admittedly, but again his intentions were benign) and calmly accepted his death sentence. Only one of them outright went bad. I agree about America, by the way. She's so much more a MacGuffin than a character, they might as well have replaced her with a literal silver suitcase. I also agree that Wanda's portrayal in MoM doesn't follow from WandaVision - but again, not because Wanda's not at her core a selfish and ruthless person. It's just weird that in WandaVision she was this hung up on her husband and brother, and willing to let her sons go, and in MoM she's obsessed with her sons and no longer spends a thought on either her husband or her brother.
  5. For me it's the other way round! I really like Carol, I thought she was excellently written in her own movie, and I've never liked Wanda. She was straight-up selfish and mostly evil from the start and it always irked me that we were expected to somehow like her despite all of that. In any situation where there's a moral and a selfish, evil choice you can pretty much count on Wanda to take option two. Whereas Carol is a hero but I think many people's problem with her is that she just isn't "womanly" enough. She doesn't define herself through her emotions or maternal instinct as much as through her deeds and in the MCU that's a position usually reserved for men. Male heroes are expected to just get shit done no matter how they feel about it; female heroes are expected to be emotional. I think an evil John could actually have worked if he were well-written. I love Agatha and she's as evil as they come! But yeah, I don't think they have much of a coherent vision for their MCU any more. This ties in with "Secret Invasion"'s "Yeah, we shot some stuff and now we're trying to hammer out a plot in post-production" attitude as well. Overall I feel myself getting less and less invested in the official MCU because of it. I'll probably watch "Doomsday" at the cinema and I'll probably catch the next couple of movies once they show up on Disney+, and maybe a couple of series featuring characters I might like, but I'm not anywhere as invested as I was in the days of "Infinity War"/"Endgame", and I think most people aren't. Also I wish they'd stop with the post-credit cards of "XY will return" already. We've had so many that haven't panned out, and even if many of those characters or teams might show up again in "Doomsday", a short cameo appearance in a movie like five years later may fulfill the letter but not the spirit of the promise. If they're not sure whether and when they'll return to a character or team because it depends on box office returns, other projects, and so on they should just stop making empty promises IMO.
  6. Yikes I hope not. Sure they're the same age but the vibe I got from her was a lot more "Awww, you're a cute little lost puppy, let me protect you" than "I can imagine you as a partner on equal standing with me". Honestly that's part of the MCU's problem. Marvel still like to pretend for the most part that women do not exist (other than in a supporting role or as Someone's Daughter to be Treasured and Protected and be Worthy of), and then every once in a while they give us a "female" and "inclusive" movie with a female protagonist and also a female antagonist like "Black Widow", "The Marvels", or "Thunderbolts". The only "regular" Marvel movies I can think of where either the antagonist or the protagonist were female without all the "Look how inclusive we are" and "A woman's worth lies in being motherly" posturing were "Multiverse of Madness" (and that's a stretch already given that being a mother was basically Wanda's entire motivation) and "Captain Marvel". As for the original plot for "Thunderbolts", sure that sounds bad. I'm glad it's not what we've got in the end. But at the same time, the fact that they considered it long enough for it to become public turns me further off the MCU. Because deep down I don't want them to make the movies they feel would be most popular with their target audience. I want them to make the movies they want to make, you know? I want to feel like they have some kind of plan, some kind of vision. For example, I hated it when Tony Stark got killed off in "Endgame", and I would have loved for Loki to be spared, but at the same time I could see how those deaths made sense for the characters. If by now they just grab random support characters from their Chest of Spare Characters and go "Are you a villain? Are you a hero? Are you going to turn into the Hulk? Let's poll some focus groups and find out!" that's not the kind of storytelling where I'm on the edge of my seat wanting to find out how it ends. As for the newly leaked LEGO sets - Daily Bugle, 781 pieces, EUR 110? Yep those are definitely HP playset Diagon Alley prices there. And is Groot really that popular? I mean I can see people buying one of them because of the sheer cuteness factor, but collecting all of them?
  7. Nah, it's the same in other themes. LEGO HP, for example, keeps jacking up prices while delivering very little. Malfoy Manor at EUR 150 list price is a paper-thin facade with a poor minifig selection, including a much inferior version of Narcissa than her last appearance in like 2011. The EUR 380 Hogsmeade collectors' edition looks like a playset and actually has a poorer minifig selection than the small playset version some years back (fewer figs for the price, McGonagall had skirt printing then but doesn't now, Mr Flume was provided then but isn't now). Also the new modular Hogwarts is dilled with crappy placeholders which you then have to remove to make room for add-ons, I can't wait for them to roll out that particular gimmick to other themes. Not.
  8. Meh, YMMV. I'd have preferred Walker as our protagonist BECAUSE he doesn't complain as much. (Well, not only because of that, but partly so.) We've had plenty of successful characters - say, Tony Stark, or Strange, or Loki - who clearly weren't happy and clearly needed a change in their lives but didn't constantly whine about it. Those opening scenes where Yelena complained to her victims, murdered them in cold blood, and then blew up the entire building (including all thoses storeys ABOVE the lab where nothing evil might have gone on at all) just presented her as someone awfully evil who didn't even register that other people had feelings and a right to live. Which made it all the weirder and more unbelievable to me that she then immediately latched onto Bob and tried to protect him Because The Script Said So. And the most she did in order to change her situation was ask Valentina for jobs that would give her better press. In general, she has a pattern of constantly expecting others to cater to her all the time (I noticed this in "Hawkeye" as well). Like when she went off on Red Guardian for not checking in on her even though she hadn't checked in on him either. Or when she, again, expected her victims to care more about her problems than the danger to their own lives. Honestly, part of the problem might be that she's a female Marvel protagonist. Marvel Studios don't have a great track record with those. They are very good at giving us male protagonists who are flawed but still sympathetic (not all the time but like 80% of the time). But there are few woman protagonists and they hold them to really weird standards. Like, Captain Marvel is a perfectly decent and heroic person but was vilefied in "The Marvels" for not checking in on Monica often enough during a galaxy-wide crisis where she had much, much bigger fish to fry. Meanwhile both Wanda and Yelena are awful, selfish people by any reasonable standards, but we're expected to excuse all of that because of their selective motherly feelings (including Yelena's for Bob). Even Agatha Harkness, whose characterisation they've done a much better job with (meaning she's still awful and selfish but at least this is acknowledged in-universe - she's actually one of my favourite Marvel characters), has to redeem herself through her motherly feelings for Billy! I've noticed a similar problem in other MCU movies (especially "Ant-Man" and "Brave New World") of non-protagonist women being reduced to Someone's Daugther to be Treasured and be Worthy of. If Marvel Studios could stop with that ridiculous double standard, we could have some much better movies.
  9. I mean I do agree with what you're saying. But they're all miserable at the beginning, and only one of them is constantly whining about it. The others at least try to put on a brave face. Plus they mostly aren't anywhere near as evil as her. Red Guardian runs a limo service instead of using his superpowers to constantly beat people up, John Walker is a patriot doing dirty work fo the government, but Yelena is all "I kill random people for money. Can't anyone tell me why I have no friends and don't feel good about myself?" Her inexplicable soft spot for Bob (as well as her inexplicable desire to protect the "hapless civilian" who, from the start, is very very clearly anything but) felt forced to me; it certainly didn't track with the rest of her behaviour. It was like the writers had dediced that Yelena was our protagonist and therefore she needed to be Bob's advocate among the group rather than the other way round. LOL I haven't seen "Black Widow" (only knew Yelena from "Hawekeye") so when I read all the "OMG they killed off Taskmaster" posts after watching "Thunderbolts", I was like "Oh. The assassin from the vault fight. Was that someone we should have known?" Your second sentence I quoted made me laugh. That's such a Marvel Studios thing, just like "Oh I couldn't possibibly fight the villain unless I get a new costume first". Of course we can't have two teams meeeting (or even one team forming for that matter) without there being a physical fight. Which would probably end in a draw no matter how differently-powered the people involved happen to be. They 100% won't release a EUR 400+ modular with that selection because the only people it would appeal to would be F4 fans. Like, Doom is the only one I'd want out of all of them! Obviously I'm not the target group but if this is going to be the successor to the Daily Bugle it needs to have a broader appeal. The Bugle didn't just get the people who work there on a regular basis, neither did the Sanctum. There has to be a climatic battle with multiple desirable characters (not just the F4 vs. Doom and a bunch of bots) there for it to even qualify IMO. Another building also would work better looks-wise. The Baxter Building and the existing Avengers Tower are IMO quite similar in terms of aesthetics, so I wouldn't be surprised if they waited for the Tower to go EOL before giving us the Baxter Building (assuming the F4 are still relevant then).
  10. Finally got around to watching "Thunderbolts*". Overall I liked it more than I thought I would, mainly because unlike "Brave New World" it remembers that a) women exist and can and should play an important part, and b) our leads should be flawed but engaging characters instead of The Dutiful Soldier's Code of Conduct Manual examples. John "My shield is a taco" Walker makes for a more engaging Captain America than Falconcap IMO. That said, I still don't like Yelena; her constant beating on everyone else while whining non-stop about how lonely she is doesn't make for an attractive combination and she doesn't ever seem to wonder if those two traits might be related. Also could Marvel Studios maybe get some coherence into its shared universe someday soon? In „Brave New World“, Falconcap was a public figure; here we constantly hear that there are no more Avengers available. What about Falconcap, what about other known Avengers such as Captain Marvel (last seen living at least semi-permanently on Earth), Spidey, Professor Hulk, you name them? (Also Ant-Man but yeah, I wouldn't rely on him against extraterrestrial threats.) In terms of LEGO I can sort of see why they decided to skip that movie. It's just not very "Marvel" overall. The colours are drab and dark. Most characters either don't have superpowers or theirs wouldn't lend themselves to minifigure action, but they do use plenty of real-world weaponry. Having yet another Captain America would probably confuse casual buyers, and Sentry's powers and actions don't exactly lend themselves to a fun, playful experience either. For some of those reasons I also cannot see the Thunderbolts* play a large role in "Doomsday": They ought to be very, very outmatched (except Sentry) by some of the rest of the cast, and given how many poorly introduced characters we'll likely be dealing with, the last thing casual viewers will need is two Captain Americas, none of which are Steve Rogers. I think the Thunderbolts might work best when removed from the main action. Please don't tell me we'll get Yelena jumping and rolling her way towards Doom in order to zap him with her widow bites! Well it would be a bit late for that. Asgard doesn't even exist anymore. In all seriousness, I do think that's the problem - it would be a bit late for it. "Endgame" came out in 2019 and still gets sets but it's "Endgame", and it gets sets in part because the movies that came after it for the most part haven't been all that well-received. Asgard was last featured in "Ragnarok" and (very briefly) "Endgame" and I think we can rule out future appearances. At the same time, Thor used to be very popular up to "Ragnarok" and "Infinity War", then he got turned into a bit of a joke by "Endgame" ("Bro Thor"), then he got a solo movie so unwatchable it makes "Quantumania" look like a masterpiece, and that's where we're at right now. And an Asgard set would have to heavily rely on Thor's popularity in order to sell.
  11. Worf minifig and additional torsos have leaked as well.
  12. Studio Ghibli content quite regularly crops up in IDEAS submissions. If there were no possibility whatsoever of those sets being realized wouldn't LEGO ban them completely (that is, make a rule of no submissions using Studio Ghibli IPs)? Also is there a reason LEGO hasn't done Miraculous yet? It's an IP that's very popular with kids, has recognisable leads, a lot of minifig potential, and tons of merch. Plus mearly everyone in it except for Marinette's parents is drawn very tall and very slim, which means that for once minidolls would be an accurate representation of the source material. (Though I'd very much prefer minifigs.) Maybe it isn't American enough since it's set in Paris? Found this on page 1 of the thread. Do you have any guess as to next week's lottery numbers? Asking for a friend. I'd also be very much interested in your lottery numbers guess. Actually a fair amount of previously mentioned dream themes already have sets by now (i.e. Zelda) or are getting them (both Tintin and Peanuts will have IDEAS sets soon) but those two stood out to me because LEGO is going all-in on them
  13. Show me one kid these days that knows what LotR even is, let alone would prefer sets for it over ones for Ninjago, Marvel, and so on. I mean I do think they should make cheaper sets as well since not all of us can or want to afford those large sets, but this is very much an adult IP. I don't blame LEGO for not marketing it to kids if there's no real target group to be found amongst them.
  14. Scarecrow's van is the GWP, not included in the set.
  15. Well that assumes that we'd get the fields outside Minas Tirith, and not just the topmost level with the Tree and the Houses of Healing. I mean the last set was called "The Shire" and it consisted of a single Hobbit hole. Just saying.
  16. Wouldn't EUR 60 be too little for a Baxter Building? Oscorp was like EUR 130 if I remember correctly and even if you forego the sidebuilds that one had, EUR 50 these days gets you one small bodega and a car, or alternatively Peter's apartment. Definitely not a skyscraper!
  17. The UCS Hogwarts Express over at HP also had several versions of several characters: 20 figs total, 4 of which were Harry, 2 of which were Ron, and 2 of which were Hermione, so that's almost half the figure count taken up by only three characters. Though that set wasn't well-received and retired pretty early, the figure selection wasn't the worst aspect of it. (Or rather, many people wished we'd gotten adult Ron and Hermione as well, which would have meant 10 slots spent on only 3 characters.)
  18. I think you were joking, but finally getting Ronin in a set - any set - would actually make a lot of Marvel fans very happy. We somehow never seem to see eye to eye on any topic, but I can assure you I feel the same (not necessarily about DC but about my own preferred themes and LEGO in general). Why can't we have just one hobby that doesn't require an app?
  19. And maybe we could combine it with LEGO Marvel's Venom obsession and have a Venomized Gingerbread Dumbledore? Hard pass for me. In other news, the EUR 1000 Death Star (or Death Disc really) has a GWP (TIE Fighter) that's clearly meant to be part of the set, it's on product photos and everything. Do you think that's the future of set-specific GWPs - day one buyers get to complete their sets at the cost of foregoing any discounts, and everyone else (including those day one buyers who didn't manage to snag a GWP due to availability issues) effectively has an incomplete set? The Gringotts set had a vault that could be added to it, but it didn't feel incomplete without it. Whereas with the Death Star, there's a space clearly set aside for the GWP to be added that otherwise remains empty.
  20. Again, the cost for Zoro's faceprint would have been the same whether or not they gave him an appropriate one. This just shows a lack of care for the theme. Or maybe they need Smirky McSmirkyface for another upcoming set and made the One Piece theme shoulder the cost of developing him, but that's internal budgeting and not something I as a customer have to care about. The average customer doesn't care how many new or recoloured pieces and unique prints are in a set, or how many fig variants of main characters a theme gets compared to other themes. They care if the characters look like their TV counterparts, period. I also don't care that much about minifig variations and would happily have accepted any versions of Zoro and Sanji in the Arlong Park set as a somewhat affordable way of getting the entire crew. (Not including them was a travesty.) But if in a EUR 300 flagship set you have to say "Oh well, about half the figs are wrong in some way but I'm sure they needed the budget elsewhere and besides, other themes have it worse" that‘s just not what I consider a premium product. Let's simply agree that our expectations differ.
  21. YMMV but to me this "Be thankful for what we've got, it could have been worse" mentality is exactly why LEGO isn't making much of an effort anymore. You yourself pointed out several bad faceprints in the Hogsmeade set and those were reuses from other themes. Zoro's at least seems to be unique to the character so there is no reason it has to be that bad other than LEGO not caring. The other One Piece sets are much cheaper and in fact the EUR 30 one contains three exclusive characters, so I'd expect at least as much attention to detail from a EUR 300 set. But I guess then we're talking Hogsmeade all over again.
  22. Sure but there's compromise and then there's that cowboy hat. Like I've said: Nami is a simple reuse who wears the wrong top (should be bright pink instead of white and blue), Luffy's a simple reuse who wears entirely the wrong outfit (should be green dungarees with a red shirt), there's Mihawk's hat, and Zoro's another simple reuse who needed either a completely straight face or a bloodthirsty grin but not that out-of-character smirk which doesn't resemble Mackenyu's portrayal at all. YMMV but to me the lackluster figs are a definitive strike against the set. If you lock iconic scenes like the duel behind a EUR 300 paywall they had better look right; however I don't feel compelled to spend money on Cowboy Mihawk vs Smirky Zoro. As for HdS, I'm not a big fan of his deliberately inflammatory phrasing myself, but his videos often give a good sense of how sets scale to each other. Such as the size difference between the LotR and HP book nook and how bad they look next to each other which IMO is valid and useful information. Back when we were speculating in this thread which sets hid behind the known set numbers, I said that the Baratie being the biggest set over the more popular but smaller Merry made sense so you could display them together. But between the design choices (one full ship, one dollhouse-style facade), the Baratie's oddly flat look, and the scaling I don't think they look great together - more like a mashup of products from different brick companies.
  23. German YouTuber Held der Steine has a review of the Baratie up that gives a side-by-side comparison to the Merry. Personally I was surprised by how huge the Merry looks in comparison given both its Canon proportions and the fact that the Merry set is already tiny for its price. Also I still just can't with Mihawk's cowboy hat or Zoro's out-of-character smirk or Luffy's and Nami's wrong outfits. For EUR 300 I find the minifigs really underwhelming especially compared to the recent Spider-Man CMF series where LEGO went all-out on otherwise useless parts (Spiderman-printed baby/horse/werewolf mask and so on) for just EUR 4 apiece.
  24. I know and I've actually pointed this out on this very thread before but I still found it worth noting.
  25. Here's the set numbers according to Brick Fanatics: 72462, 14+ (this is a weird one because it comes before several of the January 2026 numbers) 76469, 8+ 76471, 8+ 76473, 10+ 76474, 14+ Speculation: 8+ sets - if these are the only two we'll get in June, I'm expecting one to be another smaller (possibly interiors-only) Hogwarts Castle expansion and the other to be the latest Diagon Alley entry. 10+ set - if that's the only 9+ or 10+ set we'll get in June, I'm expecting a larger Hogwarts Castle expansion. 14+ sets - I'm currently leaning towards buildable creatures/objects. There's a skipped or missing number, 76472, possibly next year's AC? Also has anyone else seen the leak about "Smart Play" being meant to play a large role across several LEGO theme in the future? Between the likely pricing (look at the Sorting Hat and some Star Wars leaks!) and the fact that I'd like for both myself and the kids to retain at least one hobby that doesn't involve an app, I'm not sure I'm looking forward to that.
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