RyansRebuid

These are hilarious. Love the Hulk fist guns.

If they play the hits, there's no risk of failure, right? This movie has nothing going for it nostalgia-wise, and even with Ryan Gosling, who knows how it'll perform critically and financially. It's an untapped era… and the two previous times that happened in Star Wars were the Mandalorian and the Acolyte. (Ugh, I feel bad breathing those two in the same sentence.) For the former, it got one set—a redundant remake at that, and as for the latter, obviously it didn't perform well, and I think TLG avoided a shelf-warmer with that one. We'll see the set potential of Starfighter upon the trailer release, so I'll hold my tongue for now. In the short term there's low chance of failure. But I think this consistent lack of risk-taking turns people off long term. You already see on this board the people who have been collecting for a long time underwhelmed by this Jan wave because they already have the stuff. I think playing it safe too long eventually becomes a risk in and of itself.

If we only get 3 sets for the big new movie, what are they doing with this theme, y'know? If the new stuff doesn't get sets anymore it's all remakes forever. Also, sometimes it seems like you all are reacting to news from the same source, but unless I missed it, it's not posted here. Were all these sets posted on Reddit or something, and we're all reacting to that? There's a list in yesterday's post, but not piece counts or prices.

Wait, the different countries get different mags? This is wild. I'm going to Europe (Spain & UK) in August and was wondering if I could casually pick up a Lego magazine for the figure and as a fun souvenir. But it sounds like the competition is a bit more intense than "tourist wanders into convenience store."

Obviously this back-and-forth has gone on for ages, so I doubt I'm adding anything you haven't heard, but I'll just present the opposition case. Which is that Luke is whiny in much of Episodes 4 and 5, and has mostly overcome this in Episode 6, but people aren't stagnant. Bad changes in people's lives can undo or challenge "character development." I think "whiny" Luke was so much more of an interesting choice than some generic Wizened Sage character. The Luke/Rey stuff is the strongest material in that movie, and is in so many ways reminiscent of Yoda/Luke. Yeah, I just strongly disagree. I don't think all the choices were right, but the characters have all grown (or changed) in interesting and challenging ways.

I think the feeling around TFA is more sour now because it commits the huge canon sin of blowing up like 5 planets. And now that it's not the new! Star! Wars! movie anymore its almost exact match to A New Hope is more obvious. The Last Jedi is the best of the three, but got trapped in the culture war, which I don't think was ever a big issue for Star Wars before that. A bummer. It's got a lot of flaws but it also has, like, any original ideas at all, which is unique among the Disney movies. (Rogue One is in second there, but I just rewatched it and honestly I think Andor has made it overrated.) I think I'd strongly disagree with this idea. Luke doesn't lean into it as hard as Rey or ofc Anakin, but there's dark-side dalliances in both Episodes 5 and 6. The most recent set of villains Kylo Ren and (IM THE SPY ) General Hux both make morally complex actions. (Edit: Maybe you were talking TV canon, but this is w/r/t movies. I haven't followed the modern TV canon closely. And honestly I think someday the shoe will drop and all the bad TV will be excised from the canon just like the original EU.) Speaking of the guy, Luke's X-Wing is getting swapped out at work today with the Sith Infiltrator. Time to go home and hang out with Dodonna, Luke. My office energy is now sinister.

Great to hear about the build from everybody!

I agree that it would be great to sever the ties from the current Star Wars saga/continuity. I'd be okay if the movies for Star Wars went away. But I'd worry a little bit that that would mean less Star Wars other stuff that I like, like games, books, and ofc Legos. Obviously, since the 90s we've basically constantly gotten that extra stuff whether or not there were movies coming out. But if Star Wars really is weaker than ever, or maybe weakest since like 1989, then I worry about the smaller media material getting cut down to size

I think for somebody like me who doesn't have all these scenes the wave sounds appealing. Sure, they've done a bunch of this before, but these are good scenes/ships and I don't have a complete collection. Something like a nice play-scale Y-Wing sounds great to me. The AT-AT and Imperial Shuttle from this year are pretty similar riffs on existing good sets. (And with apologies to Cobb Vance I don't like his speeder nor do I care about the blue guy.)

Give the Boss Nass minifig shakeable flaps on the face

Yes, absolutely no stickers is great! And means it's held up well from 2007. I did notice looking it up that the newer Sith Infiltrators are like twice the size. Didn't realize they'd become so huge.

Any thoughts on building Minas Tirith? Things you like/dislike. I dislike that these forums move so quickly from speculating on one thing to the next, especially given that we actually just got something.

Speaking of The Phantom Menace, I found the time to rebuild the 2007 Sith Infiltrator (7663) over the weekend. It still looks great, visually. I haven't seen the more recent versions in person, but from images I honestly think 2007 holds up as the best looking. It's got two nice, big printed pieces on the cockpit, although I think it's a weird choice they made to make a detailed print for the ship's butt where you generally won't see it. In general it's the right amount of smooth - sleek, but still obviously Lego. The landing gear works well and the excellent-looking wings can be folded in and out nicely for landing or flight. Where this set suffers a bit is in outdated/flimsy building techniques, like a lot of older Star Wars Lego. The front of the ship slides off to let you get at the probe droids and Maul's equipment. But the slide feature is only attached by 4 studs, and unless you're quite careful you'll end up yanking the front entirely off instead of smoothly sliding it out. The cockpit opens up vertically to let Maul in, but again the connection and function is sketchy. And Maul has his little speeder, but it comes apart extremely easily and he can't actually sit on it. This set also has one of the first attempts at flick-fire missiles, but they're just technic axles instead of pins, so they slide right out if you ever tilt the ship downwards. I swapped them for newer flick-fire missiles. The other way it suffers in comparison to newer sets is the figures. It's just Maul in this one, and he looks good to be fair. He's got the chrome light saber and a hood on instead of the little horn hat they give him sometimes now. (Don't like that.) But there's nobody for him to interact with even though the ship is clearly doing the Tattooine ambush scene. Later sets give you Qui-Gon or some other people to interact. As a kid this never stopped me from making Maul the big bad of any encounter, but it's definitely better now that he gets some cast to hunt down. Shame they've still never done the Naboo Royal Starship. Would pair perfectly with any Infiltrator. I'm excited to have Maul with me at work. I'll let him scout out the cubicle with his probe droids and little binoculars for the next few weeks.

The trick is to make the Gungan Sub set include some kind of throne area and BOSS NAS BAYBEEEE EDIT: i see you considered this in a later post

Frankly, I think keeping a set sealed and never building it is a bummer. Generally, I find myself against this kind of collector mindset. If it's an "investment" then in almost all cases investing in stocks or what have you is a much better idea. And if you have it because you like Lego, then why wouldn't you want to build it and play with it? Keeping sets sealed means you're more of a "looking at boxes" fan than a Lego fan. The whole point of this set, in particular, is to be a "master builder." If you're just keeping it sealed in the box you've missed the whole point of the line. Maybe looking at boxes is a highly satisfying hobby to you, but it sounds terrible to me.