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.

I'm glad Coffeezilla took a look, I will have to watch that. He's much closer to an actual reporter than a content creator so it's great to get that version.

Finally got a chance to see the movie on a discount day. In just the 4th week it's already quite difficult to find a showing where I live in a major east coast city. A bunch of theaters have already taken it out of the rotation. Seems like it's doing quite poorly money-wise. Scattered thoughts: I would say I enjoyed the movie. I think everyone at the screenings going, basically, "it's fun" is about correct. Low stakes are okay. It definitely does feel like a stitched-together TV special with a few episodes, although obviously Lucasfilm has denied that any of this was written for TV. On one occasion it felt like we were about to go to commercial. Mando being a one-man army is a bit uninteresting in some regards because it trivializes most combat situations, but I guess Mandalorians are supposed to be the coolest dudes. That arena fight has, like, 4 more monsters than it needs to. It's overwhelming to try and follow. Cool creature designs, though. Overall hugely respected how many creatures there were. Extreme commitment, in a good way, to showing Star Wars full of aliens. I hate celebrity voice-casting. Jeremy Allen White was actually okay, but a bunch of the others were not great. The best vocal performance in the movie is Zeb because he's voiced by an actual voice actor. Nice seeing Steve Blum's name in the opening credits for a big movie. Superb anime dub guy. The Anzellans rocked. The solo bit with Grogu is probably one of the strongest sequences and is one of the few times the movie took a breather. I think in a few years this will be considered an underrated film in the Star Wars canon. This is a decent movie that came out when Star Wars needed a great movie. Unvarnished hater take: Dave Filoni putting himself in this movie as "Trapper Wolf" is loser behavior, I'm sorry. The cut to him looking cool in his OC-megablocks outfit as they bring Janu Coin in is eye-rolling. Kathleen Kennedy may have had no plan, but at least she had the self-respect not to cast herself as Killer K le epic Imperial Hunter in Episodes 7-9.

The Smart Brick Falcon is a relatively neat set. (As is Mos Eisley, in my opinion.) I keep a loose eye on the Smart Brick Falcon to see if it ever gets a steep discount when Lego gives up on this stuff. (I hope.) I've never owned a Lego Millennium Falcon. Big plan for the weekend was to rebuild my 2007 Sith Infiltrator (#7663). But kind of got busy with seeing friends and some Pride celebrations (happy US [global?] Pride Month) that I didn't get to it until late Sunday. Then, I remembered that it's one of the dustiest sets I dug up. It must have sat exposed in the attic or just out on a shelf for a few years. The Lego activity of the weekend ended up being cleaning the pieces off with some Q-tips and soapy water. The pieces are sitting and drying now. Hopefully, I get to it next weekend and can bring it in to work to swap out my 75301 Luke's X-Wing. Found that 2007 Maul figure as well to complete the set. Neat figure with the chrome lightsaber hilt. Joints seem a bit stiff. I've been trying to move his arms and legs around to fix the stiffness, but maybe that's just what happens to old figs? I also much prefer the hooded Maul to the silly little crown piece they give his figure in some sets. (Like Duel on Naboo 75169.)

I know it's not the same thing, but I couldn't help but crack up a bit when I noticed it. I am going to Barcelona this year to see the Sagrada Familia, and the flights + tour costs about as much as this set.

Jiggly is so bad that it almost wraps around to being good. I'm tempted to get it for the $15 because it's an absolutely hilarious toy.

My local B&M store is a good place to pick up generic pieces I may be missing from old sets or just want. So I like having a store around so that I can get some parts without shipping them on Bricklink. Obviously you have to dig around some big bins, but that can actually be kind of fun. The prices on the sets they sell are crazy. But just wanted to explain why somebody might like the store. I do not plan to go to the one by me until this situation is resolved.

I don't know if there ever was a time that being a Lego fan was not a super-expensive hobby, but if there ever was that time is certainly over. I wonder if getting used sets was not as bad 2000-2020. My generation has grown up and realized they liked their toys as kids, and now all sorts of used Pokemon cards, Gamecube games, and Legos etc have shot up in value. And since we now have money despite our perpetual adolescence, there's room for Nintendo and Lego to sell us super-premium stuff and they don't have to worry about selling huge volume of cheaper stuff. Frankly it feels like the whole consumer economy (at least in America) is now about selling fewer things that are more expensive.

Oh but how else will I find out what to do with my new battle droids from 2007 or 2008

Didn't they get Al Capone on tax fraud? It's not unheard-of that something (relatively) small being exposed leads to a rabbit hole. I'm kind of cautiously watching that situation. I don't know that the YouTuber in question is necessarily trustworthy although I'm also strongly inclined to believe bad things about CEOs and American police, haha. Shame because the B&M by me is where I have gone before to pick up stray pieces for my old sets in the bins. It's great for that. Not going to go for a while until this all is sorted. Hoping to see M&G next week as most theaters by me still are playing it in super premium formats on discount day. I'd like to see it for less than $10. Pretty much finished deconstructing all the Legos from my parents' place. Now there's a lot of digging around for stray pieces to do, as well as some "stretch goal" sets that are small, mostly minifigure-based, and have been broken up for more than a decade. I believe I had 7204: Jedi Defense II and 7201: Final Duel II. (Yes, in both cases only half the "scene.") I don't think I have the figures any more, but it might be fun see if I still have the, uh, doors.

SMART Play™: Charizard vs. Jolteon Ultimate Battle costing $120 (USD) seems absolutely scandalous. The Jigglypuff one is extremely funny looking. I'm definitely going to try and work it in as an extremely specific reaction image. Honestly I'm a bit relieved that these have a kind of junky, for-kids look so far. I think I'd be extremely tempted by a Lego System line of Pokemon Play Sets. We'll see about that rumored Pokeball set.