Clone OPatra

This sounds like you're disagreeing, but that's actually what I said. It made sense in Thor 2 that nobody else was there. It didn't make sense in IM3, though, what with the president being kidnapped and all. It just didn't work for me that Stark didn't at least go to Bruce Banner for help, and IMO it would've made it a much better movie since the Stark/Banner dynamic was one of the best things in Avengers.

The same thing was totally a problem in IM3. Firstly, why couldn't Tony Stark call up an Avenger buddy? We know he knows where Bruce Banner is from the post-credits scene, so he could have easily gone there with his smashed suit instead of traipsing around in the middle-of-nowhere. Secondly, SHIELD/Captain America doesn't respond when the president is kidnapped? Really? That seems to be a big deal. Feige has conveniently explained away that one with 'you'll see later why they were busy,' but you can't just cover over plot holes with that type of explanation IMO. It sounds like a bad excuse.Thor 2 at least worked well enough. I never thought while watching it 'why isn't one of the other Avengers here?' But Thor is a special case because he didn't really like them anyway.

Could this casting news add more stock to the theory that Jarvis becomes Ultron? Ultron would naturally give Vision a version of the Jarvis voice, so the Bettany casting fits perfectly.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say 'full articulation' in your review of Flain, j2g. If anything, the review shows well how little articulation Flain has - his head and arms move up and down, and the only thing useful you can do with the legs is to turn them at a slight angle. He still looks cute, but to me he looks like he really lacks different posing options of any sort (since the head only seems to look good in one position anyway, and changing an arm position isn't much of a pose). Some of the others look like they do a much better job of posing possibilities.

Ah, I totally mistook what you meant. That piece would be awesome! I'd love to get it in a lot more colors.

The problem with that theory is that Wyldstyle's hood is moulded in such a way to leave space to print on her shock of colored hair. That would look pretty odd without printing. The classic hood piece would work just fine.

She's also in the (fantastic) Super-Cycle Chase.

With this 'child murder' discussion, people seem to forget the newer General Grievous' Starfighter? A set that features a Padawan (Nahdar Vebb) who appeared in just one Clone Wars episode and got killed in said episode by Greivous. Yes, LEGO will produce (young) characters that die.

Please don't get into political discussions, which this is very heavily leaning towards. EB isn't the place for it.Thanks.

Jesse Eisenberg seems like extremely strange casting to me. He plays nerdy schizophrenic masterminds most of the time, which I guess could be applied to Lex Luthor, but I have a hard time seeing it. Plus Eisenberg is only 31, and I always see Lex as being a bit more established then that. I thought Kevin Spacey was perfect. Jeremy Irons also seems like a pretty odd choice for Alfred. He's a little creepy most of the time. Guess we'll see how it goes.

That part is actually already out in that color in the Disney Ariel's Enchanted Kiss set. Nice to see it here, too, though.The tux direction of these figures is awesome. I love fancy figs.

Well this just took a turn for the unexpectedly awesome. This theme looked like total crap in the prelims, but that truck is just superb! Looks like there will be a lot of zany, neat minifigures as well. I'm really digging the stealthy color-scheme; one thing that always bothered me about Agents was how blatant all of their vehicles were. I can't wait to see more.

No, the Ithorian is in the Yoda Chronicles set.The Phantom still looks crappy on the box, but in pictures showing it in real life it actually looks pretty nice. It kind of has a mini-Lambda shape. It's nice to see a fresh smaller flying vehicle - something that's not just another Jedi Starfighter. The Ghost looks pretty good too.

There's nothing wrong about linking to a Gizmodo article if you're going to bring it up in the first place. Gizmodo is just a news/opinion outlet, not a porn site. As I haven't seen this, I'm not exactly sure what I should be Googling to find out what you're talking about (though I can probably dig it up anyway since it's recent).

Hooooo boy, the exact same Snowspeeder repackaged and re-sold yet again! It was cool back in 2004, TLG. Ten years later, an actual re-design would be nice.

Another good direction LEGO could go would be to do 'Preview' figs, like they did before with Batman, Superman, and Azog this year. Pick the coolest new figures that people can nerd out over, and give them a nice exclusive packaging or something like that. People can still sell them for a million dollars on Ebay since they have them early, but at least all of the sane people out there can wait until the sets come out to get them. That would even be a good marketing strategy when you've got something like Guardians of the Galaxy coming up, since it'll build excitement around that.

That link has pictures of the official set, and it's got a LOT of differences to the one in the movie stills. The custom one definitely seems a lot closer. The one in those stills has SNOT sides and other things that don't appear on the official model. It's strange, but it's definitely not LEGO's version.

The Force was definitely cooler when it wasn't explained. Mystery is a good thing. In the OT the Force is this lovely mystical thing that the Jedi can apparently use and that the Rebel command believe in, which sets them apart from everybody else who thinks it doesn't exist. That's a nice touch. The only way the PT tried to explain it was the dumb midicholrian thing, and even that wasn't so bad - it just gives the Jedi some biological reason for being able to use the Force. And then the line about Qui-Gon... personally I don't think that's a big enough thing to turn Anakin being a force ghost into a plot hole. Anakin was a super-powerful Jedi. That's enough. The one thing that EpI made me wonder when I saw it for the first time was why Qui-Gon didn't disappear when he died. I explained it to myself that he didn't die peacefully, so his body stuck around, whereas both Obi-Wan and Yoda were resigned to die and did so willingly. Anakin then also didn't disappear since he didn't really want to die either. I don't know if there's an 'official' reason for why some people disappear and others don't. The CW did the worst with the Force, IMO. Those Force-planet episodes were just god-awful. Part of me is glad Filoni never got the chance to see that through farther, like he said he was going to. That better not come up in Rebels.

It's not really LEGO's fault. That's what the ship actually looks like in Rebels. I don't think a design that pays heavy homage to another design is a bad thing, though.

Great find! The Karai set looks very enticing. More interesting female faces and hairpieces are always useful. The sub looks pretty good to me as well - it's got a nice turtle shape to it, unlike that awful Shell bike from the first wave. I'm surprised at the sheer amount of variations of the turtles we're getting. It's also mind-boggling why they get so many while we're stuck with the same crappy Spider-Man over and over, but I guess it's just in LEGO's budget allotments for this line. It's hard to tell if the sub comes with new variations; if not, then I guess it's only one new version of each Turtle in this wave (plus at least one coming in the movie-themed sets).

Customs go in the Minifig Customization Workshop forum.

A little digging wouldn't have found that, since it was posted a looooooooong time ago. It might not even have been in this thread. Needless to say, those are the comic looks of the characters, and we can count on them looking different in the sets.

I've noticed actually a variety of materials used now for capes depending on the figure. Certain capes are quite stiff like you say, perhaps the majority, but I've gotten others that were quite soft such as Vitruvius' cape, Gandalf's cape, and Dwalin's cape, to name a few. Dare I say that LEGO is purposefully giving softer capes to bearded figures so that the capes don't retain a messed-up shape when not used with a beard? That's probably thinking about it too hard.Personally, I like the stiffer capes since they seem less likely to fray. Nearly all of my capes from the early 2000s (when capes really exploded due to Star Wars and Harry Potter) look very shaggy and worn. It's hard to say since there haven't been as many years on the newer capes, but they seem less likely to do that. About the separately-bagged part thing: there has been one set with separately bagged parts that did not list China as a country of origin. It was the PoP Ostrich Race. The ostriches certainly don't feel like normal LEGO, since the hard black parts don't have the normal LEGO sheen, but make of that what you will.

The last Wolverine we got also was basically Astonishing X-Men style, and he was a great figure. As long as LEGO is making more X-Men characters I think the correct approach to take is: There have been a couple very weird and off-putting X-Men iterations in the past, but I doubt LEGO will go for those. Most of the more normal ones are decent and I'm sure will make great minifigs.

I highly doubt Groot would be a big-fig. He will be a strange figure with some unique parts, for sure, but he doesn't fit the current 'big-fig' type since all of the current ones are very bulky characters while Groot is rather slender. I'd like to see more characters like Dogpound. I think that would work for Thing and Blob pretty well, since it would make them big but not ridiculous. This is falling more in line with the Big-Fig discussion topic, though.