Clone OPatra

Nice review Hinck! The only Friends set I own is the Cafe, but it's lovely seeing more and more of these stores. LEGO got down a nice aesthetic and stuck with it, which should make for a lovely cohesive town if you get all the sets. Couple things in the review: European boxes never get anything but the set number. Personally I like that in comparison to the American boxes, since the artwork never gets cluttered up with all those details (which used to go on the side of US boxes anyway). Also, that orientation of pretzel is how I'm used to seeing pretzel images. Google Image search pretzel and you'll find that pretty much all representations have it that way. Not sure why that reads as upside down to you, unless of course you have a rare eye condition in which all pretzels read bottoms-up. It happens.

It's actually Gandalf the White in that picture. That whole part is a bit messed up - I think they took the Gandalf the Grey picture from Orthanc.

I was talking about the rain. I've seen trans-blue plates used as water before, sure, but not as rain. Honestly I would not have even expected that to work, which is why it impressed me.

All of these are lovely and instantly recognizable, but boy I love that rain technique for Singin in the Rain! I don't think I've ever seen that done before. The MOC would've evoked the scene even without it, but the rain really brings it to the next level and makes you feel the downpour. Storms are something harder to convey in LEGO, but you've done a great job making it happen, with such a simple technique too. Sorry I didn't have any brutal criticism for you.

You mean the scientist in the Space Center set was actually going to sabotage the mission? Hawkeye turns bad? This Glider Pilot is out to take over the world? And I think Draco Malfoy actually went from bad to fine. Sorry, but I'm not sure that funny is really working out for you.

Please don't start the 'UCS' debate here too. It never gets anywhere. What's important is S@H Exclusive. UCS, big playset, large architectural model, etc. doesn't matter. They're all S@H Exclusives. So, yes, X-Wing and Ewok Village make two Star Wars S@H Exclusives.

It goes underneath the flinging mechanism for Gimli, replicating the split second that the eye is shown in the film. I wouldn't normally tell somebody to look up a video review (since they're inane on the whole), but video reviews such as the Brick Show or YCF show it off. Just quickly close the review after you've seen the function

Gah, it's already been explained! The promo, polybag figure has a double-sided head. There are no new faces!

Avengers 2 isn't actually in production, though. While Whedon announced his intention to have the characters in A2, he can also not do that. Nothing is set in stone, and lots of ideas for characters are always bandied about in the pre-production stage of these films.

When you're viewing an image (now surrounded by those dumb black bars), there are numerous icons beneath it. The one at the far right looks like three dots in a row. Click on that - it pops up a menu. One of the choices is 'view all sizes,' which gets you to the same old type of page with numerous size choices.

Just bought this set today in the US, and my box was corrected to reflect the actual minifigures included in the set. It makes me wonder how big of a run they did before fixing it, and it's interesting that they fixed it at all, since there are other errors I can recall that never got fixed. My set still came with an extra brown fedora and red bandana anyway. This model is ridiculously big; the horses pulling it look miniscule in comparison, but regardless it's very pretty and the minifigure lineup is superb. I guess it's standard for LEGO to go all out designing unique figs for these movie licenses (PoP, Pirates), but it still amazes me that we get unique designs even for the (probably) throwaway bad guys.

Also, the season's been done for a while now, so if people haven't seen it, their loss. Feel free to discuss openly.

Exactly. DC has less marketable/interesting/whatever-you'd-like-to-call-it characters and/or doesn't know how to handle them. From DC, there are really Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Flash, and I guess Aquaman (though he gets some hate for no reason). Yes, there are others, but as much as I'd like to see a Blue Beetle or Martian Manhunter movie, I don't think that the company bigwigs feel comfortable making that, especially given that they screw up a movie about a big character like Green Lantern. Marvel has lots of teams that include lots of character - X-Men, Fantastic Four, Avengers... Even if different studios still have the rights to some of these characters, I'd count them as Marvel movies anyway. Not all, but lots of the characters that are part of these teams have very rich, developed pasts, which gives both Disney and the other companies working on Marvel movies a huge amount of material to work with. Another problem is that DC properties are made exclusively by Warner Bros. I guess it's the same with all of the Avengers properties now being controlled by Disney, but Marvel movies really got off the ground around 2000 because different studios developed a bunch of successful Marvel films independently, making Superhero movies a new trend. The Spider-Man, X-Men, and even Fantastic Four movies made superhero movies serious blockbusters. If those hadn't happened as they did, I'm not sure the MCU could be unfolding as it is now. Honestly, I'm quite aggravated that Warner Bros and DC screws it up so much. Flash (I particularly like the third Flash, Wally West) has a lot of potential for a film series that's light and fun like the MCU films are mostly light and fun. Green Lantern had potential, but they kept in too much magic nonsense which really brought down the film from the very first moments (and the bad guy is arguably quite a weak point in the plot). Now with Batman and Superman they've been going this dark, weighty route, which is great and all, but they need some light, fun films or they'll never really go anywhere.

I believe GameStop is getting a hohum Spider-Man keychain.

Interpretive/contemporary dance is a bit of an acquired taste. Most people who look at the dance group's YouTube channel are probably adults or moderately interested in what they do, and therefore might like it. The majority of people who look at LEGO's channel are probably kids or 12-year-olds; I think it's pretty unlikely that your average kid would dig this kind of stuff.Personally, I think it was very weird, though that's how that type of dance always is. It's very odd that LEGO put this on their channel, and I too wonder how involved LEGO is with it.

You have to realize that he supposedly made all of those suits in about six months (in the interval between Avengers and IM3). So yeah, sort of a lot of work, but at the same time, he could easily rebuild them. In fact, Jarvis probably has all of them programmed, so Tony could literally a hit a button (after amassing the materials super-easily), and whichever one he wants is back. (In Iron Man 1 or 2 he has Jarvis build a suit; it's not like he does these by hand, pouring sweat into them.) That's just part of why his whole 'relationship with Pepper' was done so poorly in the film. Yeah, he blew them all up as a spectacle, but we know how easily he could build anew whatever he wants.

Ah, now this is what LEGO is about! If you're not satisfied with a set, make it better (unless it's a helicopter from the Superheroes line, in which case, just scrap it for parts)! I haven't gotten the Stagecoach yet, so I can't behold its ridiculousness for myself, but this is a wonderful MOD. Great job Kiel!

What are you responding to? It sounds like your arguing half in-film and half real world studio-making-the-movie. In the narrative of the film both Stark and Rhodey don't particularly like the armor; that was part of the plot. That's why I think Rhodey would have the regular War Machine armor next time around.

Also (and I don't think this needs to be spoiler tagged), Rhodey didn't really like the IP scheme, so I feel like it'd be him with the War Machine armor in his next appearances and not the IP armor. Or perhaps Stark will make him a new upgraded WM armor.

I was just thinking the same thing myself. The atmosphere was incredible. At first I thought it was a bit overdone, but then when you glimpse the Turbo Tank rolling right through the mist/storm... incredible.

Damn, that animation looks amazing! Plus, this means that there will be at least two story arcs featuring Jedi and Clones. It's crazy that this show reached its peak level just before it went off the air, and then is continuing with top notch stuff that will most likely be better than the majority of the five aired seasons.

The most tell-tale sign of this being a fake is the white outline around the figure. LEGO never does that. If you look up other single-figure promotional polybags, you won't find a white outline. It's a cheap photoshop trick for making things look good that a big company with a graphics department wouldn't use.

That piece already exists in dark brown…LEGO just makes choices we don't understand sometimes, like Obi-Wan's hair always being orange. For all we know the designers might have only received stills and other materials that made his hair look darker than his goatee, or black. There is going to be a lot of stylized color in the film by the looks of it (and just because it's Zack Snyder), so judging colors of things isn't always the easiest.

This review hasn't changed my mind - this is definitely the set to get out of the three. Yeah, the set itself is pretty cruddy, but it has some ok pieces and the minifigures are all you need. Supes, Lois, and Zod with full armor included; it seems like a bad decision on LEGO's part, but being able to get the full Zod armor in this set really makes me turn a blind eye to the bigger one. Superman might not look that much like the movie version (and Lois doesn't either, for that matter), but I didn't get the older Supes set anyway so I welcome him and his iconic Superman hair. One thing I notice that's a little unusual for the figures - both Zod's and Lois' mouths seem farther from their eyes than normal minifigures. Kind of weird, given that the actor who plays Zod has a somewhat chubby face.

I think it's more than just that - even if all of your people could fly and have laser eyes and stuff, if you were trying to cause some really massive havoc you'd probably want some space ships with guns. I'm sure that bad guys will be plenty powerful as individuals (we get a glimpse of a midair Zod-Supes fight after all), but just a bunch of powerful people doesn't have the same impact as people with weaponry.