Blondie-Wan

Hm. The poll doesn’t seem to be working, much like my own poll for the previous review. The just-announced results show once again just how tough it can be for me to guess how these are going to go; I’d certainly never have thought they’d go with Friends’ Central Perk over any one of three different real-world space endeavors. I will just say I think the Chemical Plant is least likely, and that the selection(s) could be any of the others, but anything’s possible (even the Chemicsl Plant, or none at all).

Well! “Steamboat Willie” is quite welcome here, but not really a huge surprise, except for my previously-noted concern about whether it came too close to being an existing license. The Friends project, on the other hand, is very much a big surprise. I never really gave it much consideration as a likely contender. And I’m also a bit surprised none of the three projects based on current real-life space exploration endeavors were selected. It just goes to show I really never know what the LEGO Review is going to do.

Hm. I have to say I prefer the specialized heads for Woody, Jessie, and Buzz and the longer arms and legs for Woody and Jessie from the 2010 line. I’m glad I was able to get that whole line then (minus a few polybags, Duplo sets, and extended line items). I would have liked to have seen Bo as a minidoll. Still, though, the sets are more than the figures, and these look like cute builds even if they’re 4+ sets. I might go for them all.

Yep! I was kind of expecting the results yesterday, actually. The results could come any day now.

Of course they are, but even fabric elements are specifically prohibited by the rules against new parts in product ideas. And it’s still a first, even if it’s “only” a soft goods part - no previous CUUSOO / Ideas set has had one before. Such bargaining with another line wouldn’t be the first time; it happened with the Doctor Who Ideas set, after all, which got to use the new hair and sonic screwdriver elements right after they appeared in a LEGO Dimensions Level Pack (and incidentally, in doing so made the Doctor Who set the first Ideas set released from an existing licensed pop-culture theme, while to date none have been approved). But this would be the first time a new part shape (even a “mere” fabric element) has actually made its official debut in an Ideas set (assuming I’m right about it not having been used before, and that it doesn’t come out in a Ninjago set or something first, as you suggest).

I think Pdaitabird means a theme happening because this set kicked one off, like Minecraft and Ghostbusters before it.

I might be in error (it would hardly be the first time!), but I think The Flintstones might represent a new first for Ideas - the first Ideas set to introduce a completely new part (specifically, the fabric element for the car top).

Whoa. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the fabric element for the car top is a new piece - a first for LEGO Ideas.

Time travel doesn’t exist for real and we don’t know whether it’s possible at all, much less what the rules are, but all of the various books, movies, shows, etc. that use it have their own interpretations and systems for it. There’s nothing saying it can’t work this way in the internal LEGO universe of the LCU. Not sure about this. There’s a fair number of LEGO elements in these movies that have never existed in reality prior to being designed for these movies. Certainly I don’t think we’re meant to surmise that Finn owns sets from a movie in which he himself (Finn) is a character. Sure, but that doesn’t mean Emmet and Rex weren’t also doing it on their own. As I see it (and have said before), I think the LEGO universe of these movies exists not solely in the imaginations of Finn, Bianca, the Man Upstairs, etc., but in an alternate dimension that is linked to this one. Events in either one affect the other, but it goes both ways, and both universes also still have some independent existence. Maybe Emmet / Rex time-traveled because Finn thought about it, but maybe Finn thought about it because Emmet / Rex did it. Think of Star Trek. The mirror universe doesn’t exist simply because characters in “our” Trek universe thought of it; it exists independently, with its own history, and once in a while characters, ships, etc. from one universe are able to pass into the other and affect things, but for the most part it exists on its own, with things that are similar to the things in the main universe in some ways but different in others. Something similar exists in the world of G4 My Little Pony, with the main universe with Equestria and the alternate Equestria Girls universe. Numerous such alternate universes are part of both the Marvel and DC universes. I think there’s something similar in the LCU, with both an in-universe LEGO universe where Emmet, Unikitty, etc. actually exist as sapient beings, and an alternate world much like our own, with “real”,”regular” humans and such, and in which Emmet, Unikitty, etc. exist but are simply inanimate toys, albeit ones that humans like Finn play with and conceptualize as being alive. These universes are linked in some way, such that events in one reflect and influence the other, but both still exist independently, and the LEGO characters are sometimes able to leave their universe and enter “our” “real” one.

(*snip*) Everything else you wrote can be true while the can still happen. As with the first, there’s some ambiguity over whether the bulk of the movie is “real”. That these characters are toys of Finn, Bianca, the Man Upstairs, etc. doesn’t mean they can’t also be discrete sapient beings inhabiting another universe, one linked to this one via the imaginations and conventions of people in our world but not necessarily dependent upon it.

The whole thing has now been posted, if you’d like to hear it (obviously it might be considered a spoiler, though I’d say it’s not a major one):

While that might be true of the overall movie, the primary scene represented here is a mine cart chase that I don’t think is any less kid-friendly than any of numerous other action sequences from PG-rated fantasies from which LEGO has produced sets.

It varies from set to set - things like the various licensed pop-culture entertainment Ideas sets normally go in Licensed, City-applicable sets (Research Institute, Old Fishing Store) go in Town, and so on. This is a fine place for discussion of the Saturn V. Enjoy it! It’s a fantastic set.

I wish I could upvote your posts here. I guess I’ll have to settle for this:

*snip* Same here.

Oh. I thought you might have actual data, like specific sales numbers or estimates of how it sold vs. how it was hoped or expected to sell.

Do these accounts specify different figures? Here in this thread, Daniel-Technic reports a box with extra Rexes instead of Dorothys, while my own local stores (both of them, it turns out, going by what our local LUG members have posted in our Facebook group) both got boxes with extras of Apocalypseburg Lucy instead of Emmet (six boxes total, split between two stores!). Are any other figures being reported as having wonky distributions?

How do you know it sold poorly?

A bunch of us have seen the movie already during last week’s early screening, yet everyone who hasn’t seen it yet has to wait until at least February 8th, and in some cases a bit longer given their countries’ local releases (never mind individual circumstances that may keep folks from seeing the movie at earliest opportunity). I therefore thought it might be good to have a dedicated thread for a little while in which everyone here who’s seen it can discuss it to their hearts’ content, with no fear of spoiling it for those still waiting. Perhaps after a while (after it goes to video, say), the thread could be merged with the main thread to unite all discussion in a single thread, and in the meantime both the have-seens and the haven’t-seens can discuss it at length without the one group ruining it for the other. Mods, does that sound good for you?

This was the first boxed set I acquired from this movie (first set overall was a polybag), and it will be the first of which I get duplicates. I’d like to see something like a headgear assortment polybag (like they used to do; it could now be part of the Xtra line) containing these new-old helmets in red, yellow, blue, white, black, gray, and green, plus gray air tanks, that we could use with our Series 17 Rocket Boy, Exo-suit, Vintage Minifigure Collection, etc. minifigures.

I just got back from a morning of packet-feeling these today, their release day at my local LEGO Store. It is looking like the distribution may indeed be skewed - between two other customers, four store employees, and myself - with plenty of experienced Minifigures packet-feelers among us - we located no Awesome Remix Emmets in at least the first couple boxes, whereas at least the first box and I think the second each had six Battle-Ready Lucys. The store wound up opening three boxes, but as I left it looked like the third mirrored the first two, and I didn’t bother feeling all the rest. I did manage to get nearly all the others, I think (I haven’t opened them, but I’m pretty confident); I should be missing only Emmet and Dorothy (who was indeed there, but I left her for later, instead getting these other eighteen plus a couple other small sets). I’m guessing this is a production aberration rather than an intentional wonky distribution. The only other time I can ever remember seeing multiple fresh new boxes of a blind-bagged LEGO figure series not contain at least one complete set apiece was with Series 10, which of course had a single figure (Mr. Gold) who was substantially rarer than all the others by design. Here, I suspect (but of course don’t know) all the characters are indeed produced in equal numbers, but some packing quirk at the factories has led to different proportions of figures packed in boxes in different runs. (It’s also possible, if unlikely, that the Emmets are there in the store’s boxes and we’re just getting them wrong, since of course this is all based on packets that have been felt but not opened. I really don’t think so, though. We had some adept and experienced hands checking and rechecking these packets.)

YMMV, but it’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. I can’t wait to get the soundtrack so I can enjoy the whole thing again and again. There are other good songs, too - the whole movie has a few more songs than the first one - but this one’s my favorite, at least for the moment (with the caveat that I’ve seen the movie just once, of course, and most of my experience of the songs comes from that single viewing).

I actually enjoyed The LEGO Ninjago Movie much more than I thought I would; in fact, I think I probably enjoyed it as much as The LEGO Batman Movie. For me, it’s as funny as TLBM is, and I think the action may actually be the best of any of the movies in this franchise; it really benefits from having Jackie Chan do actual fight choreography (even if it does mean playing even faster and looser with minifigure limitations than the other movies, something I’m not normally particularly enamored with otherwise). That the action starts off with a huge battle and then moves to smaller ones isn’t a problem for me - after all, there are some outstanding films that use similarly unconventional patterns with their action setpieces (Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back comes to mind). I also admire that the movie breaks from LCU formula in certain ways. Most notably, each of the other three movies include numerous cameos and crossovers with (LEGO versions of) various outside pop-culture properties - DC Comics (fundamental to TLBM, of course, while more of an outside crossover in TLM and TLM2), Middle-Earth, Wizarding World, Star Wars, The Simpsons, and so on, with TLBM adding to the lineup not just existing properties like Doctor Who and The Wizard of Oz, but things that have never had actual physical LEGO products before, like Clash of the Titans, King Kong, and The Matrix (something I admit I found entertaining, but which feels like a bit of a cheat if I’m completely honest). TLNM, OTOH, almost wholly eschews pop-culture references - there are numerous acknowledgements of trappings and tropes associated with martial-arts cinema, say, but IIRC, there aren’t tons of cameos of characters from other entertainment franchises, which was honestly kind of refreshing to me. I love a good pop-culture reference or character crossover as much as the next cinephile, but I think it’s easy for makers of “hip” humor endeavors to become overly reliant on them, and I liked that the makers of TLNM didn’t lazily lean on that button, choosing instead to tell their story using just LEGO-original Ninjago characters. I certainly think TLNM is the most under appreciated movie in the franchise, both critically and commercially. While I don’t doubt no small number of people found it genuinely wanting in comparison to the truly glorious The LEGO Movie, I think TLNM being the third movie in this series, coming so close on the heels of another spinoff, being based more purely on a toy line than the previous movie (which was part toy, and part commentary on a mythology that has been a cornerstone of popular culture for most of the last century), and with both TLBM and TLNM being just two of at least four toy-based movies released in theaters that year (!), may all have led critics to judge TLNM a bit more harshly than they otherwise would have. I certainly don’t think the reviews would have been so poor if it had come a few years earlier as the first LEGO movie. Oh, well. It’s still not my favorite, but I do think it’s by far the most under-appreciated entry in the LCU. I look forward to finally seeing it again.

All will be clear once you see the movie.