Blondie-Wan

2019: LEGO Indiana Jones 3 (I know it's outside the date range given in the title, but it fits the thread otherwise)

LEGO has made sets based off media that old via the Ideas program before. While I agree about the quality of those projects, the whole site is a filter - it's our voting (and not voting) that determines what falls away into obscurity.

Ooh, I hadn't realized the extended cut of that was R-rated. I can't imagine TLG is too happy about that, either (or that the originally-intended two movies were further split and expanded into three, of course). I wonder whether that was a contributing factor to the Middle-Earth theme(s) having less longevity than some of us initially hoped and expected, and if so, what that means for the DC theme...

I read not long ago that when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hits video it'll have an alternate, extended cut (30 extra minutes), and that that cut will be R-rated (!). It occurs to me that would make this movie the first R-rated movie to have LEGO sets based on it (!!). I can't help but wonder whether TLG is happy about that - presumably they didn't produce their sets with any idea the movie they were associated with would eventually have a version with that rating...

Wow, did it actually get as low as 29%? I've seen it waver slightly as new reviews came in, but the last few times I've looked at RT it was vacillating between 30% and 31%. I hadn't seen it get as low as 29%. As of a few minutes ago, it's at 30%. I'm not sure why you'd say it deserves "closer to 70%." The percentage rating doesn't describe individual critics' ratings of how good it is, like somebody giving it 70% to mean the same thing as a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10; it means the actual percentage of critics who think it's good - 70% means 7 out of every 10 critics think it's good, without any indication of how good they think it is.

I've seen a few like that, but they tend to get little or no support, which I view as the system working as intended.

Interestingly, a Fandango poll has Wonder Woman as the #1 thing most people are looking forward to in this movie.

So have lots of other movies, including some made long before Marvel began making movies. They don't have a monopoly on it. They're simply known for making a regular practice of it.

Because why would someone do it? What would be the in-universe rationale for someone fashioning themselves after Indiana Jones and doing what he does the way he does it after he stops doing it?

We don't know that for sure. It's certainly possible, given that so far, several projects have made it to review that are based on existing licenses, and every one has been declined. However, every single one of them had at least one obvious obstacle to approval besides just being based on an existing license. It's conceivable some of them might have been approved if they were smaller, or weren't already under internal development, or conflicting with some other licensee's rights. Moreover, even if the terms for some of their licensed themes do explicitly prohibit additional sets coming through the Ideas program, that doesn't mean they all do - for example, their DC license might prohibit it, but their Star Wars license might not. Even if that's the case, though, they might not be able to allow Star Wars projects while disallowing DC ones because that would then publicly reveal something about the different terms of their DC license, and any disclosure of those terms would likely itself be a violation of the terms. Hence, they continue accepting submissions in all their existing licensed themes, since they can then just decline the ones that are outright prohibited while giving serious consideration to the ones that aren't. We really have no way of knowing which licensed themes might be completely out of the question for Ideas projects, and which are actually real possibilities - at least, not yet.

Ah, gotcha! Sorry, my mistake - I don't know why that didn't occur to me, given that I think that's how the chosen Minecraft project got so much support so quickly.

Right, but the fact Ninjago's market is more or less entirely LEGO-buying kids, while the DC / Batman market isn't, skews that heavily. It's entirely possible an all-Ninjago Minifigures series would sell better than an all-DC one.

"They"? "Staff"? You have a team working for you to promote Ideas projects?

I don't think we do, actually. We don't know that about The LEGO Movie either, for that matter; I think it's more like alternate-but-linked universes. Finn's play reflects what happens in the LEGO world, and vice versa, but neither actually causes or contains the other.

That's not how RT works. It's an aggregator, which means they look at the big picture from lots of reviews from different critics. They're saying that 33% of critics gave it positive reviews, while 67% gave it negative ones.

I get that you're suggesting that; I just don't get why. It's like saying the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation should have ended with Jean-Luc Picard changing his name to James T. Kirk to take on the "mantle". Indiana Jones is a name (an adopted name, granted, but still) of a single person. He's not "Indianajonesman".

33% Fresh on RT. That's... not good. Yow.

Indeed, since we all know the answer to that question anyway, which is "a whole bunch". Speaking of which, I'm guessing the fact that most of these are specific, unique characters and that there's just one "army builder", the Pizza Planet Alien, is why they're doing 18 figures in this series rather than 16 - though if so, it raises the question of why they didn't also do 18 characters per series for The Simpsons. Perhaps increasing the figure count just hadn't occurred to them yet, or they weren't yet set up for it production-wise? Anyway. I'm happy with what we've seen. I know many others aren't crazy about the Genie, but I think he looks fine. To me, the only "off" / weird-looking one is Captain Hook, but to me his figure doesn't look bad, just different from how we normally see him. It's just a little strange to see him more fully filtered through the traditional LEGO minifigure aesthetic than we usually see most minifigures of cartoon characters, but it's not as though Disney itself doesn't routinely do that with its iconic characters in its own merchandise (the Vinymation figures, for example). I plan to get this whole series. Despite being a Toy Story fan, though, who actually does army-build for that theme, I don't think I'm going to get a huge number of the Pizza Planet Aliens; I already have almost two dozen of them from the 2010 Toy Story sets. Though I totally understand the need for a new version of the figure for this Minifigures series, I do wish that the Pizza Planet Aliens weren't updated at all; it'd be easier to justify using this series to bump up my army a bit more if they all matched perfectly. That said, I am thinking of getting more than one of these new ones, though - perhaps three, to represent "the" three, while sticking with my existing ones for all the others. But I'm still trying to decide. I may get just one of these to complete this series and be done with it.

I'd say it's not only possible but probable. TLG's licensing relationship with Lucasfilm has been important and has continued for over a decade and a half now, and I suspect Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm has only made it stronger. And the previous Indy line was reportedly a big success, which seems borne out by the fact it got four waves of sets released over two years - certainly more than they usually do for an isolated single new movie in a long-running franchise they've never done sets for before. Nothing's official until it's official, but I think it's a pretty safe bet there will be more LEGO Indiana Jones sets. To me, then, the major questions are not whether the theme is returning, but a) how long the theme resurrection will last; b) what percentage of sets will based on the new movie versus what percentage will be based on the older material; c) how many of the new sets based on the older material will be remakes / revisits of locations, vehicles, etc. covered in the 2008 / 2009 sets; d) whether they'll cover anything outside the feature film series (specifically the TV show, but also anything else); and e) whether there'll be any super-rare and elusive promo stuff to vex me. Perhaps it's unwise of me to just assume the line will return, but I have to say it looks extremely likely.

Gee, I guess all those science-y projects must simply have cheated their way to 10,000 votes, huh? Smart kids love science - maybe not all, but enough of them (and I'd hazard a guess there's more than a little overlap between that group and LEGO fandom). There are entire companies surviving and even thriving around just science-based toys. Moreover, the project here is really more about the vehicle itself. I'd argue a rocket is way, way cooler than some boring, mundane thing like a car (for example). Especially if it's a rocket that actually, for real, let people set foot on another freaking world.

Erm... no.

If you say so. I'd dearly love to have it, though (just as I'd dearly love to have the MSL Curiosity Rover you similarly dismissed). I think it's an elegant, beautiful model of one of the most amazing things ever created by human beings. And I think that's simply unlikely. The odds against any one single project (even the Saturn V) not passing might be somewhat longer, and it's certainly true some particular projects have very little chance, but we can be sure they would rather be able to say "yes" to at least one thing than "no" to everything, All it takes is for them to approve one project, any one, for the answer to be greater than "none".

Really? That's pretty pessimistic. On what basis do you think they'd decline even the Saturn V? I can't see any real obstacles for that one.

Unlikely. He's always been enthusiastic about returning to the role and has always seen the character as having more facets to explore, unlike how he's typically seen Han. Moreover, I doubt whether Indy is killed off or not would affect whether LEGO sets are made. All that's important is that a new movie comes (well, and that it's not rated R).

That sounds dead-on to me, save for the timing of what hikes they've had; however, I think it's down to them raising the prices with different waves in different countries. Here in the U.S., for example, they started with Series 1 & 2 back in 2010 at an MSRP of just $1.99 per minifigure, then went to an MSRP of $2.99 starting with Series 3, and stayed there all the way until The Simpsons Series 1 when they went to $3.99, and that's where the pricing still is now, at least for us. As I understand it, though, in different countries they raised the prices at different times. I do agree that I don't see them going any higher right away; I don't think an MSRP above $4 would fly here, at least not yet.