Mandate

No. By "new dragons" do you mean the baby ones, or full-scale ones? I don't think we'll see full-scale dragons outside of NINJAGO for a while, seeing as they're still a central asset to the line and it could cause brand confusion/sales cannibalism (admittedly not on a huge scale, but it'll probably be a concern for LEGO anyway). There's a multitude of dragons in NINJAGO that have not been made in set form... sorry, it's gonna be a while before Elves gets any. Unfortunately, what would be "best" for a line isn't always actually going to be the best for it. If LEGO has enough confidence in Elves, they'll give it a greater media presence. Similarly, if Nexo Knights turns out to be a flop (which I very much so doubt), it's either going to be canned, given a much smaller budget, or at worst join Galidor in the incinerator room.

Overuse of technology? Maybe in Rebooted, but anywhere else in the show anything that isn't the Destiny's Bounty is seen for only five seconds. Elves is not meant to be a big bang theme like Nexo Knights is. LEGO was not expecting Elves to be a runawary success like NINJAGO or BIONICLE, and that's the difference between the marketing budget of Elves and Nexo Knights. Probably not. NINJAGO's roots were in oriental Japanese structures and mythos, and it continued that trend each year with notable sets such as the Fire Temple, Dojo of Spinjitzu, Destiny's Bounty, the Temple of Light, the Battle of (for?) Ninjago City and the Temple of Airjitzu. Some of them had technological features, but none of them were overwhelmed by technology. The Destiny's Bounty can still pass for an oriental ship, whereas the Fortrex cannot pass for a simple castle. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it probably isn't going to happen.

Apologies for the double-post (it's been two weeks since the last post, give me a break), and a thanks in advance to NinjaJayNuva for pointing it out. A recent tweet by the Hageman brothers questioned whether or not Jay's last name truly is Walker.

I think it's best to direct discussion of that to the TV show thread before we inevitably derail this one again

Merlock looks like Mardolf the Orange from LU, and I love the parallels in the art style between this and LU.

Wow. Excellent greebling and detail all around. Could do with a bit more purple, but you've done a fantastic job with this.

Okay, I take back almost everything I said about this line originally. Fortrex looks amazing. Jestro's vehicle look cool as well I guess, but it's not my cup of tea. Love the minifig design, love the artstyle, love the functions, love basically everything about the sets now. As for the story, mini-rant ahead. So other than the TV show, love what you've done here LEGO. Still skeptical of the sets that we haven't seen official pics of yet (unless they've been released and I didn't see it ), but I'm looking forward to how LEGO will challenge my opinion of them.

Pretty nice MOC, but I'd like to point out it's "Hiroshi's Labyrinth" and the scene took place in a jungle, not parallel cliffs

I thought LU originally had its own section of the forums, but due to inactivity all of the content was moved to Culture and Multimedia?

Well, that was... underwhelming. Grinder was awesome, voice acting (of everything, except Grinder's first lines) was not. Ekimu looked amazing, pile of Uniter masks was not. The ending itself felt very rushed, and it's not much of an epilogue. Nothing as interesting as G1's reveal of the Bohrok, Exo-Force's Sentai Fortress being destroyed or even NINJAGO having the villain win? Really bugs me that after all this the heroes didn't actually lose anything at all. Maybe next year... Edit: Have to correct myself, it wasn't a pile of masks, it was the new crystal attachments. Thanks "Tahu" for pointing that out

Ah, thanks for letting me know! I wasn't sure if it was true or not, only that it's something that's been floating around in the fanbase for a while. Fair enough, I suppose. But couldn't the animations be seen as a way of testing the waters to see if BIONICLE could be successful in an audiovisual format?

NINJAGO's original episode is a very confusing mess after its DVD release, fan interpretations and later international releases. The original run on CN, IIRC was the episodes "Episode 1: Way of the Ninja", "Episode 2: The Golden Weapon", "Episode 3: King of Shadows" and "Episode 4: Weapons of Destiny". Some fans consider the forty-minute special two separate episodes (?), though I'm not sure how valid that claim is. The DVD release, at the very least the international version, merged all four "minisodes" together as "Episode 1: Way of the Ninja". Kind of trivial on this subject, but here's where it starts getting confusing: The later episodes effectively reset the episode counter, and the US release of "Episode 1: Rise of the Snakes" to "Episode 13: Day of The Great Devourer" were considered season 1, whereas the international release kept the original 40-minute special as season 1. Kind of pointless and trivial, but I just thought I'd let you know Anyway, TLG's done testing the waters. 2015 was the year for that, though I imagine that with only four episodes the community's going to be a lot more restless next year. At any rate, I'm not looking forward to it. If the image they provided is any indication of the show's quality I can't see any reason to be impressed by it. The colors are ironically flat, the posing is not only generic but... underdeveloped, perhaps? The way Tahu's pauldrons stick up bugs me. I don't understand why they tried to make Tahu "true to the toy" when they're simply going to flex and bend parts of him in unnatural ways, and the cell shading doesn't do a good job at all making the world seem like something out of a cartoon. Not in the way franchise like Borderlands or TellTale's The Walking Dead have, anyway. It's definitely not indicative of the show's overall quality, so I hope that the other environments will look a lot better, and hopefully they'll get some of the guys that animated the G1 CGI commercial to do their animation work.

Lloyd knew that Borg knew, Morro could have walked Lloyd off a cliff and then possessed Borg to take them. Also, I'm fairly certain Wu doesn't know the location of the Golden Weapons.

I was talking about things pulled out of nowhere when I said most of that, not things that lacked continuity between seasons. Chen's noodle house was pulled out of nowhere, we were told that it was this big massive fast food empire yet no one had ever mentioned it before in the entire series. Secrets such as Morro's existence, while pulled out of nowhere, at least made sense. The sixteen realm's introduction was both the best and worst in this regard, because on the one hand you've got the fact that we had actually seen some of them, but on the other hand you've also got the fact that they had been seen, but the full nature of the was never established. Regarding the Golden Weapons, we haven't seen them since episode 34, and there's been barely a whisper about them. When the one of the only three characters that knows anything about their whereabouts is possessed and has all of his memories accessed it's more than a little worrying that Morro was so incompetent as to not try and find them. As NinjaJayNuva said, Cole's dragon has it too. Both of them have the eyes made from crystals. I'm kind of mixed on that, I can't imagine having a dragon with transparent eyes and still looking good. One of the great parts about previous dragons was that the eyes stood out even though they were solid colors, and it never looks right when you swap them out for transparent eyes. On the other hand, if done well the eyes will glow, but I doubt they will.

The Ultra Dragon was last seen in episode 26, and it was last heard of in episode 27. The very last words ever spoken were: Presumably it was at Wu's academy, but since then there's nothing known about it. I think that both the molded dragon heads and the brick-built heads have their own particular places. On a ship such as the Destiny's Bounty, the original molded head worked incredibly well to fit the aesthetic style of the ship. Unfortunately, I don't think the same can be said of the Destiny's Bounty 2.0. No, it wasn't very continuity-driven. There have been enough things that they have completely abandoned, such as Ultra Dragon, Wu's academy and Zane's heart, to mention a few. There were so many things introduced from nowhere, such as Chen and his noodle shops, the DBX, Morro (although at least his backstory contributed to the lore meaningfully) and the 16 Realms, to name a few.

Sadly, yes. I apologize if I sounded whiny earlier, Possession was a pretty okay season, it's just that it had so many noticeable shortcomings. Hopefully they'll do better with Sky Pirates.

Jay's dragon, on the snout. I disagree. The Preeminent, Morro, Garmadon's death, etc were all forgettable. Season 5 didn't even follow the rules it had set up for its own story, a number of plot elements were tired rehashes of stuff that's been done too many times beforehand (loss of powers, possessed/evil character Gollum conflict, etc). None of the build-up payed off in the end, and despite some explanation regarding NINJAGO's more confusing moments almost, if not every, unexplained plot device from both Rebooted and the Tournament of Elements was left unexplained. NINJAGO's story isn't not improving, it's stagnant.

Looking pretty good. Cole's mini-dragon will be an instant purchase, just a shame they couldn't have released it in another wave so it could be bigger. Not sure what to make of the Sky Shark, though. edit: Sorry, almost forgot. Thank you very much for sharing these with us, CM4Sci. News has been a bit scarce around here, and you've helped make the wait a lot easier

Here's the problem though: Todd Hansen wasn't voice-acting TLM Gandalf, he was voice-acting actual Gandalf, of whom they used dialogue from the LoTR movies to represent him in both the LEGO LoTR game, and the Hobbit video game.

He played Cave Johnson in Portal 2, and he returned to replay his role as him in Dimensions. edit: Does anyone have some good images of the mini Samurai Mech they gave Nya for this? Not the one that comes in her set, the one that's a bit larger than that.

It's not Toxikita or Tox. Tox didn't have a bone in her hair, and Toxikita only shares visual appearance with Tox. It means that in that area CM4 couldn't make out what was there. Probably a flag pole or something, given the space constraint. I'm curious about the monkey's gun. Is that a stud shooter with a chain attached to the projectile?

So they could get Ellen Mclain, Stephen Merchant. JK Simmons, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett (and everyone else) to act the characters they played but they couldn't get Ian McKellen or any of NINJAGO's actors?

Wow! That's looking pretty nice. It's got a better head design than the Titanium Dragon and the DB 2.0, thankfully. Hopefully a better wing design, too. Am I seeing a spring launcher on these wings?

Just bought TFFoDB, and it's simply gorgeous. Not only does the set surpass Metal Gear ( ) my expectations, it's left sets like Battle for Ninjago City feeling empty and boring. The colorscheme is amazing, the look is amazing, (most of) the figures are amazing, the ghost dragon is amazing, it's just all around an incredibly good set. It does have its faults, sadly, but I'm really impressed how even some of its faults work into its positives. I can't say the DB 2.0 is better than the original, because I'd say they're on par with each other, but the overall set is far better than the overall original set. Bravo LEGO, now stop making these waves of NINJAGO so expensive and I'll be a regular customer for them

They discontinued the old Palm trunk piece? Anyway, that set looks gorgeous in drawn form, but I'll hold off my judgement on it until we see proper images. I'm not sure about the platform Samurai Pirate Hulk is on, I can't imagine it looking good "in the brick".