The upcoming Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens LEGO sets may be getting all the attention these days, but the original trilogy and even prequel trilogy continue to provide inspiration for many LEGO builders. AdNorrel has posted a Venator-class Star Destroyer from Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in the style of the large UCS LEGO sets. Built from about 2,000 LEGO elements, the Star Destroyer took about 20 days to create.
One of everyone’s favorite vehicles from the trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the speeder that shoots across the sands of Tatooine in front of the crashed Star Destroyer. Fortunately then for all of us, 75099 Rey’s Speeder is one of the first wave of LEGO sets from The Force Awakens released today in advance of the movie’s opening in December. I picked up a copy at my local LEGO Store, and here’s a brief review — it is, after all, the smallest of the new Star Wars sets at $19.99 and 193 pieces.
Read the full review after the jump!
Scruffy-looking son of a nerfherder umamen has been continuing his series of Star Wars themed character builds. But unlike his 8″ tall Chewbacca and Stormtrooper figures, this latest series are a mere 5″ tall – practically action figure sized. So if you showed up a bit late to the stores on Force Friday, maybe you can take a leaf out of his book and craft your own instead! The level of detail, clever part usage, and pose-ability in these is quite amazing…
Over the last few months, Irwan Prabowo has been posting a series of microscale LEGO dioramas inspired by all of the Star Wars movies, including the upcoming The Force Awakens.
My favorite is the crashed Star Destroyer seen in the trailer for the new movie. An X-wing and TIE fighter in the sands add some additional visual interest to a scene that might otherwise be a bit more plain at this scale.
Here are all of the mini-dioramas together, including the Death Star trench run, AT-AT assault on Hoth, and Sarlacc pit:
To see all of them in detail, plus some more not in the group shot above (like Owen & Beru’s moisture farm with a Jawa sandcrawler) check out Irwan’s photostream on Flickr.
Maybe it’s that I’m just noticing more LEGO Star Wars models as excitement has been building about the new The Force Awakens LEGO sets, but it seems like there have been a lot of pretty great Star Wars models popping up online over the last few weeks. de-marco brings us a scene from Tatooine with a cool green land speeder pulling up to a junk dealer’s shack. The builder doesn’t provide a whole lot of detail, but I can imagine this scene happening in the same time frame as the crashed Star Destroyer in Episode VII.
de-marco has only included his TIE fighter wing in this one scene, but I’d be interested in seeing his take on a complete fighter.
The LEGO sets for Star Wars: The Force Awakens are hitting hitting shelves and online sites today, three months ahead of the movie’s release in December. It’s apparently “Force Friday” or something to that effect. As a result, the world has gone insane.
If you’re not insane and would like to help The Brothers Brick out by purchasing the sets through us, you can do so by clicking through from the links below.
Because there’s no such thing as too many Star Wars builds, Cecilie Fritzvold has created these neat minifig-scale replicas of two locations from the least worst of the prequel movies. (Check out her photostream for alternative angles).
Dex’s Diner
The Jedi Archives
Cute is not the first word that springs to mind when I think of a wookiee, although this is arguably a pretty rare occurrence. Fuzzball, as in the quote from Han Solo, seems rather more appropriate.
Using lots of 1×2 curved slopes, Flickr user umamen has managed to capture Chewbacca’s shaggy looks and, yet, somehow there is something cute about the end result. I think it’s in the facial expression.
For 2015, LEGO is rolling out 3 themed Advent calendars: Star Wars, City, and Friends. As with previous years’ Star Wars Advent Calendars, an exclusive holiday-themed Star Wars minifig is included. This time it’s C3-P0 dressed as Santa Claus, riding a sleigh pulled by an R2-D2 with reindeer antlers. The City calendar has a mini Santa train and loads of toys, while the Friends calendar includes parts for a small hockey match and a lot of accessories – both pretty par for the course.
UPDATE: Didn’t get your hands on this year’s Advent Calendars? Follow along with our virtual LEGO Advent Calendar starting December 1st!
75097 LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar includes 292 pieces (available from Amazon.com and the LEGO Shop)
60099 LEGO City Advent Calendar includes 278 pieces (available from Amazon.com and the LEGO Shop)
41102 LEGO Friends Advent Calendar includes 233 pieces (available from Amazon.com and the LEGO Shop)
For those who’d rather wait to reveal all the surprises inside the Advent calendars, I’ve placed the full set images after the jump. Click to reveal.
When I first saw The Phantom Menance, the most memorable moment was when R2-D2 made his heroic entrance – the entire audience cheered! I have no idea if Artoo is planning a similar reprieve in The Force Awakens, but I think he’s going to have a hard time upstaging his even more adorable replacement, BB-8. Not even if he shows off all his bells and whistles, as builder Takamichi Irie imagines him doing here:
In the overall robot pecking order, I suspect a gyroscopically self-balancing sphere probably beats a metal drum with a guy inside. Who knows, maybe this’ll become a divisive issue for Star Wars fans? Of course, if they met on screen, it certainly would be a touching moment. Although I’d worry about half the audience spontaniously losing bladder control.
After blogging old Han & Leia, I remembered that I hadn’t highlighted this classic scene from Star Wars: A New Hope. Even though your eye is drawn to the two stock minifigs, the real stars of this scene by Andrew JN are the backdrop, lighting, and photo editing. I can hear the buzz of those lightsabers now!
Via BrickNerd.
I really enjoyed the growth of the Star Wars Expanded Universe back in the 90’s, from the gorgeous Dark Empire graphic novels by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy to the stellar Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Though I stopped paying attention following the Prequel Trilogy, I’ve always liked seeing the unique vehicles and vessels from the EU. Dead Frog, Inc. built this compact little TIE/D droid fighter, capturing the iconic look of the larger, manned TIE fighters while reducing the size to match the EU source material. Now imagine thousands of these spewing out of a World Devastator, swarming a Mon Calamari city…
