Category: Movies

Five Droids

  • March 5, 2024

Just because I sold hundreds of Star Wars figures last year doesn’t mean I stopped buying them, but these days all I’ll pick up is a droid. And thankfully they almost never release any! Here’s five I’ve bought since the great sell-off about a year ago.

This first one was an R2-D2 released back in 2000 in packaging reminiscent of the original figures from the 1970s. I was in the tail end of my collecting days then and didn’t buy it, but recently picked up the above copy for a low price on Amazon and was amazed when it arrived in near mint condition after 23+ years!

I won’t discuss the history of the character since you all know who he is, but here’s a fun R2 fact: he’s appeared on four postage stamps!

This R4-G9 was amongst the very first Revenge Of The Sith figures released and by then (2006) I’d by and large stopped buying any figures. I recently picked the above copy up (also on Amazon) and she’s unusual enough I’m surprised I never bought her back then. Perhaps I simply never saw her?

As for the character, despite appearing with Obi-Wan her role in the film was so brief you probably forgot about her moments later. And if you hadn’t yet picked up on it, yes R4-G9 is a lady droid. Couldn’t you tell from the pink tint to her dome? 😉

I only purchased this Power Droid because it’s so ugly and weird, and I find the existence of a carded figure amusing. Another Amazon purchase, this one came in mint condition sealed in a custom shipping box and cost me considerably less than various online sites say it is ‘worth’.

This droid – long nicknamed ‘Gonk’ – dates all the way back to the original Star Wars. They have made many appearances in Star Wars movies and shows, such as in Rogue One as shown above. Gonks are just generators on legs with rudimentary intelligence, but endearing because of how ugly they are!

I’m not a big fan of the current ‘Retro’ line of figures that are sculpted to resemble the original 1970s lines. That said I love how tiny this Chopper figure is and didn’t hesitate buying him. I’ve got a thing for little droids in tiny bubbles!

Chopper (his ‘real’ name is C1-10P) is from Rebels and last year made his live action appearance in the Ahsoka series. He’s a bit of a rogue, and famously uses a garbled dialect that is almost legible. There’s a recent non-retro figure of him as well, which I’m sure I’ll get one day.

R4-D5 was in the original Star Wars, and famously if it wasn’t for his ‘bad motivator’ then Luke may have never adopted R2 and C-3PO. Decades ago I had the original R5-D4 figure, and recently I picked up the newly released version above as well.

R5-D4 was recently in the third season of Mandalorian, which was a mystery since it raised the question of where he had been for so long? The short version is that his encounter with R2 in the belly of a sandcrawler years prior eventually led him to the Rebellion where he loyally served for years. Oh and that bad motivator? That was self-sabotage to make sure Luke took R2. Good old R5-D4: he’s always been the hero 🙂

  • Posted in Collecting
  • Robert

LEGO Rivendell

  • December 3, 2023

I bought this for my birthday earlier this year, and after many months of letting it age, it was time to build it:

This is Rivendell, the legendary elvish sanctuary in Lord Of The Rings and home of the powerful and ancient Elrond. Rivendell has always been depicted as a fantastic and beautiful place, and the LoTR films followed in the tradition:

When LEGO revealed this set I was simultaneously astonished and in love and appalled. The price was very high and it’s so big… but after several months of denying myself, I bought it 🙂

The box is gargantuan and heavy and there were fifty bags of pieces inside, as well as a sticker sheet (for the paintings, see below) and a hobbit-sized stack of instruction manuals:

The set is built in three large sections, and I did it in twelve sessions of about four bags apiece. It was a fascinating and fun build, and although I didn’t keep close track I would estimate it took me 25-30 hours in total. Some parts (the filigree and roof tiles) were a little frustrating, but it wasn’t exactly a difficult build. Here’s the finished set:

It’s so large photography was difficult! It’s about 80 cm wide, 35 cm deep and 50 cm tall. Here’s a view from the rear:

It can be separated into five different sections for ease-of-transport (and display). The first is the side of the main building, with Bilbo’s accommodations and the tower with statuary:

The middle section contains the elvish library, and the council platform where the Fellowship was first assembled. If you look close you’ll notice the small entry on the right side is at an unusual angle compared to the main building. This and several other slopes in the set were cleverly achieved using 3-4-5 Pythagorean triangles:

The last section contains the blacksmith, a waterfall and a removable pagoda. The instructions say the engineering of the base of the hexagonal pagoda was the most difficult part of designing the set. The small mushrooms you can see on this piece glow in the dark!

As you can probably see the detail is exquisite, with all sorts of furnishings and little touches that fans of the movie will spot. For instance the walls feature several cute ‘LEGO paintings’ such as this one depicting the forging of the rings:

And there’s also the shards of the legendary sword Narsil, no doubt waiting to be reforged at the smith:

The chairs on the platform are made from popsicle and frankfurter parts repurposed! Several of the mini figures have variant parts for sitting down:

Speaking of mini figures, the set has fifteen:

From the top, they are Bilbo, Frodo, Samwise, Pippin, Merry, Gloin, Boromir, Gimli, Aragorn, Gandalf, Arwen, Elrond, Legolas and a male and female elf. The set also includes many extra weapons, so even Arwen could wield a couple of axes were she so inclined!

The set has over 6000 pieces, but a few hundred of them are the roof tiles. These are applied to a single stud at a 45 degree angle, and getting them all aligned was not a trivial task! By far this was the longest and most tedious step, and I daresay I’ll shed a tear for this when/if I ever disassemble Rivendell.

Which brings me to the obvious question: Where the heck will I put this? It’s easily the biggest LEGO set I’ve ever built, and as far as I can tell fits on no surface in our house.

I think I’ll just leave it on the craft table in our library for now, and worry about that question when we return from our upcoming vacation!

  • Posted in Crafts
  • Robert

Review: Riddick Series

  • November 28, 2023

Last week, in order, we watched the 3.5 films in the Riddick series. We’d only ever seen the first one, and were interested in the others. Here’s reviews of all of them.

Pitch Black (2000)

This was a low-budget sci-fi horror film about the survivors of a crashed spaceship fighting for their lives against a legion of alien predators on an otherwise barren planet. As the name suggests, the film is very dark and this is doubly integral to the plot: the aliens only ‘come out at night’ and the antihero can see in the dark.

His name is Riddick, and he is played by a young Vin Diesel. He’s a villian and murderer, and for this reason there’s initially tension between him and the other survivors. Ultimately his martial skills and unusual vision make him invaluable to their survival, and a truce is formed.

The film is obviously inspired by Aliens but weaves a unique story of its own, and despite some dated visuals (especially use of colour grading) holds up fairly well. It’s not a great (or even good?) film, but it’s fun to watch.

The standout of course is Vin Diesel, who has strong charisma in the role of an (objectively) awful person, and very much carries the film. Pitch Black was a success and made a lot of money, and when it came time for a sequel it was obvious which way the story would go…

The Chronicles Of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004)

This was a direct-to-DVD short animated film spanning the time between Pitch Black and the sequel. It was directed by Peter Cheung (famous for Aeon Flux) and Vin Diesel returned to voice Riddick.

The story is simple and not at all required to understand the film sequel, and I found this animated interlude a little unpleasant due to the grotesque art style. Completely skippable!

The Chronicles Of Riddick (2004)

Set five years after Pitch Black, this sequel focuses on Riddick as he becomes involved in a plot to destroy a planet. The story is absolutely bonkers, and includes grand space battles, an evil empire called ‘The Necromongers’, magical beings called Elementals and all sorts of weird elements such as ‘the Underverse’.

We learn more of Riddick as well, including the fact he’s maybe not so bad after all. It turns out he’s one of the last remaining ‘Furyans’ and has superhuman abilities and mystical powers that may help wipe out the Necromongers. The film keeps throwing stuff at you hoping it sticks, and even when it doesn’t you won’t care because it’s always visually interesting (it here’s a strong Warhammer 40k vibe). Once again Vin Diesel’s weird charisma steals every scene he’s in.

Somehow they got Judi Dench and a young Karl Urban in this. There’s creepy alien dog things, many crazy fight scenes and one of the most insane endings you’ll see. The budget was obviously much bigger than Pitch Black, but for all its bombast the film underperformed and almost killed the nascent franchise.

We never saw this when it came out, but we thoroughly enjoyed it! It’s crazy and silly and very guilty of adding plot elements without any hint of explanation, but it’s also a lot of fun. The best film in this series and very much worth a watch!

Riddick (2013)

Nine years later Vin Diesel had become a megastar due to the Fast & The Furious franchise and the franchise holders decided to return once again to this series. But the budget was scaled back and the studio wanted a film more like Pitch Black and less like Chronicles Of Riddick.

What they made was a sort-of Pitch Black remake, only now the nocturnal aliens are replaced with weird scorpion-things. There’s a very lengthy setup sequence of Riddick being marooned on a planet (and befriending an alien jackal!) before mercenaries turn up to catch him only for all hell to break loose when hordes of the creatures attack.

It’s a well paced film – even if it feels like two – and for its lowish budget I thought the special effects (solidly in CGI territory now) were very good. There’s some decent acting from the mercenaries, including one that has become famous in recent years in a Star Wars show, but once again Vin Diesel steals the show. This is a much better film than Pitch Black, but not quite reaching the enjoyable lunacy of The Chronicles Of Riddick, and I think it’s worth your time.

And so – perhaps to our surprise – we thoroughly enjoyed this somewhat overlooked series! Despite very lengthy gaps between the films they tell a more or less consistent story, and the more we learned about Riddick the more we wanted to learn. There’s still many questions, about the Furyans and Necromongers, and it feels like this is a story that can continue.

So it’s perhaps good to know there’s another sequel on the way, likely to be released a dozen years (or more) after the last one. And with the working title of Riddick IV: Furya maybe we’ll finally get some answers to the true past (and future?) of this fellow Riddick? Let’s hope so.