We try to fill this site with plenty of thoughtful longform content, including an ongoing series of conversations with kindie artists that I’m awfully proud of. But judging from the stats, all you people want is posts about The Avengers, and I am not a proud man, so HERE YOU GO, AVENGERS-SEEKING WEB TYRANTS: As seen at Gizmodo, a gallery of awesome photos of full-sized Avengers props made from LEGOs, courtesy of Flickr user buriedbybricks. Pretty amazing, no?
My son is a budding superhero enthusiast, but he’s only four, so I won’t be taking him to see The Avengers this weekend. I do, however — much to my wife’s chagrin — sometimes treat him to viewings of Disney XD’s Marvel shows, including Ultimate Spider-Man and The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Truth be told, The Superhero Squad Show is probably most up his alley, but I digress — the point is, this weekend, the Hulk is doing double duty on the Disney XD lineup, with a guest appearance on Ultimate Spider-Man as well as his regular smashing on Avengers.
The action all goes down this Sunday, when the big green guy shows up on Spider-Man to help the wallcrawler defeat an invisible enemy (lazy animators!) and helps the Avengers during an adventure featuring the Guardians of the Galaxy.
According to this here press release, the fun begins at 11 AM, but check your local listings — and watch this interview with Fred Tatasciore, the voice actor who gives Hulk that certain je ne sais quoi:
LEGO
Continuing what seems like this week’s theme of “new offerings from the product lines of overly licensed properties,” LEGO has released shots of its new Avengers sets, timed to invade store shelves in tandem with the Marvel blockbuster on May 4.
I pooh-poohed movie tie-in hysteria in my Lorax post, but that was partly because A) the ads people seem to be most upset about aren’t super kid-targeted, and B) the movie has a message that I think is worth taking a few extra steps to spread, even if doing so requires things that seem counteractive to the message itself. The Avengers, on the other hand, isn’t about anything other than blowing stuff up — and although Avengers director Joss Whedon is a nerd king who could very well do right by the franchise, the movie’s trailers suggest it’s just more of the same CGI and loud explosions we line up for every summer, and these LEGO sets are designed purely to make kids beg their parents for new toys.
All of which is part of the price of procreating in a mass media society. But these are the product tie-ins that ring the hollowest for me. Typing about this stuff makes me feel like I need to wash my hands, especially given LEGO’s nobler origins. I know a lot of people who loathe the rather patronizing “LEGO Friends” product line, but if I could start tearing pages out of the company catalog, I’d start with stuff like this.
Take a look at full-size shots of the figures (including what might be your first good look at the movie’s villains, albeit in block form) over at Empire.