To say Minecraft is the smash-hit video game of the decade would be hyperbolic of me but you can’t deny the impact that this little survival/construction game has had on our cultural zeitgeist and why shouldn’t it? It’s building block visuals have a charm to them and satisfy a primal urge in all of us, to build our own world and what better partnership to craft than with LEGO, the original world builders? Throughout 2013, LEGO released Micro Worlds, micro-scaled cubes that were Minecraft worlds condensed into themed blocks and that was awesome! Now, as of November 2014, LEGO is launching minifigure-scaled sets and I was very hesitant to the idea, something struck me as immensely wrong about it. Has that opinion changed? Read on and find out!

21113 The Cave is the entry point set of this theme, retailing for around £19.99, and you can tell right off the bat that this a Minecraft product. Even without the logo, the design elements LEGO have used are undeniably evocative of the video game and I kinda dig it. The minifigs are presented in inventory slots and the text is in the Minecraft font! Contents include the instruction manual and two bags.

This is where my main problem lies, the minifigures. That’s not to say they’re shoddy, the plastic quality is definitely up to LEGO’s high standards but it’s the execution. In this set, you get Steve, a Zombie and a brick-built Spider and I think the biggest problem is the head piece for the minifigs. A cube-shaped head on a LEGO minifig body just looks… Wrong. I’m sorry if I’m being vague but it’s just something I can’t help but feel. I don’t think it helps that Steve’s head is just a solid brown cube with a little face printed on it (and his trousers are the wrong colour in every set but I’ll freely admit that is the PETTIEST nitpick I have ever had as a toy reviewer and I’m not proud of it). The Zombie is wearing exactly the same clothes except for green pixels instead of flesh coloured. On a positive note, I do like how the design team adapted the pick-axe though, it looks super cool and the brick-built Spider looks amazing. The new head brick for the animals is a fantastic piece that could be used for all sorts of sets in the future. My personal gripes aside, I think Minecraft fans of any age will adore these minifigs.

Getting into the build proper and, surprising to myself, I had an absolute blast. While this may appear to be a very simple build for the most part, there’s a few interest design choices that I adored. The key feature of these Minecraft sets aren’t just the natural synergy between the brands, but the steps taken by LEGO to give the Minecraft experience without taking the entire set apart just for blocks. They ingeniously came up with a special Item Block design to have many of the world’s natural resources (such as gold and redstone ores, in this case) represented, customisable and given the ability to be easily placed on the world or each other. I could easily replaced those gold studs with blue and have a lapis lazuli ore block ready to go! That’s a brilliant choice and I applaud it.

The other design choice that I get a kick out of are the colour choices. Maybe it’s because I’m coming directly off a Hobbit review but the vibrant colours just pop out in my mind and, weirdly, made me excited to keep building. It didn’t feel like I had to do it for a review but that I wanted to do it for fun. The vibrant oranges, blues and greens must be appealing to my inner child or that the contrast against the subdued grey blocks makes the colours pop that much more.

Anyway, as a buildable diorama, The Cave is a nice little microcosm of the Minecraft world. The design elements as well as the iconic characters really build the illusion of this world and it works out fantastically. The two bags are split into the cave itself and the cave mouth that is leading to a field outside.

But if you thought we were done, you’d be wrong because another awesome thing LEGO opted for was the inclusion of “Rebuild Inspiration”, a small set of additional instructions to help younger builders with ideas on how to use this set to create an ever-expanding world. The instructions are very simple and the conversion time was barely five minutes. Thumbs up for that idea, LEGO!

They also give you a look at other sets and give you a website url where you can submit your very own LEGO Minecraft creations! That’s a great way to build a community using these sets and to encourage bigger and better builds!

Final thoughts are extremely positive! I admit that my own feelings about the minifigs aside, they were much better in hand than I imagined they would be and The Cave build itself was a wonderfully fun and pure LEGO experience for me so I definitely recommend this set to everyone, from Minecraft fans to LEGO fans in search of a new experience.

Eh? Eh?

Don’t judge me.

I’m back with more Minecraft 3-Inch Action Figures, one each from Series 1 and 2! Although I’ve covered Steve? in my previous review, I’ve still got some stuff to say about him.

Steve? is the main protagonist/default skin for Minecraft so unless you’re venturing into Skin Packs, this will be the face of your character and these figures go to extreme lengths to replicate every last detail of his pixeled proportions.

He even comes with a (slightly too large?) gravel block and an iconic iron pick axe! There’s a minor niggle with this particular figure, however, as there was some extreme QC issues with his arms. They were stiff and barely moved so I had to remove his arms and legs off their respective ball-joints to remove moulding flash that was hindering his articulation. Given my previous experience with this figure, I can only assume this is a rare occurrence since the first one was perfect.

The Iron Golem is from the second series of figures and, in-game, is a utility mob designed to defend villages from wandering zombie hordes or aggressive players. They are hulking powerhouses and that’s reflected in this figures huge frame.

The Iron Golem is articulated in much the same way as Steve? But on a larger scale. His detailing is exquisite, looking exactly how this ancient defender looks in-game, all old, cracked and covered in vines. He comes with an iron block that he can carry and a red poppy, the symbol of friendship with the villagers.

As I’ve said previously, the Minecraft 3-Inch Action Figures make for perfect desk toys, especially for Minecraft players and would make for a perfect stuffer this Christmas. Steve? is an iconic video game character and the Iron Golem is a lumbering brute with lots of inherent charm, especially for me. The Minecraft 3-Inch Action Figures retail for around £7.99 and are available at most major retailers.

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

In 2001, on the heals of his successful Thumb shorts, Steve Oedekerk made an equal parts terrible and wonderful little movie called “Kung Pow: Enter the Fist”. When I first saw ads for it, I cringed and said “No thanks”. Then I caught Thumb Wars on UPN and reconsidered my interest when I found out it was same guy. The Thumb shorts, for those who don’t remember, were a series of half-hour parodies of popular past and present movies done entirely with a cast of thumbs with creepy faces. I’ve seen all but one, but the best examples were Thumb Wars and Thumbtanic.

The rest were… okay. You can watch Thumb Wars in it’s entirety here.

But getting back to it, I saw Kung Pow on video and absolutely loved it. Through the years, I keep coming back to it and love it every time, but I’ve always felt guilty afterwards. See, the movie walks this line of ridiculousness that you have to continuously roll with. It’s full of lame jokes and silly sight gags that on all accounts should not be funny. And yet I still laugh. I ask myself why every time. I’ve come to realize that it’s probably not the jokes themselves, but the execution. The timing of the jokes, and the caliber of silly voices Mr. Oedekerk employs (he does nearly every voiceover for every character) make the movie funny and re-watchable.

A cover like this just screams “Banish me to the ends of the earth, and let’s never speak of this again.”

This guy.

My other fascination with this movie is Steve and his crew took an old Chinese film print and restored it –no small task- specifically so they could tell silly jokes. The movie they restored and modified is a Chinese 1976 Kung Fu film called “Tiger and Crane Fist” (or alternately, Savage Killers). Steve and company tried to contact the original actors from the movie to see if they were interested in helping with production. The only guy who contacted them back was the one guy they were replacing with Steve Oedekerk – action star Jimmy Wang Yu. He went along for the ride as their consultant.

The movie, while unique, isn’t a totally original concept. Dubbing over old Kung Fu movies is a comedy staple, most famously used by Woody Allen in his film “What’s Up Tiger Lily?”, which consisted entirely of scenes from International Secret Police: A Barrel of Gunpowder and International Secret Police: Key of Keys, save for a few bumpers from Allen himself.

Even so, what’s great about Mr. Oedekerk’s foray into this genre is he takes it a step further, shooting completely new footage and putting it next to the old footage. Farther than that, Steve digitally replaces Jimmy Wang Yu in the old footage. To assist with blending the new and old, there are also painstaking reproductions of props and sets from “Tiger and Crane Fist” so they could seamlessly blend the footage. This process included degrading their newer film to meet the original print somewhere in the middle in picture quality.

So with all that detailed professional work behind it (which I deeply respect), and the fact that I enjoy it so much, why should I be ashamed to like it? To tell the truth, I can’t quite put my finger on it. But it’s enough to where I’m a little embarrassed to own it. Even within the scant few DVD menus I had to wade through to get to the comparison above (and the DVD is very comprehensive; more on that in a second), I found myself hanging my head in shame at the lame jokes flying every which way.

Actual sample joke from the movie (by the bad guy, who insists on being called “Betty”):

What the hell?

…yeah.

But even with random bits of shitty jokes(?) like that, it’s all part of a whole. And the whole is funny and worth watching and revisiting over and over. The enthusiasm for which the acting and overdubbing is done is way over-the-top, and you can tell fun is being had. This is best demonstrated by the fight scenes. The movie includes both old (and somewhat altered) fight sequences from Savage Killers, and newer ones with new characters that they shot themselves. To their credit, they blend pretty well. The pop culture references add an extra bit of fun, too.

Remember when Matrix references were cool?

Even with all that, the DVD bonus features alone are worth buying the movie. For one, there’s a hidden layer of dialogue underneath the feature. In order to achieve the proper over-dubbing effect, different lines are spoken by actors in the newer footage than what is written in the final script. The option to watch the entire movie with these insane hidden lines is one of seven audio options on the feature. There’s also the “Long Lost Book on Tape” version, in which a deadpan Englishman reads the entire movie’s lines out as if it were a book on tape. To get a taste of this, imagine that joke above being read by Jim Dale. …don’t tell me you didn’t chuckle a little. (Note: the “Book on Tape” version is not read by Jim Dale.)

There is a fake trailer for Kung Pow II at the end, but Steve freely admits that this won’t happen again for a very long time, if ever.

So if you haven’t seen this movie, go watch it; you might enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, I’m so, so sorry.