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Lego Battle of Verdun [video]
- andrewflnr 4y agoIf wonder if this is where they got the French machine guns: https://www.brickwarriors.com/french-lmg/ https://www.brickwarriors.com/french-lmg/ (first result for "lego chauchat gun"). I kind of love that there's this 3rd-party market for relatively obscure weapons for minifigs.
- usrusr 4y agoLego depicting war is so depressing... (well, except for Lego Star Wars of course, somehow that seems to pass both the corporate and my personal "no way toys!" filters)
- bluetomcat 4y agoAs far as themed sets go, Lego has been consistent in promoting aggressiveness in the last 30 years. Police chasing the bad guys to put them in a prison cell, pirates wanting to plunder the treasure, ninjas riding heavily-armed aircraft.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoAre you criticizing Lego for producing what sells? Aren’t they producing what our culture wants? Do you think a wokeness set would sell as well as a pirate set?
- egypturnash 4y agoThere was a time when Lego was pretty solidly pacifist in what they chose to make. Sure, you could make a gun out of your bricks, but they didn’t make plans for them, or special parts. Over time this has changed. There is an entire page on Wikipedia dedicated to chronicling this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_Lego https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_Lego
- NickNameNick 4y agoWhen was that time? Because classic space had rayguns, and the pirate ships had working cannons.
- Morgawr 4y ago> When was that time? It's literally written in the article that the person you are responding to linked. I'd recommend reading it.
- Xylakant 4y agoThe article is about “realistic weapons that kids may recognize from conflict zones.” Everyone I know from the time took the various “antenna” pieces on the space craft as “laser guns.” The space police figures had weird looking pieces that can be interpreted as or such, but they easily serve as futuristic guns as well. I’m observing my kid picking up lego and assembling my old sets and they take that the same way without prompting. Using bricklink as proof that the number of weapons increased is hilarious. Many kits used and still use regular bricks in places where they can clearly be read as weapons. (1) Lego definitely has a trend to make more specialized pieces now, so it’s not surprising at all that more specialized weapons show up. (1) The cannonballs are listed as “Brick Round, 1x1 open stud”, because that’s what they originally are. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3062b&name=Brick,%20Round%201%20x%201%20Open%20Stud&category=%5BBrick,%20Round%5D#T=C https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3062...
- gattilorenz 4y ago
- ARandomerDude 4y agoPirates, knights, ninjas, cops and robbers, etc. are part of being a boy. Girls have Barbie.
- kergonath 4y agoIs that it, are we back at “video games cause murders”-level pearl clutching? I’ll take a peer-reviewed cohort study before I believe that “Lego has been consistent in promoting aggressiveness”.
- kingofpandora 4y agoPoster said Lego has been promoting aggressiveness, not that it has caused aggressiveness. It's undeniable that Lego themes have drifted a lot more to violence (Lego City is half about Policing), plus all the Ninja and other stuff.
- Xylakant 4y agoI deny Lego themes drifted towards violence. I just went through my kits from the late 80ies/early 90ies since kid is reaching Lego age. I was a big fan of Space, and like > 60% of the sets are Blacktron and Space Police. City kits always had police and my cousin mostly owned Castles/Knights. There were pirates and pirate ships with cannons that can shoot bricks (we loved those) Pirates seem to be mostly gone and replaced by Ninjago but police stuck around. No surprise, kids love police stories. On the civilian side of Lego City, a large collection of civilian space exploration has been added. Space definitely has been demilitarized.
- usrusr 4y agoYeah, the answers in this thread clearly show that I greatly overestimated whatever pacifism commitment Lego ever had. I'm genuinely surprised, apparently they were quite successful at overselling the "play good" brand to me. Pirate cannons actually throwing plastic? Before today I was convinced that this was the defining difference between Lego and Playmobil. I'm from the region that is home to playmobil and we have a joke here that by count of items identifiable as "handgun" we have the world's largest guns manufacturer at our doorsteps, given the number of pirate and wild west kits sold each year.
- bombcar 4y ago
- smcl 4y agoThe police minifigs have certainly kept up with real life US cops: https://twitter.com/aliceavizandum/status/1141547556322852864 https://twitter.com/aliceavizandum/status/114154755632285286...
- dudul 4y agoThe switch that I really regretted was the move from "open play" to "good vs bad". When I was a kid I had a ton of castle sets. They were pretty much "neutral". Various factions doing their thing, some a bit more shady sure, but you could set up whichever story and alliance you wanted. In early 2000 it turned into humans vs ugly trolls. I felt like so much was taken away from kids by doing that.
- Thorrez 4y ago>well, except for Lego Star Wars of course Until you watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WmLmPYvrMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WmLmPYvrMA
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Aeolun 4y agoWatching this makes me feel ill, and it has nothing to do with the content. Seriously, were they holding a phone in their hand while moving minis around?
- marginalia_nu 4y agoProbably just someone figuring out stop-motion by trial and error.
- Thorrez 4y agoLol. I actually created it. Sorry for the undisclosed self-promotion. I made this when I was 14. Yeah, camera stability was a major problem for me in pretty much all my videos, and this one is especially bad. I'm trying to remember exactly what I did over half my lifetime ago... This was made with a point and shoot camera. I think the 2nd shot was indeed me holding the camera with my hand. I don't think there's any actual character movement there though, so that shot didn't involve me moving the characters. I had the actual Episode 3 up and was going through it frame by frame trying to replicate the scene with the same camera angles and possibly camera movement. I think simply setting the camera on the table wouldn't have given me the angles I wanted. There was no tripod short enough to get the camera as low to the table as necessary. I would need cutouts in the set's floor for the camera, requiring multiple sets or a set that can be broken into different pieces. That was too complicated for me and I'm not even sure if I had a tripod at that time. For the 1st shot, it looks like the camera is sitting on top of something (maybe a book) because its elevation seems constant. Its angle though is quite erratic, so I think I was tilting it down with my hand because simply setting it flat on the book wasn't giving the necessary downward angle. For the last shot, I think the camera was sitting level on the table. This shot is the most stable, but is still pretty shaky. The camera had a shutter button that required a fair amount of force to press. Every time I pressed it there was a large chance that it would move the camera. Also it was a crowded set. Sticking my hands in there to move the characters often resulted in me bumping the camera. For the 3rd shot, possibly the camera was also sitting on something. Another problem is I think the camera was on autofocus, auto exposure, and auto whitebalance. So between each picture these settings could change, which also contributed to inconsistencies between frames. I don't even think that camera had the option of manual focus. As I got better at stop motion, I started using a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 USB webcam attached to my laptop. That allowed me to trigger a frame by pressing a key on my keyboard, which wouldn't shake the camera. I also then enabled manual focus, exposure, and whitebalance, and could use onion skinning. The camera also had hinges allowing the height and vertical angle to be adjusted easily. I focused more on keeping the camera steady, by building a LEGO cage around it, and trying to avoid bumping it while moving the characters. I didn't have a cell phone at the time. I think I got my first phone a year and a half after this video. It was a feature phone and I think its picture quality was a lot worse than this point and shoot's quality or that of the QuickCam. I never thought about using it for stop motion; that would have been worse than this.
- tragomaskhalos 4y agoWhen I was a child, Lego was explicitly and deliberately pacifist in outlook. I remember reading that the colour palette was determined in part by this philosophy - green, grey and brown were verboten, the latter colour completely absent and the first two existing only in limited plate form. Of course manufacturing cost limitations made a restricted set of colours sensible anyway. As a preventative, this was not entirely effective - we war-mad kids still had red bombers intercepted by white fighter aircraft over a battlefield of blue armoured vehicles, we didn't care!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dxdm 4y agoWhen were you a child? In the late eightees, I happily played with Lego that had grey swords for knights in grey castles, and pirate themed stuff with brown guns, and cannons that were grey and brown. Lots of green base plates, too.
- Aeolun 4y agoNot to mention gray spaceships galore.
- mcv 4y agoI assume it was the 70s. During the 80s, Lego included more and more green, brown, and especially grey, and also more and more weapons. First swords and spears for the knights, later muskets for the Pirate theme, and then blasters for Star Wars. They still don't like modern weaponry, though. I'm not sure if they have guns for their cops and robbers. The real military stuff comes from clones/competitors, not from Lego.
- tokai 4y agoLooking through 70s lego sets there is a ton of greens and grays. Not a lot of 'violent' stuff, as it's mainly models of houses and transport vehicles. But it seems to come along with the minifigs in 78.
- dylan604 4y ago"The Battle of Verdun showed the strength and determination of the French, and revealed to the world the chaos and destructiveness of modern war." Based on the jokes from WWII, they must have not recovered that tenacity in time. "We have these gently used WWII French rifles. They've only been dropped once"
- mahkeiro 4y agoThe British Army ran faster than the French to the sea but the joke is always on the French. It's also a very anglo-saxon joke…
- ARandomerDude 4y agoA British route is not even in the same league as compete national capitulation.
- mcv 4y agoThe French fought hard. The problem was twofold: 1. The German army in 1940 was utterly unstoppable. They didn't just conquer France, they conquered half of Europe. The French army was seen as the best army in the world at the time, but they were utterly unprepared for the new way of warfare the Germans introduced. 2. Petain.
- mahkeiro 4y agoHad the channel not been there, the UK would have surrendered like the French…
- galgot 4y agoBeen like this since the 100 years war... Some tourism on the continent or else, then run back to the security of their island if any trouble. And spitting their British exceptionalism contempt across the channel and the rest at any occasion. Our best "friends".
- cyberpunk 4y agoNo one in Europe makes such jokes, the French fought like lions. Of course, our friends across the pond also think state healthcare is communism, and republicans are “literally” nazis so, I wouldn’t truck too much with such statements.
- elil17 4y agoI wonder if this is done with CGI or real Legos. The texture on the prices is excellent but The LEGO Movie achieved this level or realism in CGI. Edit: looked at the rest of his channel. It’s a mix of stop motion, rigs to throw bricks/simulate brick explosions, and CGI.
- beckingz 4y agoThe combination is extremely impressive.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pragmatick 4y agoThey definitely came a long way since their first video 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD1AbWGqT4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD1AbWGqT4c What makes you say it contains CGI?
- skywal_l 4y agoLook at the "behind the scene": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1T-RNDWIEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1T-RNDWIEU
- zwirbl 4y agoHow else would they do muzzle fire?
- Grustaf 4y agoIt obviously contains a lot of CGI, but the question is if the lego pieces are CGI.
- elil17 4y agoBased on the VFX breakdowns I think the ones in the distance and out of focus are.
- MichaelMoser123 4y agoAre these computer animated movies is are they doing that in lego? They also got lots of other battles rendered this way, it must be a movement! there are even stop motion movies on the Ukraine war https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r89A4ngNnxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r89A4ngNnxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BrAZBHkRB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BrAZBHkRB8
- beckingz 4y agoThere are behind the scenes videos of the stop animation!
- Thorrez 4y agoHere's the behind the scenes video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1T-RNDWIEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1T-RNDWIEU
- MichaelMoser123 4y agowow, amazing! thanks for the link!
- agent13 4y agoI half expected this to depict the battle of Verdun in the Edge of Tomorrow movie.
- UIUC_06 4y agoCall me a killjoy, but the Battle of Verdun was one of the worst and bloodiest battles of a horrific war that arguably ruined Europe. Is there Lego Auschwitz, too? Bad taste, whoever did this. Bad taste.
- kybernetyk 4y ago>Is there Lego Auschwitz, too? IIRC there is. A polish artist created an Auschwitz Lego Set a few years ago. (IIRC with Lego's blessing) https://culture.pl/en/work/lego-concentration-camp-zbigniew-libera https://culture.pl/en/work/lego-concentration-camp-zbigniew-...
- kergonath 4y ago> the Battle of Verdun was one of the worst and bloodiest battles of a horrific war that arguably ruined Europe Even more reasons to remember it. It’s also a law of nature: anything that can be remade in Lego bricks eventually will be. Resistance is futile. (Besides the fact that this is how someone uses their free time without hurting anyone, so I have a really hard time getting outraged about it)
- mywacaday 4y agoIs Maus in bad taste too?
- akerr 4y agoThis looks to be a history presentation in a medium the creator is most proficient, not a glorification or trivialisation of war, as evidenced by the epilogue.
- oaiey 4y agoconsidering that the video has a like two minutes long educational section without lego at the end and the fact that it is not much fun to watch this ... I would say: good job.
- whythre 4y agoThat was my takeaway. It isn’t gleeful, it is sad… and I think that’s the point. Getting huffy that a horrific battle is being portrayed with toys seems to miss the entire message.
- throwaway894345 4y agoFor anyone interested, Battlefield 1 is a world war 1 game available for every platform, and it’s one of the best games in the franchise! It’s about 6 years old now, but still active and stupidly cheap. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest or even casual curiosity in WWI.
- gattilorenz 4y agoThere's an upcoming game, Isonzo, that is a continuation of Verdun, and will probably be quite realistic (Battlefield 1 is fun, but very... Creatively based on WWI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYv8KyNRFQM&ab_channel=IGN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYv8KyNRFQM&ab_channel=IGN
- chrisseaton 4y agoObviously people weren't jumping off blimps, and the pace is higher than it is in actual warfare (but that's in all games) but apart from that I thought it had pretty historically accurate settings isn't it? (I haven't actually played it.) People think World War 1 was all trenches and mud, but it wasn't. There was action in Africa and the Middle-East as well.
- throwaway894345 4y agoYeah, it's kind of hard to make an interesting and realistic game when people were mostly chilling in trenches. That said, the maps are beautiful, and the gameplay is a whole lot of fun.
- holoduke 4y agoEvery year I visit various ww1 battle sites in northern France and Italy. We walk through endless farm lands to find information about certain events. We often stumble upon ammunition and steel scrap. The land is literally filled with shells, bullets, scrapnel everywhere. Some are still live and just brought to the top of the soil by farm tractor machinery. The amount of shells fired at the battle of as Verdun is so extremely high that you find layers of shells everywhere. For months millions of shells were fired in a 20 square km area. It will take hundreds of years to clean them up. 900 years in some places. A few years ago I found in the middle of farmland a lot of unexploded bullets still in their clips. After searching a bit more we found also various fragments of helmets and bajonets, leather belts and more. It turned out to be a French defense unit, completely destroyed and burried under layers of mud only to be discovered 100 years later.
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoMyself and my then GF visited Arras just north of Verdun in 2019. She was a few months pregnant at that stage and in every hotel we stayed, the proprietor warned her to only drink bottled water, including for brushing teeth. The locality got so hammered with poison gas shells, it all seeped into the ground water making it mildly poisonous!! Lovely part of the world, but a sad legacy of military buildups.
- SenHeng 4y agoWhat about non-pregnant people?
- SenHeng 4y agoIt is an honest question. Is the poison bad for others or only because a pregnant woman or the foetus are exceptionally weak to it? If it is, why and how do people still live there?
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoAgain, I'm guessing that pregnancy is probably a health condition where everything is under stress, and drinking toxin laced tap water doesn't help. But lots of people do live there, and from albeit biased observation, they seem happy enough just drinking beer and wine (and maybe bottled water).
- mcv 4y agoExpertly made, but not all of it is Lego. Lego doesn't make most or any of these hand weapons and helmets, so those come either from a clone/competitor, or were custom made.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- timeon 4y agoVerdun always reminds me the treaty of 843. Split of Frankish Kingdom into what is now known as France, Germany, Benelux and northern Italy.
- galgot 4y agoFunny, watched this recently : https://youtu.be/zlxECtKID6Y https://youtu.be/zlxECtKID6Y
- AndrianV 4y agoI simply cannot imagine how many hours would be required to produce this amazing stop motion film. I just hope it brings in some cash for you. It's incredible how much detail and minute motions there are between images. Bravo to you and your team!
- Synaesthesia 4y agoThe most mindless slaughter in human history.
- elcapitan 4y agoInteresting. I was going to complain about the use of the leather "Pickelhaube" helmets on the German side there, but looks like the Stahlhelm was only introduced during the battle of Verdun in 1916 (hence the name M1916). Those Pickelhaube helmets would have been covered with textile in the same color as the uniforms though, and without the characteristic spike (for obvious reasons in trench warfare). The iconic black one was mostly for staff officers and parades in those days (and police).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tibbydudeza 4y agoI always wondered how the folks that stormed beaches in Normandy did it. Where did they find the courage to face death ???.
- ajmarsh 4y agoWho makes the lego Chauchat? That was a pretty nice detail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauchat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauchat
- dleslie 4y agoUnofficial, but compatible, period-appropriate military gear is on brickwarriors.com