Giant Freakin Robot

LEGOs are great. They’re one of the best toys ever invented, but damn there’s a whole different world out there than when I was a kid. I kept my collection, a random assortment of sets and blocks that I pieced together from garage sales and hand-me-downs, in a big sack. Nowadays, however, all bets are off. Need proof of the crazy things people are doing with little stackable plastic blocks? Look no further than this massive, life-sized recreation of an X-Wing Fighter from Star Wars, or the intricately detailed Alien facehugger below.

In order to celebrate the upcoming release of the animated series Yoda Chronicles, the LEGO Group crafted this X-Wing replica, which is the “largest Lego structure ever assembled.” An internal steel skeleton supports a model that is 43 feet long, 44 wide, 11 tall, weighs more than 46,000 pounds, and contains more than 5.3 million individual blocks. All in all, it took 32 builders over four months to put it together. The engines also light up and there are sound effects.

Believe it or not, this behemoth is just a blown-up version of the kit you can buy at your local toy store. Originally put together in the Czech Republic, you can now find the creation on display in Times Square in New York. In a few days the model will begin the trek to California, where it will remain for the rest of the year.

Another day, another bit of promotion for Pacific Rim. Good god, the folks in the marketing arm of Legendary Pictures have been churning it out at warp speed, haven’t they? By the time Guillermo del Toro’s epic science fiction adventure finally stomps into theaters on July 12, they’ll surely have unleashed miles worth of banners, including this latest one.

When giant monsters called Kaiju emerge from an interdimensional rift at the bottom of the ocean, they wreak all kinds of havoc on the human population. In order to stand up to this new alien menace, engineers come up with what they call the Jaeger program, which develops big old mechs called Jaegers, each driven by two pilots with their minds linked and working in unison.

This wide image takes the action to the streets, and we see Jaeger Gipsy Danger, with a badass-looking sword, facing off with a stray Kaiju, smack in the middle of the some random downtown area. There’s going to be one hell of a mess to clean up when all is said and done.

Though the Jaegers level the combat playing field somewhat, humanity is still fighting a losing battle. The conflict costs millions of lives and depletes all manner of finite resources. Just when things are looking the darkest, a pair of unlikely heroes must step up. A washed-up pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and an untested rookie (Rinko Kikuchi) take control of a legendary, though seemingly outdated Jaeger, and may be the last chance humanity has.

Before NASA could launch a successful mission to the Moon in 1969 with Apollo 11, scientists and engineers had to figure out certain problems and logistics for the highly risky mission. One of the problems NASA had to tackle was designing a spacesuit for Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, so they could survive the unknown and deadly elements of space and the lunar surface. The problem was solved by an unlikely source, Playtex.

Warner Bros is developing the bra manufactures’ story of designing a spacesuit for NASA into a full-length feature film based on the author Nicholas de Monchaux’s book “Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo.” According to Deadline, the film will follow an unlikely team of former TV repairman, a car mechanic, and their crew of spirited seamstresses who figured out how to properly design a spacesuit for NASA’s manned-missions to the Moon.

With the Star Wars franchise being re-invigorated with J.J. Abrams and Disney at the helm, a majority of other Star Wars non-movie based properties are receiving a reboot. Star Wars video games have been a very successful venture for George Lucas’ corporation, but when the doors closed on LucasArts, it was hard to see the future of Star Wars video games prosper.

Recently, Disney has agreed to terms with Electronic Arts to develop and publish a large array of new Star Wars video games in a multi-year deal. EA CFO Blake Jorgensen, speaking at the 2013 Stifel Internet, Media & Communications Conference, has even named dropped a few popular titles so Star Wars fans can now look forward to new video games. According to Jorgensen, “The opportunity to do a new Battlefront, for example, which is one of the very popular Star Wars games, or some of the other traditional games that were made, is very exciting.”