If you buy the LEGO Marvel Avengers Tower, now available exclusively at the LEGO Store, choose where you want to display it before you build it. First, because it's massive. You'll need to clear some dedicated space, because it's too tall to fit in your average bookshelf. And second, because it's heavy; you'll need at least two people to move it without taking it apart. This set costs $499.99, and it looks and feels like every bit of its cost—which is to say, it looks incredible—iconic, even. It's a self-selection process, of sorts—anyone who is a big enough Marvel fan to purchase this set in the first place will also understand and appreciate the level of detail that went into its creation.
The LEGO Marvel Avengers Tower is divided into 39 large bags; at a leisurely pace, it should take a builder approximately 40 hours to complete the entire set. The instructions are divided into three separate booklets, and they include two sheets of stickers; there are very few instances where the elements are printed directly onto the bricks.
The build goes up in sections, like the tiers of a wedding cake. Although each tier is a single diorama from the inside, the exterior facade is of multiple windows stacked on top of one another, creating the outward-facing illusion that the building is even larger and more detail-intensive than it already is. You'll build 271 of these windows during the course of the build, which is a lot, admittedly, but is necessary to create the look that the designers were going for. This is not an Avengers Tower that is set in one particular time; its different rooms and details call back to different moments from a decade's worth of films.
First, you build the ground floor, which is a facsimile of the lobby from Avengers: Endgame, where Tony and Ant-Man attempted to hijack the Space Stone. One floor up from that is the lab from Avengers: Age of Ultron, where Tony and Bruce Banner accidentally created Ultron; we can see the spherical, holographic representations of Ultron's and JARVIS' respective AIs. There's also a glass walkway in this area, where Steve Rogers fought past Steve Rogers for the Mind Stone. There's even an area on the floor where you can position Steve face-down, so you can recreate the "America's ass" aftermath.
The third floor is Stark's suit lab, which has the circular assembly area and a facsimile of DUM-E, Tony's assistant robot that he built at MIT. We see his workspace off to the side, and a fire extinguisher in the corner, which was the basis for one of the best jokes in the first Iron Man film.
One floor up from that, the designers took a bit of creative license. Here, we see Loki's glass prison. But in the movie, this prison wasn't in Avengers Tower; it was located in SHIELD's Helicarrier. Although one supposes that Tony might build another, similar prison in Avengers Tower, especially if Hulk needed a place to cool down.
One floor up from that is the landing pad for the Quinjet, which actually gets its own, dedicated build. It's very cool-looking, and it could easily stand on its own as a set sold seperately. The same goes for a Chitauri Leviathan, which is fully articulable and is mounted on a glass stand.
The fifth floor also has the bar/lounge from Avengers: Age of Ultron, where the Avengers relaxed and partied, right before Ultron broke up the party. Thor's hammer is lying on the glass table—a callback to the scene where everyone (sans Black Widow) attempted to lift it.
We're nearly at the top. Next is Tony's living quarters and Bruce Banner's lab, which has Loki's scepter resting on the table—another creative license that conflates the Helicarrier with the Tower, but works nonetheless. And then on the roof, we see the Tesseract-fueled generator which opened the portal to the Chitauri army, and triggered the Battle of New York.
The Tower is not a "modular building," in LEGO's typical sense of the phrase. Yes, you build the Tower in tiers and then stack them, one on top of the other. But once you stack them, they are not meant to come apart again—the designers have you tile over the separation points to explicitly prevent this from happening.
So then how do you access these detailed dioramas, once the building is completed and everything is encased by bricks? One side of the building—a facade made entirely of windows—is removable. You push it "up-and-out" to loosen and remove it. And then, all of the dioramas are easily reachable and poseable. The roof area also has a separate, removable glass facade that allows you to pose the lounge.
And this is where the fun really happens—with the staging and framing of movie scenes and original fight scenes. The set comes with 31 Minifigures. It's a "complete" set, in the sense that there are no glaring omissions to the cast. Everyone who should reasonably be a part of a set with this breadth and scope is there.
The designers give you lots of clear rods and curved pieces—more than you need—which allows you to create mid-air battles. So if you want to recreate the scene where Iron Man suits up with the Mark VII mid-air? Totally doable. What if you want to have Hawkeye dive off the building while shooting upwards at a Chitauri? Also doable. What if you want Scarlet Witch and Vision to attack Loki midair, while he's riding on a Chitauri glider? Why not? Your imagination is the only limit.
We never really grow out of our need to play; we just play in a different manner than we did as children. Less smacking Minifigures against each other—less "pew-pewing" lasers guns—and more staging of elaborate tableaux and scenes. The LEGO Marvel Avengers Tower provides a fantastic play experience for adults, allowing you to frame your superhero fantasies on the most massive, grand stage possible.
The LEGO Marvel Avengers Tower, Set #76269, retails for $499.99, and it is composed of 5201 pieces. It is available exclusively at the LEGO Store.
