Thoughts About LEGO 76023 The Tumbler

When I read the side of the box of LEGO set number 76023, I immediately thought of Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction. Except he would be saying, "In France The Tumbler is The Tumbler, except it's Le Tumbler." Thinking about this while watching a commercial for McDonald's quarter pounder - in the background during that heartbreaking Ravens vs. Patriots playoff game, which is when I first started building this late holiday gift to myself - was decidedly meta. The fact that I had the time and means to embark on a project of this magnitude - almost like a minifig-sized Bruce Wayne - is hashtag one thing I'm thankful for.

My relationship with the LEGO Tumbler goes back almost two years to when I manually reconstructed the iconic discontinued set 7888 from my collection supplemented with custom-ordered bricks. My relationship with the real Tumbler goes back a couple months before that, to when the Dark Knight Legends exhibit was in Los Angeles. While there I snapped a picture of an actual Tumbler used in the movies. While it didn't have the flare or style of the Batmobiles of the 60's and 90's, it was pretty darn impressive to behold. Before jumping into the new set, let's compare my two previous Tumbler experiences. According to the design specs decal from the new set, the actual vehicle measures 15 ft. by 9 ft. 4 in., which translates to roughly 8.5 in. by 5.5 in. in LEGO dimensions. According to my math then, set 7888 and its 449 total pieces (not all of them devoted to the Tumbler itself) represents roughly a 1:20 scale model. And I have to say it's pretty accurately minifig-scaled.

Onlookers' faces have been obscured for my legal protection.

It was also raining during that fateful game when Baltimore was eliminated from the 2014-15 playoffs. Whenever I walk in the rain, I think of the song from the signature Cowboy Bebop episode 5 called Rain. There were two versions of that song, one that appeared in the actual episode and one that was released on album one of the show's soundtrack. I made a fan mashup version to showcase the two of them together. The funny thing about that song is that whenever I hear it, I think of Hans Zimmer's haunting theme from the 2008 film The Dark Knight, on which set 76023 is based, which officially plants Christopher Nolan's versions into the DC Comics Super Heroes division of the LEGO snowglobe. I've included some of that in my fan mashup as well to show you what I'm talking about.

Now back to the new set. Bag 1 (of 11) took almost the entire football game to complete, and it wasn't until the beginning of Bag 2 that I realized the scale of this project and its 1,869 pieces was going to be far larger than the average minifig. To give a completely baseless comparison, in fantasy baseball points, that set's pieces count is exactly equal to Matt Holliday's 2014 performance, and he's a damn solid player, if not one you can build a team around. Set 7888's 449 pieces equals the production of Texas rookie outfielder Daniel Robertson (not to be confused with the shortstop prospect who the A's just sent to the Rays in the Ben Zobrist deal), not by any means a major league regular.

Professional scale models of the Tumbler do exist, like this one at left, also from the Dark Knight Legends exhibit, that was used in the movie. Comparing that pic to the official LEGO marketing image on the box, you can see how closely the designers followed these professional models, even down to the bronze coloring in the front wheel wells and the spoiler support struts. I realized after finishing Bag 3, the instructions for which included steps that called for both 16x and 20x of the same element, that what I was building resembled one of these scale models more than a more traditional LEGO "playset." That's why the special edition minifigs are off to the side in all the promotional materials. It's disappointing that I won't be able to use this new Tumbler in my minifig-centered vignettes (unless I employ some impressive forced perspective), but it's worth it when you see such detailed elements as the windshield wipers found in Bag 4 accurately represented in LEGO.

In Bag 5, after you put the huge unique tires on, you get the true sense of how much this new set dwarfs the original 2008 Tumbler. It's about the same overall size as the Millennium Falcon, which is much smaller than actual minifig scale. In fact, Han Solo's famous ship from Star Wars might be pretty close to Kenner's old Micro Machine scale, but I have yet to break out the old figurines from my childhood to check and see how it would look. The rest of the bags are devoted to the roof - which does not actually attach to the rest of the vehicle with any LEGO elements but somehow manages to fit ever so snugly - the ornate armor plating on the side, and the elaborate system of spoilers. The process ended with a lot of mirror image repetition and a lot of superfluous ornamental aspects that make the model look pretty but also hard to find a place where you can grip it to lift it up. It also made me question where I would put the damn thing. But I guess that's a good problem to have.

Detractors of LEGO often point to the lack of functionality: once you finish putting the thing together, it doesn't really do anything. But that's where the concept of replay value comes in, because at any time you can demolish the original product and have the entire experience over again. It's the particular experience that is important in playing with LEGO, you see, that first impression you get when you take those pieces out of the box and literally transmute them into something else. After finishing construction of the model, beyond being both satisfied and exhausted, I felt a greater sense of accomplishment than I had felt following any "instruction build" in my previous LEGO career. At times like these, I can't help but recall the King Crimson song Indiscipline, especially the penultimate lyric: I wish you were here to see it! Which then makes me want to thrash around on the drums all progressive rock style.