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Earlier this week, this new chapter of the LEGO Atlantis sage popped up on the official LEGO Atlantis site:

Ready for more fun? Chapter II of the Atlantis Adventure is now live – including a new game! Not only can you collect more pictures for your photobook, but you can also collect treasure items hidden on the bottom of the ocean floor. Check it out in the Fun Zone!

This second chapture is called Chapter 2: The Gateway of the Squid. This corresponds directly to the Gateway of the Squid (our 8061 Gateway of the Squid review) portion of LEGO Atlantis: The Movie (our LEGO Atlantis: The Movie review).

The new game involves you being captured by the Giant Squid and trying to escape the tentacles. It does support playing it in 3D.

Even though the links below are for the US site, you should be able to find them on your native sites outside of the US. There are at least three more chapters, going live in April, June, and July, which will probably lead us up to the release of the two major LEGO Atlantis sets:
* 8077 Atlantis Exploration HQ
* 8078 Portal of Atlantis (aka the Shark Temple)

Links:
* Atlantis.LEGO.com (US Site) – Announcement
* LEGO.com Atlantis – The Adventure (US)

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LEGO’s first movie on DVD, the Adventures of Clutch Powers, should be available today (February 23, 2010), at least in the US.

Amazon.com is currently listing it for $14.99 (normally $19.98) with a release date of today. This is for the widescreen version in English, with English, French, and Spanish subtitles. It’s 82 minutes long. Best Buy is also showing it with a release date of today but there’s no way to check if it’s available in the physical Best Buy stores yet – it’s only listed for pre-order on their website.

Before anybody says “what about the Bionicle movies?” LEGO is apparently not counting those, and rightfully so. It’s also not counting LEGO Atlantis: The Movie since that has not made an appearance on DVD (unfortunately).

Obviously it’s going to be used to help sell LEGO products and sets, however a lot of effort has been put into it, and it’s looking more and more like it will be a way to introduce newcomers and possibly even AFOLs to either existing sets or upcoming sets, such as Kingdoms (the replacement for Castle), Power Miners, Space Police, etc. I think it’s going to be as cool as the Atlantis movie.

Don’t expect any of the licensed themes like Harry Potter or Star Wars to make an appearance – from the trailer and from people I’ve talked to, this is all in-house themes/lines from LEGO.

This is LEGO and Universal Home Entertainment’s summary of the action:

For the first time ever, see the creative world of LEGO® come to life in the all-new feature-length DVD movie. Meet Clutch Powers, the best builder and explorer in the LEGO®universe as he heads off on his most dangerous mission yet. Join Clutch and his team of LEGO®experts as their adventure leads them from LEGO® City to the Space Police prison planet to the medieval world of Ashlar where they must help the rightful heir to the King’s throne find the courage to regain the kingdom from the evil wizard Mallock the Malign. Their brick-building skills will be put to the ultimate test as they face off against Mallock’s skeleton army. Get ready for an action-packed adventure like nothing you have ever seen before, The Adventures of Clutch Powers!

Adventures of Clutch Powers – Trailer:

More:
- LEGOClutchPowers.com – official site.
- Amazon.com – $14.99
- BestBuy.com

When it shows up, I’ll be doing a review.

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If you missed LEGO Atlantis: The Movie (our review of it), you can watch it through the Cartoon Network’s video site – here’s a direct link to part 1 – there are 5 parts. If for some reason that link expires, just check the video site site and browse around for Atlantis.

I do not know how long it will be available online or what, if any, countries it is restricted to.

Still no word on future airings on Cartoon Network, or availability on DVD. It would be cool if they included it on the LEGO Adventures of Clutch Powers DVD, which is LEGO’s first full-length movie. As far as I know, that is not being broadcast anywhere, and will only be available through purchase or rental.

Amazon has the Clutch Powers DVD pre-order for $14.99 and Amazon.com Video on Demand has it for $3.99 for a 24 hour rental or $14.99 for purchase. It’ll be available towards the end of February 2010.

The animation in the Atlantis Movie looks very similar to that of the Clutch Powers movie.

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A quick note: I was mistaken yesterday, LEGO did do some promotion of the movie on the Atlantis.LEGO.com site, but I still believe more should have been done on LEGO.com as well as the Cartoon Network website. That’s just me.

If you’ve been following the Atlantis Theme, nothing in the movie should be a surprise. I’m going to post a short review, then some notes from the movie, and then a full synopsis of the movie (all in this post). If you don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading after the short review in the paragraph after this.

My overall impression is that it was very well done. The animation was good, the voice talent was good. As an AFOL, I wasn’t cringing at anything (and they even referrenced AFOLs at the end of the movie), it was enjoyable, and I could see kids really liking it. It showcased every single one of the existing LEGO Atlantis sets except for the 8079 Shadow Snapper. It also showed or hinted at a few large sets that we know about, but that aren’t yet available for purchase (later this year). It also showed something that… I don’t want to spoil the movie, so I’ll post it at the bottom, but let’s just say that it could either turn into a huge theme on its own, or be a sub-theme of Atlantis. It used almost all of the content from the Atlantis.LEGO.com website with the exception of the backstory around Dr. Artimus Rhodes and his great-granddaughter Professor Samantha Artesia Rhodes. This was probably due to the time constraints of a half-hour movie. It will be interesting to see if the LEGO Brickmaster Atlantis book fills in any gaps. It used all of the minifigs we’ve seen in the Atlantis sets, and everything but the Neptune Carrier was scaled appropriately.

STOP READING HERE IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HAVE THE MOVIE SPOILED!!

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As you are well aware by now, we’ve been beating the drum this week about LEGO Atlantis: The Movie, airing tomorrow night on the Cartoon Network here in the US. Why? because it seems like nobody else is, least of all LEGO or the Cartoon Network. No, we are not being paid to or being given any incentives, this is all our own doing – we are fans of the Atlantis theme and it’s driving us bonkers that the cartoon/movie is being downplayed or not given much support.

As we mentioned last week, LEGO has updated their Atlantis Movie Site with what look to be teaser trailers, including mention of 3D, as well as wallpapers and the like from what looks to be the movie, and if you’ve been to LEGO.com this week, you may have even seen a brief animation, but there is no indication that it’s from a 30-minute movie/cartoon airing tomorrow night. Update: There is a release that popped up, but still not much on www.LEGO.com.

If you do a search on CartoonNetwork.com for “Atlantis”, nothing comes up. You can find the show times tomorrow by browsing to the listings, but even just a search of “Lego” only turns up Ben 10 related information.

The first time we mentioned this was at the end of December when we came across a LEGO Store calendar in-store for the month of January. We then posted some more information about the Atlantis movie including showtimes, the movie clips, wallpapers, and our speculation.

We mention all of this because it’s almost like it’s supposed to be top secret. We were given permission by LEGO to post some advertising material from LEGO discussing how big Atlantis is to LEGO:

Atlantis is a great new theme based in the story of underwater adventurers battling the deep sea creature guardians of the lost city of Atlantis through use of versatile and intricate underwater vehicles. Each set comes with a collectible key that within the story lines helps the underwater adventures unlock the gate to the lost city. LEGO has taken many cues from the extremely strong Power Miner’s marketing effort and applied them to this line. Most importantly, is the largest ever LEGO.com base of supporting interactive content with a large 3-D tie in.

I don’t know why it’s being treated as something that’s secret. The Atlantis campaign appears to tightly scripted and well run, and as the bit from above mentions, they modeled it on the successful Power Miners campaign. This information was widely available a few weeks ago to the public, and by last week, it was showing up on TVGuide.com as well as many other schedule providers. I was able to program it through my DVR over a week ago.

This isn’t some super secret set information that was leaked early, this movie/cartoon is a part of an expensive campaign done on the part of The LEGO Group to promote Atlantis!

It’s incredibly odd.

And now for some screenshots from the trailers – we held off until tonight to post these to maybe help generate interest and help people remember that the movie/cartoon is tomorrow night. I’m deliberately not posting anything related to the plot, just some screenshots of the some of the sets we’ve already seen:

Neptune Carrier – it’s huge.
(Neptune Carrier review)

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A couple of quick notes. Back in December, I posted an article from The Dail Mail discussing LEGO and mentioning the design of LEGO Atlantis. There was an interview with William Thorogood who was the team lead on the Power Miners. Quite a few people (including Jason and I) have commented or thought that there were some similarities with the Power Miners even before we knew that the team lead behind Power Miners is the team lead behind Atlantis. Among other similarities, there was just a feel to the whole series/line that there was a lot of “unity” among the various sets we’ve seen so far.

LEGO seemed to also be putting a large amount of back story and history into the Atlantis series, more so than in past series/lines. You could make a case for Bionicle, and while it has a lot of history and back story, I don’t think there was as much present when Bionicle launched. Combined with the upcoming movie and all of the related materials on the Atlantis.LEGO.com website, it really is one of The LEGO Group’s biggest launches. The following was released through LEGO marketing this week (and is printed with permission here):

Atlantis is a great new theme based in the story of underwater adventurers battling the deep sea creature guardians of the lost city of Atlantis through use of versatile and intricate underwater vehicles. Each set comes with a collectible key that within the story lines helps the underwater adventures unlock the gate to the lost city. LEGO has taken many cues from the extremely strong Power Miner’s marketing effort and applied them to this line. Most importantly, is the largest ever LEGO.com base of supporting interactive content with a large 3-D tie in.

On a related note, I believe LEGO Atlantis: The Movie, will be airing in the US:
Friday, Jan 15 7:00 PM Eastern/6:00 PM Central
Saturday, Jan 16 9:30 AM Eastern/8:30 AM Central

I’m sure it will be run several more times. That is based on what showed up on my DVR schedule this morning. You should check your local listings as we get closer.

Somebody has asked if this would be turned into a regular series on the Cartoon Network. While it would be very cool and interesting, and a reverse, since we’ve had a couple of cartoon series on the Cartoon Network turned into LEGO, I have no idea. I think enough material could be created around the LEGO sets to provide for a mini-series at the least, but who knows. We should see more Atlantis sets later in the year. Perhaps then. I’d add that LEGO did a good job of keeping a lot of Atlantis-related materials secret, such as the movie.

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Update: 7pm Eastern, 6pm Central according to the Cartoon Network’s website.

Last week I mentioned that the LEGO Store calendars showed an event for January 15, 2010 called LEGO Atlantis: The Movie, on the Cartoon Network that is set in the LEGO Atlantis theme, here in the US:

Somebody contacted me asking about exact times, and I poked around a bit since I was really curious as well. January 15 is a Friday, and on that day, there are at least two other shows from LEGO-related licenses – Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Ben 10: Alien Force. On a couple of cable TV schedules, From 7:00 – 7:30pm Central Time, there is a gap in the programming with the words “To Be Announced”. Neither Ben 10 or Clone Wars is around that time (they are both later).

A quick check of TVGuide.com shows:

Lego Atlantis CARTOON Fri, Jan 15 7:00 PM
Lego Atlantis CARTOON Sat, Jan 16 9:30 AM

I am not sure if that is the Central or Eastern time zone.

It does seem that everybody involved is being pretty tight-lipped about it and the only thing we really have is this plot outline from the calendar:

….join the Atlantis Deep Sea Salvage crew in their thrilling search for the Lost City of Atlantis

A search on the Cartoon Network site doesn’t turn up anything Atlantis-related and their TV schedule doesn’t show that far out (we should know more this coming Friday).

Checking Atlantis.LEGO.com, it has been heavily updated over the past few days or week. They even have some movies and TV commercials up (see this link) and some of the stuff in the online photo album does appear that it could be from the movie.

This is pretty exciting – I’ve speculated about how big Atlantis will be back in November of last year and there are still Atlantis sets coming out that we haven’t seen too much of in the stores – the Atlantis 8079 Shadow Snapper is showing up at the online LEGO Store and in Brickset’s 2010 Atlantis listing, there are these entries:

8076 Deep Sea Striker
8077 Atlantis Exploration HQ
8078 Portal Of Atlantis

There isn’t much information on those yet, but they make a lot of sense. The Portal of Atlantis is, I’m guessing, what I was talking about when I mentioned a Shark Temple back in November as well, and some kind of Exploration HQ makes sense. You look at the previous aquatic/underwater theme, the Aqua Raiders from 2007, and they had a headquarters set that was over 800 pieces. A lot of people felt that theme should have been expanded more and it is clear that a few of the Aqua Raiders sets inspired the Atlantis designers. I would even speculate that some of the same people were involved.