The LEGO Movie

LEGO The Rexcelsior! (70839)

Name: LEGO The Rexcelsior!
Brand: LEGO
SKU: 70839

A giant fist-shaped spaceship with a tiny skate park hidden inside, and yes, it fires.

Brick Rated Score

4.1/5

Set 70839 · 2019

Pieces1,826

Minifigs2

Year2019

Set number70839

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The verdict

This one made me grin the whole way through, and I don't say that about many big play ships.

It's huge, stuffed with silly details, and built around a six-dart rapid-fire launcher that genuinely works. What won me over was how much personality is crammed into it, though I'll be honest that it's a playset first and a display piece a distant second. It's also crept well above its original price since retiring. Grab it for the fun and character. Skip it if you only care about smooth curves and a clean shelf centerpiece.

Best for: LEGO Movie fans who want a big, playable ship dripping with jokes

The full review

What it is

The Rexcelsior is one of the wildest ships to ever come out of The LEGO Movie 2, and I mean that as the highest compliment. It's a spaceship shaped like a giant clenched fist, which is exactly as ridiculous and brilliant as it sounds. This is Rex Dangervest's ride, built to be picked up, aimed, and fired, with a chunky handle at the back and a trigger that launches six darts one after another. At 1,826 pieces it's a big, satisfying LEGO set that gives you plenty to do without ever feeling like homework. If you or your kid loved the movie, it nails the tone: loud, funny, and a little bit unhinged.

The catch

Here's where I'll be straight with you. It's genuinely heavy, so even though it's designed to be held one-handed like a big foam blaster, younger builders will struggle to actually lift and aim it. The age rating sits at 10 plus, partly because those darts fire with real force. A set this size also means long stretches of repetitive work, lots of grey plates and layered greebling to bulk out the fist shape, and I felt the pacing drag a little in the middle. The pricing stings now too. It launched at $149.99, retired back at the end of 2019, and sealed copies have climbed to somewhere around $200 to $227, so you're paying a premium for the privilege.

Who it's for

This is a play machine first and a display piece second, and that's the honest heart of it. If you want something to pose statically on a shelf, there are sleeker ships out there, because that blocky fist silhouette is very much its own acquired taste. But if you want a set full of personality, hidden jokes, and a launcher that actually does something, this one delivers big grins. It's perfect for LEGO Movie fans, kids who like their builds to shoot things, and collectors chasing a set that has quietly grown into something a bit special. If you live for pure elegant spaceship design, you can happily let this one pass.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building The Rexcelsior is a game of two halves. The core is where the clever engineering lives: you assemble the spring-loaded six-dart launcher and the trigger that fires the whole magazine in quick succession, plus storage for six spare darts tucked into the front. Around that you build out the microscale interior, and this is the charming part, with a tiny skate park, a cargo bay, and a command bridge hidden under lift-off roof sections and behind opening doors. Then comes the outer shell, layering plates and detail pieces to sculpt that fist shape, and this is where the pacing slows, because there's a lot of similar repetitive work to bulk it out.

On the pieces front, the headline extras are the little figures. You get two full minifigs, Stubble Trouble Emmet with his smeared marker stubble printing and Rex Dangervest, plus micro versions of both for the dual cockpit, and five micro raptor dino figures (three in metallic, two in dark blue) that are genuinely cute and nod to sci-fi heroes like Ripley and Connor. The parts value is fair rather than remarkable at the original price, since a big chunk of the 1,826 pieces are structural greebling rather than rare elements, but the launcher hardware and that pile of grey system parts make it a solid donor set if you're into MOCs.

Fun facts

01The name Rexcelsior is a pun on the USS Excelsior from Star Trek, and the ship's whole design is a giant clenched fist.
02In the film the ship is secretly a time machine cobbled together from the TARDIS, the DeLorean's flux capacitor, and other movie time travel gadgets.
03The five raptors are named after sci-fi and action heroes including Ripley from Alien and Connor from Terminator.
04Released in April 2019, it retired that same December and now regularly sells sealed for well above its 149.99 dollar launch price.