The LEGO Movie

The Rexcelsior!

A giant fist-shaped spaceship with a hidden microscale skate park inside.

4.4/5

Set 70839 · 2019

Pieces1,826

Minifigs2

Year2019

Set number70839

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The verdict

If you love a big, chunky play ship with genuine personality, this one is a blast, and it has quietly become a proper collector piece since it retired.

It is huge, packed with silly details, and built around a stonking six-dart rapid-fire launcher. Just know it leans playset over display shelf, and it now costs well over its original price. Grab it if you want fun and character, skip it if you only care about smooth curves and a display centerpiece.

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

The full review

What it is

So here is the deal with The Rexcelsior, one of the wildest ships to ever come out of The LEGO Movie 2. It is a spaceship shaped like a giant clenched fist, which is exactly as ridiculous and brilliant as it sounds. This is Rex Dangervest's ride, and the whole thing is 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 is a big, satisfying LEGO® set that gives you plenty to do without ever feeling like homework. If you or your kid loved the movie, this set nails the tone: loud, funny, and a little bit unhinged.

The catch

Now for the honest bits. It is genuinely heavy, so even though it is 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. Being a set of this size, you should also expect long stretches of repetitive work, lots of grey plates and layered greebling to bulk out the fist shape, which can drag a little in the middle. And the pricing story stings now. It launched at 149.99 dollars, retired back at the end of 2019, and secondhand sealed copies have climbed to somewhere around 200 to 227 dollars, so you are paying a premium for the privilege.

Who it's for

Who is this really for? It is a play machine first and a display piece second. If you want something to pose statically on a shelf, there are sleeker ships out there, because the 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 is 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. Fans of pure elegant spaceship design can happily give it a miss.

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 mechanism that lets you fire the whole magazine in quick succession, plus there is storage for six spare darts tucked into the front of the ship. 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, which is where the pacing slows because there is 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 reference sci-fi heroes like Ripley and Connor. The parts count value is fair rather than amazing 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 are 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.