LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr review

LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr has a tough act to follow, but can this towering edifice justify keeping a much-loved licence behind an equally towering paywall?

LEGO The Lord of the Rings returned with a mic drop moment in March last year, walking into the room after a decade off shelves with one of the most impressive and highly-rated sets of all time in 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell. Weighing in at more than 6,000 pieces with a price tag to match, it was and remains the ultimate rendition of the home of the elves.

But it also brought the Middle-earth franchise under the Icons banner, and in doing so ensured that this theme will seemingly always be the preserve of those with the space and budget for immense, flagship sets. 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr is the immediate consequence of that decision, realising the Eye of Sauron and his tower in Mordor with an astonishing 5,471 pieces and asking us to pay £399.99 to experience the joy of putting it together and having it on display.

There’s a wider conversation there around the LEGO Group’s approach to this theme – one that has been dormant for a good while and is hooked to movies now more than two decades old (yes, we are all old) – but it’s one that 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr commands you to put aside and hop on board the mega Middle-earth train. Because just look at it. How could you not?

— LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr set details —

Theme: LEGO Icons Set name: 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr Release date: June 1, 2024

Price: £399.99 / $459.99 / €459.99 Pieces: 5,471 Minifigures: 10

LEGO: Order now

— Where to buy LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr —

LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr will be available to buy from LEGO.com and in LEGO Stores from June 1 for LEGO Insiders (and June 4 for everyone else). You might be able to find it through a third-party retailer a few months from now, but there are no guarantees.

— LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr build —

The obvious thing to get out of the way first is that LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr isn’t going to give you the same level of building experience as 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell. That set benefited from clever construction in pleasant colours all the way through, with things like the ornate gazebo and a bunch of different trees offering both variety and an engaging build (not to mention that now-iconic tiled roof).

Barad-dûr doesn’t have the same opportunities, with the majority of the build feeling mostly satisfying if not extraordinary, but what it does is stand in really clear visual contrast to Rivendell. This was absolutely the right direction to go in after that model, which was all light and whimsy and was also hooked to the trilogy’s good guys. Here is something ominous and menacing, all sharp angles and brutal architecture. It’s worlds away from its predecessor, for both good and bad.

Putting together the fiery rockwork around the base will quickly teach you a few tips for your own landscaping, for example, and while this is a much more symmetrical build than Rivendell, the designers have done their best to break things up and keep it engaging throughout its entire 40 bags (which were all paper in our review copy!). That’s not only in the flow of the build, but also in the colours chosen: the vast quantity of trans-orange 1×4 tiles in the lava-fuelled base; the winding rocks that give the impression the tower is built into a mountain; the browns, dark oranges and nougats dotted around near light sources. These are clever and carefully considered choices that save us from what could have been an unending and dismal sea of black.

The tower is open-backed and built in four separable sections: the base, which houses Barad-dûr’s dungeons, forge and a secret hidey-hole for Gollum; the mid-section, where you’ll find the kitchen; Sauron’s throne room; and the spire, which shoots straight up and can be stacked if you have the means to collect the parts necessary for additional sections. The techniques for the spire are lifted straight from 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – and while you’re really getting down in the weeds with black upon black here, the set keeps things interesting with some unique parts usage and nifty techniques.

Again, nothing here is really on the level of even the most straightforward parts of Rivendell, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining. Last year’s Middle-earth model set the bar so high that few others could ever hope to reach it, and using that experience as a stick with which to beat subsequent sets would just be unfair.

And on the whole, the exterior of the tower does well to recreate Barad-dûr in all its might (always remembering that these things are artistic interpretations, and especially of fictional locations), even if you’ll need to look a little closer to distinguish some of its finer details. But it’s inside where you might just have the most fun with 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr, because it’s here where the designers have had the most freedom to take certain creative liberties.

We never really got a good look inside Barad-dûr in the movies, so Warner Bros. gave the LEGO Group carte blanche to come up with their own ideas for day-to-day life in Mordor’s stronghold supreme. At ground level, you’ll find magma pools, a hanging cage with a prisoner long since dead, a forge for orc weaponry and – squirrelled away inside the wall – a little hidey-hole for Gollum, complete with a fish to snack on. There’s also a neat function to open the front gates by turning a rock on the side of the tower, although the single-axle mechanism does feel like it’s straining a little under the weight of it all. Still: so far, so good.

Move up a level and you’ll really crack a smile. One of the most memorable moments in the Two Towers sees the orcs capturing Merry and Pippin outside Fangorn Forest, at which point one of them growls, ‘Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!’ The LEGO Icons team has taken this throwaway line to its natural conclusion: if the orcs have a menu, they must also have a restaurant, or at least a kitchen. That’s exactly what you’ll find here, complete with a cauldron over an open flame, a table covered in orc delicacies, and even a chalkboard with ‘menu’ scrawled on. It’s exactly the level of humour and creativity you’d expect from a LEGO set.

As you progress further up the tower, you’ll reach Sauron’s throne room, which of course makes no sense while he’s just a disembodied eye, but then it doesn’t need to make sense: it’s just fun. Plus, it houses maybe the best play feature in the entire set. Pull the knob jutting out of his throne and the entire assembly will slide forward and split in two, revealing a Palantir orb and a map of Middle-earth for Sauron to pore over in his quest for world domination. The white tree of Gondor beckons, and it just might be spelling out the next LEGO The Lord of the Rings set… or maybe we’re reading too much into it.

Finally, the very top of the spire houses the Mouth of Sauron’s study – ‘They’re sending the letters to Isengard!’ – which is a fun concept only slightly marred by the need to place stickers inside curved panels. Boooo. But all told, this is a really fun and novel way to approach Barad-dûr’s interior from top to bottom, especially given the lack of reference material, and really helps to elevate 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr beyond the lofty heights it’s already (literally) reaching.

And it does so with what’s almost the most important part of this set, because it’s where your own eye is instantly drawn. The good news is that the designers have basically nailed it. The Eye of Sauron is the one part of the build that will have you reminiscing over Rivendell (if you’re fortunate enough to have built that too), because it’s the smartest and most intricate part of the entire process. (Just wait ‘til you see how they did it.) And it’s the last bit to go on, so you’re finishing on a high note.

It’s such a rewarding end to the build too, 40 bags later, as you pop it on and light it up. You’ll need to stand back a bit to truly bask in and appreciate the sheer visual presence of this thing, because it’s genuinely massive, standing a properly impressive 83cm tall (just a shade taller than 76178 Daily Bugle, for reference). It’s imposing, dramatic, and oppressive in all the right ways, with just the right use of colour to prevent its sharp details and asymmetrical angles getting swallowed up. You’ll never get tired of staring at it, and that’s pretty good going for a big black tower.

— LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr characters —

10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr doesn’t quite match the quantity of minifigures in 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell, but it absolutely holds its own in quality. You probably won’t find yourself wishing for more when all’s said and done, either: this feels like just the right amount for the space available here.

Chief among them is of course the first-ever minifigure of Sauron, a character that would have been easy to get wrong – but which the LEGO Group has got pretty much just right. Some may have hoped for the longer arms and taller legs of the LEGO Avatar minifigures to better communicate his towering stature, but Madame Maxime’s latest iteration in 76440 Triwizard Tournament: The Arrival is one good example of why those skewed proportions don’t work for everyone.

Paired with the Mouth of Sauron, these two minifigures represent the most detailed of Barad-dûr’s characters thanks to their unique and prickly helmets. Cast in rubber for reasons that should be obvious, these pieces are accurate to their on-screen counterparts almost to a fault – perhaps overstepping that balance between authenticity and the classic LEGO DNA to just a tiny degree. It’s a fine line, and one that not every LEGO minifigure manages to toe successfully.

There’s no faulting Gothmog and his orcs though, beyond maybe the desire they’ll unlock in you for a battle pack of these guys further down the line – we can dream – while the LEGO Group has found a clever way to bulk out the roster with a tiny, freestanding slice of Mordor on which Frodo, Sam and Gollum can stand. Even here there’s newness to enjoy, from the first Gollum minifigure since 2012 (with a brand new, scene-relevant face print) to the unique helmets the Hobbits appropriate to simply walk into Mordor.

Those helmets come as part of a new ‘family pack’ of moulds, by the way, aping the approach to the weapon pieces in Rivendell. It’s a smart way to give us a lot of variety at minimal cost, and means you get a whole bunch of surplus helmets in this set to boot. So points all round for the minifigure selection here, not only for the contrast to Rivendell’s line-up (a contrast embodied by the entire set, as mentioned), but also for how the LEGO Icons team has managed to make even the repeats interesting.

— LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr price —

As we’ve alluded to already in this review, the price of 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr is likely to be the major stumbling block for most people. This set is not cheap at £399.99 / $459.99 / €459.99, and nor was Rivendell, and so if you want to collect LEGO The Lord of the Rings in 2024 you’re going to first have to accept that this is the direction the LEGO Group has chosen to take this theme (while of course still making your voice heard if you want playsets too).

We’re long since past entering the age of stupidly-priced LEGO sets, of course, but even the company’s CEO has admitted that consumers are trending towards cheaper models amid a wider cost of living crisis. 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr stands tall and resolute in the face of that market manoeuvring, demanding a significant chunk of your LEGO budget – perhaps at the expense of four, five or 10 smaller and cheaper sets you were hoping to collect instead.

If your annual LEGO spend does stretch to 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr’s RRP, and for most of us invested in this hobby it’s with the acceptance that it’s never going to be cheap, then devoting it entirely or in part to this one set is a tall (sorry not sorry) order. But with all that said… it’s one that Middle-earth fans will feel no regret doing. It may be expensive, but when the result is as impressive as this, you won’t really be wishing it was smaller and cheaper. Save that for the Orc battle pack.

— LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr pictures —

— LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr pros and cons —

10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr embodies the ideals of artistic expression like no licensed set before it (whether in Middle-earth, a galaxy far, far away or the Wizarding World), demonstrating such smart design that you’ll almost overlook a building experience that was never really going to live up to 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell.

From the clever use of colour that preserves the tower’s visual clarity to the fun and imaginative approach to its expansive interior, there’s plenty to enjoy in the way the designers have approached LEGO Barad-dûr. The challenge on the table here was very different to the one presented by Rivendell, but like that set, you can see every ounce of consideration that’s gone into the finished model on display in front of you. 

It makes for a build that might not blow you away with its intricacies (the great eye aside), but will make you appreciate just how difficult it must have been to arrive at this finishing point. The very best LEGO sets do that, and 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr surely belongs among them. It’s going to take some saving up for, and it’s still not ideal that we don’t have cheaper LEGO The Lord of the Rings playsets alongside this, but you can’t fail to be impressed by what that increased budget has unlocked here yet again.

LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr pros	LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr cons
Dramatic and commanding in all the right ways	An almost inevitable step down in building experience from Rivendell
Smart use of internal space, even smarter use of colour	A couple of the minifigures almost feel over-engineered
Some key characters crossed off the LotR list, including Sauron for the first time	Another costly barrier of entry to LEGO Middle-earth

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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— Alternatives to LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr —

There’s one super-obvious alternative to 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr in 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell, which offers a very different take on LEGO Middle-earth. It sprawls horizontally rather than vertically, with a colour palette painting in light rather than dark. It’s really best placed as a companion to Barad-dûr, but you’re going to need deep pockets (and lots of space) to collect them both.

If for some reason you just love tall LEGO sets, oh boy does the LEGO Group have something for you. Consider any one of 10307 Eiffel Tower, 76178 Daily Bugle, 76417 Gringotts Wizarding Bank Collectors’ Edition… the list goes on.

— LEGO Icons 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr FAQs —