"<unintelligible>WORLD DOMINATION<unintelligible>INVASION<unintelligible>BRAINPOWER<unintelligible>ALIEN CONQUEST(cue evil laugh)"By the way, check out what's behind the aliens.
A proposal for a character from an original LEGO IP without a dedicated TV series? Yeah, that can happen too.
What's the work?[]
Alien Conquest is a LEGO theme telling the story of humans defending their planet against an onslaught of aliens who want to steal their brains. Due to LEGO's habit of putting every other action theme in the same continuity, the theme is directly linked to Atlantis, Pharaoh's Quest and Dino storylines (more on that later), and indirectly with all that link to those themes. Commander Hypaxxus-8 is the leader of the invading aliens.
Now, I gotta mention that when determining the villain's status, I drew information from both the official website and the LEGO Club magazine. I have no idea if all this content is supposed to be canon to each other, but with no serious contradictions, let's just assume it is.
Link to all promotional story videos.
Link to 2011 LEGO Club magazine issues which had Alien Conquest-related material.
(Sorry for indulging in piracy, folks, but the magazines are over a decade old and out of stock, so what's a guy to do?)
Who's the guy?[]
As said before, Hypaxxus is the commander of the invading fleet. He's been around for millenia, actually, helping other LEGO villains in their plans: he armed Guardians from Atlantis, so that they could seize the sunken city, and he helped the pharaoh Amset-Ra from Pharaoh's Quest build his artifacts. After these villains were foiled in modern times, Hypaxxus-8 just sent his own aliens to invade the planet. Humans (and a few cows) all over the world were abducted and borught onto the mothership, where the aliens then sucked out their brainpower to fuel the batteries powering their spaceships. Hypaxxus planned to rule the Earth as its Supreme Overlord after sucking the humankind's brains dry, and even gave a press conference at Washington, D.C. to convince "puny Earthlings" that resistance was futile. At one point he managed to capture most of the Alien Defense Unit forces, including their leader, and the reporter Lotta Brix, subjecting them to the same fate as his other victims, and took a chance to mock ADU further.
Of course, like in the movies the toyline pays homage to, ADU strikes back, and Hypaxxus is forced to rely on Amset-Ra's help, as well as mind control Atlantis' guardian, Golden King, to build a new weapon, which the Earth's defenders still destroy. Before leaving for good, he somehow unleashed the dinosaurs (through a time portal, apparently), forcing humans to capture them before they can do any damage. And yeah, that's pretty much all we've seen of him so far. No, I'm not counting LEGO Minifigures Online, he has a different design and name there and might not even be the same character, plus it's clearly an alternate continuity.
Heinous Standards?[]
Time to blow your minds (full of brainpower, I suppose). The majority of LEGO themes take place within the same continuity. Alien Conquest is linked to Atlantis, Pharaoh's Quest and Dino via a LEGO Club comic, Alpha Team is linked to Agents and Ultra Agent via the Agent A collectable minifigure's biography and to Knights' Kingdom via Ogel's in-character interview in a magazine, Monster Fighters, Galaxy Squad and Ultra Agents are also linked via comics, although the MF-UA connection has since been retconned (but not MF-GS and GS-UA ones)... Long story short, I'm willing to believe that nearly every unlicensed LEGO theme takes place in the same universe (with a few exceptions, like Ninjago, Nexo Knights, Friends, Elves, Bionicle etc., since they cannot plausibly take place in the same continuity), so let's just assume most of them do share a continuity. You could of course say that all these crossover may be non-canon and merely a marketing ploy, but no serious contradictions have been noticed, so until proven otherwise, why not? Still, with so many villain to compete with, how is Hypaxxus-8 going to stand out?
Now, remember what I've mentioned about him stealing humankind's brainpower? Judging from the supplementary material, this process is rather painful, as the victims are shown either screaming as their brains are sucked dry or have an agonized expression, and the businessman who's had all his brainpower extracted appears to be really traumatized by the experience, not to mention he doesn't even speak, just rubs his head in pain with a shocked expression, so it's questionable if he can even still think after what he's gone through. I'd say there is an established pattern, and it's not Fridge Horror. And judging from both Hypaxxus' and Alien Android's descriptions, such a fate awaited all of humanity. If everyone on Earth would end up like that businessman, is it really a blessing that they're not simply exterminating us? To my knowledge of LEGO action themes that share the same continuity, planet-wide mass torture of such volume is an uncommon crime there. Most shared LEGO universe villains don't do that type of plots, knowing the sets' demographic, mostly trying to conquer the world, and that's about it. Ogel from Alpha Team wanted to freeze time, but i'm not sure if this counts as omnicide, unless he really did want to dismantle the universe afterwards, but even then, hed technically have bigger resources than Hypaxxus-8. As for possibly failing personal capability standards, the aliens caused plenty of damage to the cities, so it's likely that they didn't mind causing human casualties either.
Just one more thing: in LEGO lore, there's this Alien Villainess lass who is heavily implied to be Hypaxxus-8's superior and the true mastermind of the invasion, but it hasn't been fully confirmed. And even if she were, we don't know if brain draining was her idea or Hypaxxus', I won't rule out the latter.
Mitigating factors?[]
To my memory, the Commander has no actual redeeming qualities. His relationship with Amset-Ra is, from what we've seen, is purely professional and not a genuine friendship. In the Alien Clinger's description, Hypaxxus mentions having a pet Clinger he affectionately names Captain Ploovie, and continues with a "Isn’t he cute? Yes he is!", but I'm not sure if he genuinely cares for his Ploovie or is it just him finding him a cute living accessory, since they are never seen together. He doesn't seem to care for his troopers either, as he rudely smacks one while speaking to ADU.
The only thing bothering me is comedic moments. Character descriptions from the website (now defunct, but archived on Brickipedia), in-universe newspaper, comics and even the web shorts provide some for Hypaxxus. For example, he has a habit of long maniacal laughter (one even lasting for several minutes, according to an in-universe newspaper), boasting about how one of the reasons Earthlings will lose is that his spaceship is "really, really big", noting that Alien Clingers will not just suck their victims brains, but will probably make them eat broccoli (they like that stuff), referring to himself as the "greatest, bestest, coolest leader in the galaxy", and extracting brainpower from not only humans, but a cow and a phone booth. There's none excuse for these ones, I'm sure said moments were played for laughs.
BUT, somehow I'm under the impression that in spite of all these moments, he wasn't meant to be taken as a complete joke. For example, whenever we see his on-screen in web shorts, there's some creepy moment going on. Lotta Brix is plain horrified of his plan to steal brainpower (and no, Lieutenant's remark about how it's because aliens have none of their own doesn't make it better, since Hypaxxus himself possesses quite a huge brain), she and ADU Lieutenant scream in pain as their turn comes, his speech to ADU, delivered in his mother tongue intermitted with a few English words...all of this clearly estabilishes him as anything but a joke villain, and I believe those comedic tendencies fail to fullly detract from them. In fact, I think a few of his comedic moments (boasting about his soldiers' superior abilities while using plenty of otherwordly metaphors, and smacking his subordinate during the "Skype call", so to call it) don't even detract from his villainy, but rather just indicate his arrogance and jerkishness. So there you have it, I left all the links for you, character descriptions you can find on your own by browsing Brickipedia if you wanna be sure.
Verdict?[]
Tentative yes.