Praise4Media #72 - The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

The original Lego Movie was great a fun nostalgia trip for adults and a decent mix of humour of set-pieces to advertise lego products to our younger audience. A sequel to this was inevitable, and Phil Lord and Chris Miller, two still popular writers, were on board. So why did this film flounder at the box office? What went wrong here?

The film had critical success, but not the same level as the first one, though still an impressive 84% compared to 96% for the first one. The drop off with audiences is a bit steeper with a 68% rating down from 87% but why is that? I have some theories but let’s start by diving into the story.

We pick up where the first film left off, the aliens from the planet Duplo, I think, are here to destroy the heroes. Emmet steps in before fighting can begin to try a diplomatic approach, making a lego heart and offering it as a token of friendship. The aliens eat the heart and continue their rampage, Metalbeard loses his body, Vitruvius is banished out of the film and Lord Business is relegated to a cameo. And if you think Liam Neeson is coming back… he isn’t.

So yeah, the only star-power we have left is Chris Pratt and, well, Batman. I guess Elizabeth Banks is also a pretty well-known actress but I digress. Over the next 5 years, they continue to attack, taking away shiny things until the new Bricksburg becomes Apocolypseburg. Which is a terrible pun: Apocobricks, Brickpocolypseburg, be creative.

So, this Mad-Max style dystopia has hardened the hearts of many, except for our title character Emmet who is still his usual optimistic, smiley self. It’s been 5 years, in both the film and real life, a point I will have to get back to. And Emmet is still trying to rebuild his life. Lucy (or Wyldstyle) is brooding with an internal monologue, as you do. Emmet tries to do the same but is not really successful. Though he does recall a nightmare about the end of days at 5:15, more on that in a bit. He’s built a ludicrously impractical house for the two to live in but Lucy is concerned that it’s gonna attract aliens and get destroyed.

I think it’s fairly obvious they’re satirising the dark and gritty trope that people like to think is more grown-up. But one of the bigger problems with the film is how light it is on the humour… This premise is a gold mine for jokes but it feels like they barely scratch the surface of it, relying mostly on the contrast between Emmet and everyone else, and don’t get me wrong, it’s necessary to do that for the wider character arcs.

The Justice League left to pursue the aliens minus Batman who was busy having his own standalone adventure, which co-incidentally also featured the Justice League so god knows how that works. The house tour is interrupted by a new arrival and I’m gonna mention something I’m not all that fond of, the vocalisation of sound effects. I know what effect they’re going for, these are supposed to be kids making the sound effects as they play with the toys but it’s grating and not consistent. Maybe just have the voices of the kids make the sound effects as opposed to every character, makes it sound the characters are going “pew pew pew.”

Emmet and Lucy, along with Unikitty investigate and find the ship, finding it scanning the area. Emmet eventually does something to accidentally give away their location and it becomes a quick chase with them both master-building a vehicle to get them back to the bunker. Batman is on the defence turret but his bullets don’t seem to be working. Yeah, Batman is using a gun, not sure how comfortable I feel about that. Still, when it doesn’t work he’s clever enough to use a piece of the collapsed statue of Liberty to pin the ship down.

Emmet, Lucy and Unikitty make it in in time but a weapon from the ship, which are hearts and stars, gets jammed in the doors. An unknown masked person steps away from the wreckage of her ship, and because Emmet can’t resist the sad face the star is making, she’s given an opportunity to enter the base.

“So you fought, and master built and kicked butt but the hapless male was the leader”

I genuinely don’t know what to think of this… YES! Because in the end it wasn’t the fighting or the master-building or the butt-kicking that solved the problem, it was Emmett’s empathy and compassion, as cheesy as that sounds.

OK, so our masked person has come to take their leaders to a matrimonial ceremony, easily defeating our heroes, including Emmett, and taking away Batman, Unikitty, Metalbeard, Benny and Lucy. Emmett is knocked out and hears some arguing between Finn and Bianca arguing, I’m gonna save most of their story for a major revelation around the end of the second act so bear with me. Everyone, including Lucy believe that Emmett hasn’t adapted to the times and needs to change, because they’re not subtle about the themes here.

So, Emmett turns his house into a space-ship, because To Boldly Flee is apparently inspirational. He heads off after his kidnapped friends through what’s known as the Stair-gate. Some funny stuff happens and he finds himself in an asteroid field, saved from certain doom only by the arrival of Rex Dangervest. Rex is tough, good in action whilst maintaining a certain charm and kindness, basically he’s everything Emmett wants to be to impress Lucy.

Rex takes him back to his ship, the Rex-elcior and that was actually a good pun, have a cookie. Let’s cut back to our abducted quintet as they land at the house of the alien queen. And I have to give props, I adore Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi and props to Tiffany Haddish who absolutely sells this role. She’s equal parts adorable (funny) and intimidating and that brings us into the musical number because this film is a musical apparently.

That said, this song is easily the best of the movie, and the one that sticks around in mind longer than any other, which is funny considering one of them is called “This song’s gonna get stuck inside your head.”

Anyway, to get them to co-operate she has something for each of them, except for Lucy who’s the most sceptical. Benny is offered a planet full of space-ships, Metalbeard a new Pirateship, Unikitty a lot of glitter and Batman, half of everything. Yeah, she plans to get hitched to Batman as a way to unite their worlds. Interesting plan… They’re all shipped to get ready for the ceremony.

And there they meet, the sparkle vampires. And I think in 2019, this is what we have to say about Twilight memes

Back with Emmett, they arrive on planet… nope, I can’t remember the name, and begin exploring, Rex teaches Emmett a skill known as master breaking and it’s at this moment you realise he’s the bad guy of this story… Again, like it wasn’t obvious already but I digress.

It’s hear where we find out the fate of the Justice League, they’re covered in glitter and seemingly brainwashed, and how the f*ck did Lex Luthor get among them, and wasn’t Zod in the Phantom zone, since we’re implying Lego Batman is in continuity. OK, enough nit-picking, and it’s time we zip back to Lucy, who has blue hair underneath her black. Apparently she took a pen and did every single strand of… ok, one you’re a lego figurine you don’t have strands and 2, you didn’t even know what a sharpie was before the last film, gimme a break.

So, music therapy, in case we forgot this was a musical, but Lucy came prepared, creating headphones to block out the music and escaping into the ventilation shaft. And Bruce Willis is there, huh. As the song ‘This song’s gonna get stuck inside your head’ plays, it also begins to play with Emmet and Rex, with everyone now pursuing the two in a zombified state, Emmet has to perform a master-break so the two can escape.

They fall into planet Duplo, a junk planet which is sorting out various bricks for the upcoming wedding ceremony. They sneak themselves aboard one of the transports carrying bricks. Our masked villain is carrying the others back to the palace, and Lucy has snuck aboard, she stops to save Emmet and Rex from being scanned and they devise a plan, Lucy will disable the shields using the smart-tablet powering the place, Rex will get his ship for their escape and Emmett will climb to the top of the tower and perform a master breaker punch that will destroy it.

Rex subtly hints that Lucy may have been brainwashed, though Emmett doesn’t believe it. Batman still hasn’t agreed to the wedding but Queen Wa’Nabi uses some reverse psychology and another song to convince him. Yeah, all it took was being compared to Superman, what have you done, Zack Snyder?

Wedding plans going ahead as Lucy sneaks in to try and disable the shields but is interrupted by General Mayhem, the two fight but this time Lucy is ready for General Mayhem’s attacks and manages to win the fight but in the process, Mayhem is knocked off a ledge and is hanging on for dear life. Lucy decides to rescue her and soon the truth is dropped. The Queen is legit, her friends aren’t hypnotised and this was a gambit to try and prevent the end of the worlds. Oh, and she’s an anime character.

Anyway, the only problem is Emmett is about to crash the wedding, which in this caser won't be better than regretting. Lucy tries to call him off, but hearing her epiphany only strengthens the belief that she’s been brainwashed. More gratuitous cameos, some gags involving Banana Peel and Rex is the bad guy, he tells Emmett that a good master breaker punch would take the shields down as well, and that’s exactly what happens.

OK, before I get to the real-world stuff, I’ll just reveal now that Rex Dangervest is in fact an alternate version of Emmett, who got tough after not being rescued when his house ship was destroyed. The Rex-elcior was built from parts of various time machines so he could go back in time and save himself.

So the film has been building up to an event known as armamageddon, where they’ll be cast into the Bin of Storajj the planetary system General Mayhem is from is called the Systar system. Rex spent his time in isolation on the planet Undar in the Dryar system. They’re not being subtle with what they’re referencing this time.

In the original film, the revelation the story was essentially created by Finn, a young child engrossed in the idea of his father’s Lego World and the stories that could be told there. But 5 years have passed, he’s drawing inspiration from things like Mad Max, I dunno it feels kinda childish that he’s still playing with his lego like this. As for the feud with his sister, this presents another problem. From what I can work out, anything with General Mayhem is told from Bianca’s perspective, and the stuff with Emmett and Rex is from Finn’s perspective, except they mesh together too well.

Finn and Bianca are not roleplaying a story together, Bianca is taking figurines from the basement, from Finn’s set and using them in her own story. These stories should feel at odds with each other but they aren’t. Finn is taking revenge for a perceived slight against him by destroying his sister’s lego set, so they idea of Rex being the bad guy for suggesting it only mesh if he’s supposed to be an allegory for Finn, but no, he’s an alternate version of Emmett, which raises further questions about who he is in reality. Is he a different figure and Finn has assigned him this backstory? He did say he was working on a story involving time travel.

The story the original lego movie chose to tell was fairly basic, as you’d expect from a fairly childish mindset, but importantly it was told in a singular voice so you could imagine it being told from that child. I can’t imagine Finn and Bianca telling this story in the Lego worlds they created. Other things of note, turns out Queen Wa’Nabi is actually the heart Emmett gave to the aliens… go figure how she survived being eaten, and also she’s alive now, what the heck?

There’s also the common trope of a sibling feud, “you started it” and whilst they turn that on its head with the aforementioned revelation, all I can think of is…

“We’re from the planet duplo, we are here to destroy you”

I don’t think that side can claim they didn’t start it.

So the mother orders all the lego packed up, but not without her stepping on lego bricks, twice, and comparing it to childbirth… Got that out of your system, WB, bet you’ve been wanting to make that joke for years, moving on…

Lucy, General Mayhem, and everyone except Rex and Emmett are cast into the ‘Bin of Storajj’ and because of reasons they continue to act like they have agency. This is another example of them trying to have their cake and eat it when it comes to this story and the real-world analogue which, whilst it happened on occasion in the original, is a lot more prevalent here.

Emmett continues to express concern for Lucy and the others and Rex decides that he needs to experience the isolation and casts him to Undar in the Dryar system. All seems hopeless and the ‘everything’s not awesome song’ begins. They’re playing it like Everything is Awesome was played completely straight, the entire point of the song is that it was ironic. Trying to go, no don’t be optimistic, be pragmatic is kinda funny, considering that’s kinda where we were, minus Emmett at the start of the film.

I mean it’s a good song, don’t get me wrong. Anyway, during this rendition, Finn comes across the pieces of heart, he, many years ago built for his sister, motivating him to try and make amends with her.

Lucy’s verse in Everything’s not Awesome motivates everyone else to band together, using the discarded parts to create a whole bunch of toys to go on a final attack against the Rexelcior. Finn rebuilds the heart, bringing back Queen Wa’Nabi. It’s all on for rescuing Emmett as they all conveniently know where he and Rex are somehow and make their attack, the raptors begin fighting back as Rex is still with Emmett on Undar, incidentally, Rex is able to move just fine in that area despite Emmett not being able to.

It really does speak to my biggest issue with the film that the climax takes place in a place neither of the kids could possibly be involved… Until Lucy comes along and Undar turns into a lego set because of reasons… How is it she can move just fine? Because Lucy came back for him, Rex realises that Emmett will never become him and disappears into the realm of confusing time-travel based plot devices.

We’re at the end now, Finn and Bianca have set up a new Lego set outside, we get another gag with President Business, remember he’s in the film… and Lucy has rebuilt Emmett’s house and reveals that she’s one of the artists from the original Everything is Awesome. That makes no sense yet I love it.

So that was the Lego Movie 2 and whilst it’s got big ideas, not all of them pan out. Creating a scene to re-enact a brother sister dynamic among characters in a lego set is actually pretty clever, and there are, at least early on some good parallels, the name General Mayhem, the idea that Bianca’s characters don’t seem to obey Finn’s lego rules are just 2 examples, but as time moves on, it becomes increasingly more difficult to reconcile the two.

The animation is fantastic, as it was with the first one, there are a good couple of memorable songs. Queen Wa’Nabi is great and the story has a good moral, looking at the mindset of being serious and what that actually entails, the nature of change and how it can be both a good and a bad thing, as well as the natural dynamics of a brother sister trying to get along and learning to play together, they’re a tad more interesting than something that could fit on a cat poster.

But this comes at a cost as the jokes are a lot more scattershot, some of which, like the Gary Poppins bit, are just groanworthy. The script could’ve done with another draft to add a few more jokes that aren’t just lego references.

So, why did this movie fail? The story has its issues but I’m not convinced it’s a primary factor? I think the 5-year gap did the story and the franchise a disservice, certainly some of the story beats for the real world might’ve worked better with a shorter time jump. Then there’s the Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago movie, both of which were released in 2017, the latter of which also underperformed and may have soured people away from the franchise. It’s clear WB had no idea that the Lego Movie was gonna be such a smash hit and because animation takes a good long time to make, the result was the time gap.

The Lego Movie rights have since been loaned to Universal, we’ll see what their take is.

Praise Rating 64%