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%
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