It took almost half a billion dollars at the global box office, won the hearts of critics and is the favourite to take the Bafta for Best Animated Film when the awards are handed out in February. But The Lego Movie - which was the highest grossing film in the UK last year - has been frozen out by voters for the 87th Academy Awards, failing to pick up a nomination for either Best Animated Feature or Best Picture. (Its title tune, 'Everything is Awesome!!!', was nominated in the category for Best Original Song.) There is speculation that the film's relatively distant release date (it came out on February 7 2014 in the US and February 14 2014 in the UK) may have been a factor in its absence from the list of nominees, with ageing Oscars voters - whose median age is 62 - unable to recall the merits of a film that came out at the beginning of last year. Perhaps there was a split in the vote between those who thought it deserved a Best Animated Feature nod and those who saw it as a potential Best Picture - although winning a place in both categories has not proven impossible in the past, with Toy Story 3 achieving a double nomination in 2011.
Some have suggested that a roughly 10-minute-long live-action sequence at the end of the film may have cost it a nomination in Best Animated Feature; however the Academy's guidelines state that animation only needs to feature in 75 per cent of a film's running time to make it eligible. Aside from its stellar box-office success, The Lego Movie won praise from critics around the world; the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes currently lists it as having 96 per cent positive reviews. There is a sequel planned for 2018, and a spin-off film featuring the character of Batman (voiced by Will Arnett) is to be released in 2017. The snub has provoked a strong reaction on social media, with scores of Twitter users expressing their dissatisfaction with the decision. Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin, who gave the film a glowing review when it was released in February 2014, was one of the first to respond: No best animated nod for The Lego Movie is a nonsense. Delighted Ghibli got in though... #OscarNoms— Robbie Collin (@robbiereviews)
Slate film critic Dana Stevens tweeted at one of the film's directors, Phil Lord: Was The Lego Movie really just not nominated? @/HFLmVfB16J— Dana Stevens (@thehighsign) Lord, who co-directed with Christopher Miller, seemed to take things philosophically:/kgyu1GRHGR— philip lord (@philiplord)Catch up with all the action as it happened.An omnipotent dictator controls the whereabouts and movements of the citizenry. Surveillance cameras constantly monitor the public. Words and songs chosen by the government keep the masses pacified. Yes, I'm describing George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four — but I'm also describing The LEGO Movie, which hits theaters today. You probably wouldn't expect to see much in common between a dark, dystopian vision of the future and a children's movie based on a popular toy line. But let me lay out the evidence, and see if you agree (minor spoilers for both Orwell's novel and The LEGO Movie to follow): Nineteen Eighty-Four: "Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia…"
The LEGO Movie: Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell) is the omnipotent leader of the LEGO world, whose absolute hatred of chaos led him to seek power. He ultimately aims to freeze the world and prevent anyone or anything from changing. Nineteen Eighty-Four: "It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise." The LEGO Movie: That "drowning of consciousness" exists in the uniformity of each person's actions in LEGO land. From the shows the citizens watch to the songs they sing to the coffee they consume, the people are pushed to lead bland and monotonous lives. Nineteen Eighty-Four: "People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten."
The LEGO Movie: When people question the leader, they are frozen in place or disappear, never to be seen again. Nineteen Eighty-Four: "There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means…" The LEGO Movie: Lord Business and his minions mass-produce entertainment shows, including the nation's biggest television hit, "Where Are My Pants?" The show — as with other, similar programs — was created to keep the citizens stilted and pacified and succeeds in doing so. Nineteen Eighty-Four: "You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades; but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others." The LEGO Movie: When the main character Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt) goes missing, his "friends" are interviewed on television about him and none of them know anything important about him.
He simply exists as another face in the crowd, rather than a unique person with friends and family members who love him. Nineteen Eighty-Four: "The new tune which was to be the theme song of Hate Week ('The Hate Song,' it was called) had already been composed and was being endlessly plugged on the telescreens." The LEGO Movie: There's no song of hate in the film, but there is a song dedicated to how blandly happy everyone's lives are. As the film begins, "Everything is Awesome" is sung by thousands of LEGO characters, who are instructed to sing along for the next five hours. Nineteen Eighty-Four: "One did not know what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions…" The LEGO Movie: When people — including the main character — question authority, they are brought into a quiet room, interrogated, and even tortured into submission. (Don't worry, parents — it's mostly off-screen.)
Nineteen Eighty-Four: "A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone." The LEGO Movie: The LEGO characters all live under constant surveillance and can never escape being watched by the police and their overlords. In fact, if they ever go against the routine, they are punished for their rebellious behavior. Nineteen Eighty-Four: "'We [the government] have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman.'" The LEGO Movie: In one of the movie's most unexpectedly devastating scenes, a LEGO police officer — who serves as both a good cop and a bad cop — is pushed to cut ties between himself and his family. After being brainwashed, he is forced to torture his parents to prove his loyalty to the government. A film about the world of LEGO blocks might not sound like the most promising material for a thought-provoking animated feature, but The LEGO Movie defies expectation by brilliantly capturing and reinventing the world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four for a whole new generation.