The creators of “The Lego Movie,” shut out from Sunday night’s Academy Awards, turned the snub to their advantage with a publicity stunt that garnered tons of attention anyway. While the Warner Bros. movie didn’t win any Oscars, the producers handed out trophies made of plastic bricks from toymaker Lego A/S during a performance of the Oscar-nominated song. Oprah Winfrey, Steve Carell and Emma Stone held the yellow Lego Oscar statuettes. The stunt amounted to millions of dollars of free publicity for the Danish toymaker’s signature product -- this year’s version of the Oscar selfie that host Ellen DeGeneres took with a Samsung phone in 2014. Lego supplied props for the musical number, including a toy saxophone made of the bricks, said Michael McNally, a brand relations director for the company. He said he was still tallying the social-media hits. “There’s one word to describe it and it’s priceless,” McNally said. Using the statuette was the inspiration of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, creators of the “The Lego Movie.”
When the Warner Bros. film was passed over for a best animated picture nomination in January, Lord posted on Twitter a photo of a Lego Oscar the artist created more than a decade ago. Lord and Miller contacted Sawaya about making copies for the show. Sawaya made 20 Lego trophies, each consisting of 500 bricks. He said he’s already received hundreds of e-mail requests to make Lego Oscars for fans. He e-mailed the Lego company last night suggesting they offer a kit for sale. “It’s kind of surreal,” Sawaya said by phone. “I just do these in my studio for fun.” “Everything Is Awesome,” the theme from “The Lego Movie,” was nominated for best original song. It lost to “Glory,” from the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic “Selma.” Oscars host Neil Patrick Harris took advantage of the film’s animated feature snub to crack a joke. “If you are at an Oscar party with the guys who made ‘The Lego Movie,’ now would be a good time to start distracting them,” he said when introducing the category.
Sawaya, who works independently of the Lego company and still has to buy his bricks, said he’s delighted his design has become an Internet sensation. of Bradley Cooper, Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep holding the Lego Oscars at an after party. “There was a lot going on during the show,” Sawaya said. “This was a light moment that people really picked up on. Everyone can connect with Legos.”When the Academy makes a monster clusterfuck of its nominations, it’s easy to respond, “Well they don’t matter anyway!”, which is true to an extent. But I won’t lie and say I’m fine that The LEGO Movie was snubbed. My immediate reaction was to tweet this. Yes, the film was critically acclaimed, did huge at the box office, and there are spinoffs and a sequel on the way, which means everyone in it will be fine (the snubbing of Selma is far more troubling). Nevertheless, it’s still surprising to see the lack of a nomination for a movie everyone thought was a lock in the category.
Perhaps the voters in the animation branch thought it had too much live action, but then why does the film have six Annie Award nominations? Let’s just fall back on the Academy is terrible, which is true for many reasons. But The LEGO Movie co-director Phil Lord responded to his movie’s snub far more gracefully and cleverly than I did. He decided to build his own statue out of LEGO, which was a smart, fun, creative action, something the Academy probably wouldn’t understand (its president certainly struggled with the correct pronunciation of “Dick Pope”). Hit the jump to check out the LEGO Oscar statue Lord built. — philip lord (@philiplord) January 15, 2015 Stay informed with our weekly NewsletterPhil Lord and Christopher Miller’s flamboyant tale should have made the Academy’s shortlist ahead of the likes of How to Train Your Dragon 2. Is the animation award becoming too conservative? Oscar spotlight fails to shine on Australia as Babadook and Lego Movie snubbed The 10 best films of 2014: No 10 – The Lego Movie
It was the highest-grossing film of 2014 in the UK, holds a staggering rating of 96% “fresh” on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and has been widely praised as a pioneering example of how to mine movie gold from the most unlikely of corporate sources. But The Lego Movie still wasn’t good enough to make the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ list of nominees for the best animated film Oscar. In one of the biggest snubs of this year’s award season, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s flamboyant tale lost out to Big Hero 6, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Boxtrolls, as well as Song of the Sea and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. In fairness, 2014 was one of the strongest years yet for animation – perhaps even the best since 2009, when Up, Coraline and Fantastic Mr Fox competed for the Oscar. But The Lego Movie was expected to challenge for the prize itself, not just place as an also-ran. The anger on Twitter has been palpable, and the snub has already been voted the year’s most spectacular by filmgoers.
What’s even more worrying than a fine movie missing out on its chance for glory – it would hardly be the first time a worthy film missed the Oscars cut – is the sense that the relatively new animation prize is continuing to take a decisive shift towards conservatism as it approaches middle age. It wasn’t until 2002 that the Academy began to honour animated feature films with its own category, though Toy Story won a special prize in 1996 to celebrate its achievements with then-pioneering CGI. For seven out of the first eight years of the award being presented, only three movies picked up nominations, such was the perceived paucity of quality productions. It did not take long for attitudes among filmgoers and critics to change. In 2010 six out of the top 10 highest-grossing films across the globe were animated. In the eight years between 2003 and 2010, animated movies were the best-reviewed wide release films seven times, according to Rotten Tomatoes. In the meantime the best animated film Oscar went to sublime Pixar fare such as Wall-E, The Incredibles and Up.
These days there are more animated movies being made than ever before, which is one of the reasons we got The Lego Movie in the first place. The other is that, like Transformers, GI Joe and Battleship before it, Lego is an enormous global brand with the potential to lure filmgoers into cinemas in huge numbers even when the end product is utterly horrendous. The fact that the film refused to follow in the footsteps of its half-cocked predecessors is exactly why it so deserves recognition from the world’s most important movie awards ceremony. Could it be that The Lego Movie’s corporate origins continued to rankle with Academy voters, even as they were soon forgotten by viewers entranced by the boisterous tale of an ordinary construction worker mini figure who battles to torpedo the evil veil of conformity that has enveloped the once-vibrant Lego universe? This year’s selection seems to go in the exact opposite direction, with an emphasis on the delights of whimsy-packed stop motion (Laika’s admittedly-superb Boxtrolls), far out Celtic fantasy (Song of the Sea) and hypnagogic Studio Ghibli fairytale fable (The Tale of the Princess Kaguya).