It's hardly news that life has got a lot worse for a lot of people since the financial crisis hit. Inequality is on the rise, and with it alienation from the worlds of business and politics, which carry on as if nothing has really changed. Many of us brood on the abyss – the sense that, in some large, inchoate way, we are nearing the end of life as we know it. Yet no cohesive vision of an alternative has emerged. We seem to be stuck. The movies have not been slow to tap into this widespread sense of anxiety and even despair. Our screens have been filled with images of urban collapse and apocalyptic destruction, dystopian wastelands and zombie hordes. But, like Washington and Westminster, Hollywood has been better at scaring us with the threat of calamity than inspiring hope for the new. Finally, however, the studio system has delivered a vision of a radical paradigm shift, a way out of the impasse. I'm talking, of course, about The Lego Movie – a 3D computer-animated family adventure based on a corporate toy range that turns out to be Hollywood's answer to the Occupy movement.
The Lego Movie tells the story of Emmet, a conspicuously average member of the ultra-peppy Lego society: yellow head, curved hands, job in construction (what else?) and super-positive attitude. Everything is awesome until he is anointed by an underground resistance movement as the "Special" – the one person who can save the world from the secret scheming of its nefarious leader. The film's exuberant, kid-friendly larks – Wild West! – are laced with satirical digs at surveillance culture, built-in obsolescence and police brutality, as well as inane positive thinking. Its opening sequences show a world in which a pliant, consumerist populace, mollified by overpriced coffee and dumb TV shows, is exploited by cynical leadership; political and corporate power are conflated in the villainous figure of "President Business" (Will Ferrell). Most fascinating is President Business's masterplan and our heroes' response to it: he hopes to make the status quo a permanent reality by literally gluing everyone in place.
A society doesn't get more stuck than that. Emmet, meanwhile, must learn to stop slavishly following "the instructions", improvise and think the unthinkable. The way forward is found in the hybrid, the mutant, the absurd – the different. In other words, the crux of the drama is not whether the world will be saved or destroyed. It's whether "Do not touch" will triumph over "You can still change everything". It's that small shift – from staking everything on the preservation of the familiar to embracing the unknown – that makes The Lego Movie remarkable. And this is where the comparison with Occupy comes in. The value of that movement wasn't in its ability to present a viable alternative model for the organisation of society. Clearly, it hasn't done that. Its value was in its insistence that it's worth exploring the options. The Lego Movie does something similar. I'm not proposing it as a work of leftist agitprop – it remains, after all, a giant billboard for a multinational company – or suggesting it offers a viable blueprint for post-neoliberal civics.
But, like Occupy, it asserts that it's OK – exciting, even – to consider how society could be structured differently. It invites us to imagine other worlds. It's not really surprising, then, that the Hollywood logjam of spectacles of despair should be broken by a kids' movie. The Lego movie is a celebration of the untrammeled imagination, the urge to have fun jumbling ideas together and finding meaning in the mess, however unconventional. It's a quintessentially childlike sensibility, and one we could all use a bit more of. "I know things seem bad right now but there is a way out of it," the movie insists. The fact that a sequel is already in the works suggests that Emmet and his pals will now be faced with a challenge far more formidable than ending the world: making a new one.YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollectionsMovies With Batman, Gandalf and Luke Skywalker all making appearances — and, of course, with constant references to the titular toy — "The Lego Movie" may be one of the biggest brand barrages Hollywood has unleashed on the American filmgoing public in recent memory.
With an undercurrent of anti-totalitarianism, a suggestion that big corporations keep us numb with empty entertainment and even self-mocking references to dud Lego products, the film also may be one of the more meta and subversive movies Hollywood has unleashed on the American filmgoing public in recent memory.It was only a matter of time. With "The Lego Movie," the film business has come up with the first-ever postmodern toy movie. And it certainly has a unique construction.FULL COVERAGE: Winter Movie Sneaks"It's an anti-corporate movie that's all about a huge corporation, and that's a funny synthesis," said Chris Miller, one of the film's writer-directors."My dream is to have terrible undergraduate term papers written about the movie," said Phil Lord, another of the film's writer-directors."The Lego Movie" (an early, cheeky subtitle was "The Piece of Resistance") offers an elaborate, ahem, structure.The plot for the animated film, which arrives in theaters Feb. 7 and marks the Danish toy giant's first turn on the big screen, centers on the rule-following Lego mini-figure Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt) who is improbably chosen for an epic quest.
He soon meets WyldStyle (Elizabeth Banks), a punky type who believes in maverick thinking and imaginative play. When the evil leader Lord Business (Will Ferrell) cooks up a plan for world domination, the odd couple unite to stop him, encountering Batman (Will Arnett) and other branded Lego characters along the way.The visuals have been built with a certain aesthetic in mind. Characters look and move as Lego characters do in real life, not according to a CGI film's typical anything-goes rules of motion. Objects like water are made up of bricks.PHOTOS: Billion-dollar movie clubAnd in the tradition of crosstown competitor DreamWorks Animation, Warner Bros. has ensured plenty of adult references; for every kid-friendly pun ("Rest in pieces") there's a sly Siri joke.But if story or comedy aren't what you look for in an animated release, perhaps you'll want to see "The Lego Movie" for its anti-corporate messaging?There are derisive nods to fast-food chains, portrayals of a reality TV show that's been created to anesthetize an electorate and even, in Lord Business' interest in keeping various Lego worlds separate, anti-immigration overtones.
Do the filmmakers (who also include co-director Chris McKay, original writers Dan and Kevin Hageman and lead producer Dan Lin) see a contradiction in the questioning of capitalism amid the display of big corporate brands (many are owned by WB, others are licensed) and marketing partners (there will be Happy Meals)? Or feel odd making a movie about painting outside the lines on behalf of the giant conglomerates typically associated with staying in them?"We are trying to play it from both sides," Lord said."It's actually what Lego is about. The idea with many of the kits is that you can follow the instructions and have it look exactly like it does on the box, or you can go your own way and build it so that it looks the way you want it to look," Miller said. "We're making a movie that shows there's no one way to do things. And hopefully making people laugh doing it." (He and Lord previously teamed up on the "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" and "21 Jump Street" franchises.)PHOTOS: Greatest box office flopsAnd what about corporate partners — did they not have any objections to the self-jabs?"