SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERThe LEGO Movie is the latest example of Hollywood drumming anti-capitalist messages into its youthful audience. Conservatives decried the 2011 Muppets reboot for making an oil baron as the enemy. A year later, The Lorax did the same with far greater passion, casting kindly environmentalists against those who dare to create new businesses.SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER Next year, the LEGO brand will introduce a new villain to millions of children worldwide–President Business. The character, voiced by Will Ferrell, is the bad guy in the upcoming film, a character aided by another ominous type dubbed Bad Cop (Liam Neeson).Last month, Warner Bros. debuted a new trailer for their highly-anticipated animated spin-off The LEGO Batman Movie, as fans get ready for the February 10, 2017 release date. Director Chris McKay, who served as the animation director of the 2014 blockbuster The LEGO Movie and makes his feature directorial debut with this spin-off, revealed that there are also plenty of Easter Eggs that are waiting to be found when the film hits theaters.
Today we have a new poster, which offers a new look at Batman (Will Arnett), Batgirl (Rosario Dawson) and Robin (Michael Cera), along with a slew of other DC Comics characters, most of whom have not yet been announced.iTunes debuted the poster earlier today, which features The Joker (Zach Galifianakis) and Alfred Pennyworth (Ralph Fiennes) directly behind the aforementioned heroes, along with Harley Quinn. If you look up in the sky you can see Lego versions of Superman, Green Lantern and Hawkman, along with The Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Mera and many more. This one-sheet also gives us our first look at a character who was just confirmed yesterday.Director Chris McKay revealed on Twitter that Billy Dee Williams is voicing Two-Face in the movie. The news came as quite a pleasant surprise to hardcore Batman fans, who remember that Billy Dee Williams played Harvey Dent in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie. While he never transformed into Two-Face in that movie, the actor had a provision in his contract that reserved the role for him, but the studio changed their minds and bought out the actor's contract, paving the way to cast Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face in 1995's Batman Forever.
If you look on the lower right hand side of this poster, you can see the mini-fig version of Two-Face, between Wonder Woman and what looks like John Blake in a tactical police uniform.Other characters who are present in this one-sheet include Commissioner Gordon, Bane, Martian Manhunter, Scarecrow, Clayface, The Riddler, Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Green Lantern, Hugo Strange and the Mutant Leader from the animated film Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Way back in November 2014, producer Phil Lord and Chris Miller teased that this movie will span every era of Batman filmmaking, while teasing an "Avengers-style universe with these movies. With that being said, it's possible then that The Lego Movie stars Jonah Hill (Green Lantern), Cobie Smulders (Wonder Woman) and Channing Tatum (Superman) may be reprising their superhero roles, but that hasn't been confirmed.In the irreverent spirit of fun that made The LEGO Movie a worldwide phenomenon, the self-described leading man of that ensemble - LEGO Batman - stars in his own big-screen adventure.
But there are big changes brewing in Gotham, and if he wants to save the city from The Joker 's hostile takeover, Batman may have to drop the lone vigilante thing, try to work with others and maybe, just maybe, learn to lighten up. Take a look at the new poster for The LEGO Batman Movie below.LEGO Batman's coming, and he's bringing some friends./sD5mVAjeFT— iTunes Trailers (@iTunesTrailers) December 1, 2016The Right Somehow Still Hates ‘The Lego Movie’Conservative pundits totally missed the point of The Lego Movie last year. They’re still doing so. Everything about The Lego Movie is awesomely communist, according to the senior U.S. senator from Wisconsin. On Thursday, The Huffington Post ran a story on Republican Senator Ron Johnson’s recent comments denouncing the PG-rated 2014 computer-animated family film.Johnson expressed distaste for liberal Hollywood’s tendency to make capitalists the bad guys, citing The Lego Movie as a prime example. The film, co-written and directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, follows the adventures of a construction worker Lego named Emmet Brickowski (voiced by Chris Pratt) who must save the Lego universe from the villainous villain, President/Lord Business (Will Ferrell).
Lord Business presides over a totalitarian, corporate surveillance state. “That’s done for a reason,” Johnson said. “They’re starting that propaganda, and it’s insidious.”After the HuffPo story made the rounds, the senator returned fire with an angry blog post, doubling down on his anti-Lego Movie position. “Some liberal writer at the Huffington Post was excited to find out that I’ve been talking to Wisconsinites about how enthusiastically the entertainment media spread a ‘business is bad’ message,” he blogged. “He seems to get hung up on the way I mentioned The Lego Movie…The strange thing isn’t that a kids’ movie was anti-business, it is that someone claiming to be a journalist never encountered the idea before.” Johnson’s comments—and follow-up angry-blogging—serves as a bit of a revival of the original conservative freakout over The Lego Movie early last year, upon the film’s theatrical release. The critically acclaimed kids’ movie, which doubles as a political and social satire, made some news in February 2014 after it became the target of certain commentators in conservative media, including The Weekly Standard and Fox News’s sister channel.
(For what it’s worth, The Economist—which Senator Johnson, oddly, links to on his blog—found the film to be “pleasingly libertarian.”) Fox Business personalities weren’t happy with the movie for its allegedly “anti-business,” anti-capitalist message. One talked about how President Business physically resembles Mitt Romney. Another then segued into defending the similarly capitalist and evil Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life—an instance of life imitating parody. Watch the Fox segment below:This wasn’t all that different from the Fox pushback against The Lorax or The Muppets, two other alleged examples of left-of-Lenin Hollywood trying to ruin your American kids. Publicists for Lord and Miller did not respond to a request for comment regarding Senator Johnson’s hot take on The Lego Movie. However, I asked the directors last year what they thought of the Fox Business segment on their supposedly socialist-leaning, indoctrinating work. Lord got back to me, via Twitter: