The Lego Movie is out today and is the best reviewed kids’ film since Woody, Buzz and Co were almost burned to death in an incinerator. Cuddly, aren’t they, kids’ movies? Thanks to its various tie-ins, The Lego Movie features characters from Star Wars and DC Comics – but where would these heroes be without the founding bricks from Lego lore? MORE: The Lego Movie gets a resounding thumps-up from the critics You and your kids (mainly you) might sit at home these days playing with your Hobbit Lego set but, perhaps sadly, not enough attention is paid to the more basic bricks who made the brand what it is. It’s time for their moment in the spotlight. For those about to block… we salute you. Proof, if proof were needed, that big and blue can be beautiful. The large blue baseplate is 1,024 studs of gorgeousness. Lego say it’s perfect ‘whether you’re constructing an ocean scene or just like the colour blue’, and who are we to argue? Although if you fill it with carefully dispersed small white Lego pieces, you could also have a makeshift tea towel.
If you thought the big blue baseplate was big, take a look at this guy. Okay, so technically the green baseplate is exactly the same size as the blue baseplate, but what it lacks in blueness it more than makes up for in greenness. Forests, football pitches, fields, battlefields, houses… seriously, there’s nothing substantial you can build in Lego land without this bad boy. This classic 2×2 brick – or code 300321 to call him by his full name – is a bright little number that can go with every occasion. Building a Lego car and need a makeshift bonnet? Building a Lego car and need a makeshift boot? He is also your man. The Claude Makélélé of Lego bricks – you never quite realise how important he is until you lose him down the back of the sofa. Look at the bricks, look how they shine for you, and every Lego house you do… and they were all yellow. You simply could not construct a contemporary Lego building in the 1980s without using this particular piece. Long, sleek and alluring, this eight-studded marvel may have lost its bright colour after a few years of being sucked on by baby brothers and sisters, but it never lost its heart.
Under-appreciated in its time, perhaps, but now rightly hailed as a Lego legend.There’s nothing in Colossal Legocity quite like the catchily named Brick Ø16 W. Cross. It is simply impossible to build a Lego chimney without him. And two more of him on top of him. He might not have been first in the queue when Lego God was giving out handsome bricks, but you don’t look at the chimney when you’re lighting a Lego fire. MORE: The Lego Movie – The bricks might be made of plastic but this is fantastic 5. Rhapsody in Upside Down Blue The thinking Lego builder’s brick of choice, you needed this little fellow and dozens of his cousins if you were going to undertake any serious roofing work. He may be blue above, but in grey and black he helped bring hundreds of thousands of Lego castles in kids’ bedrooms across the world to fruition. The Cuban Missile Crisis. The Beatles’ first TV appearance. The introduction of the Lego tyre. Yes, 1962 was a pretty big year.
Before the swinging 60s, Lego thought you could get by with square wheels on your little Lego cars. It all seems laughable now, when every Lego vehicle from a Police Prisoner Transporter to The Batmobile has a tyre or two. I like big bricks and I cannot lie, you other builders may deny… however, sometimes small is better. The classic Angular Brick 1×1 is every Lego builder’s dream, ideal for holding flags on castles and lights on cars… The beauty of Lego was that you didn’t have to always build things with it. This magnificent flat piece had its uses in the Lego arena, of course, such as providing a vehicle chassis or a pirate ship plank, but perhaps its most effective deployment was as a weapon when you desperately needed to flick something – perhaps a minifig’s chopped-off head – at your little sister. Lego… so many memories… And now we come… to the greatest Lego brick of them all. Come on, was this ever in doubt? Sometimes, millions of people can be wrong about something at once – you only have to look at the success of bestselling author Dan Brown to see that – but there are fleeting moments when the majority are in the right.
The classic eight-studded red 2×4 is the prime example of this. It’s devastatingly simple yet unputdownable, the first Lego brick in the box that we all continue to reach for. It is the brick that makes children cheer and grown men and women cry, a gleaming red champion that just screams ‘Lego’. It might not be the brick you need right now, but it’s the brick that your burgeoning Lego city deserves. A brick that male bricks want to be and female bricks want to be with. It’s a brick that will echo throughout the building ages. Larger / SmallerNight Mode Balgownie illustrator explains how The Lego Batman Movie was made The movie is a wonderful surprise, cleverly written and executed brick by brick with a visual panache. January 3, 2015 | Lord and Miller's sensibilities are continually clever, and The Lego Movie works hard to gradually deliver surprising payoffs to what seem to be throwaway bits. The Lego Movie has enough wit and wisdom to send a recession-age message to families on the importance of thinking through problems with creativity.
As a rule, movies about toys need to be approached with extreme caution; some of them have been bad enough to count as health hazards. This one is the exception. March 3, 2014 | This is truly a movie that children and their parents can both enjoy for different reasons. February 10, 2014 | The Lego Movie: Merely a great film, or the greatest film ever in the history of cinema? February 9, 2014 | There was a time when people used to argue about who was the best Batman. There was Michael Keaton, Christian Bale and Ben Affleck (not that anyone argued for him, other than maybe Matt Damon). I think the argument is done. Will Arnett is the greatest Batman ever, and “The LEGO Batman Movie” may be the greatest Batman movie ever. Somehow, this animated delight manages to lovingly capture the ridiculousness of the Caped Crusader, in all his incarnations. It’s a giant, hilarious love letter to Batman that is stunning in how well it works. The film follows “The LEGO Movie,” a surprise hit with critics and moviegoers alike.
Batman was a character in that film, but I doubted building a new LEGO movie around him would work. So my expectations were low. And I was so wonderfully wrong. I laughed more in the first 10 minutes of “The LEGO Batman Movie” than I’ve laughed at a movie in years. And it just got better from there. As the film starts, the heroic Batman has Gotham City in the palm of his hand, and he knows it. He’s been doing the incredible for so long, he’s as confidant as Michael Jordan with a basketball in his hand. But after another amazing episode in which the city is saved, we see the very human Batman coming home to his incredible Bat Cave to eat leftovers from the microwave. Batman may be a superhero, but he’s lonely. He says that’s the way he likes it. The tortured soul routine has been a part of Batman lore since the character’s creation nearly 80 years ago. The LEGO version plays the angle up hilariously. Eventually, our hero has to accept that he needs others, both personally and professionally.
And he needs others to need him. For instance, there’s The Joker, (played by Zach Galifianakis), who is just as troubled as Batman and absolutely obsessed with being the Caped Crusader’s No. 1 enemy. He’s like a spurned ex-girlfriend who won’t go away until Batman acknowledges that, yes, he’s important. Together, they are suffering through personality crises, and their ongoing troubles are hilarious. And, yes, Batman hates Superman. That was the premise of an entire movie last year, but the LEGO version captures the conflict much better. Director Chris McKay and his animators do everything they can to push the visual boundaries, and the result is borderline sensory overload. But even the effects are secondary to the relationships — yes, relationships. We get a new commissioner Gordon, as in Barbara (Rosario Dawson), who becomes every bit the crime fighter that Batman is. And then there’s Robin (Michael Cera), an attention-starved orphan who accidentally gets adopted by Batman and gives his character some much needed humanity.