It’s not every day a U.S. Senate election includes conspiracy claims over an animated children’s movie and a staffer dispatched to visit an opponent dressed as "Lord Business." It felt like something we should check out. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, took hits from bloggers in May 2015 after criticizing "The Lego Movie" for pushing an anti-business message. Amid a contentious election that could swing the balance of power in the Senate, challenger Russ Feingold has repeatedly revisited Johnson’s statements, including June 3, 2016, at the state Democratic Party convention in Green Bay. Amid one of many reminders that he had visited all 72 Wisconsin counties, Feingold said this: "Something else I didn’t hear around the state is that, as Sen. Johnson said, that ‘The Lego Movie’ — he said this — that ‘The Lego Movie’ is an insidious, anti-business conspiracy. I didn’t hear that. My grandkids don’t even think that." Did a sitting U.S. senator claim Hollywood is in cahoots with anti-business forces elsewhere to bring their insidious doctrine to the masses?
"The Lego Movie" — which was released in February 2014 and brought in almost $500 million worldwide — follows the exploits of an extraordinarily average Lego construction worker named Emmet. The Washington Post described him as "an unthinking worshipper at the consumerist temples that President Business has erected to distract his citizens from Business’ evil plan to freeze them into a state of perfection." In short, President Business — later revealed to be the sinister Lord Business — is trying to glue all the Legos together to keep everything in its proper place, and Emmet and his team of master builders want to maintain freedom and creativity. We eventually learn the plot stems from the imagination of a young boy playing with Legos belonging to his businessman father, who plans to, yes, glue them together to keep everything in its proper place. So what did Johnson say? , a small group in Cedarburg and in a since-deleted blog post on his official Senate site.
In the various comments, Johnson made multiple references to leftist control of education and the media and repeatedly referred to "The Lego Movie" as anti-business, though not in those direct words. , phrased it in a May 28, 2015, post, Johnson "lamented what he called a ‘cultural attitude’ that ‘government is good and business is bad,’ giving as an example the animated ‘Lego’ movie, in which the villain is called ‘Lord Business.’ "That's done for a reason," Johnson told the site. "They're starting that propaganda, and it's insidious." Johnson noted in his blog post the same day that his comments were inspired by a Wall Street Journal column criticizing the anti-business tone of the movie. So Johnson clearly called the movie ‘insidious’ and implied it was anti-business, but there’s no conspiracy claim. (Merriam-Webster defines a conspiracy as "a secret plan made by two or more people to do something that is harmful or illegal.") When questioned on the "conspiracy" claim, Feingold’s campaign provided a dozen links to stories on Johnson and "The Lego Movie," but no evidence that Johnson had called it a conspiracy.
A Feingold spokesman noted only that Johnson mentioned the movie to the Leader-Telegram two days after describing to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce how "the radical left" controls the university system, education system, news media, entertainment media and "more and more of our courts." The coverage of that talk also did not include any more direct reference to a conspiracy. And the conspiracy claim was notably absent when Feingold’s campaign hammered Johnson on "The Lego Movie" several weeks before the Democratic convention speech. The campaign issued a news release May 14 and even sent a press assistant to Johnson’s Milwaukee office dressed as Lord Business, asserting he and Johnson were friends. The character offered to endorse the senator if he supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement backed by the Obama administration. As long as we’re on the topic, are Johnson and other commentators right to call the movie anti-business? However you summarize the plot, it is a feature-length piece of product placement, which seems a curious frame for anti-business propaganda.
And while being "anti-business" is an opinion, it’s worth noting the creators at least didn’t intend it that way. Philip Lord, who co-wrote and co-directed the movie, described it as an "anti-totalitarian film for children. Something that was talking about the importance of freedom and innovation in keeping society honest." When asked to respond on Twitter to the anti-business claims last year, Lord said: "Art deserves many interpretations, even wrong ones." Feingold told a hall full of Democrats that his opponent called "The Lego Movie" an "insidious, anti-business conspiracy." Johnson used the word "insidious" to describe the movie on multiple occasions and repeatedly referred to it as anti-business, though not in so many words. But Feingold is wrong on the boldest and most significant part of the claim. A conspiracy implies a specific fact – that some great hidden hand or collusion is at work to indoctrinate the masses. And it’s something Johnson never said.
We rate Feingold’s claim Half True.‘The LEGO Batman Movie’ Review Early Buzz: Everything Is Still Mostly AwesomePosted on Monday, February 6th, 2017 by Ethan AndertonIn just a few days, we’ll get to see if The LEGO Batman Movie lives up to the hype and continues the inspired style and imagination of The LEGO Movie that introduced us to this brilliant version of Batman voiced by Will Arnett. This past weekend the first press screenings rolled out, and the reviews were available online later in the day.The LEGO Batman Movie reviews are overwhelmingly positive, though some point out that it’s not quite on par with The LEGO Movie. One of the more common claims though is that this is one of the best Batman movies ever made, including some talk about how its creators understand Batman infinitely better as a character than those driving the DC Expanded Universe.Check out The LEGO Batman Movie early buzz after the jump.Here was our own Peter Sciretta’s reaction to The LEGO Batman Movie after he saw it:The Lego Batman movie is alot of fun & surprisingly emotional, but doesn't quite live up to the level of hilarity set by The Lego Movie.— Peter Sciretta (@slashfilm) February 5, 2017Susana Polo at Polygon praises how complex a movie aimed at kids makes the character of Batman
:The Lego Batman Movie is not to be underestimated. I expected it to answer its questions quickly and get on with things, but the third act is satisfyingly complicated. It doesn’t take the idea that Batman is a jerk as a necessary quality of the setting, and keeps pushing until it earns its accomplishments. Batman is bad at team work, and he fails at it over and over again, but The Lego Batman Movie makes sure we know exactly why he’s failing, the lessons he keeps missing and the trauma and justified fear that ultimately drive his isolation.The Lego Batman Movie is that rare bird of big-screen Batman film: A Batman movie that is actually narratively about Batman, and not a featured villain.It also has a big dance number over the end credits.Take your kids to see it. Take a Warner Bros. executive, and maybe they’ll finally realize what they’re doing wrong with the DC Expanded Universe.Owen Gleiberman at Variety had more praise for the approach the film takes to Batman:The first thing to say about “The Lego Batman Movie” is that it’s kicky, bedazzling, and super-fun.
The second thing to say about it is that, like “The Lego Movie” (2014), it’s a kiddie flick that’s been made in a sophisticated spirit of lightning-fast, brain-bursting paradox.“The Lego Batman Movie” comes on like a kid-friendly sendup of the adult world, yet there’s a dizzying depth to its satirical observations that grows right out of the spectacularly fake settings, which are hypnotic to look at but have the effect of putting postmodern quotation marks around…everything.“The Lego Batman Movie” uses the towering plasticity of Lego to tweak a superhero culture (namely, ours) that pretends to be about nobility but is really about the vain delusion of full-time fantasy. Your average Pixar comedy thumbs its nose at a great many things, but “The Lego Batman Movie” is a helter-skelter lampoon in the daftly exhilarating spirit of Mad magazine and the “Naked Gun” films. It’s that quick and cutthroat clever and self-knowing.Steve Rose at The Guardian calls this movie Deadpool for juniors and also says:This gag-packed, knockabout action-adventure has a lot of fun with the character, while also broaching his pathologies in a way the “serious movies” rarely do.
It doesn’t have the heart, the depth or the novelty of the first Lego movie, but it is relentlessly, consistently funny – which excuses everything.Robbie Collin at The Telegraph compares it to the DC Expanded Universe version of Batman:Followers of the current batch of live-action DC Comics films may not be stunned to hear it’s immeasurably more stylish, spectacular, deftly written, thematically rich, visually ravishing and generally delightful than anything yet to feature the latest, Affleck-essayed incarnation of Actual Batman.Oh, and it’s funny too. Frantically and relentlessly so, in that way you can feel your brain lurch and grab at punchlines as they whistle past your head. While it never achieves, or even reaches for, The Lego Movie’s unexpected profundity and emotional bite, in purely logistical terms, The Lego Batman Movie is a thing of wonder. There are around four (great) films’ worth of action and jokes here, crammed into a story so streamlined it might have been assembled in the Lockheed wind tunnel.
Mike Ryan at Uproxx points out The LEGO Batman Movie isn’t necessarily on par with The LEGO Movie, but doesn’t think that’s a bad thing:The LEGO Batman Movie isn’t the same experience as watching The LEGO Movie, but I also don’t think its trying to be. It’s trying to be a fun superhero movie with clever callbacks to previous Batman films (every single Batman movie all the way back to the 1940s serials are referenced) that can, at least, provide DC superhero fans with a taste of fun amidst all the doom and gloom. (That can either be a reference to “the real world” or the current DC Cinematic Universe films, you can choose either one you want or both.) And at that, The LEGO Batman Movie succeeds.David Ehrlich at IndieWire is pretty high on the movie as well, as he writes:“The LEGO Batman Movie” is this year’s only worthwhile story about a manic, self-obsessed, profoundly unloved cartoon billionaire who lives in an isolated fortress of his own design, resents the people that he’s entrusted to protect, and receives money from (executive producer) Steve Mnuchin.
It is also arguably the most enjoyable Batman movie ever made, and certainly the funniest.Neither of those are particularly high bars to clear, but Chris Mckay’s exuberant — and exhausting — new film is nevertheless a worthy spin-off of 2014’s “The LEGO Movie,” grafting a warm-hearted parody of the Caped Crusader onto an animated franchise that’s as malleable as the plastic bricks for which it’s named.Alonso Duralde at The Wrap thinks The LEGO Batman Movie could bridge the gap between some Marvel and DC fans:Movie superhero fans tend to be divided into camps, with Marvel people complaining about the dank glumness of the DC films, and DC partisans decrying the jokiness of Marvel movies. Committed to lunacy while paying homage to the varied legacy of Batman over the decades, “The Lego Batman Movie” might be the common ground that satisfies both camps.Daniel Krupa over at IGN has plenty of praise as well:The usually dark world of Batman is reimagined with insane energy and vibrancy.
The quality of animation ensures each one of its blocky characters bursts with life and emotion. I particularly love how McKay and his writers have – very much in the spirit of LEGO – mixed-and-matched elements from other Batman stories and adaptations. Danny DeVito’s Penguin colludes with Tom Hardy’s Bane, while Arnett’s Batman quotes Michael Keaton one minute and tips his cowl to Adam West the next. Where else can you see that? It’s a frenetic and joyously unhinged celebration of all things Batman. But it’s so much more than a parody. Beneath its eccentric surface, The LEGO Batman Movie finds a new way to approach these familiar characters. Yes, it’s a great comedy, but it’s a great Batman movie, too.Not all the reviews are full of praise though, as at The Hollywood Reporter wrote:Watching The Lego Batman Movie, the follow-up to the wildly entertaining The Lego Movie, is sort of like re-assembling the Lego Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s 5,197-piece Millennium Falcon: The achievement just doesn’t convey the sort of triumphant, giddy satisfaction that it did the first time.
Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that Will Arnett’s hilariously egotistical Caped Crusader has been promoted from mightily effective scene-stealer to the role of all Batman, all the time — which can prove to be too much of a good thing.Whatever the reasons, although there is still much to enjoy here, this DC Comics-fueled Lego adventure fails to clear the creative bar so energetically raised by co-directors and writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller back in 2014. Not that it will face any hurdles at the box office, with an all-ages-appropriate PG rating that should give the Warner Bros. release a solid run at the original’s $469-million worldwide haul.Oliver Lyttelton at The Playlist also wasn’t as impressed as others:While there’s some fun to be had, it can’t help but feel like a missed opportunity.It’s less a superhero parody than a plain old superhero movie for probably two-thirds of its running time, becoming increasingly conventional and rather less funny as it goes on.
For instance, some might try and explain away the film’s reliance, yet-fucking-again, on a portal in the sky for its third-act climax as a joke at the trope in the genre, but for it to be a parody it would have to in some way use it for the purpose of a joke, which it really doesn’t do.“The Lego Batman Movie” is still roughly four hundred million times more enjoyable than “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice,” and hardcore Bat-fans will probably find it an absolute joy. But those of us who were hoping for the film to be something of an antidote to superhero formula will unfortunately find it adhering much too closely to the playbook.For the most part, it sounds like The LEGO Batman Movie delivers on what many were hoping for. But beyond that, it seems to separate itself enough from The LEGO Movie to be something different, mostly thanks to how it approaches Batman and the little corner of the LEGO universe that he lives in. Though it’s clearly a parody, the movie appears to have the reverence for Batman that fans demand, including references to the entire mythology of the character on the big screen.