YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollectionsMovies Of the many unexpected moments in Phil Lord and Chris Miller's breakout hit "The Lego Movie," perhaps none is as surprising as the film's ending, which is daring even by the standards of this unconventional film.So daring, in fact, that even its filmmakers weren't sure they could get away with it."We were terrified," said Miller. "We didn't know if you would care about the universe once you understood how the universe worked," alluding to how the movie turns itself inside-out at the end.PHOTOS: Images from 'The Lego Movie'In a season in which the typically tricky art of the movie ending has largely satisfied — witness the well-regarded twist in "American Hustle," the Quaalude-enabled piece de resistance of "The Wolf of Wall Street" and the return-to-Earth redemption of "Gravity" — the finale of "Lego" may top them all.Warner Bros., which financed and released "The Lego Movie," was also unsure about the finale and for a time pushed the filmmakers to consider a more conventional path.
It had reason for hesitating.[Spoiler alert: The following passages contain details about the film's ending.]Just when audiences think they've seen it all — Abraham Lincoln exasperatedly leaving a convocation that includes the Green Lantern and Shaquille O'Neal will have that effect — the movie quite literally separates from itself, as hero Emmet (Chris Pratt) and the entire movie that preceded it is revealed to be the figment of a young (live-action) boy's fertile mind.All that's happened — the use of Krazy Glue as a weapon, the God-like power of Morgan Freeman's Vitruvius, a kitchen-sink ensemble that also includes Batman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — has happened because the boy, a basement-playing child named Finn, took the ordinary and turned it into the stuff of epic storytelling.BEST MOVIES OF 2013: Turan | He's inspired by the boy's stern father, referred to as the man upstairs in the animated section because he, of course, lives upstairs. At the film's end, the man (Will Ferrell) comes down to the basement and lets the boy have it for playing with his Lego kits, though the two eventually find common ground.
It would all be as if, at the end of "Gravity," Sandra Bullock turned to the camera and said she had imagined the whole space adventure and has been on Earth the entire time.Noting as inspiration the series finales of "St. Elsewhere" and "Newhart" (both '80's shows ended with the suggestion that all that came before was the product of someone's imagination), Lord and Miller said they believed that their ending played directly to the film's message."The kid is making connections that adults aren't making," Lord said. "He's making connections you can't make as you get older and your thinking gets more rigid. And we couldn't really set up that dichotomy without including the last scenes." He added, "It just seemed intrinsic to the concept."Audiences have certainly responded — they gave the movie an "A" CinemaScore and turned out in droves to see it again last weekend, ensuring that it won the box-office crown for the second weekend in a row. The film has collected a whopping $146 million in just 12 days of release.
PHOTOS: Memorable TV series finalesThe numbers may be validation for the filmmakers' approach to the ending but, during post-production, studio executives weren't convinced. They wondered if the surprise was too meta for kids and the twist too jarring for everyone else, according to a person close to the production who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the issue. But Lord and Miller held their ground, the person said, and the studio relented.The ending had an unusual beginning. Dan and Kevin Hageman, the project's initial writers and the men who sold the Lego company on the concept of film, also included a switch to live action at the end of their script. But their draft didn't include, as Kevin Hageman put it, an "epic meta twist." Instead, the story shifted to real-life people without suggesting that all that came before was in the mind of one of the characters. When Lord and Miller came on, they upped the ante and introduced the rug-pull."It's such a jarring twist, one of those things that can turn super-schmaltzy," Dan Hageman said.
"But it also is what the movie is about, this idea of childhood and adulthood, of fathers and sons, which is why I think it works."Shooting the ending required a very different use of the film's actors. Ferrell was already cast, playing the voice of the animated movie's antagonist Lord Business. Lord and Miller then found a child actor named Jadon Sand to play Finn; his wide-eyed innocence and dark-haired curls suggested a boy who might mentally create the adventures seen in the film. Ironically, Sand had worked previously as an unseen voice in animated films, including "Wreck-It Ralph" and "Frozen." Seizure Led to FloJo's DeathHis 104 scores make his caseRestaurant review: South Beverly GrillBrutal Murder by Teen-Age Girls Adds to Britons' ShockComaneci Confirms Suicide Attempt, Magazine Says We found 0 results for toys-games-lego-movie-lord-business-evil-lair/27706095. Pros: Entertaining story, gameplay improvements, some gamepad use.Cons: Stop-and-start narrative structure, touchscreen bug.
Once upon a time, developer Traveller’s Tales created the game Lego Star Wars. They then created more movie-based games, first with pantomimed vignettes, then with dialogue. Then they moved into original stories. With The Lego Movie Videogame, they have come full circle, making a Lego game out of a Lego movie done in the style of a Lego game. Lego, a company founded on putting pieces together, seems to be piecing together its own media empire.Developed by: TT GamesPublished by: WBIEGenre: Action-AdventureFor ages: 10 and upPlatform: Wii URelease Date: February 7, 2014The decidedly nonsensical story centers on a construction worker named Emmett who stumbles into a battle between good and evil, as bad guy Lord Business works on a weapon to destroy the world and a team of good guys, able to build anything out of anything (i.e. out of Legos), tries to stop him. Soon Emmett is battling robots and building machines, traveling through the wild west and a surreal cloud world, working alongside a kick-ass woman, a cutesie kitten, an ancient mage, and several superheroes.
The story is generally well told, featuring cut scenes taken from the movie (which looks to be quite funny), but as it goes on it seems to spend less and less time trying to hold together the movie’s plot threads. Characters pop up out of nowhere; an astronaut suddenly joins the party, Abraham Lincoln quietly and without explanation waits for you to repair his hovercraft, the bad guy, for some reason, seems obsessed with the oversized detritus of the human race.There also appears to be some sort of evil corporation theme, but I only know that because at one point I was able to change an advertising billboard into a protest billboard. Overall the story still makes sense, and even offers a genuinely surprising and unusual finale, but it’s clear a lot is missing in terms of concepts and narrative; until I see the movie I’m going to have an incomplete idea of the story.The gameplay follows the formula that has made the series so endlessly popular. Once again, you control a number of different characters, each with specific abilities.
Some can fire weapons or grappling hooks. Some can make high jumps. Emmett can break through fragile areas with his jackhammer and use blueprints to build objects. Some characters are “master builders” who can simply grab miscellaneous objects and swirl them together, tornado-like, into elaborate machines.Once again there’s a lot of breaking things, building things, and bashing attackers. This is one of the more challenging games in the series, by which I mean, it is sometimes mildly challenging, as when you must climb up a giant robot’s back, pull off a wheel, then switch to a different character to destroy the robot before it gets up. It’s not Donkey Kong hard, but it takes a little effort.The game also introduces a few cute mini-games. When Emmett builds something, we see it being put together piece by piece, and occasionally players have to choose the right piece from a wheel. The astronaut accesses terminals, using a vaguely Pacman-ish interface to hack into computers.
There’s also a rhythm game that pops up a couple of times, done to the movie’s cheesy, catchy song, “Everything is Awesome”. None of this is terribly challenging, but it does offer variety.Emmet travels through a several worlds, from a city to a wild west-themed town to Cuckoo Cloud, a surreal world where breaking objects cause them to explode into fireworks and where you acquire the laughably cutesy Rainbow Kitty. The biggest oddity in the game is its attempt to maintain the hub world concept that is part of the Lego formula, in which missions are launched from an open environment. Since the game’s varied locales prescribe a large, coherent hub world, the developers have created mini-hubs for different worlds.When you finish a level, instead of immediately continuing the story to the next, there is a mini-hub where you must solve some simple puzzle or wander a few steps to start up the next chapter. It gives the story a weird, halting feel, especially when one level ends in the middle of peril and you suddenly find yourself rambling around a peaceful environment.
Once you’ve played through the story, these hub worlds make more sense, as they give you extra gameplay, but it is as inelegant a solution to retaining a hub world as I can think of.The gamepad touchscreen has two useful icons, one to call up a character-switch menu, the other to instantly change to off-TV play.Unfortunately, the touchscreen is a little buggy. The character menu exits out every time there’s a cutscene or any actions outside of user control, and there’s a bug that sometimes causes both the character and off-TV icons to disappear entirely. But when it was working I preferred it to calling up the character wheel or using the hotkey to swap to whoever you are facing.While not quite perfect, The Lego Movie Video Game is one of the best games in the series, with a few twists in the gameplay, two-player co-op, a little extra challenge, and an engrossing and entertaining story. Built on itself, the game is a meta-Lego marvel. The game based on the novelization of the making-of-the-movie documentary can’t be far behind.