The LEGO® Movie puts engineering on the big screen in the hands of an assortment of plastic master builders and superheroes from various time periods and realms who come together to challenge Lord Business and the superior threat of Kragle. What they engineer in their quest to stop the Kragle will inspire students, teachers, and parents. If you aren't singing the awesome virtues of engineering yet, you should be! Note: You can find out more about the movie and watch video trailers on the official LEGO Movie site or on the LEGO site. If you've seen the LEGO® Movie, then you know, "Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you're part of a team." And, maybe... everything is awesome when you trust yourself, build what you want, imagine what isn't already written in a manual, and see yourself as special. With Engineers Week this week, the timing for the smash LEGO Movie feels pretty, well, awesome. The importance of strengthening and encouraging science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for K-12 students is an important topic of discussion, and on the heels of the great GoldieBlox ad during last month's Super Bowl game, a movie devoted to highlighting what is possible when you celebrate and combine ingenuity, innovation, and the spirit of engineering has all the makings of a blockbuster.
No matter what angle you approach it from, there is something to like in the LEGO Movie, even if a toddler seated behind you stands up the entire movie with his face wedged on the back edge of your seat and babbles throughout. There is something to like even if you think you have a toe a bit too far into teenhood to still play with LEGO. This is a feel-good movie that budding engineers, creative types, parents, kids, vehicle enthusiasts, and all fans of pink unicorn kitties are sure to enjoy. Maybe you really love the fact that the first master builder who whirls into quick-as-a-flash building view is Wyldstyle, aka Lucy, a perfect big screen moment for inspiring and applauding girls interested in STEM. Maybe you love Batman's wry persona and his comment about building only in black, and sometimes a very, very dark grey. Maybe you like Emmet's morning routines, all by the instruction manual, including some pretty fierce jumping jacks. Maybe you really liked the appearance of a floating, dangling, glowing-eyed, Ghost Vitruvious.
Maybe you really liked Benny the astronaut who can snap together a space ship out of whatever parts are on hand. Depending on where you live (or in which realm), maybe you chuckled over the overpriced coffee. Or maybe you liked the aha moment when you finally realized what the "piece of resistance" really is in the context of the story. The movie is full of great moments that may strike a chord with viewers of all ages in ways both obvious and subtle. As a parent, I liked the movie on many levels. We have zillions of bricks in the house from years gone by, and I fondly remember our days of "instruction manual" building as well as our days of free-form building. I loved the way master builders in the movie looked around at piles of bricks and pieces and saw, instantly, the different kinds of elements they needed, complete with the LEGO part ID numbers. Watching the master builders in the movie quickly assess the problem, the moment, the dire necessity, and whip up something amazing from salvaged and reclaimed bricks was very cool.
But Emmet's solution for the broken wheel axle during an early wagon escape scene was also right on track for the way engineers think on their feet (or with their heads) as they create and innovate needed solutions. His double-decker couch may have inspired some laughter, but in the end, it helped Emmet and a core group of characters escape, its real functionality emerging as an accidental discovery—something that happens in science and engineering all the time! Ultimately, throughout the movie, viewers see the engineering design process in action. Things are built and rebuilt over and over and over again—with or without a manual. Engineering is fun and awesome. If the movie inspired you and your kids and made you think about the buckets, bins, and baskets of LEGO bricks that have wound their way into the basement or storage or a closet, pull them out again and see what happens when you encourage your kids to take a fresh look and think and build beyond the instruction booklet.
The following science project ideas can be turned on their heads to give students new building experiences and challenges: If your older kids are using LEGO Mindstorms, don't miss the great array of Mindstorms projects in the robotics area at Science Buddies. Follow these, as written, or use the ideas as starting points for launching your own building projects and engineering or robotics investigations: (These projects work with older Mindstorms kits or the new EV3 model.) What you build will be awesome—because you build it! Science on the Dark Side Did the Kragle in the movie make your brain buzz? Did you spot the scene at the end where the humans are un-gluing structures that had been super-glued in perfect place? Did you cringe at the sad moment when Good Cop, Bad Cop's good face was wiped clean? These moments invite all kinds of science questions about glues, adhesives, and solvents. Explore science connections with other movies and popular culture examples.
Last week, Darren Rowse concluded a one-day ProBlogger course with that disclosure and reference to The Lego Movie's protagonist. Why does Darren identify with the Lego everyman? Because of this speech to the : Click to tweet this quote Are You Being Pigeon-Holed? Learn (and then Do) Something New Like What You Read?Cisco Blog > Digital Transformation Lessons from LEGO To Drive “Out-of-the-Box” Thinking Are your Master Builders free to create? Are your Ordinary Builders helping them to execute? And more to the point, are you acting like the evil President Business, hindering innovation, placing talent in silos, and keeping your organization frozen in the past? If so, you may find an unlikely role model in Emmet Brickowski. OK, Emmet may be an animated character made of plastic blocks, but don’t dismiss him so easily. If you are a manager looking to ensure your team is the best it can be, you may want to check out Emmet’s starring role in “The LEGO Movie.”
I believe there is deep wisdom in what this little character has to say. One of the key themes of the film is that many organizations adhere too strongly to their legacy traditions. Though such traditions may have served them well in the past, they can also sow stagnation and put a brake on agility and adaptability. This is especially true in the Internet of Everything (IoE) era, as a massive wave of network connectivity and innovation upends organizations, business models, and entire industries. In the process, longstanding assumptions around strategy and success are falling by the wayside. Emmet lives in a world run by President Business, the head of a successful corporation that fears any change to the status quo. President Business will even resort to supergluing LEGO pieces to keep them in their rightful places. President Business divides the world into two kinds of people: Ordinary Builders and Master Builders. He rewards Ordinary Builders who follow the rules, building from their LEGO Kits;
he disapproves of the “anarchic” creativity of the Master Builders, who like to improvise from a pile of blocks, and he is determined to capture all of them. President Business may be an exaggerated “bad guy.” But we can all relate to a fear of disruption. How do we avoid slipping into behaviors that feel safe but could ultimately hold us back? It’s a challenging time for managers. They’re rewarded for executing today’s processes, whether in the kinds of people they hire or how they allocate budgets. Anything that doesn’t contribute to the bottom line of the current business model — such as laying the creative groundwork for tomorrow’s innovations — is likely to receive less attention. Which is where Emmet comes in. Emmet is a perfect metaphor for a manager who, by changing his own mind-set, is able to challenge business orthodoxy and impact the larger organization. A typical Ordinary Builder, Emmet can’t function without an instruction booklet, and he’s been rewarded for adhering to the past traditions firmly established in the LEGO Kits.
That is, until he loses his instruction manual, and his worldview is disrupted. Unable to continue working, Emmet is awed by the Master Builders and their ability to create whatever their imaginations dream up, quickly and without a manual. (In reality, Master Builders are the super-inventive designers who create the official LEGO Sets.) Emmet, once happy to follow the rules, sees the Big Picture — and the value in what Master Builders create. He puts together a team and sets off to challenge President Business’s rampant supergluing. Emmet’s odyssey offers important lessons for driving success in the real world: In the end, Emmet must convince President Business that the Master Builders have great value. Will he save his friends? (No spoiler alert necessary — go see the film!) Like all superhero films, “The LEGO Movie” exaggerates real themes to make a point. I don’t see it as an argument against the evils of capitalism or Big Business. Instead, I believe it presents a model that real-life managers can apply to real-world business challenges — namely, the imperative to innovate, evolve, execute, and scale in an atmosphere of near-constant disruption.