After Lord Business (Will Ferrell) steals the Kragel and plans to destroy the LEGO universe on Taco Tuesday, regular mini-figure Emmett (Chris Pratt) is mistaken as “The Special” and the saviour of the LEGO people. With the help of his new friends Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman), Emmett must find the rest of the Master Builders and stop Lord Business from gluing the LEGO universe together. What’s most surprising about The LEGO Movie is not that it’s absolutely hilarious, creative or exciting. It’s that it has an incredible amount of heart, perfectly capturing how people use LEGO and using that in the film in moving and imaginative ways. Everything from the voice acting to the animation is absolutely spot on, solidifying Phil Lord and Chris Miller as two of the best comedy directors working in the industry. (The pair previously collaborated on both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies, as well as 21 Jump Street.) You’ll be hard pressed to find many negatives in The LEGO Movie, it’s perfectly balanced for both adults and children.
It’s ridiculous and goofy enough for younger audiences but also has a surprising amount of adult humour that will go completely over the kiddies heads. Lord and Miller find a balance that is incredibly hard to obtain in animated films, mastered by Pixar but rarely found outside of that studio. Although geared towards adults at times, it’s never inappropriate and during the film’s more silly moments, it never feels like it’s pandering towards the young audience that it is ultimately “for”. The amount of creativity shown in the film is mind blowing. Perfectly capturing the essence of LEGO and how people use the product, audiences will be surprised time and time again at how it is used not only for gags throughout the film, but also in its narrative, which is smart, fun and moving. The LEGO Movie could easily have been a feature length commercial; however, Lord and Miller pour their heart and soul into the film and truly understand why people love LEGO and integrate this into the script.
Sure, they will obviously sell a lot of toys in the process but it never feels like they are trying to do that. Story and characters come first in The LEGO Movie and it shows. While the narrative is extremely fun, The Lego Movie is first and foremost a great comedy, with mostly every punchline hitting its mark. It’s cast of characters each have a time to shine and manage to never feel over or under used. Emmett is joined by his friends Wyldstyle and Vitruvius, whom both are executed wonderfully, never taking the spotlight away from Emmett but each having their own unique style and comedy. Will Ferrell is excellent as the villain, Lord (and President) Business, similar to some characters he has played in Megamind and Zoolander but that isn’t a bad thing and an excellent choice nonetheless. Will Arnett as Batman is incredibly spot-on and cameos from other LEGO properties are hilarious and best to not be spoiled. The rest of the voice cast of Liam Neeson (Bad Cop/Good Cop), Nick Offerman (Metalbeard), Alison Brie (Uni-Kitty) and Charlie Day (Benny) are fantastic as well and there are many more that show up in cameos.
The Lego Movie is incredibly creative and hilarious with fantastic voice acting. It’s surprisingly heartwarming and has a ton for both adults and children to enjoy. One of the best animated films in years. The LEGO Movie is much better than it has any right to be. Before you read on let me give the obligatory SPOILER warning. The thing is though, I often question why bloggers like me offer SPOILER warnings on stories like this because if you’ve landed here because you want to know the major plot hole, surely you’ve seen the movie and you know how it ends. If no, stop reading, go and see the movie and then come back here and read. I’ll wait for you. Everything is NOT awesome. Well, not in the Lego Movie, that’s for sure. I loved the movie, I really did. I loved it despite this problem I had with the movie; The Only Problem With The Lego Movie. And whilst I have only watched it twice, I have listened to the movie a thousand times because my kids have had it on high rotation on the DVD player in my car.
I thought the movie was well written. The story line was great. And when it turned out that the movie was simply all in the imagination of a boy, well that was just the best twist because as someone who played out a million scenarios with my own Lego when I was young, I could relate. I used to have my Lego guys explore “the real world” and interact with other toys and inanimate objects and the major “plot” of my storyline might have been their interaction with these things. If I was the boy in the movie you’d see me playing with the 1980-Something Space Guy or to be more accurate, the Blue Classic Spaceman as it’s known on Brickipedia.”I here you ask. You don’t need to use that language here. No, let THEM explain; Welcome to Brickipedia, a free online LEGO encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers known as Brickipedians. The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit almost any article right now by clicking on the Edit link that appears at the top of a page.
With 27,630 pages and 342 active users, we are Wikia’s largest LEGO wiki, founded on January 29, 2006. This wiki is based on the MediaWiki software used to run Wikipedia, and with the help of editors like yourself, we strive to be the best LEGO reference site out there. That’s from the home page of Brickipedia. Although “Wikis” especially Wikipedia cop a lot of flack for being an unreliable source based on the fact that anyone CAN add their own information and the information doesn’t have to be true, it can be a great starting point for further investigation into a subject. When it IS fleshed out with correct information with citations by way of links to verified sources, Wikis can be websites you can have some faith in. And it’s what I read about certain minifigures that are now on sale based on The Lego Movie that I discovered this plot hole. It started with Wyldstyle. At the bottom of each Lego minifigure’s page on Brickipedia it gives some information about them.
The sets they appear in, the similar features or bit they have to other Lego minifigures. Or – and this is where the penny dropped for me – the exclusive parts that they have. For Wyldstyle it mentions this about her; “Her appearance is similar to the Skater Girl‘s.” So naturally I was interested in just how close to Skater Girl this minifigure of Wyldstyle is. The answer to that is “close, but no cigar.” Oh sure you could pretend Skater Girl is Wyldstyle, but she’s not. She doesn’t have the blue streak in her hair. She doesn’t have the black gloves (which one could take from another minifigure, so that’s not such a problem). And she doesn’t have that crazy design on her (what looks to be) one piece hooded jump suit. So I kept digging. Emmet Brockowski is the main character or protagonist if you will in this movie. When he’s not wearing his pyjamas or standing naked in the shower (or even walking out his front door in the nude) he is dressed in his construction worker uniform.
The construction worker minifigures have been available since 2005, but not with a construction hat that has hair attached to it as Emmet’s has. Before he gets into his uniform, Emmet tries on many outfits as you can see in this official clip posted by Warner Bros. UK. Those outfits that he tries on are all from the Lego theme; Minifigures (also known as Collectable Minifigures). Let me just explain that. Lego “themes” are a way of classifying groups of Lego sets by the subject matter. Space, Castle, Pirates, Western (Cowboys and Indians), Town (more commonly known as City today), and the licensed sets including DC Comic, Marvel Comics, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lone Ranger, TMNT, and (my personal favourite) The Simpsons. The Collectable Minifigures were released in 2010 with there being 12 series of sets, each with 16 characters per set being released. The Series 6 set is where you’ll find the character known as Sleepyhead who is wearing pyjamas and has bed hair.
This minifigure’s pyjamas and hair are used by Emmet in the movie but it’s not Sleepyhead that you see in Emmet’s apartment as the minifigure himself (Sleepyhead that is) appears in a scene that Emmet appears in later in the film. Series 6 is also the same series that Skater Girl was part of. For Finn (that’s the name of the boy in “the real world” scenes in the movie) to be playing with Emmet as Emmet appears, and for Wildstyle for that matter, the outfits that they are wearing must have been available before the movie takes place. These outfits were created as part of the merchandising of the movie and therefore can’t exist before the movie takes place. Further, whilst many of the “extras” in the movie are minifigures that have been available for years, some of the extras in the movie were released after the movie as part of a Lego Movie sub-themed Collectable Minifigures theme including Larry the Barista, Abraham Lincoln and William Shakespeare, Gail the Construction Worker, the aforementioned Emmet with his hard-hat complete with hair
, and the only minifigure that I have actually purchased for my kids, the Taco Tuesday Man with his poncho and plate of tacos. Now for me, the “pièce de résistance” in this discovery has to be our main protagonist’s antagonist; Lord Business and his alter ego, President Business (or is that the other way around?) In Lord Business’ profile (also that of President Business) on Brickipedia is mentions that; So because these characters weren’t available before the movie was released, Finn could not have been playing with them to “make” this movie. Finn couldn’t have made many of these characters as well because some of their parts including President Business’ hair did not exist until the film’s merchandise sets were released. Once this movie brought the characters into the “real world” it puts the movie into a grey area inline with the whole concept of the “suspension of disbelief” where we are expected to assume that Finn has all these characters and parts at his disposal even if the parts and characters can’t exist in his “universe” until the movie is played out and then Lego creates them to support the movie’s merchandise interests.
I could go one step further and state that having Will Ferrell play “the Man Upstairs” means that in the universe that Finn and his dad and their Lego sets exist in, Will Ferrell and his movies can’t exist, but then we’re just heading down the road of The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis. “But your just over-thinking it…” I know you’re going to write in the comments section below. And it’s you’re, not your. If YOU’RE going to come here and start pulling this apart, please get YOUR spelling right. No I’m not over-thinking it. The concept of the Master Builder exists in the real world as is evident in Lego’s own Master Builder Academy series. And whilst Master Builders in real life or in the movie are those who can take a look at existing pieces and turn them into something great, that’s just the thing; they need to have existing pieces at their disposal, NOT new pieces that suddenly appear to make a new character or an item. Now we’re just heading down the path of “deus ex machina.”
There are many other characters from this move that have exclusive body parts, facial designs, and accessories that didn’t exist before the movie and therefore should not have been used in the movie. The movie technically should have only used parts and characters that were released before the movie was filmed. Emmet could have been played by any of those construction workers that have been available since 2005. Skater Girl could have been the side-kick/”other protagonist” and Lord Business could have been played by this guy; Oh sure, they had to make some exclusive sets otherwise who would have bought the Lego Movie themed sets? Umm, me for one. My kids not having been born back in 2005 when the first construction worker was released and therefore they haven’t got that set. If they had of just used existing characters from their wide range of minifigures released before the movie was filmed, that would have made the “real world” seem more like, the real world.