I was thinking these days about the first film, more precisely about Syndrome, the villain played by Jason Lee, one of the best disguised Scientologists in Hollywood. If you remember, all he wanted was to use the technology he created, thanks to his great knowledge, to give all people superpowers because “When everyone is great, then no one is!”.
I start the story of the Lego movie this way because, from the point of view of the story, this achievement is a mix of The Incredibles, The Matrix, Orwell’s 1984 and, of course, Toy Story. It sounds a bit complicated for a cartoon intended for children, but adding LEGO charm to the whole story softens the thing enough and makes it accessible to a wide audience.
The main antagonist in the film is President Business who rules a country made of LEGO City sets. In that country, everything is under control, residents have booklets that transcribe their behavior from morning to evening (which, of course, look like LEGO brochures with instructions) and, as the song that effectively brainwashes residents says, everything is awesome. However, everything is far from ideal because Business is actually a full-blooded evil wizard who lives in fear of the prophecy uttered by his opponent eight years before the main action of the film: one day, a character will appear who will find the Resistance Cube (Piece of Resistance) and who will be a builder like the world has never seen, known for his imagination and inventiveness.
As usual, Kocka is found by Emmett, one of the builders who, even in the mass of uniform characters and opinions, is special only in his ordinaryness. What is it, Emmett accepts the game and together with the beauty Wildstyle, the wizard Vitruvius, Batman and the creature named Unikitty, who, as the name says, is a unicorn cat, sets out to save LEGO worlds. The whole plot has its counterpart in the real world, which puts the story in a realistic framework and in the domain of reality.
The humor in the film is great and constant, in the sense that there are not a few key moments in which you will be startled by laughter, but a smile will be on your face all the time. The animation, which is made of “CGI intentionally made to act as a stop motion” variety is really phenomenal, and the things that are typical of LEGO fit perfectly into the story (for example, it’s been ten years, some LEGO minifigures have two facial expressions , depending on which part of the head you turn forward – here it is used so that the traditional Good and Bad policeman are united in one figure).
Everything would be great if it weren’t for the final message of the film, which is, paradoxically, something that is easy to agree with, but also something that contradicts the policy of the LEGO company.
Another paradox that seems inevitable for films based on toys and games is that this film is intended for a wide audience. As someone who is passionate about collecting Castle, Star Wars and Pirates themes and who buys a City or Creator set when it itches money, hardly anything new I saw in this realization. The idea of parallel worlds already exists in The Adventures of Clutch Powers cartoon, the concept of putting new things together from found dice, as well as the idea that each character has some special skills and moves is present in all LEGO games, from Star Wars to Marvel Super Heroes , and the animated series Ninjago and Chima have already accustomed me to the fact that the LEGO world is a counterpart to ours, with slightly changed rules.
