The video goes by pretty quickly, so I took a few screenshots so you can appreciate some of the side by side comparisons between the live-action reference footage and the final animation.

San Diego Comic Con was this past weekend, and it gave us a look at the second trailer for “The LEGO Ninjago Movie”. Putting aside the constant LEGO Movie “parental issues” plotlines, there are some solid gags in this preview—as well as a tease at how this film will integrate the live-action world, which is something that was almost completely lacking from “The LEGO Batman Movie“. I am intrigued.

The LEGO NINJAGO Movie – Trailer 2 – YouTube

I was all set to write a review of “The LEGO Batman Movie” way back in February, before the film even came out. The first of 2017’s two sequels to “The LEGO Movie” focused on not only a beloved character from the first film, but on one of the most popular fictional characters of all time. Batman is a pop culture institution. So is LEGO. Combining them is a sure thing.

And for the most part, that’s accurate. The film did well; it’s got a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The product line was robust and full of beautifully designed sets and characters. There was even a lovely Making-of book for the film (though it’s really more a collection of concept art book than it is a comprehensive look behind-the-scenes).

So why did I find it so hard to write anything about this film? Why didn’t I have the same vigor I had while writing my in-depth review of the first film?

I think it’s because a “LEGO Movie” is no longer the gamble it once was. This sequel was another fun, well-made film in the LEGO Movie universe, with a great cast and some wonderful designs. But unlike the original, the marketing for this film definitely had the vibe of “yeah, come on… we know you’re all gonna come see this.”

On top of that, the “Batman” of it all is nothing new, either. All of the familiar motifs are here:

• A gang of Gotham’s worst criminals (led by The Joker, natch) is loose in the city, wreaking havoc and conspiring against our heroes,
• The Gotham City government and police force struggle with this excessive amount of crime. And, of course,
• Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne dresses like a bat man to clean up the town and work through the pain of losing his parents at a young age.

On paper, this might sound like a recipe for a dull film. But as with the first LEGO Movie, what makes it all work is a wonderful dose of humor, self-awareness, and an obvious love for the property. LEGO Batman is definitely a fun watch, and if you liked the original, you’ll probably like this one, too.

But unfortunately, this all means that I don’t much else to say about The LEGO Batman Movie itself. Dave Pickett and I talked at length about it on my YouTube channel back in February (see above), if you’re interested in some further random discussion.

However, I will say this: I am curious to see what comes next, given the fact that we’ll have “The LEGO Ninjago Movie” to watch and think through a few months from now. As far as IPs go, Ninjago is certainly no Batman…

You can catch The LEGO Batman Movie on DVD, Blu-ray, iTunes, and elsewhere.

Vox and Grant Freckelton from Animal Logic do a great job explaining the difference between the stop-motionesque style of The LEGO Movie and the “noodle limb” approach of the other LEGO CG movies. There are lots of great freeze frames from the movie that illustrate various points.

They also explore the influence of brickfilms (and The Magic Portal specifically) on The LEGO Movie. If you’re well versed in brickfilm history this is probably old news to you, but it’s all presented in a beautiful and easy-to-consume package.

Watch this video and share it with all your friends to make sure the world knows about influence of fans on The LEGO Movie and why respecting the limitations of the LEGO medium can result in better brickfilms!

Story Lab is housed in the Green Zone of LEGO House. Based on this image, it seems to include at least 18 workstations where visitors can create stop-motion animations using a touchscreen interface. Each workstation has a green screen backdrop, so participants will presumably be able to choose from pre-set backgrounds for their films. Beyond that, it’s hard to know how much control participants will have. If nothing else, Story Lab should introduce a lot of new people to the art of brickfilming and hopefully get them excited to pursue it on their own.

Another area of LEGO House I’m interested to learn more about is the Masterpiece Gallery, which will have a curated selection of works by LEGO fans from around the world. Hopefully, the curators will put brickfilms on display in addition to LEGO sculptures. And if the curators need any ideas for films to include, hopefully the archive of this blog will be useful

Retailing for 35 Singapore dollars (roughly $25 USD), the set includes 152 pieces, most of which seem to be used to build a smartphone camera mount. The camera mount looks like it can tilt using technic connections and do a dolly move by rotating at its attachment point (mixel ball joint) to the set. The set seems to include cardboard backdrops similar to the LEGO Studio sets.

This set hasn’t been officially announced by LEGO, so we don’t have many details, but it’s safe to assume that LEGO will be offering some kind of stop motion app in conjunction with this set. Which would explain why they recently removed their two stop motion apps.

It’s nice to see LEGO returning to this type of set after 15 years. We’ll have a full review of this set once it’s more widely available.

LEGO Life seems to be the replacement for the LEGO Club, the former hub of online LEGO activity featuring games, challenges, videos, and of course, the LEGO Club magazine. With the introduction of LEGO Life comes the introduction of the LEGO Life magazine.

Besides user-submitted content, the app also features officially curated content, most of which comes from LEGO.com. Along with stop-motion videos that were commissioned by the LEGO Group, some of the videos in the Ninjago category are entries to the LEGO ReBrick Greatest Villain of all Time in NINJAGO contest—a few of which did not even place in the runner-up category.

As a pleasant surprise, I noticed that the the app also features the brickfilm classic The Han Solo Affair alongside the more modern animated videos.

Other than that, there unfortunately does not seem to be much stop-motion content within the app. However, now that LEGO has undergone this massive overhaul in their online presence, let us hope that they will bring back the stop-motion aspects once again.

LEGO Life is available in some countries for iPhone and iPad, with an Android version reportedly coming soon.

We’re a little less than one month out from the North American release of “The LEGO Batman Movie”, the first of this year’s two (!) sequels to 2014’s “The LEGO Movie”. In the time since our last post about it, there have been a number of trailers for the film, as well as a few TV spots with additional footage. Let’s review.

Teaser Trailer #1 – The Batcave

The first teaser sees Batman introducing us to his Batcave, general solitude, and the overall concept of the film. It also features an opening prologue, which suggests (albeit jokingly) that the film was written and directed by Batman himself. I would love it if that conceit carried over to the actual film.

Teaser Trailer #2 – Wayne Manor

The second teaser followed only a few days later, and gave some insight into LEGO Batman’s parentage (spoiler alert: Batman’s parents are dead) as well as how this film fits into the overall Bat-continuity. The Wayne Manor fireplace room is a gorgeous design, and the animation of Batman flopping around the floor like some sort of fish is very entertaining and well-posed. #ABR

Comic Con 2016 Trailer

The Comic Con trailer was the first to feature Michael Cera’s Dick Grayson/Robin, as well as more looks at the Batcave and Batman’s expansive costume collection.

Trailer #4

The succinctly-titled “Trailer #4” serves as an amalgam of the previous previews, while also showcasing more of the plot and characters—including Rosario Dawson as Barbara Gordon, and Zack Galifianakis as The Joker.

Extended TV Spot

Finally, the Extended TV Spot confirms something that I was curious about—this film will take place in “Gotham City” (or a reasonable brick-built facsimile) and not Bricksburg (home of Emmet from the original LEGO Movie). We also get more of the Dark Knight’s rogues gallery, including The Riddler, Catwoman, Penguin, Gentleman Ghost (real), Calendar Man (very real), and the Condiment King (really really real). Of course, my favorite villain (seen here in a quick glimpse) will most likely prove to be Killer Croc, if only for the retro LEGO crocodile head he sports in this film.

What are you most looking forward to in The LEGO Batman Movie? Did we miss any of the trailers? Let us know in the comments!

As a LEGO Creator themed contest, the goal is for entrants to create a 15 to 45 second stop-motion animation showing the building and rebuilding of a LEGO Creator 3-in-1 set. Films cannot feature other LEGO parts that are not included in the specific LEGO Creator 3-in-1 set used by an entrant, nor can the video feature anything besides the LEGO set (such as hands or clay). The video’s background must also be clean and uncluttered, according to the ReBrick rules. I assume this is to ensure that the completed videos correspond with the LEGO Creator branding and are similar to the building videos already featured on the LEGO Creator website.

In contrast to the previous stop-motion contests on ReBrick, this contest does not allow Creative Commons music or sound effects. Unfortunately for those who aren’t musically talented (), the rules state that all sounds and music must be original and created by the entrant or from a “LEGO movie editor/music creator.” If this is referencing the LEGO Movie Maker app, then many people are out of luck due to the recent closure of the app. (If there is some other LEGO movie editor/music creator app out there, please let us know in the comments!)

The contest is now open and runs until March 22, 2017 at 10:00 am EST. As with every ReBrick contest, it is only available for entrants ages 13 and older. I look forward to seeing many of your awesome entries there!

Do you think this contest looks fun? Are you planning on entering? What do you think about the rules? Tell us down in the comments below! Also be sure to check out The Set Bump on Facebook and Twitter!

The four Brick Tricks videos are well made; they mix live-action and stop-motion footage to clearly convey the information. I’m sure that beginning brickfilmers will find these tips helpful. In a weird coincidence, both Brick Tricks and our book illustrate the concept of deleting unnecessary shots from a movie using the example of someone walking to/from the Palace Cinema set.

The video descriptions of the Brick Tricks videos encourage viewers to “create your own stop-motion videos by downloading the Creator App.” However, the link leads to the Creator Island app (which is just a game with no stop-motion features) as opposed to the LEGO Creator app. According to the Google Play page for LEGO Creator, the app was last updated on December 12, 2016 (3 days before these videos launched on YouTube). It seems like the update was just to add a message that it is being discontinued.

I don’t mourn the loss of the LEGO Creator app; it was around for less than a year. The bigger loss—which I uncovered while researching the LEGO Creator disappearance—is that LEGO appears to have discontinued the LEGO Movie Maker app as well, after providing it for free for 4 years. The LEGO Movie Maker app wasn’t perfect (its biggest limitation was that it was only available for iOS), but it was a really good app for beginning brickfilmers and I have been recommending it to people since it was first released.

My hope is that LEGO has removed these apps in preparation for launching a new cross-platform brickfilming app in conjunction with the LEGO Batman Movie next month—but that’s pure speculation.

360 videos present a unique challenge for the viewer. Do you just watch the default view and trust that most of the action will be there (a safe bet with this particular video)?

Do you look around at random things that are potentially not very interesting (like the floor)?

Do you watch multiple times looking at various angles trying to find hidden stuff and inadvertently get the song stuck in your head for several days? I know I did.

Ultimately, this video relies more on the gimmick of “Hey look, it’s PENTATONIX in LEGO form!” than the gimmick of “Hey look, you can spin this video around in different directions to see interesting stuff.” For an example of a 360 video using LEGO that actually rewards the viewer for looking around, check out this Simpsons / Ghostbusters crossover.

There’s some nice stuff going on here, from the dogs playing fetch to the idling crowd outside the Today Show studio. It’s always interesting when TV personalities and celebrities get “LEGO-fied”; something I expect we’ll see a lot more in the coming year with “The LEGO Batman Movie” and “The LEGO Ninjago Movie” on the horizon for 2017. (EDIT: or right now.)

I wasn’t quite sure what this campaign was all about, but it seems like it’s an NBC News promotional drive. Not quite a charity fundraiser, and not to be confused with this non-profit. I like the sentiment of it all, but it could be a bit clearer. Maybe it’s just because I don’t watch the Today Show.

(And of course, despite the YouTube description touting “the super creative folks behind LEGO’s legendary stop-motion animations”, there is no attribution to Kevin Ulrich or his team. For TLG, “Sharing Kindness” apparently does not include giving credit where credit is due.)

NBC TODAY Show: KLG, Hoda and LEGO Get Animated About Kindness | Hulu

Warner Bros. has released some promotional images for its forthcoming, aptly-titled film: “The LEGO Batman Movie.” (Not to be confused with “LEGO Batman: The Movie”, a home video release from 2012.) The caped crusader, once again played by Will Arnett, will be swooping into theaters on February 10, 2017.

Batman in a new version of the Batwing, flying over… Gotham? Bricksburg?

A Batcave detail, with costume variations like the “Raging Bat” boxing outfit, and “Excalibat”, which seems to be a Castle-themed suit of armor. (I also see “Bat By Gaslight”, “Glam Bat”, “Current Bat”, and “New 52” signs at the bottom.)

It appears that the brick-built explosion motif will carry over from the first film, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Batman in his cowl and dinner jacket, microwaving a lobster. Nothing weird about that.

The man himself.

According to ComingSoon.net, a trailer for the film is supposed to drop today. No word on that so far, but we’ll update you as soon it hits the web.

How will this film tie into the established LEGO Movie continuity? We’ll just have to wait (though not quite as long as last time) and see.

Sneak peek: ‘Lego Batman’ shows his brick-made lair | USA Today

Here’s the first look at Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Lego Batman movie | Polygon

Ok, “we” didn’t build it, but it was built by someone.

We’ve got some catching up to do here, so let’s start by drawing your eye to this “LEGO City” promo made for LEGO China a few months back. Directed by Rogier Wieland, “LEGO_Adventure in the City” is a fantastic mix of traditional miniatures, really impressive brick-built replacement animation (check out that dino!), and goofy minifig business. The live-action bits are a treat as well; all of the disparate media meshes well together into a fun story that perfectly captures a post-“The LEGO Movie” brickfilm world.

There’s even a sweet behind-the-scenes video here! Good stuff.

LEGO_ADVENTURE IN THE CITY on Vimeo

Something is happening in outer space…

Peter Reid’s Exo Suit is the latest release from the website-formerly-known-as-Cuusoo, LEGO Ideas. To announce the impending arrival of this set, TLG put out the above CG animated video, “co-created” (whatever that means) by Chris Salt of Oblong Pictures. I think having promotional videos for upcoming LEGO Ideas sets is a great concept on TLG’s part, but as with so many of their releases, this one suffers from being about twice as long as it needed to be.

Oddly, I don’t think the running time would have stuck out to me as much if the video had been done with stop-motion. As much as I’d love to see the real Exo Suit kit get animated (and I’m sure we will), it is a fragile-looking design. TLG tends to use CG when there are clear advantages to having a weightless wire-frame model, and that makes sense here from a production standpoint.

Except… none of those advantages are really utilized, and there’s large swaths of time where we’re basically looking at a video of a still image. It’s neat that the characters adhere to real-world minifig limitations (the influence of The LEGO Movie continues to be felt), but there is just SO MUCH DEAD TIME in this piece that it makes me wonder why they bothered making an animated video at all. When Exo Suit pilot Yve punches the keypad at 2:00, and the door starts whirring open with all the quickness of an inebriated turtle, I literally yelled at my computer screen for it to hurry up.

Anyway, I can certainly appreciate the effort that goes into making an animated video of any kind; this one just didn’t do it for me. Despite the less than stellar (space pun) execution, I’m hoping that promo videos for LEGO Ideas sets become something we see more of in the future. At the very least, it did get me excited about the set itself.

LEGO® Ideas #007 — Exo Suit – YouTube

As of this writing, the most-viewed article on The Set Bump is this short-and-admittedly-more-snarky-than-helpful piece entitled “No, ‘The LEGO Movie’ isn’t stop-motion”. I posted this commentary last year, as a response to several articles that jumped the gun by describing the contents of The LEGO Movie trailer as stop-motion when it was clearly done with CG.

Now, when I say:

It was clearly done with CG.

I of course mean:

Based on my 20+ years of study; and my knowledge of the limitations of LEGO stop-motion, film scheduling, and cash money; I (and my well-trained eye) can say with 99.9% certainty that not one shot in “The LEGO Movie” trailer is pure stop-motion photography.

Of course, motion pictures are illusions by definition, but I was still confident in my assertion that The LEGO Movie wasn’t stop-motion. Further adding to the confusion were contradictory comments from the directors and filmmaking crew, which skirted the line between actual information and marketing hype soundbites. What we really needed was hard evidence in the form of behind-the-scenes featurettes and footage.

And over the past month or so, we got just that.

First up was this “Behind the Bricks” mockumentary featurette, which was basically just a promo piece and not anything about the making of The LEGO Movie itself. Funny, but not helpful. It all still looked like 100% CG.

Next was this weird footage dump from ScreenSlam of some LEGO Movie making-of clips. Still no sign of stop-motion. (They did release some fun behind-the-scenes bits of the dialogue recording session with Chris Pratt, though.)

Then came this (veeeeeery dry) episode and article from fxguide, featuring interviews with Animal Logic crew members who detail (greaaaaaat detail) the CG approach and pipeline used for The LEGO Movie. Vindication was mine!

Finally, earlier today, Art of the Title gave us a look at the creation of the end titles from The LEGO Movie, and — lo and behold — they actually are stop-motion. Annoyingly, I can’t embed the videos here, but you should definitely check out the link. There’s a ton of cool making-of goodness to pour over.

On the set of the full end title reveal.

So what does this all mean? Well, it means that technically the directors weren’t kidding when they said there was some stop-motion in the film. Although it does still feel a tiny bit disingenuous to describe the entire film as “part-CGI and part actual real LEGO bricks in stop-motion”.

To be honest, having seen The LEGO Movie for a third time this past week, I still wasn’t sure myself as to whether the end titles were stop-motion or not. The animation and physical built pieces looked like stop-motion, but the structure of the “cubbyhole” layout seemed too CG-like to me. Knowing now how much CG pre-vis was done on the sequence, that assertion makes total sense.

Anyway, I guess the most important thing to take away here is that it really doesn’t matter what medium is used to make a film; as long as the story is compelling, memorable, and filled with characters who invite you to join them on their journey. Of course, I’ll still be waiting with bated breath for The LEGO Movie on home video… despite being CG, there are some amazing builds that I really want to go through one frame at a time.

I’ll also be checking the DVD featurettes veeeeery carefully for any signs of stop-motion.

Here at The Set Bump, we’ve been keeping tabs on the progress and development of The LEGO Movie for a while, compiling what morsels of information we could to try and satisfy our curiosity. The announcement of the film (waaay back in 2009) left many unanswered questions in our minds — what would a LEGO motion picture even be about? Would it be done in stop-motion? Could it possibly be as boring as Clutch Powers?

Fear not, dear readers, for we now have answers and so much more. Sound the spoiler alarm (I’m about to spoil pretty much everything), and let’s dive on in.

Story

The LEGO Movie tells the story of Emmet Brickowski, a construction worker minifig who lives his average life in the average LEGO city of Bricksburg. Using very familiar-looking instruction booklets, Emmet helps build skyscrapers for the Octan Corporation, under CEO President Business.

But President Business has a secret alter-ego: Lord Business, a tyrannical despot with designs to conquer the entire LEGO universe by — what else? — gluing everything together.

Fortunately, a group of minifig Master Builders (i.e. our main cast and some licensed supporting cameos) has found the key to foiling Lord Business’ plan: the fabled “Piece of Resistance”. Unfortunately, that piece just happens to be glued to Emmet’s back. And thus, the odyssey begins…

There’s a larger story at work in The LEGO Movie, too (both figuratively and literally), but I’ll get to that.

Characters

Emmet (Chris Pratt) is the focal character of the film. Pratt plays the LEGO everyman to a T — his mastery of goofy charm (refined in his role as Andy Dwyer on “Parks & Recreation”) makes him a perfect fit to carry a LEGO film.

Emmet’s a simple fellow, but his eagerness and sincerity make his adventure a joy to watch. And in the standard “hero’s journey” manner, he picks up a variety of allies along the way…

• Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) is the wise old sage and inveterate foe of Lord Business. Having failed to protect the LEGO universe in the past, Vitruvius foretells of a prophesied chosen one — “The Special” — who will unlock the key to Lord Business’ eventual defeat.
• Wyldstyle, aka Lucy (Elizabeth Banks) is an ambitious and headstrong Master Builder, who’s actively trying to become The Special by finding the Piece of Resistance. You may remember my considerable dislike for the name “Wyldstyle”; fortunately, it turns out the movie agrees with me (via lots of “what are you, a DJ?” jokes at her expense). For better or worse, a lot of Wyldstyle’s character centers around a sort-of love triangle (a “like triangle”?) between her, Emmet, and her current boyfriend…
• Batman (Will Arnett) is the Dark Knight as a hilarious parody; as if the Christopher Nolan films featured Adam West-inspired dramatics. Arnett is perfect in this role, and although much of his funniest material is in the trailer, there is one great sequence where millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne becomes integral to the plot.

Other helpful side-characters include Benny, a 1980s-era LEGO spaceman who REALLY wants to build spaceships; Unikitty, an anime-esque cat/unicorn hybrid with some serious anger issues (and some terrific brick-built alternate faces); and Metalbeard, a giant cyborg pirate who holds Lord Business responsible for his half-minifig, half robot condition.

In the villains’ corner, there’s really only President/Lord Business (Will Ferrell); his underutilized right hand man, Good Cop/Bad Cop (Liam Neeson); and an endless supply of robot police, robot feds, robot swat teams, and robot skeletons as cannon fodder for our heroes.

And then, there’s “The Man Upstairs”…

Design

The design of The LEGO Movie is where things really shine; it’s an amazingly gorgeous film. Every single setting has beautiful detailing and tons of NPU, almost to the point where it becomes distracting. There are dozens of visual nods to LEGO fandom, builder inside jokes, and some great micro-scale gags. Dave pointed some of these out in his review of the trailer, but that’s really only a small fraction of the insane beauty the filmmakers have packed in. That ocean! (I can’t wait to pause and frame-by-frame my way through the Blu-ray.)

For those of you who were worried about the use of computer graphics over stop-motion, I can honestly say that the film does not suffer one bit for it. The framing of many of the shots, as well as the overall texturing and lighting of scenes, really gives you that tactile feeling of being immersed in a brick-built LEGO world. There are one or two shots where the scope of what you’re looking at belies the film’s tiny toy-scale nature, but these are few and far between.

In many ways, the design of The LEGO Movie feels like not only a celebration of LEGO products and the hobby as a whole, but also of the craft of animation. Every major animation technique is at work here:

• The stop-motiony quality to the cinematography and character movement really helps set this film apart from things like Clutch Powers and the other CG releases. It’s super fun, and it feels like LEGO. I’m sure this approach will inform many stop-motion brickfilms in the future, and I would also have no problem with it becoming the new paradigm for CG LEGO animation. (Please and thank you.)
• There’s also some fantastically fluid 2D facial animation on all of the characters. The CG artists went so far as to give depth to the “paint” of the character face designs, as if the faces had been printed on like real LEGO minifigs. As someone who’s spent hours and hours staring at minifig heads through a macro lens, I truly appreciate this consummate attention to detail.
• And then, finally, the CG polish and shine brings everything together.

There’s a fourth filmmaking medium in the film as well — live-action photography. This was another detail made public by the filmmakers early on, though no one really knew what the implementation of it would be. As it turns out, the live-action sections are where the real story of the film lives.

Themes

In a broad sense, The LEGO Movie is built around a few overall motifs:

1. LEGO creations are not meant to be glued together, but to be continuously rebuilt into whatever cool models a creator can imagine.
2. You don’t have to build the greatest creation ever, as long as you’re building together with the people you care about.
3. Embrace the things that make you unique.

These are the main themes as depicted in Emmet’s character arc; though, as we find out, Emmet is not really the main character of this story.

About 2/3 of the way through the movie, Emmet sacrifices himself by tumbling out of Lord Business’ tower and down into a swirling vortex. Having blacked out, Emmet wakes up to find that he’s a toy LEGO minifigure in the human world, being played with by a young boy named Finn.

As the live-action scenes unfold, we come to understand that the events of the film up to this point have basically been a dramatization of Finn’s LEGO playtime scenarios. This makes sense as, earlier in the film, Emmet has a vision of “The Man Upstairs”, as illustrated by his mental construction of a distinctly humanoid hand. Additionally, Lord Business’ collection of non-LEGO human-scale artifacts (erasers, band-aids, highlighters, etc.) tells us that the LEGO universe must be somehow tied to our world.

Finn, however, is not “The Man Upstairs”. In a further twist (one which I found really enjoyable), it turns out that “The Man Upstairs” is actually Finn’s father, the real owner of the tables full of LEGO displays that make up the worlds of the LEGO universe. Finn’s father is quite unhappy, as those LEGO displays are part of his very adult hobby, and are NOT meant to be played with by Finn. When you consider the fact that Finn’s father — a businessman in a suit and tie — is also played by Will Ferrell, the central conflict and meaning of the story becomes unmistakably straightforward. Lord Business’ super-tall legs aren’t just for show.

(I’ve heard some comments from fans who question this portion of the film; saying that it’s a little insulting to AFOLs to be portrayed in such a way. Personally, I thought it was really funny.)

It’s at this point that The LEGO Movie becomes not only a action movie for kids, or a toy advertisement, but a fable about the relationship between AFOL and KFOL, parent and child. The film is fundamentally a feature-length “Build Together” spot — a series of LEGO TV ads that, perhaps coincidentally, began right around the time this film was announced.

A Few Gripes

I’ve already mentioned the somewhat distracting and complex artistry of the LEGO universe itself. The story, by contrast, is rather simplistic. To be fair, the way that story plays out doesn’t have a lot of padding or unnecessary scenes — everything is aptly cut — but it does feel slightly too fast-paced at times.

Which is crazy, considering the film runs for about 100 minutes in total. (Maybe I’m just getting old.) Plus, the notion that the entire tale comes from the imagination of a young boy really helps to lampshade a lot of the less satisfying story elements.

Another thing that made me a bit uneasy was the idea of “The Special”. I’m all for empowering kids to use their imaginations, but the word “special” is immensely overused in our cultural consciousness. As a concept, it just made me think of that line from “The Incredibles”:

When everyone’s super… no one will be.

However, given that the intent here is to embrace those things that make us individually special (and the fact that the prophecy is all but thrown out as malarkey in the third act), I’m willing to give The Special a pass, too.

The only thing in The LEGO Movie that I couldn’t find any rationalization for was the utter dearth of female characters. Seriously. Where are all the women?

• We’ve got Wyldstyle as the the only lady character with any real agency, though her role is not much more than that of Action Girlfriend.
• Unikitty (Alison Brie) is female, but is technically an animal and not a minifigure. Plus, she doesn’t come into the film until around halfway through, and even then, her presence is not terribly significant.
• Wonder Woman is on the poster, and they went through the trouble of casting Cobie Smulders in the role, but the only thing she does in the film was already shown in the trailer. I honestly can’t remember if she had more than one line of dialogue in the whole film. (EDIT 2/16/14: She speaks literally eight words in the entire film.)

If you ask me, an easy solution would have been to cast a woman in the role of Vitruvius. There’s honestly not much you would have had to change about the character. It’s great that we now have a recording of Morgan Freeman saying the words “Taco Tuesday”, but I would have gladly given that up to have this film pass the Bechdel test. Wyldstyle is essentially Vitruvius’ apprentice, and it could have been interesting to have a female-female relationship stand in contrast to the live-action father-son relationship.

Given the recent furor over LEGO Friends, and the fact that a lot of the film’s tie-in sets include female minifigures, I expected a lot more from The LEGO Movie in that regard. (EDIT: I feel like this girl might agree with me.) I think I might have cheered aloud when, towards the end, Will Ferrell tells his son that he’s going to have to let his sister play, too.

(Hilarious Duplo payoff notwithstanding, I don’t think it would have been too much to ask to actually see the sister on screen, though, even if just for a second. You can’t be what you can’t see.)

Putting it all together

One of the inside jokes of the LEGO fan community is that of the “Rainbow Warrior,” a name fondly given to those weird-looking multi-colored models we all built as children.

In some ways, The LEGO Movie is a bit of a Rainbow Warrior itself. For one thing, it ably tackles the unique problem of tying all the disparate LEGO worlds together; presenting the various play themes as parallel dimensions (and eschewing the nonsensical “play themes as planets” approach that Clutch Powers attempted to put forth).

But more than that, it manages to capture the fun, ubiquitous crossover vibe of every child’s playroom. Batman shooting his grappling hook at the Millennium Falcon in order to steal some spaceship parts from Han Solo and Lando Calrissian? That scene definitely happened in my backyard when I was a kid — and it happened in this movie, too.

Similarly, I couldn’t help but react to every pop culture reference and film allusion —

• Terminator (“Come with me if you want to not die”)
• The Matrix (Real/dream world analogies, The One, and the “Think Tank” room)
• Total Recall (The “Think Tank” again)
• Robocop (“Where are my pants?” is this film’s “I’d buy that for a dollar”)
• Super Mario Brothers: The Movie (Random dancing as a way to disable enemy forces, “cause everybody loves to dance, that’s why.”)
• Star Trek (“The Kragle” might as well be “V’Ger“)
• Clash of the Titans (“Release the Kragle!”)
• They Live (The subtle “Conform!” propaganda posters, and a few of the skeletal robot feds)
• Hot Rod (I kept waiting for Batman to do this towards the end)

And that’s not even including the official LEGO licenses. In a normal film, such an overabundance of seemingly random references might have felt lazy or unwarranted; but here, they somehow felt justified. I’ve already referenced “The Hero’s Journey” in this review, and maybe that’s all too appropriate — the minifigure might be the most literal encapsulation of The Hero with a Thousand Faces ever.

Overall

If I haven’t made it clear already, I thought The LEGO Movie was really fun, well-made, and an absolute delight to watch. The stunning visuals alone make it worth the price of admission, but the story is efficiently told and has some legitimate stakes, too. It’s not a perfect film, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s something for everyone to enjoy.

Those of us who do LEGO stop-motion (myself included) can admittedly be a bit snobby when it comes to the relationship between CG and “true” Brick Animation. When discussing brickfilms in interviews and at workshops, I tend to describe them thusly:

Brickfilms are a way for LEGO fans to tell their stories through the use of film and animation techniques. They can use any style, and can be about anything, but they all have one thing in common — the use of LEGO bricks and elements!

If that’s true, then I think it’s fair to say that The LEGO Movie qualifies as a brickfilm. Given the nature of the film’s story — a child whose imagined LEGO worlds are directly translated into on-screen action — The LEGO Movie might be the most ambitious, high-concept brickfilm ever. A meta-brickfilm, perhaps.

At the same time, The LEGO Movie also feels like a love letter to the entire brickfilming community. The directors have stated these intentions in interviews, but there was one other fun touch I noticed in the film’s live-action sequence: the aforementioned swirling vortex that Emmet tumbles down is, in the human world, an over-sized kaleidoscope with the words “Magic Portal” written on the side. Kind of reminds me of another Magic Portal…

But that’s not so important. What IS important is that this film is going to get a lot of people building. And animating. Heck, I left the theater and immediately went to the LEGO store to pick up one of the sets.

Go see The LEGO Movie.

The Simpsons House 71006

Yes, you can now build Bart, Lisa, Maggie, Marge and Homer’s house out of LEGO bricks. And we even have the minifigs to go with it.

But this is not the first time that those yellow fellows were made out of LEGO. Nope.

The couch gag in LEGO

Here is a compilation of Simpsons couch gags, with the LEGO version starting at 1:24. You can check out the many other versions, too.

Fan-made LEGO Simpsons opening credits

Made by a 13 year old boy, this brickfilm now has more than 10 million views.

And a LEGO ad with The Simpsons

Just WOW! You can check out a whole gallery of others like that one here.

I don’t know if you were planning on doing a brickfilm with the new Simpsons minifigs, but I know I am.

I was intrigued to find this pamphlet tucked away inside the November-December 2013 issue of the LEGO Club Magazine. Billed as the “Special LEGO Video Guide”, it purports to feature the “top 2013 LEGO videos, free online games, apps, and more!”

In reality, it’s just one big advertisement for LEGO multimedia content (much like what the Club Magazine itself is for LEGO toys). But it definitely points towards increased coverage/awareness of LEGO films and animated content, most likely in preparation for the release of The LEGO Movie next February.

And since “increased coverage/awareness of LEGO films and animated content” is our middle name here, I figured I’d take a second to walk you guys through this “Entertainment Guide” brochure…

The Cover

• The cover is made up to look like an “Entertainment Weekly” magazine, both in terms of layout and font choice for the title. In fact, I’m kind of surprised they were able to get away with that. Parody… I guess?
• Chase McCain is holding a LEGO Clapboard tile, which says “Awards!” on it. I’m not sure what that’s referring to, since there are no awards given or listed on the pages within. It almost feels like a movie industry word association game. “What are some other Hollywood-related words… how about ‘Awards’?”

Pages 1-2

• The first spread is titled “Top 2013 LEGO Videos!”, though based on the content being presented, that’s a pretty arbitrary label. All the videos in this pamphlet are official LEGO releases, which means they’re somewhat limited in scope. How or why these particular videos were chosen to be the “top” videos, it doesn’t say, but there was basically nothing noteworthy I hadn’t seen before.
• Seeing the Paganomation-produced LEGO Superman and Iron Man videos listed in there was a nice touch, though.
• The only new content to catch my eye was not a video at all, but a notice for a “NEW FREE LEGO TV APP” available on iTunes. This was the first I had ever heard of such an app existing; though, thanks to similar notices on subsequent pages, it was not the last.

Pages 3-4

• More of the “Top 2013 LEGO Videos”, including the “first trailer” for The LEGO Movie. Didn’t the second trailer already come out?
• I can appreciate how repetitive it must be to write short blurbs about so many conceptually similar LEGO videos, but some of the grammar/sentence structure in this brochure is kinda wonky. “How did it go from idea to finished LEGO Specials?” How indeed.

Pages 5-6

• These pages focus on LEGO City video/game media from 2013. Page 6 is solely devoted to advertising a new LEGO City game for mobile devices.
• Page 5 does focus on videos; though oddly, they’re all CGI entries. What’s weirder are the “milestone”-type captions on a few of the thumbnail images: “First Appearance of Dalmatian Firedog”! Oh… okay. “Most Minifigures in a Single Video!” Well, that’s not really true; it’s CG, so technically there are no minifigures in that video.

Pages 7-8

• Pages 7 and 8 feature an ad for the Cartoon Network “Legends of Chima” CG series, which I have yet to check out in any capacity.

Pages 9-10

• The spread on pages 9 and 10 is entitled, “Mini Movies… Big Creativity!”
• Rather than focusing on specific video entries, these blurbs talk more generally about a few LEGO video genres — Microsquare (a series of Master Builder how-to videos), LEGO CGI Animation (technically a medium, not a genre), and Seasonal Shorts (Adventures of Max, the Brick-a-Brack Bunch, etc.).
• More strange sentences: “Featuring the Brick-a-Brack Bunch  on zany adventures, look for these videos during holidays and when the seasons change.” “A Club Member favorite, ‘Adventures of Max,’ from the LEGO Club TV Show have been an online mainstay for a few years, following the LEGO Club mascot on adventures that take him under the sea, into outer space, and follow him through almost every LEGO line.”
• And another ad touting “2 ways to watch: catch them all at LEGO.com/clubvideos OR Ask your parents to download the FREE LEGO TV APP on your iPhone or tablet.”

Back Cover

• Yet another ad for Legends of Chima.

Overall thoughts

• The biggest takeaway from this brochure is the existence of the LEGO TV mobile app, which I think is pretty cool. Anything that gets LEGO videos further out into the public eye can only be a good thing, I think.
• However, there are some inconsistencies. For example, our aforementioned LEGO Iron Man short is nowhere to be found on the LEGO TV app, despite the claim that all videos shown in the guide are available to watch on the app. I wonder how many other videos might have been lost in the void.
• The other interesting thing I discovered via this brochure is the existence of yet another outlet for LEGO Video content. When the blurb mentioned checking out club videos on the LEGO website, I assumed it was talking about the LEGO Club Videos page. In fact, it’s talking about something else entirely: a Videos page on LEGO.com itself.
• This newer videos page does seem to be more thorough than the Club Videos page ever was; though, on this new page, there is again a subcategory for Club Videos, effectively rendering the separate Club Videos page outmoded and redundant.
• I am again baffled by the ways in which The LEGO Group continues the fracturing of their video releases; especially when it’s clear from this brochure that they want more people to check out said videos. Now we’ve got the official LEGO YouTube channel, the old (dead) LEGO Club TV channel, the Club Videos page, the LEGO.com Videos page, the LEGO Movie Maker App “Movie Gallery” section, the LEGO TV app, ReBrick.com… sheesh.
• Why not just have ONE central location and drive all the traffic there? I get wanting to have as many people as possible see the video content itself, but this just feels like a big mess. I want to be able to come back to the same place every time and see all the video content there is; not have to figure out which videos were uploaded where, when, and then try to keep tabs on all of them.

Anyway, what did you guys think of the The 2013 LEGO Club Entertainment Guide? Are you going to check out the LEGO TV app?