The Lego Movie

It looks blander than bland, with more of the same.

And I seriously don't know how you could continue the story organically.

This just seems like a cash grab. A 90 minute commercial.

I have more confidence in a Leho Batman 2 because there IS someplace you can go with that story.

My main problem with the trailer is that it's acting like Emmett was this massive dumbass which he really wasn't after about the midway point of the last film. He did really develop and took charge.

Mmmm I respect your opinion on that. I can see why you feel that way.

I can see that. This could just be an case of a bad trailer or they were just going for the jokes over the acknowledged character development. I dunno

I am hoping they still manage to pull this off. The first LEGO Movie was one of my longtime favorites.

It seemed like a one-off joke to me. I don't really think it'll play into the plot at all. Emmet certainly doesn't seem to be incompetent in the rest of the trailer, just weirdly cheerful in their Mad Max like world.

I really hope this movie is great, too. The first movie was amazing and I hope this one measures up, though that's a tough task.

My main concern is about how it seems the real world conflict will be a how boys play vs how girls play sort of thing. I really hope they don't go overly stereotypical with it. Gender difference plots make me nervous.

edited 9th Jun '18 10:15:19 AM by DeathsApprentice

Yeah his biggest screwup is leaving the turn signals on. But that's more a product of his tendency to follow instructions, which is also shown to be an asset in certain situations.

Well, what's going to be The Reveal here? Where can you go with the story that isn't "Jack Sparrow finds himself in another wacky situation!"?

I don't know, the story can go lots of places. The setting doesn't really have all that many constraints attached to it.

My best guess is that it'll likely be some sort of allegory for the conflict between Finn and his sister.

Likely resolving with Emmett and the crew from the first Lego movie teaming up with Sweet Mayhem against the true antagonist of the movie. Which will be an allegory for Finn and his sister starting to get along.

New trailer!:

Seems we're having the main characters face pseudo-bizarro otherworld versions of themselves, if the poster in that link is any indication. Is Max, the new character, also voiced by Chris Pratt? I see we're gonna get a lot of nods this role in Jurassic World too.

Yeah, that's Chris Pratt playing Rex Dangervest.

For some reason the thing that caught me off-guard was that cameo from Puppycorn.

I'm very suspicious of Rex Dangervest, though, for some reason. But for all I know he could actually be a totally cool dude. XD

So I'm a little late to the party in posting this, but the marketing team for the movie decided to pull one of those "Wow I can't believe they did that" moves on Black Friday, and they way they announced it... well:

I was seeing so many comments astonished about that.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Nov 24th 2018 at 8:57:14 AM

That sounds hilarious. I love the peeps that made these movies. You can usually tell they are having fun with it.

I liked the trailer on Twitter, and they sent me a message that I could watch the whole first movie free on the day after Thanksgiving, which was a neat surprise, although not quite on the level that you guys had it.

I, uh, didn't, though. Partly because I was worn out, but mostly because I already own it, so watching it again via YouTube wasn't a high priority for me. Still cool that they did it, though.

So, for those who don't mind toy spoilers, the first sets for the movie are in some stores. I got the set Introducing Princess Watevra Wa'Nabi, which comes with Lucy, a servant, and General Mayhem (and yes, the back of the box reveals her face she's got Mismatched Eyes - one pink, one powder blue, with eyeshadow contrasting with each eye).

For those who want to avoid spoilers, keep out of the toy aisle. For those who want hype, many of the sets are rather affordable, in the $15-$20 range. I swear, they dust those bricks with cocaine.

Saw the movie last night, it's really, really good. One of those rare sequels where its not "super good but not as good as the original" or the even rarer "its better than the original" but "pretty close to on par, if lacking only in that some of the uniqueness of the original can't be recaptured because its already been done."

Some spoiler-y thoughts.

-While I'm not sure I'd call it a true musical, I was surprised by how many musical numbers are in the film, and they're all really good. Queen Whatevera 'Nabi's not Villain Song is probably my favorite.

-I like how it acknowledges that everybody already knows the twist of the original so doesn't even try to hide that the film is really just Finn and his sister having a fight over who gets to play with what legos. It makes "figure out what each part of the film is a metaphor for and which parts are Finn telling the story and which parts are Bianca telling it" a fun game.

-I love how they handled The LEGO Batman Movie in regards to 'the canon' by having Batman admit he's deliberately ignoring his character development from it because dark and broody Batman is more marketable. Though I do wish Alfred wasn't the only character from it to appear here, Robin at least should have had a cameo.

-The twist is not as mind blowing as the original of course, but making a twist about what the theme of the movie is rather than a twist about the nature of the story's reality is was a good move. Similar but different enough to feel fresh. While Bianca's girly legos not being the villains is fairly predictable, that the actual concept and moral isn't "how boys play vs how girls play," though that's still a big theme, but what being "grown up" actually is vs. a teenager's idea of being "grown up" and that is not a movie about a boy learning to deal with his Annoying Younger Sibling but a movie about a boy realizing he's been the bad guy the whole time was a lot more surprising and meaningful.

-Speaking further on the twist, my favorite part my actually be the reveal of what "You started it!" actually means. That was really sweet and easily on par with the Finn saying how Emmett would redeem Lord Business in the original.

-In non story twist related reveals, finding out that Lucy hates 'Everything is Awesome' so much because she was the lead singer of the band that wrote the song was amazing. Also that "Honey, Where are My Paaaaants?" is based on true events.

-Its probably for the best that this didn't end with a Sequel Hook like the original, I'm not really sure where else you could go from here. Maybe if they continued on the teenager's misunderstanding of what being "mature" and "grown up" is idea they could do a Toy Story 3 and make one about Finn and his sister actually having grown up and not playing with Legos with the characters seeing as the world ending but that would be hard to pull off without being too derivative and a little too similar to the climax of this film but for different reasons.

Edited by IHOP on Feb 8th 2019 at 2:24:36 PM

Okay either I'm getting old or the release of the sequel JUST CREPT up on me! Like I didn't realize it would come out today until 2 days ago! And this is someone who sees trailers online all the time. This is in contrast to when the first movie came out 5 years ago, where I started each day with memorizing that release date.

Gonna see it tomorrow. I'm pumped.

Apparently the sequel is tracking for a $40-$45 million domestic opening weekend. Within the context of a $100-million budget, that's OK, but nowhere near as good as the first movie. It's closer to what The LEGO Batman Movie did. The amount of money the two movies have earned from pre-release screenings is also similar ($2.1 million for the former, $2.2 million for the latter). Using The LEGO Batman Movie as a comparison, let's see what sort of haul we can expect (warning: math ahead)

The LEGO Batman Movie opened with $53 million domestically, a tad higher than The LEGO Movie 2 is expected to. It finished its domestic run with a gross of $175 million—in other words, roughly 3 times its opening weekend. If The LEGO Movie 2 does that, it should end its run with about $150 million.

As far as foreign gross goes, both the first LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie are unusual in that they made less overseas than they did domestically. The LEGO Batman Movie grossed $134 million overseas, and a similar amount for The LEGO Movie 2 seems plausible. That gives us a total of about $280 million on a $100 million budget, worst-case scenario. Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, keep in mind that The LEGO Movie was one of the few big-budget animated movies to break even entirely from its domestic release. If the box-office tracking is any indication, The LEGO Movie 2 will need foreign grosses to keep it in the pink.

To put my calculations in perspective, here's how these numbers would stack up with the other movies in the series. That's slightly less than what The LEGO Batman Movie made, and only about two thirds of what The LEGO Movie made. It is, however, significantly more than what the Ninjago movie made, which supports my theory that Ninjago's unusually low box-office haul was a fluke.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on Feb 8th 2019 at 7:11:28 AM

Glad I'm not the only one who tilted their head when people claim "Lego Movie broke the chosen one!" Like, they literally still made Emmett the chosen one.

And. . . the movie debuted lower than I thought was possible. We're looking at an estimated $33-35M opening weekend here, folks.

At this point, going by my previous calculations, a worldwide total similar to 2009's Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs seems likely. That movie debuted to a $30M opening weekend, and ended up grossing $243M worldwide, more than half of which came from the domestic market.

If that's the case, Warner Bros. will definitely have to re-evaluate how it wants to approach the LEGO movie series going forward. Even if The LEGO Movie 2 ultimately makes it into the black (and I still think it will), the fact remains that the novelty that made the first movie such a runaway smash hit is gone.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on Feb 9th 2019 at 11:19:50 AM

For the franchise's future, there are only two further Lego movies announced, The Lego Batman Movie 2, which has virtually nothing known about it, and a film that some websites called The Lego Brick Race and others The Billion Brick Race, that was supposed to come out this year but has just stopped being talked about.

So let's say the movie performs the way I'm expecting it to—i.e. around $230-240M worldwide. That's a disappointment compared to the first movie, no matter how you slice it, but not a disaster since it's still enough to cover the budget. Is Warner Bros. still going to consider the LEGO movie series a worthwhile investment? Or are they going to focus more or original movies, like Storks and Smallfoot?

Well the weekend isnt over.

That's true, but we still have a pretty good idea of how well it's going to do. And the answer is "not as good as we were expecting." If it debuts to a $33-35M opening weekend, and follows the pattern set by The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Ninjago Movie of earning roughly three times that domestically, we should be looking at around $105-$110M. As for foreign grosses, all of the LEGO movies have made slightly less overseas than they have domestically, which is a reversal of the usual rules for animated movies. I predict a ceiling of about $100M for the overseas gross. That gives us a final total of $205-215M on a $100M budget. That's good in the sense that it probably won't be a box-office bomb, but it's still pretty disappointing for the sequel to Warner Bros.'s most successful animated movie.