In The First Part, Lucy sings "Everything is Awesome" perfectly while distracting the robots to get to the Kragle, despite claiming to not like the song. She was one of the original singers of the song before her personality shift.
Overlaps a bit with Horror, but this reveal also puts a new spin on Lucy's hatred of the song. Lord Business took her band's peppy, happy song about teamwork and togetherness and turned it into the conformist anthem of his False Utopia. Her tough "Wyldstyle" persona was part of an attempt to distance herself as far as possible from the song, and it took until this movie for her to embrace that side of her again.
It's said that the Duploidians attacked many times, each time carrying away anything they found cute or adorable to the Systar System (which is why the inhabitants of Apocalypseburg have cultivated a tough gritty aesthetic). This is basically what Finn's sister likely did over the years after she was allowed to play with the Legos just like him: grab the parts she liked (cute and adorable) and take them to her room.
The filmmakers took the tired-long gag of similarly-voiced characters, and made it a case of Foreshadowing.
Ultrakatty's Berserk Button being "people putting raisins into things" seems like a random joke, but then you remember that raisins are poisonous to cats.
Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi's frequent slip-ups during her Villain Song aren't Freudian slips, but rather, because Bianca, a young girl, probably still struggles with her vocabulary, and sometimes uses the wrong words.
In general, Watevra's suspicious behavior makes sense because it's an earnest child telling her story, thinking that clarifying her good nature means the audience (her brother's) impressions of her being good will be reinforced and missing the nuance that the claims actually seem like a lie because she's too young to get it. Finn, frustrated with Bianca, took Watevra's behavior as duplicity rather than the genuine kindness Bianca was innocently trying to convey.
Tying into this is her use of terms like 'un-nasty' and 'un-duplicitous', Bianca has probably heard these exact words being used, either by her parents, her brother, or in movies and TV shows, and simply doesn't know the correct opposite term to use. So rather than try and say something like 'delightful' or 'pleasant', she'd rather just say 'un-malicious' to try and get the same point across
The "Not Evil" song, full of detailed insistence that she's not evil, in the classic style of a Villain Song, sounds a lot like a Suspiciously Specific Denial. But realizing that it all comes from the mind of a pre-teen girl, it makes a lot more sense. Fairy tales and Disney movies are lousy with "evil queen" songs, so that's the style she'd expect the queen to sing it, but she's quick to point that she's "not one of those evil queens", not realizing how suspicious that sounds.
As someone points out in the comments section of the video, everything Watevra says she isn’t is what Rex is.
Even the backup singers get in on this. They're chanting "least evil queen" et al because they - via Bianca - think that's how to convey their honest opinion of Watevra.
Some viewers might think it's a bit rushed that Batman and Queen Watevra got married so quickly. But of course it's rushed, this subplot came from the imagination of a little girl, Finn's sister Bianca. She's not yet old enough to experience how slowly real relationships develop.
It needs to be taken into account both major couples happened in the imagination of young kids, but Finn did Emmet x Lucy with much more build-up than Batman x Watevra. So more than age, Fridge comes when remembering that Bianca thought if one of Finn's toys married one of her's, they could be together. His main Lego figure, Emmett was already put with Lucy so she used Batman, and had to be quick due to being on thin ice with their mom already and possibly before Finn could come in and destroy everything.
If you really think about it, why is it that the villains of the Systar System reveal to actually have good intentions, but just didn't know how to properly express them? Well, this is due to the creator of the system itself, Bianca, having trouble trying to get along and play with her big brother Finn. She wants to have fun with the LEGO toys, but is just too young to understand how Finn feels when she plays with his toys without his permission. The same goes for Finn having to learn how to share with his little sister. The joining of both systems in the end represents Finn and Bianca finally making up and playing together as siblings should, showing all of the characters in the LEGO world being friendly with one another.
It's also possible Bianca tried to "play like a boy" and play into the good-versus-evil alien invasion narrative he projected because she wanted to engage in any way she could with her brother (Sweet Mayhem said her helmet commanded attention and respect, after all) but things got out of hand because he wasn't on board with her plan to segue into friendly party playtime and stubbornly interpreted her characters as the bad guys even when she tried to make it clear they weren't evil.
Rex wasn't trying to kill Emmet, he was trying to break him, both physically and mentally, by rubbing Emmet's face into the fact that friends had failed to rescue him, and thus feel the same despair that turned him into Rex. It's only by Lucy's intervention that Emmet manages to pull himself back together.
You can even argue this is hinted at in the lyrics of 'Everything Is Awesome', particularly the line 'Everything is better, when we stick together'. Reverse the words, and it reads 'everything goes wrong if we face life alone', which is exactly what happened to Rex, and contrarily, what doesn't happen to Emmet
"Catchy Song" is a counter-melody for "Everything is Awesome", so part of why it does get stuck so easily in many viewers' heads is that it's taking advantage of a musical structure that's already been stuck there for the last five years.
Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi rather excitedly lists all the extremely fitting gifts she'll give the group of friends; why would she be so accurate as to what would be perfect for each person? Bianca's grown up seeing Finn playing with each figure, and probably is aware of what each figure "likes." After becoming aware of Finn's transition to Apocalypseburg, away from what makes the the figures happy, it makes sense that she would create a narrative where each one gets exactly what they would love. She's trying to fix things, after all.
On a similar note, when the Queen claims to only be marrying Batman to make her true suitor jealous, she proceeds to make Batman envious by deliberately listing qualities that she's interested in that belong to Superman. Once Batman pulls out an engagement ring, she's no longer adamant on not marrying him. She actually did try to make the person she intended to marry jealous- that being she actually was planning to marry him all along.
The different mindsets to Our-Mom-Ageddon between the Systar System and Apocalypseburg makes sense when you take into account the creators. Finn is probably not taking his mom's threats seriously, while Bianca is.
Lord Business getting Put on a Bus almost immediately makes a lot more sense when we find out later how little Finn's dad (on whom Lord Business was based on) involves himself with Finn and Bianca's conflicts.
You can see how the initial appeal to Lord Business to intervene being dismissed during the Duplo invasion parallel's the father being asked to intervene when Finn feels his sister is ruining everything and pushing his kids to work it out between them.
A bit of Fridge Heartwarming. When Emmet lets the Star missile in after he sympathizes with it's plight, he's portrayed as an idiot for being too kind and giving Mayhem a chance to intrude. While yes, that ultimately resulted in his friends getting kidnapped, nobody was aware that the Systarians were Good All Along and that the kidnapping was meant to unite the two worlds. It looked like Emmet doomed his friends, but in reality, he was making the union possible.
Upon receiving the heart offering, one of the aliens appears to eat it. Young children often explore things by placing them in their mouths.
During her "Gotham City Guys" song, Queen Watevra's passing mention of liking Beetlejuice makes huge sense as he is also a shapeshifting reality-warper. That movie must have given Bianca the inspiration for the superpowers she imagines Watevra having (provided it didn't scare the piss out of her).
Maybe she watched the animated version?
The Rexcelsior being shaped like a fist foreshadows Rex's backstory. He's seen human hands before.
In a bit of Fridge Heartwarming the fact that the animated portions of the film has a coherent narrative despite the two people telling the story being in conflict implies that Finn and Bianca are at least subconsciously adjusting their narratives to fit each others and thus are actually playing together.
After the reveal of who Rex really is, the scene where he tells Emmet to not let his "big beautiful heart" be taken advantage of becomes Fridge Sadness.
In a way, Queen Watevra Wanabi is the perfect representation of LEGO at its core; a mass of bricks that can shift about and shape themselves into anything. Like Finn said when he gave his sister the heart that became Watevra, "it can be whatever you want it to be". In that sense, Watevra is LEGO.
This borders on Fridge Horror, but Emmett going ahead with punching the wedding cake after seeing Lucy's been "brainwashed" (the marker in her hair had been washed off) could be interpreted as Finn reaching a snapping point when he sees that his sister washed off the custom black hair color on Lucy. This could've been the final straw for him, viewing this as trying to "wash away" Lucy's tomboyish 'individuality'.
Fridge-Heartwarming: Queen Watevra didn't simply wait to show her true form until the wedding. She was also adhering to an old wedding tradition: It's bad luck for the groom to see the bride('s true form) before the wedding.
This is something that someone pointed out on Tumblr, but Rex is a...
Galaxy defending: Emmet saved every LEGO world Finn had in the first movie from Lord Business.
Archaelogist: This is one might be a shot in the dark, but Emmet did find the piece of resistance in the first movie.
Cowboy: Emmet dressed up as a cowboy when he and Wyldstyle visited the The Old West world in the first movie.
Raptor Trainer: This one is obvious - Rex has indeed trained a few raptor in the past and they are now members of his crew.
Who likes building furniture: Emmet is a Master Builder and a construction worker who came up with the double-decker couch in the past.
Busting heads: Most likely a reference to Rex's destructive power and personality... or maybe Emmet fighting Lord Business mooks at the end of the first movie.
And having chiseled features previously hidden under baby fat: He is a future version of Emmet who is generally more rugged, has facial lines and a Perma-Stubble.
Having Will Farrell yell "Honey, where are my pants?" at the end provides a humorous Call-Back to the first film, but it's fitting that it should be Finn's dad who says it. Assuming this isn't the first time he couldn't find his pants, it explains where Finn got the idea for Lord Business's "sitcom." It also adds a new perspective to the shot in the first film where said father glues the man's pants onto him-he was trying to conceal his own insecurities!
One of the heart missiles tells Batman that he is "very handsome". It's later revealed that those heart and star missiles belong to Queen Watevra, who wants to marry Batman.
While introducing himself to Lucy, Rex mentions that he is, among other things, a script doctor. A script doctor is a person whose job it is to fix and/or rewrite parts of movie, theater or TV show scripts. Rex went back in time to save Emmet, his past self, from being stranded under the dryer. In other words, Rex changed something about his story because he wasn't okay with it, just like a true script doctor.
The name "Emmet(t)" is derived from the name "Emma", which means "whole". In the alternate future, Emmet changed his name to something else ("Rex") when he became broken.
As someone pointed out, Rex sounds a lot like "wrecks", not only alluding to Rex's destructive streak, but also how he is a wrecked version of Emmet.
"Gotham City Guys" claims that Superman is "not afraid of commitment", despite Superman Returns having him impregnate Lois Lane, then fly off into space for five years, as opposed to helping raise their baby. While it might sound unusual not to acknowledge this in a song referencing so many other DC movies, it does sound likely that the thought of Superman and Lois making a baby out of wedlock resulted in Bianca's parents forbidding her from watching Superman Returns.
While all of the standard LEGO figures have simple, undetailed faces, Emmet is shown to have an especially generic, yellow LEGO face with no distinct features on it, which was used in the first film to establish him as an unimportant, unremarkable face in the crowd note When Emmet and Lucy escape from Bad Cop in the first movie, one of President Business' robots says that Emmet's face is so generic that facial scanners cannot point him out. Aside from his Perma-Stubble and chiselled features, Rex also has a generic yellow face, with both Rex and Emmet looking so unremarkable that viewers will not see any notable similarities and are less likely to suspect that they're the same person.
Of course Emmet and Lucy think that "Catchy Song" is used to brainwash people - "Everything is Awesome" was one of the things that President Business used to keep everyone in Bricksburg in their place in the first movie.
In order to make him agree the wedding, Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi takes advantage of Batman's ego by pretending that she doesn't care about him and wants Superman instead. She literally pulled a Batman Gambit on Batman.
Watevra Wa'Nabi's name itself is probably a result of Bianca being a kindergartner when Finn gave her the brick heart, causing her to interpret the phrase "Whatever you want it to be" as the heart's literal name and mangling the phrase almost beyond recognition.
The brick heart that eventually became Watevra Wa'Nabi is the first creation that Finn willingly gave to Bianca, effectively making her the symbol of the bond between the siblings. Fittingly, she gets shattered when Finn tears apart Bianca's wedding cake creation and triggers Ourmamageddon, then rebuilt when the siblings make up and learn to play together.
If any viewers wonder if Bianca tried to learn from Frozen how a good queen could sing, it actually wouldn't seem very helpful to someone who'd notice that Elsa sings about doing things a good queen shouldn't do, such as shut out family or run away from her domain.note When Disney planned to make Elsa another evil queen, the songwriters penned "Let It Go" as a Villain Song, which remains apparent during such lines as, "That perfect girl is gone!" In "Frozen Fever", a less-introverted Elsa sings about giving several gifts while denying an obvious truth, which Lucy hears "Not Evil" as until she learns the whole truth about Queen Watevra.
Rex used to be a happy-go-lucky person who liked "Everything is Awesome", but then became tougher, used a black marker to change his appearance and changed his name, just like Lucy. He puts up the appearance of a tough, manly and egotistical loner to the point of unhealthiness, just like Batman. His powers are powered by anger, just like Uni-Kitty's. And he does that thing where he breaks down things with just one hit, just like Benny did to the spaceship he was building in the first movie. Rex may act like he doesn't care for his friends anymore, but their influence on him is still there.
Lucy being the singer of "Everything Is Awesome" makes a lot more sense when you remember that Emmet and Vitruvius once said her Wyldstyle name made her sound like a DJ.
In the first movie, President Business was the bad guy, but was a stand-in for Finn's father. When his father realised this, he softened up and changed his ways. Who was the villain in the sequel? Rex. And who was Rex really? Emmet. And who was Emmet a stand-in for? Puts Finn's change of heart towards his sister in a new perspective when you realise he basically repeated his father's own mistakes, becoming the bad-guy of the storyline without even realising it.
Concept art showed that the heroic Takanuva was part of Rex's crew. Given Rex's true villainous nature, it wouldn't make sense for Takanuva to join him, until you take into account the existence of Shadow Takanuva.
Rex first shows up quoting The Doors. Guess Finn hasn’t just been watching old movies.
Why does Gandalf return in this movie and not Dumbledore? Dumbledore dies in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince while Gandalf more-or-less survives The Lord of the Rings, albeit reincarnated as Gandalf the White. Finn likely learned about this when he was old enough to read the books and/or watch the movies and decided to incorporate it in his play sessions.
Fridge Horror
While the Systarians are not evil at all, everyone still seems to be happy there. There's a slight chance that they do brainwash people with "Catchy Song", but just a bit. It's all in the music.
It's also possible they're being brainwashed on a meta scale: The actions, thoughts and personalities of the minifigs are directly influenced by the humans playing with them, as seen in both this movie and its prequel. After the minifigs are kidnapped/"go to space," they're moved from the basement (Finn's influence) to Bianca's room (Bianca's influence), after which most of them quickly fall in line with Bianca's universe. The minifigs might think they're acting of their own free will but that might actually be impossible so long as humans are influencing them from the "unseen" world.
With Rex's Star-Lord-esque qualities suggesting that the Marvel Cinematic Universe influences Finn's stories, then one can't blame Marvel for not returning Apocalpyseburg's calls, if they went to either someone whom Thanos snapped away beforehand, or someone still struggling to figure out how to bring his victims back. It helps that the former movie might receive a Stealth Insult after Ourmamageddon.note The commentary at least blames Infinity War for the editors needing to shorten exactly how long the movie would show the fake "The End" card, before Lucy interrupts; in test screenings, it lingered for so long, audiences applauded at what seemed like an intriguing Sequel Hook.
Lucy: This isn't the end. It can't be. This isn't one of those things with a downer cliffhanger ending...
Between the way Lord Business is instantly sidelined and the dad is only heard off-screen dumping all parenting responsibilities on the mom in the few times he's home at all, the last movie's lesson didn't stick a single day. The dad is such a small part of his kids' lives and play that he isn't even involved when mom decides to clear out the entire collection that he was so obsessed with in the last movie. The lack of a positive role model explains a lot of Finn's behavior.
To be completely fair, we don't know what the dad's life is like; he's obviously a businessman, which can be a very demanding job. The last movie was mostly about letting Finn play and not being so tyrannical about it; let him do his thing.
It may also be that his lesson from the first movie stuck TOO well. That, in light of realizing what Finn thought of him, he's trying too hard to be the "nice parent", and staying out of Finn and Bianca's squabbles so as not to seem like the overbearing, control-freak dad he was before.
We seem to be being a little harsh to Dad here; he's clearly given the LEGO to his kids so that they can play with it in the way that suits them rather than being dominated by him. However, they're still kids; if they can't play with it reasonably, and if the LEGO seems like it's going to create more trouble than it's worth, them Mom is entirely within rights to take it off them so that they can't use it as a reason to fight. Dad may be simply trusting that his wife is making the fair decision and doesn't want to overrule her. Also, the guy is what seems to be the primary income earner for a medium-sized family; as mentioned above, he almost certainly doesn't necessarily have the luxury of spending his every free moment playing LEGO with his kids.
Also, this could potentially be more Fridge Horror the other way, if we're so inclined. Finn has clearly reached the age where, if his dad suggested that they spend some time playing with LEGO together, he'd probably be met with rolled eyes and a snide retort. We're presuming that Dad is the one who didn't learn a lesson; maybe this time it's Finn pushing his dad away and not the other way around?
More like Fridge Tearjerker - both Emmet and Rex represent Finn. Specifically, Emmet represents the innocent and imaginative kid that Finn was in the first movie, while Rex represents the more bitter and reclusive teenage Finn that you see in this movie. Emmet, who in the first movie was a hero who saved the day just by being kind is now treated as "weak" for being kind and optimistic, while the cynical macho man Rex is depicted as the "cool" one that Emmet should aspire to be (by Finn, not by the movie itself, obviously) until the end, where Finn realizes the error of his ways. This means that Finn now thinks that being kind and optimistic are negative qualities and that being a macho Jerkass is somehow "cooler". Looks like Rex isn't the only one who looks down on his younger self...
On the other hand, Finn might just see the more cynical personality as a better fit for the post-apocalypse scenario he's building in the basement (and maybe the 'betrayed and abandoned' scenario, depending on how much you think Rex's backstory was influenced by Finn actually playing it out).
He may not see them as "negative" per se. Simply that being kind and nice to Bianca is "childish". He seems to be caught in that awkward phase of adolescence where you still love childish things, but try to distance yourself from them to seem "cool" and "mature".
Where Are My Pants? teasing the Man Upstairs' incompetence might make it seem secretly blasphemous, from the perspective of any LEGO people who think of him as a god. This would also mean that the sitcom's large fanbase unknowingly encouraged blasphemy.
Although it was produced by his avatar, so that probably makes it okay.
At the beginning of the movie, when the Duplo Aliens first show up and Emmet attempt to make peace only resulted in them getting greedy, Lucy decides that Violence is the Only Option and hits one of them with an improvised weapon. It didn't do anything, except making the alien scream so loud that the windows of the buildings shatter. Pretty funny joke in-universe, but then you realize that the events in the Lego world parallel similarevents in the real world...
Queen Watevra sings that she doesn't have an ulterior motive, but by not telling Wyldstyle and the others her wedding-union plan and saying she just wants to help still counts as an ulterior motive, even if the motive isn't necessarily evil. On the soundtrack's extended version of "Not Evil", she also claims she never lies or bribes, but not saying a word about her ulterior motive is lying by omission, and giving Benny, Metalbeard and Unikitty 'gifts' does raise the question of "do they like Queen Watevra, or do they just like the gifts?" If the latter, it can count as a bribe of sorts. Lastly, she also did some emotional/psychological manipulation by making Batman want to marry her via exploiting his dislike of Superman.
If you think about it hard enough, Rex gaining freedom of movement in the real world could be this in a way. If he can move and somehow go back and forth between reality and fantasy, what else do you suppose he is capable of in the real world?
Even worse; he can time travel. He states during the climax that he'll just keep trying until he gets it right. How many times has he attempted this??
Fridge Tear Jerker: In the first movie, when Emmet was being interrogated by Bad Cop, he tried to get out of it by telling him that his friends are probably worried about him and wondering where he is, only to find out that the people he considers friends barely remember him and think he is just an unremarkable nobody. Then in this movie, it's revealed that an alternate version of him got stranded under the dryer for a very long time and his friends were so distracted by partying that they didn't even notice he was gone. OmnicidalJerkass or not, it's no wonder Rex feels the way he does.
Emmet and company likely will still wind up in Storajj for a long time...they haven’t averted disaster, just postponed it. Finn is already a teen and his interests will continue to shift toward more adult things in the next few years. He might keep playing with Bianca because it makes her happy, but she’s also going to get older and probably leave the Legos behind too. They’ll go to college and enter the adult world. They’ll wind up in Storajj for a long time, though things might improve if one of them has kids and passes the toys to them. Finn’s dad was an adult after all, though that makes one wonder how different Finn might be if he still collects as an adult. There could be future movie plots there...
At one point in Not Evil, Queen Watevra briefly shifts into the shape of a human hand, something that only Legos who know the true nature of their reality have seen. She probably knew exactly what Armomagedon actually is the whole time. It's no wonder she was so desperate to go through with the matrimonial ceremony.
How lucky is Lucy that all the other minifigs sung "Everything's Not Awesome", instead of something impossible to twist into a more positive light, like "Everything Is Awful"?
, full of detailed insistence that she's not evil, in the classic style of a Villain Song, sounds a lot like a Suspiciously Specific Denial. But realizing that it all comes from the mind of a pre-teen girl, it makes a lot more sense. Fairy tales and Disney movies are lousy with "evil queen" songs, so that's the style she'd expect the queen to sing it, but she's quick to point that she's "not one of those evil queens", not realizing how suspicious that sounds.