The Lego Movie

Just saw it and really liked it. I wasn't expecting Fight Club in my LEGO movie.

In a conversation on Reddit, I was told that Captain Marvel and How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World might negatively impact it. However, I am unconvinced. HTTYD has already been out for several weeks in some foreign markets, so its novelty has largely worn off.

So, anyone else care to speculate on what the eventual box-office take for this movie is going to end up being? In the context of a $30-35M opening weekend, I can't see it going below $100M domestically, and probably closer to $110M. I don't have any data on The LEGO Movie 2's foreign grosses, and some foreign markets do not get it for a long time yet. Japan and Australia don't get it until March, and while I don't know if China is getting it, that could definitely help.

Probably the best comparison I can make to this movie, performance-wise, is another WB production, Storks. That movie was predicted to have a $30M opening weekend, but ended up debuting to just $21M and earning $72M domestically. It faced stiff competition from Trolls and Doctor Strange. Ultimately, Storks ended up with a worldwide gross of $183M, more than doubling its $70M budget.

So if The LEGO Movie 2 has similar legs to Storks, and considering that it will probably have an opening weekend in the $30-35M range, a worldwide total of above $200M is not out of the question.

I didn't just pull those numbers out of my ass, by the way. I calculated what the possible final domestic gross of The LEGO Movie 2 would be based on those of Warner Bros.' other animated movies, as well as Sony's Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. No matter which movie I used as a model, I always came out with a domestic total of around $100M, give or take.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on Feb 9th 2019 at 2:53:35 PM

LEGO is popular everywhere but the movies have a decidedly "American" style of humor.

So the movie is definitely about on par with the original. I would say not quite as good for minor story reasons, but the creativity in contrasting a "boy" style of play with a "girl" style of play becomes more apparent as they reach the climax. The funny thing is that since the first movie established such unique rules to its narrative that much of the movie became predictable ( "Our-Mom-Aggeddon, really?") and the majority of plot points could be figured out along the way.

My main criticism of the story is the first film established "the man upstairs" as being its own separate story, they intersect and inform each other but they are linear stories with arcs that work independently. With the fake-out "The End" the resolution instead becomes a Deus ex Machina that requires the real world story to intervene, the characters are rescued by the siblings playing together and not because they figured an in-universe way out of the story. On that front, the sibling story is lacking in any real tension, the boy just decides to play with his sister and all is well. Compared to the first movie, the dad has a learning moment over his sons creativity and that's why they end up playing together. The movie almost reaches a similar thing when it starts explaining that the aliens (ie sister) have been trying to communicate/play with them but don't quite understand how, but doesn't really follow through with that.

Here's something interesting. The domestic opening weekend is only about half of what it was for the original The LEGO Movie in 2014, but the overseas opening weekend is actually pretty similar.

The LEGO Movie opened to $18.7 million in 34 territories, while The LEGO Movie 2 opened to $18.1 million in 31 territories.

Just came out of the theater.

The framing device is a lot more overt in this one. Makes sense to build the story from it now that it has been set.

It took me until some character to show up for me to fully get where the meta narrative was heading, but the visuals were a good indication of what the conflict trully was.

Got hit by a feels train towards the end. Got all teary eyed towards the end.

All in all, a fun, enjoyable and emotional journey. 10/10 would watch again.

EDIT:

Anecdotal and not real evidence of anything, but regarding audience attendance, last weekend's HTTYD 3 function had about five times more people at midnight than the afternoon LEGO 2 function I came out of today.

Dragons might just have broader appeal.

Edited by MrSeyker on Feb 10th 2019 at 5:28:41 AM

Saw it.

Yes, like 90% of sequels, it is not as good as the first movie, but for very interesting reasons here. The animation is ramped up with a ton going on, the team has clearly been refining this style and it comes off even more impressive. All the characters are great, LEGO Batman's adventure in his own movie is canon and is mentioned a few times, Lucy's back story comes more into light, and it contains all the elements of the first move I loved, but it's not quite as well pulled-off. The story is a bit weaker and the moral is much more obvious, causing sequences to go on for way longer than they should.

Okay, it was a give-in that the live-action portions were NOT going to be a spoiler twist this time. At its core it's a metaphor for Finn and his sister fighting over legos, and the resolution is achieved when they both agree with play nice together. You SEE the live-action at the beginning. So they had to make up for it by revealing a lot more about certain characters' identities and who really is the bad guy, which I was surprised and glad about. Uh who Rex is is a tad confusing, but maybe could make more sense if you assume its part of Finn's imagination too. I know a ton of people were upset that Lego people can now move and talk normally in the real world by the end, but hey... kid's imagination again. Maya Rudolph is hilarious and her scene is WAY too short! :D Will Ferrall returns as ex-President Business but the character literally hitches a ride out of the movie first chance he gets, and Finn's father is reduced to an off-screen voice, which is actually really funny! I heard it was a musical and I got very worried, but the songs were really good. They were well-written and performed, there weren't a ton of songs, and most of them drove the story forward. Except the song "Everything's Not Awesome" which was way too melodramatic and anvilicious. I didn't really care that Batman and Whatever got married, it DID feel like the next natural step in his character development but I wasn't feeling it.

In the end, I was just having a REGULAR fun time, it wasn't a special admiration that i felt from the first movie. Because the adult conflict (The Man Upstairs, letting kids be kids thing) was out of the picture, there wasn't a ton of things for adults to appreciate here. Because 95% of the movie is in the animated world, Finn and his sister are only seen for like 3 minutes tops and they do not emote. If the two characters who drive the plot have no character, how can we care about the importance of the conflict?

Edited by kyun on Feb 16th 2019 at 5:45:22 AM

How was Ninjago movie anyway?

Didn't see it.

So I heard or was at least under the impression that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would voice her LEGO mini-figure in the movie, but she only appears for that one scene in the trailer and never again. Sucks. I don't know where I heard that now that I think it over. Ginsburg did approve of and gave them her blessing for the cameo though. The movie also has surprise cameos from Bruce Willis, and two basketball players.

Edited by kyun on Feb 17th 2019 at 6:57:10 AM

Easily the weakest of the Lego movies overall but it has its standout moments and their reworking of Lloyd actually works really well with what they're going for.

To answer the quicker question first - I honestly think The Lego Ninjago Movie is way stronger than The Lego Batman Movie, but it might have spoken to me more as a dad. The first is still the best, though.

The Lego Movie 2, I saw it over the weekend, and I will agree that it isn't as strong as the first movie. For one, the direction isn't nearly as strong, and the pacing is off here and there. Part of the problem is that the movie tends to put the focus on Emmet still, but if you look at the story structure, he's not The Hero this time - Lucy is. If you track what the message is, it has way more resonance with her and her character journey/growth, but the movie glosses over the points where that would be reinforced.

Also, the movie is kind of odd in that the messaging is less for adults, but there was at the same time way more adult references. My kid was not getting the references to The Terminator and Hot Tub Time Machine, and boy am I glad for that. But at the same time, outside of one absolutely brilliant reference to C. S. Lewis in the buildup (which works as quick Foreshadowing as to Rex's role in the film). So it wasn't completely bad, but it would have worked better if there was more for adults in the movie than some references.

As for the music, I was pretty happy with what they did. In particular, both of Whatevra Wa'Nabi's numbers were great, and "Not Evil" is the absolute best Villain Song that got subverted, along with Most Definitely Not a Villain I've heard in ages.

Finally, I'm disappointed that I've yet to see a set that has Disco Benny in it.

It figures. Mike Mitchell is the director, not Lord & Miller, so it kinda shows given the slightly different pacing.

The LEGO movies were always known for their pop cultural references which works with how the toys were franchise tie-ins, but it seems The LEGO Movie 2 can't go one minute without several of them! This movie felt way more packed and overstuffed, there were too many jokes and background things going on.

Edited by kyun on Feb 19th 2019 at 8:47:33 AM

I feel bad for the kids. Neither of the parents really seem that great.

Like, yeah, obviously it's shitty of the older brother to smash the little sister's LEGO set, but that's a failing on the parents' part for letting the daughter think she can just take the son's LEG Os without asking him first, or just getting her more of her own when she's old enough not to choke on them. I feel like all the mom wants is obedience and all the dad wants is to be left alone.

Edited by SonOfSharknado on Feb 19th 2019 at 12:22:13 PM

Speaking as a dad, I laugh whenever I see anyone talk about "letting" the kids do this or that. To some extent, kids are going to do what they're going to do. You can order them to do certain things, but I've never seen the perfectly behaved child that always listens to what their parental units say. This is why punishments happen. I'm perfectly fine with glossing over the fact that Bianca was probably, in fact, warned about just taking Lego characters that her brother was playing with (and also glossing over the idea that Finn almost never, if ever, gave permission for Bianca to play with "his" Lego bricks). After all, there's a reason that both kids lost their Lego rights and not just Finn.

To some extent, I'll grant that the dad is checked out of the parenting, but it's very strongly implied throughout the movie that this was the proverbial last straw in terms of arguing over who plays with what Lego sets, with up to five years of arguments between two kids over what is essentially a very petty issue. We're seeing the mom at the end of, from the movie's premise, five years of constant arguments over toys. She's not being presented on her best day, or even a good day, or even a day in which she didn't just step on a freaking Lego brick. Plus, given the fact that she doesn't just take the Lego back at the end of the movie when Finn and Bianca are finally playing together, I honestly think she's a pretty good mom. It's just that her first appearance was already when the situation was pretty devolved, and she had to do her best in a bad circumstance.

Of course, between the two movies, it's pretty safe to say that the dad/The Man Upstairs is pretty checked out and needs to do more work to salvage his relationships with his whole family. If there is to be a The LEGO Movie 3, I'd revolve it around him having to rebuild the relationships between the mom, Finn, and Bianca through the vein of, of course, Lego sets.

Are we sure he wasn't checked out in the first movie? All that time he had to build those massive Lego displays had to come from somewhere.

It feels like whatever lesson The Man Upstairs learned in the basement, he forgot about it immediately as soon as he went back upstairs.

Which makes Will Ferrell's character the most perplexing yet funny. The first film's conflict was caused totally by him, and now he's just an afterthought, like Lord and Miller wrote a script and didn't realize until it was too late that President Business had no role in it, so of course they cast him in a very tongue-in-cheek way.

@Wackd - I'm fairly confident that we're all in agreement that The Man Upstairs was some level of absentee father from the get-go. I mean, there's the off-chance that he let Finn "help" build Lego with him according to the instructions, but I suspect that wasn't the case. I say that as someone who regularly takes his sets apart to rebuild them with his child.

@SonOfSharknado - Well, not totally - after all, his kids were allowed to play with all his Lego without reservation. He just completely missed the part about togetherness and connections.

On the subject of the movie's box office, it's holding up better than many of us expected after its disappointing first weekend. It's already crossed the $100 million mark worldwide, and $200 million looks like a very real possibility at this point.

Nice!

I mean, particularly when you consider that every single movie in the franchise has been a Dump Months release, they've done amazingly well. For all that I wanted things to be sharper in the movie, it's still a solid film that I think is going to do quite well and that I look forward to getting down the line.

Also, I'm loving that my kid is into "Not Evil," to the extent of coming up with a dance for it (which I'm hoping she'll soon consent to letting me film).

Just thought I'd leave an update. The LEGO Movie 2 has crossed $100 million domestically. A final domestic total of $105-110 million shouldn't be out of the question. It has still yet to open in Australia (where the series tends to do pretty well), China, and Japan, so a final tally of $200 million seems possible.

Lego movie STILL isn't out in Australia? Why so behind? Some marketing thing or is it a localization problem?

They're getting it this week. Australia tends to be one of the bigger foreign markets for the LEGO movies. China and Japan also haven't gotten it yet. Those are the major markets that have yet to open, but if it plays well in them (and extrapolating from the previous LEGO movies' performance) in those regions it should have a shot at the $200 million mark.

I made a chart on The Numbers comparing its performance to The LEGO Ninjago Movie: https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/custom-comparisons/Lego-Movie-2-The-Second-Part-The-(2019)/Lego-Ninjago-Movie-The

Edited by ElSquibbonator on Mar 18th 2019 at 5:46:43 AM

Must be because the LEGO movies are animated there.