The Lego Movie

Oof,I guess the first lego movie really was lightning in a bottle

If people watched The Second Part this wouldn't have happened.

LEGO: We're done with WB forever and ever.

Also LEGO: But because COVID-19 is a jerk, we made an informational video about it featuring Lego Batman and Lego Alfred. You're welcome.

YouTube version:

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Aug 10th 2022 at 1:57:03 PM

That LEGO coronavirus is great.

They are totally cheating on that push-up bit, by the way. So much for only doing what actual LEGO can do.

Edited by Redmess on May 2nd 2020 at 11:20:08 AM

So I'm actually confused about something. A recent edit to the relevant list on TheOtherWiki claims that The LEGO Movie 2 was a box-office bomb, losing $60 million for the studio. The thing is, the article they cite as proof (this one) doesn't say anything about how much money, if any, the movie actually lost.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on Dec 26th 2020 at 9:39:50 AM

Wikipedia lists the budget at 99 million, and the box office at 192 million. That does not sound like a box office bomb to me.

The 60 million number may be a mistake, taking only the opening weekend into account, which grossed 34 million according to IMDB.

The box office certainly was a little slow at first, and perhaps disappointing, but the movie didn't exactly bomb either.

I also notice that article was written only a month after the movie's release, so the author may have been jumping the gun a little on the negative impact of this movie.

Edited by Redmess on Dec 26th 2020 at 4:47:55 PM

Well, however it did, it certainly didn't encourage WB to make any more.

It's their own fault with oversaturating the market with spinoffs, really. That, and writing off anything that doesn't break the record books, it seems.

The more I rewatch the first film the more the whole "the movie deconstructs the chosen one!" when the whole thing is so on the nose (especially the beginning) about him being "not special" and that he was a special one among the gang.

Um... the more it what? That sentence feels like it's not complete.

There were just too many LEGO animation products and they all basically had the same kind of humor.

They should have paced these better. Like make the sequel and have it do well before you spin-off.

Anwyay rewatching clips of this movie, I'm reminded of how much I love it, and unironically think it's a very deep movie. I have it on dvd, I should rewatch it in full, but sometimes it's just easier to look youtube clips...

I meant the whole supposed "deconstruction" thing people kept praising the film with falls flat.

Oh. Uh, it looks like LEGO Movies might come back with a vengeance?

At least according to producer Dan Lin, who says the next one is still in active development.

I know WB and LEGO had a sticky divorce and it really felt like Universal was just sitting on the LEGO license since 2020 like lazy bums, if this new one is still in the same spirit as the other ones, I won't complain.

Not surprising. LEGO movies could be a genre if it wasn't tied so closely to a brand toy.

WB really fucked up. Instead of doing a sequel after the first, they instead diluted it with two spin-offs on the same year, only for the true sequel to come out after loss of interest. Frozen can get away with a 5 year wait in between, not The Lego Movie.

I think that's the franchising plague at work there. Studios are so eager to immediately jump into spinoffs that they neglect laying the groundwork to justify the existence of these spinoffs in the first place.

Its called having your cake and eating it too

More like jumping the gun, really.

I think just the Lego Batman movie would have been fine (it really is very good), but the Lego Ninjago movie actually really confused a lot of people. It's not clearly part of the movie series...but it also doesn't line up with the TV show and it's part of a line that, while popular, didn't really have any mainstream presence so a lot of the reaction to it was "I don't know what Lego Ninjago is."

Lego ninjas have been around for decades I think,

Yeah, but how well-known would they have been outside of Lego enthusiast circles? These movies are trying to capture a wider audience, after all.

Maybe it would have worked better if they had focused on Lego as a style, rather than a specific franchise, like claymation.

And perhaps the LEGO movie set the wrong tone in a way, by making it feel like a very non-serious movie.

Edited by Redmess on Aug 12th 2022 at 2:45:32 PM

I honestly don't think the franchise is dynamic enough to sustain multiple sublines at the same time. They have simply never had a big enough story mythology backing up major characters compared to something like Transformers. The toys themselves required piggybacking on other brands to maintain its' popularity (Ninjago, Friends and City pale in popularity with Star Wars, DC, Marvel and Technic).

The first Lego Movie was definitely lightning in a bottle, and it does so by embracing the construction aspect of the toys instead of JUST playing with action figures.

Well, like I said, if they focused more on LEGO as a style rather than as a vehicle for other brands and works, they could probably do more with it. People love claymation like Shaun the Sheep and Wallace and Gromit too, after all.