The LEGO Movie

(Consider this your Monday article. Sorry, no Editorial, no Fun Stuff article; instead, a movie review!)

This afternoon, I went to watch The LEGO Movie. Okay, everyone has done that joke already, its from the film, everyone has quoted it, so I guess I can't help but join in... This movie was AWESOME!

No, really! It was an awesome, awesome movie! Everything about it was done well. I think I'd better start at the beginning...

The old wizard Vitruvius, and the main villain Lord Business, are fighting for possession of the dreaded ultimate weapon, the Krygle. Lord Business defeats Vitruvius, who them speaks of a prophecy that a "Chosen One" will soon put an end to Lord Business's plans, thanks to an artifact named the Piece of Resistance. Damn, Chosen One, really? They had to go with that kind of plot, once again? Urgh...

More than eight years later, we meet Emmet, a construction worker whose whole life is regulated by instructions and rules. He kind of knows the people around his and desperately tries to make friends. One night, he spots a girl looking around the construction site for something. After she's gone, he falls down an extremely deep hole and finds a strange, non-LEGO item. The next thing he knows is that it's stuck to his back. This is the Piece of Resistance! Emmet is the Chosen One! And therefore, he gets captured by the villains. He's saved in the nick of time by Wyldstyle, the girl he saw on the construction site. She travels with him through a LEGO City, to a Wild West world, so they can meet Vitruvius. It is shown that Emmet has hardly ever had a creative idea, and can't possibly be the Chosen One. The heroes meet LEGO Batman and travel to another part of the LEGO universe, where they meet up with all the Master Builders; those are all major members of the universe who are able to create all sorts of things with pieces they find around them. However, Emmet proves again that he's really not the best choice for a Chosen One. The meeting gets disrupted by Lord Business's robots, which wreck the place and capture everyone except the group of protagonists.

The only ones who aren't captured by Lord Business are Emmet, Wyldstyle, Vitruvius, Batman, Benny the astronaut, Princess Uni-Kitty, and the pirate Metalbeard (the most badass character in the whole movie, in my opinion). As if that wasn't enough, it seems as Lord Business and his underling Bad Cop constantly have the advantage in this battle. Luckily, Emmet devises a plan so crazy that it works; following instructions to blend in with the other machines entering and leaving Lord Business' Babel tower (Okay, it's not the tower's name, but it's pretty much what it is), and then operating inside to stop his operations. It works for a while, until the group is cornered and captured. With Lord Business's imminent victory, Emmet has lost hope. Lord Business has deployed his robots all over the universe and started gluing everything together thanks to the Krygle. However, Emmet frees himself and then rolls to the side of the tower, which is located at the end of the LEGO universe... and throws himself off the tower, into the abyss, off the end of the universe.

And sadly, I have to stop there. I hate to be cruel like this, but seriously... I don't think I can go beyond that point without ruining the fun of discovering the story. Anything beyond that point would be information you DON'T want to know if you want to see the movie. It's not like Carrie, which was a story we had already seen quite a few times, and as such it wasn't too bad to spoil it. Here... That's not the case. I'm not spoiling this to you (although Wikipedia and TVTropes will be glad to do it).

What is there to say about this movie? It's a deconstruction of the whole "Chosen One" story, as it is shown rather quickly that Emmet can NOT be the Chosen One. He's the butt of all sorts of jokes about his lack of creativity and how lame his very few creations are. Many plot twists are very good, which is why I don't want to spoil them for you. However, I have to tell you right away: One plot twist has a lot of clues set before it actually happens, and therefore you might guess kind of quickly what the major plot twist will be. However, I can't say that you'll easily guess any other plot twist that comes after the major one. The whole theme is "Order" VS "Chaos", but a nice change is that the heroes actually represent the chaos in those two, the right to be creative, while Lord Business represents the tyranny of order.

The story is great, taking a lot of turns. The comedy is great, going through the entire spectrum of comedy one can think of (sarcasm, visual comedy, puns, shout outs and references not only to the LEGO universe and sets, past and present, but also to lots and lots of franchises and series). The visual style is great, this mix of CGI animation with the LEGO characters blended with a bit of stop-motion animation to give the movie its unique look and feel. Finally, one could argue that this movie is a giant commercial for LEGO. In a way, it is. But you can feel that the team behind this movie thought about that, and made sure it wouldn't be just a commercial film. You can feel that they honest-to-God tried to make a story that would both advertise LEGO and provide an interesting story, something that doesn't feel like advertisement and more like true entertainment. You know what? They succeeded. As of writing, the LEGO Movie is one of the better received animated films of the past years. No less!

In other words, this movie is aw-... Er... It's excellent. Go watch it. As soon as you can. It's definitely worth paying to watch this on the big screen.

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Oh, by the way, I got the very first art I commanded for the blog. It's not much, a picture made quickly during some free time by @Punkyval, who I contacted over Twitter. Or, she offered to doodle some quick little pictures and I jumped on the occasion to ask for something. She has an Instagram account, too.

If you say it sucks, well... keep in mind that it was made for free, it was made quickly, and it was made because I was nagging. Therefore, I accept it the way it is. And so should you. It's not every day that you get fan art made of your stuff. It usually happens after you've reached the five digits in number of visits.

(By the way, I'm looking for artists to draw wallpapers to celebrate my blog's first anniversary! Contact me if you want your art to be showcased on this blog!)