First off, quick update on the upcoming game reviews. I have two finished, one more than halfway done, and two that still have to be started. I will try to get them done by March, but I can't make much in the way of promises; the past week had the worst winter weather I've ever seen and following an unpleasant bumper-to-snowpile meetup, my car needs repairs and I can feel my wallet dying. So, as you can guess, reviews aren't exactly the biggest thing on my mind at the moment. However, I am still doing my best, and I'll try to have some stuff ready soon-ish. And hey, not all's grim, I could spare a couple bucks on the side to go see a movie in theaters.
The first of those two is The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. I'll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, yet again, since the film is still in theaters. However! The plot of this one hinges heavily on the plot of the original LEGO Movie, including the twist. It's referenced (more like replayed) in the very first minutes, so I HEAVILY recommend you watchg the first film if you haven't seen it before seeing this one.
(By the way, Warner Brothers did an awesome thing with promotion for this film, making the first movie available on YouTube for a full day last year, albeit intercut with ads for the sequel. I kinda wished that became a common thing in promotions, especially for sequels to films that were released a few years prior.)
The plot begins after the alien invasion of the DUPLO at the end of the first movie (don't worry, that wasn't the plot twist of that one). Five years have passed since, and Bricksburg has turned into an apocalyptic, Blatant-Mad-Max-Ripoff wasteland. The aliens kept stealing away every cute thing they could get their hands on, so the LEGO minifigs adapted their world to have nothing cute about it anymore. It's a gloomy desert of violence and edge that you could cut yourself on. In spite of all that, Emmet is still his jolly self, keeping his seemingly-unbreakable positivity even as everybody around him brood and tatto themselves with badass imagery. Even Lucy, the girl Emmet hooked up with by the end of the first film, thinks an awful lot about war and pain lately.
This changes when an advanced spaceship colored with white, blue and pink appears. Emmet just HAD to build a cute house for himself and Lucy, didn't he? The alien aboard this ship demands to speak to the strongest leader in the place. Following an argument with Emmet and Lucy, the alien kidnaps Lucy, Batman, Unikitty, Metalbeard and Benny and flies off in their spaceship. Emmet is left behind, and now he must save Lucy! And all of the others. Good thing he learned to harness the power of creativity in the previous film, and can transform his house into a functional spaceship of his own!
From there, the plot follows two ongoing stories. The alien's captives are brought to the Systar System, a series of planets led by Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi, a creature made of blocks who can change her appearance, rebuilding her body constantly into multiple shapes. The Queen hopes to have all of these guests at a wedding planned later, though Lucy's combative attitude against these aliens makes her a bit of a spanner in Watevra's plans. On his end, Emmet travels through space and almost crashes in a field of asteroids, only to be rescued by Rex Dangervest, some kind of action hero with more titles than any hero should have. After taking Emmet in his massive fist-shaped vessel, he proceeds to train Emmet into becoming a hardened action hero just like him, as those are skills that ought to be useful in this adventure...
And this is where I should stop. I tried not to call too much attention to it during the synopsis, but a theme is omnipresent in the story: Namely, the contrast between genders when kids play with LEGO. How boys play versus how girls play. Oh, it's a lot more complex than that, buuuuuut that's veering into spoiler territory.
Speaking of spoilers, there are twists later in the story, and I am not going to spoil them, even if actually explaining them would help my point. One of these twists is rather blatantly telegraphed to the point where you can figure it out pretty quickly, though I think that was intentional. The second twist may be hidden better.
The strength of the first LEGO Movie was to celebrate creativity as it's encouraged by those building bricks, and as a result not only are these films bursting with creativity, they also have the creativity of builders as a central element of the story. This one, in particular, tries to do things that are even more impressive than the first - I even heard that one scene literally had required a billion virtual bricks. Yikes.
The comedy is omnipresent, but never takes away from the emotional moments. I hope you enjoy fourth wall break, though, because there's a lot of that. It almost pains me that I can't say more about the story, because the morals it shares are all important and vital. This one has a few musical numbers, you'll probably be cursing at the creators for putting ear worms in your head. The animation is stellar, pun not intended, and perhaps goes even further than it did in the first. The animation of Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi is the most notable example.
Now, is it as good as the first film? Oh, that's always a tough question for me. The strength of a good sequel is to do something different enough from the original, without ditching what made the original good in the first place, and those criteria are met here. Although its reliance on knowledge of the ending of the first film means that this is not a movie you want to go in withouit prior knowledge, unlike other franchises where it's possible to start with any film in the series. But is it as good as the original? If it isn't, it comes really darn close, that's for sure!
This makes me want to bust out the LEGO Technic pieces for that giant excavator model and make something out of them. Ah, if I only had more free time...
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