The Lego Movie (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller)

[Milky Joe]

What other movie are you describing here besides The Matrix?

[Watashi]

how did they subvert it?

Er... [

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by saying the prophecy was made up and there is no Chosen One.

]

[Milky Joe]

weak. the movie plays out as if there were a chosen one, then is like, "actually I made it up" and everyone is like Whoooaaaah and then they go back to celebrating their white male savior.

[

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the real subversion is that this is all playing out in the imaginations of a boy and his man-child father.

]

[Kurosawa Fan]

weak. the movie plays out as if there were a chosen one, then is like, "actually I made it up" and everyone is like Whoooaaaah and then they go back to celebrating their white male savior.

[

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But he doesn't really save the day. He convinces Lord Business to save the day by stopping the attack by showing that he is just as "special" as Emmett. Emmett gets his foot glued to the floor and can't save the day. That's hardly Neo-esque. Not only that, as you already mentioned, it is further subverted when you consider that the real savior is a little boy in his father's basement.

]

Also, you should probably spoiler your second sentence.

[number8]

how did they subvert it?

How is it not? The entire moral of the movie is that Chosen Ones are bullshit and that everyone has the potential to be special. It's directly counter to the Chosen One narrative in the movies you're thinking about.

[EyesWideOpen]

Yellow lego figures aren't meant to mean white people anyways. They are meant to be "any race".

[Milky Joe]

[

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But he doesn't really save the day. He convinces Lord Business to save the day by stopping the attack by showing that he is just as "special" as Emmett. Emmett gets his foot glued to the floor and can't save the day. That's hardly Neo-esque. Not only that, as you already mentioned, it is further subverted when you consider that the real savior is a little boy in his father's basement.

]

[

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Convincing the villain to be a good guy is saving the day in my book. And he's Neo-esque because he "dies" (falls into the vortex) and is reborn with higher knowledge about their reality, which he comes back and uses to save said day.

]

How is it not? The entire moral of the movie is that Chosen Ones are bullshit and that everyone has the potential to be special. It's directly counter to the Chosen One narrative in the movies you're thinking about.

I didn't see that as the moral of the movie, but okay. The Matrix movies (at least the latter two) subvert the Chosen One narrative by revealing that it's just another control mechanism. This movie just kinda makes a weak appeal to it not being real, while still following through on it one-hundred percent. Chosen One saves the day and gets the girl, because of course, the woman, who is far more skilled and competent, always falls for the schlubby dude in the end. cuz she's a woman.

I want to reiterate that I really liked the movie and was genuinely moved by the end, but I just thought it fell back on lazy and problematic tropes too often.

Yellow lego figures aren't meant to mean white people anyways. They are meant to be "any race".

Uh-huh. Then why are there black legos?

[EyesWideOpen]

Uh-huh. Then why are there black legos?

In regular Legos there aren't they are all yellow. In the branded versions like Marvel, Batman, etc the characters match their normal skin color. White characters have "a light pink color", like this:

[dreamdead]

Enjoyable enough. While the film does subvert the Chosen One mythos, I do wish that it had moved more progressively to suggesting how Banks' character is not dependent on loving one to achieve success. While others point out that Lucy is able to establish a sense of narrative control in the finale among the Legoans, she and everyone else is still beholden to two male characters. And while that's still fairly progressive for an action film, it doesn't challenge the core concept--especially with the final joke that the sister will now further bring chaos and ill-logic to the Legoland.

Best bit is probably 80s Astronaut guy. That stuff was wonderful.

[Rowland]

First nay? Albeit, a mixed one that only dipped into nay territory with the clunky, ideologically incoherent final act. In the end, it felt too much like it was made by/for the President Businesses in the audience.

[Watashi]

In the end, it felt too much like it was made by/for the President Businesses in the audience.

I have no idea what this means and why it's a bad thing.

[Ezee E]

Yeah, I'm curious what that means too.

[MadMan]

I see the film as being made for people like me who played with Lego's as a kid. Does this mean I'm President Business now? I let my little sisters play with my Lego's all the time. I probably should have tried to keep intact my Lego Star Wars sets that came out around the time of the prequels, but eh what the hell? (Regrets it years later when they're worth tons of money...) :P

Also I think its interesting how [

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the villain in this movie isn't killed off. This is very non-Disney and even at times non-Pixar like. Huh. Curious. Instead the heroes/kid convince the bad guy/father to see the error of his ways and become good. Nice message there.

]

[slqrick]

Really liked the first two thirds and particularly loved the first half hour, but the last act just didn't jibe with me. It could have been problematic that I already knew the twist going in, and while I appreciated what it was trying to do on a symbolic level with those scenes, they killed the momentum of the movie. It just didn't hit me on any emotional level and felt really shoehorned and corny, like they had to make sure all the kids left the movie with some profound learned.

The cast was tremendous though, and I laughed a lot.

[Henry Gale]

Fiiinally got around to seeing this on Friday, and as someone that's been looking forward to it since I heard Lord & Miller were going to be behind it, I was completely expectedly fulfilled and easily invigorated by its energy and hilarious, gorgeous craft, and even loving it more than I assumed I would because I didn't think it could actually live up to my ridiculous hopes and even the response to it so far.

^ Similar to Rick, I had kind of figured out or been mildly spoiler-hinted as to a lot of things going on, [

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Though really, the broad idea of this all stemming from the mind of a child was an idea I had when I initially heard the premise that I was more delighted actually came to fruition as well as it did

], but it allowed me to view a lot of things under the lens of those assumptions and expectations in its own nice way, particularly with certain flashes and foreshadow-y flourishes that made my even more excited for what was to come.

As someone that thinks product placement can be an useful and exemplary tool to allow an audience to related to the reality of a film and allow a film to embelish itself in its time period, it obviously is done really obnoxiously and insultingly in the majority of the times you see it. So needlessly to say I think this is one of the best use of pop culture branding and commercialized properties to conceive its own creative entity I can possibly think of. I've seen people bring up the Toy Story, Wreck-It Ralph and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (by the way of Matrix) comparisons a lot, but I feel like a much less vocalized cousin of it is something like Kingdom Hearts in the way it navigates recognizable worlds, characters and other specific iconography for the audience connect to while it blends its own spellbinding and subversively juxtaposed narrative and lovable singular personality (which is still the unmistakably voice and general sensibilities of those who made Clone High, Cloudy and 21 Jump Street). Thanks to Lord & Miller, the design, animation, Lego manages to be its cinematic own world here, even if more than a significant portion of it owes a debt to endless years of the brand's creative initiative that already existed before it was greenlit.

And that's the beauty of it. It's the movie you envision in your head as a kid while you play with your toys, bringing worlds together in ways that only need to make sense to you, reveling in the joy that it's all for you just the way you want it, especially since deep down, even with your childhood understanding of rights issues and studio politics you know certain characters and ideas would never mix on screen. But then this miracle of a movie sits you down decades later and shows you that not only that those wacky dreaming playtime years not withered away from your mind, but that so many other people had the same kindred imaginations and somehow manifested them into a 100-minute dream you never had yourself, and one that's somehow been captured for you to return to and share with your future generations and cherish forever.

I can't even be bothered to force myself to try to say anything critical about it because it would be microscopic nitpicking or lying and that's pointless and everything is awesome.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Echoing what most have said here, Wow, what an unexpected treat. Although it was kind of expected, since this received such critical raves.

I had the end slightly spoilered for me, in that I knew that

[

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there would be a "real world" beyond the Lego universe.

]

But I had no idea how important it would be to the story, or how much the story relies upon it, once you realize the buried storyline between father and son. I ached when the movie visually explains that

[

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Lord Business is always wearing his super-tall boots because Finn's dad is so tall.

]

The Bat-Song is amazing. The visual technique here, with the Legos looking slightly worn, and the characters not capable of movement beyond what their mini-figs can do (the horses!), and the stop-motiony aesthetic... that's all so inspired.

And as a Lego nurd back in the day, there was something weirdly thrilling about recognizing pieces. Emmett's first clothes change of the morning was a Forestman! I know that's a cheap, easy sort of nostalgia, but I'll be goddamned if it didn't work.

[Lazlo]

I had that set!

[Dead & Messed Up]

I had that set!

It was my first bigger set. It's still at my parents' house.

And now I want it back.

[Qrazy]

It was my first bigger set. It's still at my parents' house.

And now I want it back.

Hell yeah, I had all of those.

[Rowland]

I'm still that guy? *weeps* But, seriously. Corporations are people, my friend.

[MadMan]

I thought this was a 2013 release. Eh oh well.

[Bosco B Thug]

I'm still that guy? *weeps* But, seriously. Corporations are people, my friend.

I recently branded this to my socialist friend who surprisingly liked this as the "Cure corporateness with more, slightly reformed corporateness and lots of tiny little manufactured multicolor pieces" movie.

[number8]

Your friend doesn't realize that corporations have figured out that satirizing themselves is a way to lower a cynic's guard so that they may be less reluctant to consume their output. Giving provisions just enough to stop a rebellion, old political tactic. The Hunger Games got people to resent first-world gluttony while simultaneously hawking Subway sandwiches.

[Bosco B Thug]

Exactly. He sees through the Obama cabal, but not this!

[ledfloyd]

Yeah, the message is definitely a bit muddled, the compositions are occasionally over-crowded, but it's still a ton of fun.