The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

The Lego Movie garnered acclaim from showing how funny and touching a movie based on a licensed property can be. The implication being that most license based media tends to care more about sales rather than quality which many people can attest to from personal experience. (Have you ever played E.T. on Atari, Superman 64, or the My Little Pony Farmville clone?) They praise the ironic use of tropes, the self aware gags, the stunning animation which mimics what stop-motion Lego films look like, the clever writing showing a child’s perspective on the father refusing him access to Legos, and the real life objects referencing the hacks of real world master builders.

    

The more important and understated lesson of both the first and second Lego movies comes from noticing that their limitations did not prevent their creativity as artists, it improved it.

    

A common theme of writing film reviews comes from the auteur school of thought where to create a verbal shorthand for creative decisions we assign one person the metaphorical power of making every decision. This one auteur we assign rarely has that much creative control, but we write as though they do so we can write about a movie having major themes and all the minutiae cooperating to support those ideas and interpretations of ideas presented. But films don’t always feel unified, or even sometimes finished.

Which leads to the collaborative partner of the auteur the studio exec, the bean counter, the man. One simply has to imply a narrative of this producer and his score of surveyors, censors, chart enthusiasts, and red tape dispensers opposing an auteur’s decision and the audience will fill in the gaps. Partially because this situation happens frequently, and partially because we as film enthusiasts write as though it’s the only reason this film must have failed or does not deliver to the same level I expect from this creator and his team. Even though without the bean counters, these directors would not have the resources to display their visions on the scale that they can. Distribution and effects alone mean they would have to make B-movies out of their garages, and no one wants that. Even though Joss Whedon has done that.  Twice.  Successfully.

This common theme either leads to or come from a central assumption that limitations prevent creativity. If we didn’t have to make animated films for kids because people assume animated equals kids film, or if we didn’t need to please the censor by not swearing, or if representing a gay couple having relationship issues wasn’t taboo or financially unviable, we could make something brilliant. Free us from the man and we’ll make the crowd pleasing, award winning, timeless classic you expect of me. But this simply isn’t true.

More often than not, more problems come from refusing to recognize limitations than from being let loose. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast from 2017 chose to cast Emma Watson and market itself on having real-time singing from that recording of that scene, a la Les Miserables from a couple years prior. But Emma Watson’s not as good a singer as the part required. Rather than cast someone who could sing that well, or dubbing over later, they used autotune to try and mask their limitations rather than admit them. Not to mention the writing stuck so close to the animated version to the point every audience members asked themself, “I already own this exact movie, why am I not watching that instead?”

Now you’re probably thinking that instance proves that limitations squash creativity and doesn’t that disprove my point? Actually, no. I have seen different iterations of the Broadway musical version of Beauty and the Beast which repeats the film verbatim while adding new songs and I certainly did not feel my time was wasted by those excursions. Those Broadway versions of Disney films have two major limitations- needing to stick to the script of the animated version, the change of medium to live performance, and not having the same cast. Three. Three major limitations. Yet those bring a new spirit to the piece despite the limitations to create memorable moments that do not remind one of the animated version, from set and costume design to the original songs to the unique physicalization and inflections they give these characters.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part contains limitations galore. The animation still needs to mimic Lego stop motion animation, everything needs to be made of Lego or a real world substance, the film continues immediately from the first-meaning they have to follow up on their own 10 second sequel bait/hook, the writing still needs to have that child-like perspective and sound of the first while also changing because the humans grow and age, every recurring character has previously established personality traits that must remain consistent, the film has an audience expecting another home run so they can’t just be a surprise hit like before, every cameo and joke needs to be family friendly and approved by higher ups at Warner Brothers, Lego, and DC, and doesn’t have a series canon to make fun of like Lego Batman and Lego Ninjago had. Breathe.

The Lego Movie had a scene where the character needs to breathe because it’s in the instructions and they have to animate it as though done in Lego stop-motion. So they had the character bend backwards until his legs and back form a 90 degree angle. It’s hilarious because we don’t expect it and because we also expect and know that Legos move in blocky ways. The Lego Movie 2:The Second Part features a character who morphs to fit the circumstances, so they have her made of normal blocks that reconstruct piece by piece into the approximate shape of what appearance she desires, whether a horse, a hand, or a statue of a reclining figure.

The movie even limits itself further by having the crew in a brown dusty Mad Max style Apocalypse-burg where the color choice is limited, and having Emmet remain his positive upbeat self which is difficult to continue for a main character and prevent from turning into an annoyance. And the movie addresses this by showing why being positive may be a self-created limitation, but more so showing why we shouldn’t despise those who continue to be happy and positive despite the changing circumstances of our lives. We may not choose who comes into our lives and what difficulties life gives us, but we do choose our attitude and how we react to change. Likewise, the film creators can't choose all the limitations they are given, but they can choose to deal with limitations creatively.

The film can’t choose the circumstance of its birth and purpose, but it can choose to play off of the limits it is given, whether that’s a throwaway line about Marvel not returning their calls (since Marvel is owned by Disney) or creating a time travel paradox for the impossibly happy ending.

--Clyde E Northrup (@QLeeches)