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About
The Lego Movie is a 2014 animated film based on the popular children’s toy, LEGOs. The film’s subject matter, animation, and soundtrack lead it to become one of the highest grossing films of 2014 and earned it several honorable awards and nominations.
History
The LEGO Movie was conceived in 2008 by Dan Lin, who brought the idea to fellow co-producer Roy Lee. The film was green-lit by Warner Bros. in November 2011, and written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Cast as voice actors for the film were Chris Pratt as “Emmet”, Will Ferrell as “Lord Business”, Liam Neeson as “Good Cop/Bad Cop”, Elizabeth Banks as “Wyldstyle”, and Morgan Freeman as “Vitruvius”. Animation of the film was designed to imitate fan-made Brickfilms and real legos although the actual media was computer generated. (seen below)
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The film premiered February 1, 2014, and was released in theaters February 7, 2014.
Plot
From iMDB:
The wizard Vitruvius attempts to protect the “Kragle”, a superweapon, from the evil Lord Business. He fails to do so, but warns Lord Business of a prophecy where a person called the “Special” will find the Piece of Resistance capable of stopping the Kragle.
8 and a half years later, Emmet Joe Brickowski, an ordinary construction worker with no special qualities, comes across a woman, Wyldstyle, who is searching for something after hours at Emmet’s construction site. When he investigates, Emmet falls into a hole and finds the Piece of Resistance. Compelled to touch it, Emmet experiences vivid visions and passes out. He awakens elsewhere, with the Piece of Resistance attached to his back, in the custody of Bad Cop, Lord Business’ lieutenant (whose head sometimes turns around to reveal his other side, Good Cop). There, Emmet learns Business’ plans to destroy the world with the Kragle. Wyldstyle rescues Emmet and takes him to Vitruvius, who explains that he and Wyldstyle are “Master Builders” capable of building anything they need, both with great speed and without instruction manuals. Years ago, Lord Business rose to power, his disapproval of such anarchic creativity resulting in him capturing many of them. As the “Special”, Emmet is destined to defeat him, yet Wyldstyle and Vitruvius are disappointed to find Emmet displays no creativity.
Lord Business plans to use the Kragle (a tube of Krazy Glue with some of the logo’s letters rubbed out) to freeze the universe perfectly in place. Bad Cop tracks down Emmet and Wyldstyle, who are rescued by her boyfriend, Batman. He takes them to a meeting of the remaining Master Builders. Unimpressed with Emmet, they refuse to fight Lord Business. Bad Cop and his forces attack and capture all the Master Builders except for Emmet and a few others. Emmet believes the Master Builders’ weakness is that their individual creativity prevents them from working together. He devises a team plan to infiltrate Lord Business’ headquarters. As Emmet and his allies are captured and imprisoned, Vitruvius attempts to fight back but is killed; with his dying words he admits the prophecy was made up. Business throws the Piece of Resistance off the edge of the universe, sets his headquarters to self-destruct, and leaves with the Kragle while leaving Bad Cop behind. Vitruvius’ ghost tells Emmet that even if the prophecy isn’t real, Emmet can still save the world. Emmet, tied to the self-destruct mechanism’s battery, sacrifices himself for his friends, flinging himself off the edge of the universe.
Inspired, the Master Builders escape and rally with the help of Bad Cop. Soon, Lego people across the universe are building their own creative weapons. The Master Builders lead the charge against Business.
Emmet finds himself in the real world, where the events of the story are being played out within the imagination of a boy, Finn. His father “The Man Upstairs” chastises his son for ruining his father’s Lego set by mixing characters with the wrong playsets, and originating hodgepodge creations. Finn argues that Lego are for children, but his father prefers to Krazy Glue his perceived perfect creations together permanently, as this is how adults play with Lego. In the Lego world, Lord Business’ forces gain the upper hand. Realizing the father will glue all the Lego in place, Emmet wills himself to move and falls off the table, gaining Finn’s attention. Finn returns Emmet to the Lego set, where Emmet builds a massive robot to assist his friends before confronting Lord Business. In the real world, Finn’s father looks at his son’s creations again and finds himself impressed. Realizing his son based the evil Lord Business on him, the father has a change of heart and allows his son to play with his Lego however he sees fit. In the Lego world, Emmet convinces Lord Business that Business, too, is special, as is everyone. Moved by Emmet’s speech, Business destroys the Kragle and unfreezes his victims.
With the world saved, Emmet celebrates with his friends, and Wyldstyle, whose real name is Lucy, becomes his girlfriend. However, alien Duplo beings beam down, announcing their intentions to invade, due to the father allowing Finn’s little sister to play with his Lego set as well. Then at the end they get captured by the Duplo toys.
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 96% fresh rating, as well as a critic rating of 8.1/10, and an average user rating of 4.3/5. On iMDB, the film received an average user rating of 7.8/10, as well as a metacritic score of 83. Opening weekend, the film grossed $69,050,279 and was #1 in the US box office for three straight weeks and the 5th highest grossing film in the US during 2014. Worldwide, the movie grossed a total of $468.1 million and was the 16th highest grossing film worldwide.
Sequel
After the success at the box office, a sequel was announced and set to be May 2017. After the popularity of Batman’s appearance in the film, a Lego Batman spin-off film was reportedly set to be released the same year.
Fandom
Though notably popular among kids, causing a Lego shortage during the Christmas shopping 2014 year, the movie gained a strong online following. As of February 2014, the official Facebook page for The Lego Movie has 2,012,529 likes. The verified Twitter account for the film has 65.3k followers and was created August 2012. As of February 2014, DeviantArt search results for “The Lego Movie” returns over 9,000 deviations created by fans.
Related Memes
Everything is Awesome
Everything is Awesome is the theme song of The Lego Movie, sung by Tegan & Sara and featuring The Lonely Island. It was uploaded to the Warner Bros. YouTube channel Febuary 7, 2014, and gained 30.6 million views within a year.
Though featured several times throughout the movie, the song was also used in the end credits during a brick animation sequence. During the 2015 Oscars, Everything is Awesome was preformed live and featured dancers dressed up as characters from the film, as well as LEGO Oscars handed out to the audience.
The song has numerous YouTube covers and the phrase was frequently used in or as a working title for much of the fan art dedicated to the film.
Everything is Not Awesome
Everything is Not Awesome is a cooperate shaming campaign started by Greenpeace in 2014. The campaign aimed at getting the LEGO group to end it’s partnership with Shell for plans to drill in the arctic for oil. The video was covered by many websites including The Guardian and Forbes. In less than a week the video gained over 3.1 million views.
Although not dissuaded to end their current obligations to the contract, public attention pushed the LEGO group to announce they would not be renewing the contract with Shell once it expired.
Search Interest
External Results
) and KappaHD (
). The original photograph exposes former Justin.tv employee and software creator Josh DeSeno.
