The LEGO Movie | |
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"The Story of a Nobody Who Saved Everybody" | |
Directed By | Phil Lord, Christopher Miller |
Screenplay By | Phil Lord, Christopher Miller |
Cast | Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Alison Brie |
Produced By | Dan Lin, Roy Lee |
Cinematography By | Pablo Plaisted |
Film Editing By | David Burrows, Chris McKay |
Music By | Mark Mothersbaugh |
Studio | Village Roadshow Pictures, Lego System A/S, Lin Pictures, Ratpac-Dune Entertainment, Vertigo Entertainment |
Distributed By | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Franchise | LEGO Franchise |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Release Date | February 7, 2014 |
Runtime | 100 Minutes |
Rating | PG |
Budget | $60,000,000 |
Gross | $360,477,997 |
Overview[]
The Lego Movie also stylized as The LEGO Movie is a 2014 American produced 3D computer animated action-comedy-family film with Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, and Morgan Freeman contributing as the primary voice actors along with Will Ferrell both starring as a live action and voice actor. The film was both written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
An ordinary LEGO mini-figure is drawn into a quest alongside the other Master Builders to save LEGO Land from a maniacal tyrant into gluing it into a state of eternal stasis. But can an ordinary nobody do the extraordinary and save everybody?
Plot[]
Lego Master Builder Virtuvius is defeated and blinded by the evil Lord Business who takes a mysterious artifact known as the Kragle that Virtuvius has been safeguarding for many years. With the Kragle in his possession, Business will become unstoppable in Legoland. However Virtuvius prophesies that "The Special" will one day arise to find "The Piece of Resistance" which will counteract the Kragle's power.
Eight years later, President Business controls the ever growing, ever expanding Bricksburg. A tyrant in all but name, Business is just about to unleash his master plan when Emmett Bickowski, an ordinary construction worker in Bricksburg runs into Wyldstyle and instantly develops a crush on the mysterious girl who vanishes shortly afterwards. Searching for her, Emmett accidentally falls into a hole at the construction site where he works and inadvertently discovers the "Piece of Resistance" and experiences strange visions when he comes into contact with it.
Upon awakening, Emmett finds that he has been imprisoned by Business' enforcer, Bad Cop and that the Piece of Resistance has somehow attached itself to his back. During the interrogation, Emmett discovers that Business plans to use the Kragle to freeze all of Legoland, eliminating anarchic creativity.
Emmett is then rescued by Wyldstyle, a Master Builder and a member of the resistance forces against Business and takes him to met Virtuvius. At first excited at the idea that Emmett is the Special, Wyldstyle becomes increasingly disappointed and dismayed, believing that he is not the one that they have been waiting for. To confirm his suspicions that Emmett is the prophesied one, Virtuvius examines his mind and realizes that Emmett has had a vision of the Creator, a strange humanoid type creature that does not resemble other Legos and is referred to as "the Man Upstairs".
Convinced that Emmett is indeed "The Special", he and Wyldstyle along with her boyfriend Batman are able to evade Bad Cop and Business' forces to brings Emmett to met the still-free Master Builders who have escaped being captured by Lord Business. However Emmett fails to impress the other Master Builders and then their meeting is interrupted by Bad Cop accompanied by an armada of Business' forces who have been tracking Emmett.
While most of the Master Builders are captured, a small group consisting of Emmett, Virtuvius, Wyldstyle, Batman, Princess Uni-Kitty, and Benny the Spaceman escape and join up with another renegade Master Builder, Metal Beard.
The group embark on an audacious plan to infiltrate Business' Fortress located at the edge of universe and free the other Master Builders held in a prison known as the Think Tank. Led by Emmett, the group is discovered and Business decapitates Virtuvius who confesses that he made up the whole Prophecy before he dies. Business then removes the Piece of Resistance and hurls it into the rift at the edge of the universe before initiating a self-destruct sequence to blow up the Think Tank, killing any possible future resistance to his reign as he departs to Kragle Bricksburg.
As the timer is winding down, Emmett is visited by the Ghost of Virtuvius who has one last message to him; that even though the Prophecy was false, it was Emmett believing that he was Special that made it real and enabled him to do great things. Ghost Virtuvius begs him to continue to believe in himself and Emmett in a fit of heroism, hurls himself along with the battery powering the self-destruct sequence into the rift, saving the other Master Builders who free themselves.
Wyldstyle uses Business' broadcasting equipment to project a message to all of Legoland where she tells the story of Emmett, the most unlikely yet the most special hero of them all and rallying the ordinary citizens to begin building whatever wacky things pops into their heads to stall Lord Business' plan while she and the other Master Builders rush to Bricksburg to fight Lord Business.
Meanwhile, Emmett awakes in the real world where he discovers that his entire world and the events themselves are an imaginary story being played out by a young boy known as Finn using his father's Lego playsets in the basement of their house and that the "rift" at the edge of the universe; was merely the edge of the tabletop itself. Finn's father appears shortly afterwards and is revealed as "the Man Upstairs" who promptly begins admonishing his son for taking apart his Lego constructs and playing with them. As Emmett watches, the Man Upstairs begins reordering all of Finn's constructs and starts using Krazy Glue (which is the mysterious artifact known as the Kragle with part of the label rubbed out) to permanently glue his "perfect" creations together as his perfect collection. Before Emmett's horrified eyes, all of Legoland is being reordered by the Man Upstairs and in desperation, struggles to seize the "Piece of Resistance" (the cap of the Krazy Glue tube) which attracts the attention of Finn who returns Emmett back to the Legoland playset where Emmett discovers that he has gained the powers of a Master Builder and proceeds to create a construct to save his friends and confront Lord Business himself.
Back in the real world, the Man Upstairs is struggling to take apart some of Finn's outrageous constructs and becomes increasingly impressed with his son's creativity. Absently, he asks his son just what he was doing with them and once Finn begins describing the story plot, the Man Upstairs is rather disheartened to realize that his son has placed him in the role of Lord Business and is the main villain.
Finn proceeds to give Emmett's final plea to Lord Business as a speech to his father describing that the most special, the most extraordinary person in the world is yourself; that no matter what you have done before, you can change if you truly want to. As Lord Business experiences a change of heart and caps the Kragle and unfreezes his victims, so too does the Man Upstairs realize that he doesn't have to build everything exactly according to the plans and instead starts to play with his son with the Legos. Subsequently, the Man Upstairs warns Finn that since he's allowing Finn to play with his stuff, his younger sister will be too.
As Emmett reunites with Wyldstyle after amicably splitting up with Batman and tentatively begin a romantic relationship, a strange group of aliens from the planet Duplo beam down and announce their attention to conquer Legoland.
Cast[]
- Chris Pratt as Emmet Brickowski
- Will Ferrell as Lord Business / The Man Upstairs
- Elizabeth Banks as Wyldstyle
- Will Arnett as Batman
- Morgan Freeman as Virtuvius
- Liam Neeson as Good Cop/Bad Cop / Pa Cop
- Nick Offerman as Metal Beard
- Alison Brie as Princess Uni-Kitty
- Charlie Day as Benny
- Channing Tatum as Superman
- Jonah Hill as Green Lantern
- Cobie Smulders as Wonder Woman
- Jadon Sand as Finn
- Melissa Sturm as Gail and Ma Cop
- Anthony Daniels as C-3PO
- Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian
- Keith Ferguson as Han Solo
- Shaquille O'Neal as Himself
- Will Forte as Abraham Lincoln
- Dave Franco as Wally
- Jake Johnson as Barry
- Keegan-Michael Key as Foreman Jim
- Jorma Taccone as William Shakespeare
Production[]
The concept of a LEGO based movie was conceived as far back as 2007 by Warner Bros. executive Kevin Tsujihara, who believed that such a venture could be very successful due to the popularity of the LEGO toy franchise and the rising popularity of the LEGO based video games. He was able to successfully gather sufficient interest that Dan and Kevin Hageman were recruited to begin writing a script in August of 2009 of an "action adventure set in a LEGO World". Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, fresh from their debut film of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs were asked shortly afterwards if they were interested in the project with a planned release date of 2014. Both Phil Lord and Christopher Miller worked extensively on rewriting the script, announcing that they were finished by March of 2012.
The Australian animation studio, Animal Logic was selected to handle the complex animation portion of the film with Chris McKay supervising. The studio was strongly inspired by fanmade Brickfilms created by stop-motion animation although their work was made exclusively via computer generated imagery. Chris Pratt and Will Arnett were announced as being cast as voice actors in June of 2012, with their co-stars of Morgan Freeman and Elizabeth Banks being cast approximately two months later. The rest of the voice actors cast including Will Ferell, Alison Brie, and Liam Neeson was finalized by November of 2012.
Alternative Movie Titles[]
- The Lego Movie
- The LEGO Movie
- Lego: The Piece of Resistance
Additional/Alternate Movie Taglines[]
- Assembling in 2014
- The Story of a Nobody Who Saved Everybody
Reception[]
The LEGO Movie made a special premiere on February 1, 2014 in the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles, California. It subsequently released on February 7 alongside The Monuments Men and Vampire Academy and debuted in 3,775 theaters in the United States and earned a total gross of $69,050,279 in its opening weekend. The film was immediately catapulted to the 1st most popular movie and maintained its lead for the next three weekends before being toppled to 3rd place by Non-Stop and Son of God. It would continue its downward decline over the course of the rest of its 30-week box office run. Overall, The LEGO Movie earned a total of $257,760,692 domestically and $211,400,000 internationally for a combined worldwide total of $469,160,692.
It received almost overwhelmingly positive reviews with the Rotten Tomatoes website bestowed upon it a "Certified Fresh" 95% approval rating with Metacritic scored it with an "83 out of 100" and labeled it as "Must See". The film also won a number of awards including an AACTA Award for "Best Visual Effects or Animation"; as well as a Golden Globe and Saturn Award for "Best Animated Feature Film".
The enormous popularity and overwhelming commerical success of The LEGO Movie also resulted in the creation of a special 4D movie ride/experience, The LEGO Movie: 4D - The New Adventure exclusive to the Legoland Parks worldwide in 2016. There were also several spin-off projects including two films, The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Ninjago Movie and a TV series, Unikitty! which were all released in 2017 and a direct sequel film; LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part released in 2019.
The LEGO Movie was originally commercially released on DVD and a 3D Blu-Ray + Blu-Ray + DVD + Ultraviolet set on June 17, 2014. It was re-released separately on Blu-Ray and a 3D Blu-Ray + Blu-Ray + DVD set in 2015 and most recently again in a 4K UHD + Blu-Ray + Digital HD set in 2016.
Trivia[]
- This is the first animated film for Morgan Freeman.
- Morgan Freeman stated that Batman, in this film, is his favorite incarnation of the character of all time.
- The most commercially successful animated film made by Warner Bros.
- Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and Christian Bale at one point were considered to reprise the role of Batman.
- This is Wonder Woman's debut in a theatrical film.
- The first theatrical film to have Batman and Superman together.