Everything... is no longer AWESOME!? The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part review!

The LEGO Movie. The strangest film ever released in theaters. Why is it the strangest film ever? Because it could easily have been a lazy cash-grab with no heart and soul put into it *cough cough* Emoji Movie *cough cough* but Chris Miller and Phil Lord made a name for themselves for turning what in theory would be lazy and shallow into something deep, meaningful, thoroughly entertaining, and mind-blowing. Naturally, we got two spin-off films, The Lego Batman Movie (which is an affectionate parody of not just Batman, but superheroes in general), and The LEGO Ninjago Movie, which admittedly was weaker than the first two films but still holds up on it's own.

Before we continue, I just want to say SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST FILM!!! The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part operates under the assumption you either have already seen the previous film, or at least know about the plot twist that the whole LEGO world is just a child using his LEGO pieces to tell a story in the real world, and the film itself is just a representation of the child's imagination. Anyway, the story begins right where the previous film left off. Now that the Man Upstairs (aka the child's father) has rediscovered the magic of playing with LEGO and learned that it's okay to let his son play with "grown-up toys" (read: more complicated LEGO sets), he gives his younger daughter permission to do the same. The daughter is also a toddler, whilst the son is a tween. The difference in age group naturally leads to them fighting over the LEGO pieces, which is represented as the daughter's LEGO becoming alien invaders that abduct everything cute and colorful while the son's LEGO try to fight off the invaders.

But then's there's a five and a half year Time Skip because this movie was literally in development for exactly five and a half years, and the Time Skip was an in-joke because this film was supposed to come out in 2014 but got delayed all the way into 2019. In the time since the son and the daughter have grown-up a little. The boy is now an angsty teenager while the girl is about the same age the boy was in the first film. And this is reflected in their building styles. The boy now uses more elaborate, edgy-looking builds because he's gotten better at building things, but thinks that being dark and gritty is cool, so most of the cast got "grittier" redesigns and Bricksburg (the main setting for the first film) got turned into a cross between a Fallout Vault and the Capitol from Mad Max. The girl has graduated from DUPLO blocks to full on LEGO pieces, but her shameless girliness results in her building in a more feminine aesthetic, with rainbows, glitter, space aliens, catchy pop music, princesses, and even Disney-esque musical numbers. In fact, this whole film could be interpreted as social commentary on the arbitrary nature of gender roles and stereotypes. That is, until you remember one of the boy's main characters is a walking homage to My Little Pony, so I choose to interpret the film as being less about gender stereotypes and how meaningless they are, and more about the preconception that as you age you are only allowed to like quote-end-quote "Mature" things. But this mindset is only a self-destructive and needlessly crippling hindrance in the human experience. Like drinking alcohol. You need to be of adult age to drink it, so does the act of drinking it make you mature? No. It makes you drunk and act like an idiot. Maturity does not refer to being able to do things that only adults are allowed to do, people! Anyway, the in-universe plot revolves around the girl "abducting" some of the boy's favorite characters to stop an event known as Armamageddon, with the boy sending his chosen champion, Emmett the Construction Worker, to save everybody.

Rant aside, I love LEGO Movie 2's aesthetic and tone choices. Normally I'd knock a few points for the inconsistent nature of the story-telling, but the fact that two completely different kids are trying to tell a story with the same toys is literally a plot device. You know how J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson are fighting over the directing rights to Star Wars? LEGO Movie 2's main conflict is caused by what amounts to two aspiring movie directors trying to take the story arc of their latest project in completely different directions. The boy wanting to make it tough and gritty and cool, and the girl just wanting to do classic era Disney. Like her segments of the film are so similar to classic era Disney films that it makes me wish we got more Classic Era-style  Disney films. 

Anyway, I actually relate a little to the kids. I grew up with LEGO and little Spencer came up with wacky situations to throw my characters in, like an Imperial Stormtrooper and Zane from Ninjago getting into a cook-off against a frog-man, a hippie, and a minotaur. No, I'm not making that up, that was something I actually did as a kid. But on a more serious note, I am a writer, so I understand the frustration the boy feels when the girl hijacks his story. Because no story-teller likes it when an outside force changes YOUR story, possibly for the worse. But then again, I never had a younger sibling around growing up (I got a bajillion cousins though), so the whole fighting over toys thing is something that, while I understand, I don't relate with it because I never had the experience. As such, I relate with the boy's desire to tell a story and artistic frustration when other people derail said story more so than the girl's desire to spend some family time with her emotionally distant brother. Even though I'm pretty sure that the boy closing himself off from his own family to appear tough and cool is a bad thing, and you are supposed to be rooting for the girl to break through to her admittedly jerkish brother. But here I am, just wanting the boy to get his guys back so he can wrap up his post-apocalyptic action story.

But what about the actual characters? Well, ignoring the fact they are all just toys (not even sentient toys like in Toy Story, the film makes it clear that the kids are the ones that give these characters life and voice, and without them they become inanimate), the characters are all great. Almost the entire cast from the first film returns, including my favorite supporting characters ever, Benny the Spaceman and Princess Unikitty. Captain Metalbeard is also back, but out of the supporting cast he's definitely the weakest. He's not a bad character, in fact I find his wasteland design and his girlified design to be really cool looking. But he doesn't really have that much to do. Granted he didn't do much in the previous film, since he spent the majority of that film away from the action because he deemed the rebellion against the antagonist of that film to be a lost cause. But at least he had some scenes to establish his character. Here, the most he does is take part in some group fight sequences, has a few lines to remind us that yes, he is a pirate, and that's pretty much it. Granted, Benny and Unikitty are in a similar boat where they don't have much to do, aside from the aforementioned action sequences. At least Unikitty gets more screen-time than both Benny and Metalbeard combined, thanks in part to her popularity with the fanbase and also the fact that Unikitty actually has her own cartoon that you can go watch on Cartoon Network. So she gets extra star power here.

The main protagonists (outside of the kids themselves) are of course Emmett (played by Chris Pratt) and Wyldstyle (played by Elizabeth Banks). Both are fantastic here. Emmet is the one character owned by the boy to not receive a grittier redesign, unless having part of your torso print chipped off counts as gritty. No, really, the only difference between Emmett's design in the first film and the second, is that the printing on his safety vest is starting to chip away. He's also the only person in Apocalypse-Burg (the boy's main building project) to still have a pleasant, optimistic attitude towards life, despite (or because of?) the world around him growing more and more cynical. A big part of the film is everyone telling Emmett he needs to grow up and act tough, but MILD SPOILERS, Emmett finally toughening up only worsens the conflict and causes everything to go wrong. So Emmett's character development is him learning to become more assertive and less of a push-over, but still hold on to his kindness and ideals, even when the rest of the world thinks him mad for doing so, which is the perfect middle ground between the girl's cutesiness and the boy's edginess.

Wyldstyle (aka Lucy), is the secondary lead of the film, and her character is almost the opposite of Emmett. Where Emmett needs to learn how to become more assertive without becoming overly edgy, Wyldstyle is already edgy and (over)serious, and needs to learn to enjoy herself more often. And also to stop being ashamed of stuff she did when she was younger. I also like how during the third act when all hope seems lost, it's Wyldstyle that motivates everyone to keep on fighting, which in a way mirrors Emmett's role in the first film, and it's here we get the reprise of the fabled melody, Everything Is Awesome. But anyway, I like both Emmett and Wyldstyle, and I especially like Wyldstyle's design, and they have some great chemistry together. 

But now let's talk about my favorite part of the whole movie; Queen Whatevra Wa'nabi. Her name is a pun on the phrase "whatever I want to be". She's the ruler of the Systar System (the girl's main building project) and is a shape-shifter. This is portrayed as her being a sapient pile of LEGO that constantly builds and rebuilds itself over and over. It's beautifully animated and helps her steal the show every time she's on screen. The other thing that helps her steal the show is her charisma and swagger. Like she gets to sing not one, but two completely different songs, and both are really good songs that showcase her swagger quite nicely. 

Next up is Rex Dangervest, a rogue minifigure that guides Emmett through the Systar System, as well as serving as the anthropomorphic personification of perceived maturity, AS WELL AS being a walking shout-out to Chris Pratt's previous roles in theatrical films. For context, before LEGO Movie, he was mostly know for comedic roles in sitcoms. But ever since he played the role of Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy he has been typecast almost exclusively as a tough, manly, impossibly cool action hero (in other words Chris Pratt is slowly transforming into the second coming of Chuck Norris). As such Rex (who is also voiced by Chris Pratt) is a strange combination of Star-Lord, being a lovable rogue from SPACE, and Owen Grady, being a hunter with a pack of trained velociraptors at his beck and call. Now we're about to head into spoiler territory, so if want to remain unspoiled, ignore this paragraph. So Rex is later revealed to be the villain all along, and Queen Whatevra was a red herring. Now, the exact nature of Rex is up for debate. Either he is just another toy serving his role in the kids' story, a minifigure who became self-aware and is actively sabotaging his own creators' story, or some combination of the two. If it's the former, then we have nothing to really worry about. But if he's the latter, then there are some genuinely terrifying implications at play here. Like if Rex could become self-aware, what's stopping the hundreds of minifigures in the boy and girl's collection from doing the same and rebelling against the humans? What kind of damage could a self-aware minifigure do if they had a more sinister plan? And assuming that Rex really could time-travel like he boasts, and the time travel aspect was not something the boy invented for his story, then how many times has he tried to "toughen up" Emmett before failing for good? The whole plot twist involving Rex opens up a massive can of existential crisis worms.

A major antagonist throughout the film is General Mayhem, Queen Whatevra's right-hand woman. The simplest way to describe General Mayhem is that she is basically a female counterpart to none other than Darth Vader. They both wear heavy armor, have deep booming voices, are much more powerful than the average mook and have a heel-face turn later on the story. Though in General Mayhem's case she was a face all along and the boy's main heroes were the heels. Anyway, I like her design, though once she takes off the helmet she looks a bit too similar to Harley Quinn for my liking (especially since Harley Quinn herself cameos in the film). But other than that, she's alright. She isn't a stand-out character but there are some great gags involving her. Like the fact that when she walks she just hops up and down because her legs are all one piece and cannot move individually.

Also, Batman's back! And naturally he brings the best gags with him. He is also involved in a romantic sub-plot with Whatevra, which is... An unusual pairing, but again, the whole thing is a story invented by kids, so they probably don't know how to handle relationships in story-telling yet, so I'll let it slide. Also fun fact! This the third time Will Arnett played the role of Batman, tying him with Christian Bale and Ben Affleck. Which means if if there is another LEGO Movie after this and Batman returns in that one, then Will Arnett will hold the record for most times playing the role of Batman in theatrical films. Not counting cartoons or video games. Because if we count video games, Will Arnett gets bumped up to six times as Batman, but now he's competing with Kevin Conroy, who has played the role of Batman in dozens of cartoons and almost every Batman-related video game ever released. In other words, there is no way Will Arnett can surpass Kevin Conroy as the definitive Batman, but he could in theory overtake the live action Bats. Think of that what you will.

As for the presentation, it's a Lord-Miller LEGO Movie. Of course the visuals are amazing. From the stop-motion style choreography (note, this film is not actually stop-motion, it's actually CGI designed to as closely resemble stop-motion as possible) is a treat to watch, and even though they could have used CGI to cheat and make unbuildable structures, everything in this movie can, in theory, be recreated using real life LEGO pieces. The intentionally low frame-rate further adds to the illusion of stop-motion, and the lighting is by far the best in the films yet. The action sequences are just as exciting as they were in the previous films, which means you'll have to watch this film at least three times just to follow everything because so much stuff happens at once that you could be disoriented. I also like the minor details in the characters themselves, like the reflective shine of the plastic and the little imperfections like the printing on some characters start to chip off, signifying the toys' age. The music is also great, which is good because once the main cast reaches the Systar System the film suddenly changes genres and becomes a musical. And if you thought Everything is Awesome is the ultimate ear worm, just wait until you hear Catchy Song. The voice acting is fantastic, as each actor does their best to bring their character to life in a way only they can. Like I can't imagine anyone besides Chris Pratt as Emmett, or Elizabeth Banks as Wyldstyle, or Charlie Day as Benny.

Overall, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part is a great film that serves as the best possible follow-up to the masterpiece that is The LEGO Movie. ...It still feels weird that something as commercialized as LEGO can pump out something with genuine heart and soul poured into it. But anyway, is this film better than the original? No. Not because the quality is worse, but because of the nature of The LEGO Movie's story structure, back when people didn't know what to expect from this franchise, gives it the kind of novelty where it becomes, almost by default, the best film precisely because it the was first film. Likewise, whichever Star Wars film trilogy you saw first becomes your favorite by default, as the first Star Wars film you watch sets your expectations on what Star Wars should be. Like, if I have kids one day and they grow up with the Disney Era films, and then I make them go back and watch the original trilogy, they are going to think the original trilogy sucks because their expectation for a Star Wars film has been molded by whichever form of it they experienced first. Same with Pokemon. My favorite Generation is 4, because that was my first Pokemon experience. And even though Generation 7 has dozens of quality of life improvements, I can't bring myself to like it more than Generation 4. Nostalgia is a powerful and very dangerous beast, my friends. But with that rant out of the way, I give The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part 9 brightly colored pieces of plastic out of 10.