In the Lego Ninjago Movie, we see two storylines. We see the live action storyline, wherein Jackie Chan/Mr. Liu teaches a young boy about the legendary stories of Ninjago and eventually decides to train the boy in the art of the Ninja. But we also get the animated storyline of Lloyd Garmadon reconciling with his father, the infamous villian known as Lord Garmadon. Two different storylines that are very interlinked. Especially since Meowthra is just Mr. Liu's real world cat and the ultimate weapon is a laser pointer. Also, it's rather unclear if Wu is actually Mr. Liu or not. I don't think he is, but Jackie Chan doing both roles does kind of make things complicated.
Anyways, this movie series could only continue in one way. We need to make the live action segments more interesting, so we can seamlessly do another movie with two storylines. This new storyline will be all about Master Chen, the evil noodle hut magnate who runs a fight club on an island and plans to steal all the powers from the different elemental masters. Chen was Garmadon's master, and it's him who's responsible for some of Garmadon's corruption. Chen is still teaching new warriors the art of darkness, of cheating to win at all costs. Master Chen is a corrupt threat to the whole entire realm of Ninjago, and he's already hard at work abducting the ninja and the other elemental masters. Chen is hard at work, scheming away as best he can.
Chen has an irl counterpart, by the way. In the real world, Master Chen is actually a pastiche of Master Chan, an equally corrupt figure in the real world. Master Chan is the owner of a karate studio in the city, and he's running a tournament to find the best dojo in the city. But he lets his students chest while he doles out unfair punishments to all the students who don't come from his dojo. His dojo's staff help him run his corrupt enterprise, and the boy training under Mr. Liu (let's call this boy by his actor's name for name, which is Kaan) wants to stand up to Chan. Kaan really wants to stand up for himself, but Mr. Liu has a history with Chan. One of Chan's students is actually Liu's son or grandson. And that makes things complicated for him. So the real world has a very sad plotline about a different sort of father son relationship than the one shown in the original movie.
To represent this in the Lego world, Master Chen actually has Morro as one of his ex-students. Chen stole Morro away from Wu, because Wu wouldn't let Morro be controlled by his anger (whereas Chen will definitely let that happen). So Wu and Garmadon are not at odds. Garmadon wants to stand up to Chen, but Wu doesn't want to do it and lose Morro. Morro already barely comes home for family events. He doesn't want to lose him even more than he's already losing him. So the Ninja are pulled in two different directions at once, leading to a rift in the team.
Chen exploits that rift, and he gets Clouse to start whispering in some of the ninja's ears. Soon enough all the Ninja are involved in the Tournament of Elements, and Chen is able to begin his scheme to revive the ancient race of Serpentine buried deep underneath Ninjago City! Yeah, there's a lore difference between the movies and the show. The serpentine are all centuries old, and they're all dead. Chen is still weirdly obsessed with them, though. So his plan is to revive them from the dead using the elemental powers. Because the Ninja are still at each other's throats, Chen succesful revives all the serpentine. Which means that Pythor can show up and become a bonus antagonist for the last half of the movie.
In the real world, things heat up more and more as the day of the big contest approaches. Mr. Liu actively knows he has to take a stand against Chan, but he's so afraid of disappointing his grandson with his actions. He still ends up taking the stand, though. He has to, for the good of fairness and decency. And although his grandson seems angry at him at first, a confrontation between the grandson and kaan leads to liu's grandson realizing his grandfather really does care about him. And then our real world story ends on a really tender note.
Back in the Lego world, Garmadon and Koko and Wu have to finally go undercover to try and find Chen and his island. While the Ninja team up with the elemental masters to try and deal with Morro, Pythor the other serpentine join Chen and Clouse and escape to Ninjago City. By the time Garmadon and Wu get the island, all that's there is Morro, the Ninja and the elemental masters. From here, Morro realizes he's being used by Master Chen. He finally realizes that he's been distant from Wu for no good reason. And the two of them reconcile, just as Mr. Liu and his grandson reconcile.
After this, the whole group, Garmadon and Wu and Koko and the elemental masters and the Ninja and Morro all team up to go deal with Chen and the Serpentine. In the end, Ninjago City is saved! But it is desperately in need of a rebuild, because Chen and the serpentine really damaged the place. But otherwise everything ends happily. Both in the real world and in the Lego world. I'd leave space open for one final movie, just so we could make a trilogy of Lego Ninjago movies. But this is all I have for the Lego Ninjago Movie 2 right now.
