I stand at the precipice of a dark pit called “getting way too deep into contemplating the metafictional cosmology of the Lego Movie” and the edge is crumbling beneath my feet. It’s too late for me, but before the inevitable slide into Lego Movie Lore Heck occurs I might as well ramble about some of my various feelings after seeing the movie. Obvious spoilers for the Lego Movie 2 beneath the cut. also oh god this got long.
First of all, I sort of went through the entire movie with a perpetual “:D” face on and mostly took the whole thing as it went. Because of that I was pretty thoroughly blindsided by the whole time travel thing even though Finn explicitly mentioned it during a vision. I just went through it thinking “haha Chris Pratt is talking to himself and one of them’s the cool movie actor version” without thinking about why they’d make that choice in the first place. Good on you, movie writers, I missed every single breadcrumb on that one.
The amount of more visible interplay between the imagination world and the real world was sort of strange at first, but I guess it makes sense that they’d do that. Considering they lifted the metaphorical curtain in the first movie it was either ignore it entirely or go all in on it. I’m kind of glad they went all in, though boy I have some questions. Questions I will probably go on for far too long about later.
The whole “apocalypseburg” thing and the plotline of Finn is a Teen and Must Be Edgy was great. And by great I mean I’ve been that person. Possibly still kind of that person. Woops. I did like Bianca’s builds, though! I wish they’d let her escape the trap of only working with “girl” blocks, but at least the builds got to be as elaborate and cool as Finn’s stuff. and I’m a sucker for the space fantasy aesthetic so
Animation was good. Watching Queen Whatevra move around was always a delight in particular, as was Unikitty’s ragebeast mode. So many moving parts, I can only imagine how much time that took to make look right...
The whole thing of “oh they’re not actually evil/brainwashed” thing sort of felt... weird, though? It felt like it came out of nowhere after a whole lot of “this is weird! they’re evil!” setup. I imagine in the context of the story and it’s themes it made sense, since we were firmly locked into Wildstyle’s and by proxy Finn’s going into the situation with preconceived notions about how the narrative was playing out but. come on. you can’t show me superman and green lantern getting along and not expect me to think something’s weird going on.
Also whole thing sure went hard on the lampshades and references. I felt some landed better than others on that front.
Overall, the movie still managed to feel really... sincere, I guess? I mean it was pretty snarky at some points and cheesy at others but at least it wholeheartedly embraced the message it was trying to send. that was nice.
...
man if they end up making a Third Part what’s it even gonna be... they didn’t have a stinger like the last one, I wonder if that means they’re done with it?
...
guess it depends on how much money it makes?
