Robert8

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part

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The only thing that might save the franchise is the tie in merch sales, as often their sales outdo the movies themselves 

Edited by jhuyser

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17 minutes ago, jhuyser said:

The only thing that might save the franchise is the tie in merch sales, as often their sales outdo the movies themselves 

That's actually a great point, many animated franchises practicality live of the toy sales, that's the entire reason Cars 2 even happened

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2 hours ago, Robert8 said:

TLM2 had a 52% drop this weekend and the current box office is $136,619,039. At this point is pretty clear the film won't break even, which means WB will lose money to it

 

 

I'm curious what you mean by it not breaking even? A cursory Google search says that it had a budget of $99 million, so if that's accurate then the box office returns have technically already exceeded that. Which isn't to say it's a resounding success, but not exactly a bomb, either.

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1 hour ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

Unless a miracle happens or it turns out WB has the same level of dedication here as they do with their DCEU best we can hope for is that in 5-10 years we get a sequel like Toy Story 3 or Incredibles 2 to capitalize on Nostalgia

I wouldn't mind that happening honestly, because for as great as they've been, these movies have been seemingly eating into Lego's product line-up somewhat, making it hard for other themes (in-house lines in particular) to find room to set-up shop and establish themselves. 

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Just now, Lyichir said:

I'm curious what you mean by it not breaking even? A cursory Google search says that it had a budget of $99 million, so if that's accurate then the box office returns have technically already exceeded that. Which isn't to say it's a resounding success, but not exactly a bomb, either.

It's a rough rule, but it said that to break even a movie needs to approximately double the budget. Because that budget is just production budget. Marketing and Advertising are not included here and in some cases (not this one) are more expensive than the actual production of the movie. Also, theaters of course take a part of the box office 

So, with a production budget of 99M, TLM2 needs around 198M to break even 

 

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8 minutes ago, Digger of Bricks said:

I wouldn't mind that happening honestly, because for as great as they've been, these movies have been seemingly eating into Lego's product line-up somewhat, making it hard for other themes (in-house lines in particular) to find room to set-up shop and establish themselves. 

While I see what you're saying I couldn't disagree more, even before 2014 there weren't many in-house lines this decade and the ones that that were there were almost all just Bikes, cars, jets and mechs for a team of uninteresting heroes to fight an army of monsters in raw repetitive combat(Plus TLNM and TLM (Asides from Batman) lines were practically just in-house themes themselves). Whereas The LEGO Movies have some of the most interesting builds and ideas in recent memory, just by comparing the normal Ninjago line to The LEGO Ninjago Movie line presents a stark contrast.

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6 minutes ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

While I see what you're saying I couldn't disagree more, even before 2014 there weren't many in-house lines this decade and the ones that that were there were almost all just Bikes, cars, jets and mechs for a team of uninteresting heroes to fight an army of monsters in raw repetitive combat(Plus TLNM and TLM (Asides from Batman) lines were practically just in-house themes themselves). Whereas The LEGO Movies have some of the most interesting builds and ideas in recent memory, just by comparing the normal Ninjago line to The LEGO Ninjago Movie line presents a stark contrast.

I can definitely agree with you on the superiority in quality of the cinematic tie-in sets over other playthemes' offerings, and perhaps it is a bit unfair to partly blame the Lego Movies for the increasing absence of in-house themes. After all, the Lego Movies aren't stopping TLG from acquiring further licenses at a record pace. :sadnew:

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Just now, Digger of Bricks said:

I can definitely agree with you on the superiority in quality of the cinematic tie-in sets over other playthemes' offerings, and perhaps it is a bit unfair to partly blame the Lego Movies for the increasing absence of in-house themes. After all, the Lego Movies aren't stopping TLG from acquiring further licenses at a record pace. :sadnew:

Exactly, it's real weird how their still devoting time and money to a themes like Minecraft which isn't even relevant with kids anymore 

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1 hour ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

Exactly, it's real weird how their still devoting time and money to a themes like Minecraft which isn't even relevant with kids anymore 

Minecraft IS still relevant with kids. The game may no longer be new, but it's still massively popular on a wide range of platforms. And when Lego continues to devote time and money to a theme like that it's usually a good sign that it's continuing to bring in money—despite the perception that it isn't bringing anything new to the table, it'll probably be several years more at least until it loses steam.

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On 2/24/2019 at 5:52 PM, Renny The Spaceman said:

Exactly, it's real weird how their still devoting time and money to a themes like Minecraft which isn't even relevant with kids anymore 

Minecraft is only eight years old. That’s much newer than the Wizarding World, Star Wars, Marvel, and DC, and no one’s saying they’re not relevant to kids.

Edited by Blondie-Wan

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2 hours ago, Blondie-Wan said:

Minecraft is only eight years old. That’s much newer than the Wizarding World, Star Wars, Marvel, and DC, and no one’s saying they’re not relevant to kids.

I obviously didn't mean age, I meant relevance. At least from what I see on the interwebs Minecraft is not seen as the 'in' game anymore, if you go to a store now you won't see the hordes of merch you used to, not one in every two kids you see on the street is wearing shirts with it on and you don't see channel 4 documentaries saying LEGO be gonna replaced by the game because they make LotR sets.

Then again maybe it's just my bias against the theme as the builds are made to intentionally look bad.

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2 minutes ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

I obviously didn't mean age, I meant relevance. At least from what I see on the interwebs Minecraft is not seen as the 'in' game anymore, if you go to a store now you won't see the hordes of merch you used to, not one in every two kids you see on the street is wearing shirts with it on and you don't see channel 4 documentaries saying LEGO be gonna replaced by the game because they make LotR sets.

Then again maybe it's just my bias against the theme as the builds are made to intentionally look bad.

Just because it's no longer getting the hype and press that come with being a new, potentially disruptive craze doesn't mean kids aren't still interested. Here's an article about some of the game's recent sales statistics: https://www.game-debate.com/news/24411/minecraft-sales-hit-144-million-mojang-boasts-of-74-million-active-monthly-players

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Just now, Renny The Spaceman said:

I obviously didn't mean age, I meant relevance. At least from what I see on the interwebs Minecraft is not seen as the 'in' game anymore, if you go to a store now you won't see the hordes of merch you used to, not one in every two kids you see on the street is wearing shirts with it on and you don't see channel 4 documentaries saying LEGO be gonna replaced by the game because they make LotR sets.

Agreed, but there’s a pretty significant gulf between it being absolutely, completely off the cultural radar and merely not being at the peak of its popularity. There are any number of once-popular gaming franchises that are way less popular right now than Minecraft still is - Lode Runner, Zork, Myth, Marathon, Prince of Persia, etc. If Minecraft is still more popular than lots of other franchises, it’s not exactly dead, is it?

Note Minecraft is quite a bit different from all the pop-culture licenses that have gotten a single wave, usually though not always tied to a movie release - Speed Racer, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, The Lone Ranger, Avatar: The Last Airbender, etc. Each of them had a single wave of sets, released to capitalize on the new movie release or the launch of the show, and didn’t stay around; most of them were probably never intended to become ongoing, recurring themes. Minecraft made its LEGO debut way back in 2012 with what we’d now call a LEGO Ideas set, back when it was still LEGO CUUSOO. Not only do lots of licensed themes exist as single-wave themes, but most licenses picked up via CUUSOO / Ideas are for single sets, and don’t even get full themes, even single-wave ones. Minecraft was different, though, right off the bat - it was the first CUUSOO / Ideas set to launch a whole theme, and what’s more, it has stayed around more or less continuously since that 2012 set.

Consider that for a moment. Even those pop-culture licenses that do get more than one wave don’t usually stick around forever. Indiana Jones got four waves. Toy Story got two, followed by a couple figures in the Disney Minifigures series a few years later, and is now getting another wave of sets years later still with the new movie. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings got five waves of sets over three years, followed by the inclusion of a few packs in LEGO Dimensions. These are big, blue-chip licenses, and even they don’t stick around forever. Aside from Minecraft, just about only pop-culture properties with LEGO themes that last continuously for several years are major franchises with ongoing media support (regular and frequent movie releases, ongoing TV series, etc.) What’s more, LEGO tends to produce on the conservative side with most of its licensed properties; very very few does it ever fully exploit as much as its fans would like. Consider all the stuff from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings that fans of LEGO Middle-Earth still yearn for. There’s tons of stuff in the source material of Indiana Jones, Toy Story, The Incredibles, and countless others that LEGO has barely scratched the surface of, or even ignored altogether. Look at Doctor Who - an absolutely massive franchise with several hundred episodes produced over more than half a century, multiple spinoff series, a central character with incarnations played by over a dozen actors, etc., and yet LEGO’s entire offerings for it to date consist of a single Ideas set and two Dimensions packs. Even Harry Potter and the Wizarding World, one of the largest and most long-lived of licensed LEGO themes, has had multiple stretches of multiple years in which few or no new LEGO items were offered - even sometimes when there were new movies! Fans of licensed themes are forever lamenting various properties that LEGO touched and then abandoned without ever exploiting their full potential.

All this, and yet Minecraft has been produced continuously since 2012; it is now 2019. Given LEGO’s oft-demonstrated propensity for dropping licensed themes before they’ve done everything with them that they can, I have to assume they would never have kept Minecraft going for seven years straight (!) if it wasn’t steadily profitable.

Just now, Renny The Spaceman said:

Then again maybe it's just my bias against the theme as the builds are made to intentionally look bad.

Not to look bad, per se, but to look like the source material (and that happens to look... crude, which some would take to look bad).

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On 2/25/2019 at 8:19 AM, Pop Star c o said:

I don't know why gets this movie so badly. For me, it was the best LEGO movie.

You know, I wonder if a big part of the problem was that TLM2 didn't tie into existing Lego that much. TLM1 had the cast of characters familiar to Lego owners, including (but not limited to) the construction worker, the policeman, Batman, the obsolete but iconic spaceman, and the pirate. In Bricksberg, it had the best realised Lego city ever put the screen, grander than the one in your home, but still familiar. Even some of the tie-in sets could be merged seamlessly with your existing collection. For instance, I collected all three of the two in one fighting machines, but only ever built the civilian models to go with my town and City models.

octanfleet01.jpg
TLM2, however, was packed with utterly unfamiliar scenes, and it was clear from the first trailers that this would be the case. Bricksberg, for instance, was transformed into a 'heckish' place packed with references to a movie franchise Lego's target audience shouldn't really be watching. The outer space scenes previewed were even more unfamiliar, and overrun with 'girly' stereotypes. Nothing looked familiar. Nothing appealed to our Lego memories. Instead, it went further down the familiar irreverent animation tropes, in particular, with its overreliance on pop culture references.

I quite enjoyed it, particularly on the second viewing, but still found it hard to follow. A kid in the 5 to 12 age range would find it even harder, particularly as whether the Lego world is in some way real or not is thoroughly brought into question. Still, I think my biggest disappointment was that it appealed to the cultural memories I don't have, rather than the Lego memories I do have.

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26 minutes ago, Bornin1980something said:

You know, I wonder if a big part of the problem was that TLM2 didn't tie into existing Lego that much. TLM1 had the cast of characters familiar to Lego owners, including (but not limited to) the construction worker, the policeman, Batman, the obsolete but iconic spaceman, and the pirate. In Bricksberg, it had the best realised Lego city ever put the screen, grander than the one in your home, but still familiar. Even some of the tie-in sets could be merged seamlessly with your existing collection. For instance, I collected all three of the two in one fighting machines, but only ever built the civilian models to go with my town and City models. 

\
TLM2, however, was packed with utterly unfamiliar scenes, and it was clear from the first trailers that this would be the case. Bricksberg, for instance, was transformed into a 'heckish' place packed with references to a movie franchise Lego's target audience shouldn't really be watching. The outer space scenes previewed were even more unfamiliar, and overrun with 'girly' stereotypes. Nothing looked familiar. Nothing appealed to our Lego memories. Instead, it went further down the familiar irreverent animation tropes, in particular, with its overreliance on pop culture references.

I quite enjoyed it, particularly on the second viewing, but still found it hard to follow. A kid in the 5 to 12 age range would find it even harder, particularly as whether the Lego world is in some way real or not is thoroughly brought into question. Still, I think my biggest disappointment was that it appealed to the cultural memories I don't have, rather than the Lego memories I do have.

I think part of it is that "the Lego memories you do have" are based on your own preferences and biases. For me, the presence of "girlier" subject matter appealed greatly to me, especially in the absence of the Lego Elves theme that I had become a huge fan of in the preceding years. Rex Dangervest's aesthetic reminded me positively of some of the sorts of "action themes" I've loved over the years like Lego Agents or Space Police. And the formless, shapeshifting Queen Watevra (as well as the cast of brick-built Systar System residents) represented a very primal sort of building that I think most Lego fans start out with in childhood, and, from my personal experience, can't help but return to when faced with an array of basic bricks. Meanwhile, the Apocalypseburg setting resonated with my memories of Lego conventions—in particular the sorts of gritty subject matter that often seems to be popular with TFOLs and younger AFOLs. I felt that the evolution of the sorts of subject matter it explored was a natural follow-up to the first movie's plot, shifting from the conflict between the Man Upstairs' very rigid, rule-following mentality and Finn's wide-eyed wonderment to a very different conflict between a teenager's maturing tastes and the even more mercurial and wide ranging tastes of a young girl.

Also, while this Lego movie had a fair share of pop-culture references I don't think it was that many more than the first movie, which had a plot that unapologetically referenced movies like The Matrix and genres like westerns or fantasy epics and peppered in a wide assortment of character cameos among its Master Builders, up to and including real-world celebrities like Shaquille O'Neal.

Edited by Lyichir

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6 hours ago, Lyichir said:

I think part of it is that "the Lego memories you do have" are based on your own preferences and biases. For me, the presence of "girlier" subject matter appealed greatly to me, especially in the absence of the Lego Elves theme that I had become a huge fan of in the preceding years. Rex Dangervest's aesthetic reminded me positively of some of the sorts of "action themes" I've loved over the years like Lego Agents or Space Police. And the formless, shapeshifting Queen Watevra (as well as the cast of brick-built Systar System residents) represented a very primal sort of building that I think most Lego fans start out with in childhood, and, from my personal experience, can't help but return to when faced with an array of basic bricks. Meanwhile, the Apocalypseburg setting resonated with my memories of Lego conventions—in particular the sorts of gritty subject matter that often seems to be popular with TFOLs and younger AFOLs. I felt that the evolution of the sorts of subject matter it explored was a natural follow-up to the first movie's plot, shifting from the conflict between the Man Upstairs' very rigid, rule-following mentality and Finn's wide-eyed wonderment to a very different conflict between a teenager's maturing tastes and the even more mercurial and wide ranging tastes of a young girl.

Also, while this Lego movie had a fair share of pop-culture references I don't think it was that many more than the first movie, which had a plot that unapologetically referenced movies like The Matrix and genres like westerns or fantasy epics and peppered in a wide assortment of character cameos among its Master Builders, up to and including real-world celebrities like Shaquille O'Neal.

Yeah, honestly the post-apocalyptic genre is hardly any more obscure than the dystopian genre which President Business's regime and the Super Secret Police in the first film quite clearly alluded to… and probably a lot more relevant in this day and age than the Western genre that they devoted a major setting to in the first film. What's more, there are many other very familiar childhood references within the Systar System:

Spoiler

 

  • Queen Watevra's initial musical number calls to mind the surreal imagery in many Disney animated musical numbers
  • A lot of the music, motifs, and cinematography in the outer space scenes are obvious allusions to Star Wars — including Sweet Mayhem's Darth Vader-esque voice filter and "enforcer" role under Queen Watevra's command.
  • The climactic importance of a wedding scene echoes a plot point familiar from many Disney Princess films and other feminine-coded cartoons and movies
  • Most of the superhero characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are of course fairly iconic in their own right
  • Balthazar clearly alludes to recent crazes like Twilight and Frozen that kids, interested or not, were in the very least AWARE of.
  • Both the original suburban version of Harmony Town and the transformed, towering version have considerable Dr. Seuss vibes
  • Wyldstyle's new costume calls to mind recent, well-known, and highly influential action heroines like Katniss from The Hunger Games, Rey from Star Wars, etc.
  • …And so on

 

And yeah, concerns about the outer space scenes being "overrun with 'girly' stereotypes are absolutely silly, considering how that really cuts to the heart of one of the movie's biggest STRENGTHS — embracing many forms of iconic childhood toy and media imagery that were neglected by the original film. Like, it's fine that Castle, Pirates, Space, and Western are familiar themes to you. But considering that LEGO Friends is one of the most successful themes of the past decade, I think it goes without saying that including "girly" elements as more than a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo helps make this movie MORE relevant to the tastes of today's kids, not less.

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10 hours ago, Bornin1980something said:

A lot of stuff

While I do agree with your opinion on the key locations of the film, I'm neither a fan of the aesthetic  super 'Masculine' Apocalypseburg or the super 'Feminine' Systar System  (Well apart from the place where Benny can build he spaceship of his dreams, on his very own planet with own spaceship building team)  I'd have to disagree with your assessment as this was a film first and a toy line second. Even then, at least from what I've seen, the set's are selling well.

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12 hours ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

Well apart from the place where Benny can build he spaceship of his dreams, on his very own planet with own spaceship building team

How'd she know that loving spaceships is your one defining trait? :tongue:

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So according to RT, The LEGO Movie 2 needed 300M to break even

Like what the actual heck?!

That's got to be wrong, right? Because if WB was really expecting 300M, then this franchise is deader than dead. I thought it needed aprox. 198M to break even *huh*

 

The movie is currently at 152M and Captain Marvel is coming this week.......... 

:pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel::pir-skel:

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Am i the only one who sees some similarity between TLM2 and SW Episode 8? I have to say, i saw the German Version. I know the first movie and the Batman Movie in English and German. The Translation was great. The way they changed for example jokes to work in German was perfect. Part two seems to be translated by Google and is causing me pain while watching. They should really fire and sue the guy who did that... and everyone of the voice actors, who did not recognise what rubbish they were talking from time to time (both in meaning and grammar). It was the quality of very cheap video games. I often recognised what they wanted to say in English but even with that in mind at best one out of five jokes made me smirk a bit. The humor in part one and the Batman Movie was hilarious. Thinking about how bad the translation was it could be characters are slightly dfferent in the original language but i doubt there is so much difference. The music is not the best in the original Version (listened to it on Youtube)... But in the German version every bit of rythm is broken.

I am shoked by the way they changed for example Benny, the joyfull little guy, who was only sad everytime he was not allowed to build a spaceship, to a psycho with that insane angry look screeming at people when they talk to him while he flies his spaceship. It was so out of character. Unikitty on the other hand isn´t aggressive anymore. If you take all of what she is saying, Wildstyle is clearly looking down on Emmet. In the end she doesn´t change her opinion about him but thinks it is good, that he is pathetic. Emmet was never the smartest. The way they mocked him with the double decker couch in the first movie was really heavy but funny and not against him as a person. When Sweet Mayhem talks about him beeing completely useless (not his idea) it goes much too far and Lucy agrees instead of defending him like any Person with a sense of decency would. Mayhem calls him "Nullnummer", which is a really hard version of "looser" and Wildstyle doesn´t know what to say because she thinks the same... The way she talks about his different qualitys seems ironic. I am disgusted by anyone who sees that as an acceptable behavior for a friend or a boy/girlfriend. In my opinion Lucy is the true villain the way she is pictured. The tripple decker couch, which is failing on rescuing Lucy, is like the cherry on his humilation. If we ignore everything i wrote until now, there is still one thing: Rex is right. If you follow the films own new narrative where the minifigures can walk around (even if it is not that elegant) like in Toy Story, they forget about Emmet for years and dont help him. Rex has every right on earth to be only caring about himself. They don´t even have to look for him. They could timetravel to see where he landed or warn him at least.  These people are not his friends. On the other hand: would Emmet like we know him from the past really stay there till his mind is broken instead of going back by himself beeing a little angry and dissapointed but not hating everyone? Of course new writers and directors can set their own tone. But they did to every single main character from the first movie what Disney did to Luke Skywalker.

Every female character is a Mary Sue. Every male character is stupid and/or hyperaggressive in a way he wasn´t before... The only ones learning are the male characters. And the only thing they are learning is that the females are right and nice even if they act and talk terrible because of a "communication problem". It´s a message i would my kids not want to hear no matter which sex they are. 

I love one thing about the Movie: the raptors. Every sceene with them is good and the jokes are working no matter if you recognise for example the Alien reference. If they made that a short movie out of this with a few additional sceenes it would have been awesome. Rex is cool in the middle of the movie. I do not see him as "toxic masculinity" like some comments i read, but as the kind of overcompensating superstrong/cool/clever character a older version of Finn would invent. He had great potential and i would have loved at least one sceene with him and Batman discussing who is the cooler one. That´s one of the reasons i hate the last 30% of the movie so much...

Edited by Gorilla94

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5 hours ago, Gorilla94 said:

Am i the only one who sees some similarity between TLM2 and SW Episode 8? I have to say, i saw the German Version. I know the first movie and the Batman Movie in English and German. The Translation was great. The way they changed for example jokes to work in German was perfect. Part two seems to be translated by Google and is causing me pain while watching. They should really fire and sue the guy who did that... and everyone of the voice actors, who did not recognise what rubbish they were talking from time to time (both in meaning and grammar). It was the quality of very cheap video games. I often recognised what they wanted to say in English but even with that in mind at best one out of five jokes made me smirk a bit. The humor in part one and the Batman Movie was hilarious. Thinking about how bad the translation was it could be characters are slightly dfferent in the original language but i doubt there is so much difference. The music is not the best in the original Version (listened to it on Youtube)... But in the German version every bit of rythm is broken.

I am shoked by the way they changed for example Benny, the joyfull little guy, who was only sad everytime he was not allowed to build a spaceship, to a psycho with that insane angry look screeming at people when they talk to him while he flies his spaceship. It was so out of character. Unikitty on the other hand isn´t aggressive anymore. If you take all of what she is saying, Wildstyle is clearly looking down on Emmet. In the end she doesn´t change her opinion about him but thinks it is good, that he is pathetic. Emmet was never the smartest. The way they mocked him with the double decker couch in the first movie was really heavy but funny and not against him as a person. When Sweet Mayhem talks about him beeing completely useless (not his idea) it goes much too far and Lucy agrees instead of defending him like any Person with a sense of decency would. Mayhem calls him "Nullnummer", which is a really hard version of "looser" and Wildstyle doesn´t know what to say because she thinks the same... The way she talks about his different qualitys seems ironic. I am disgusted by anyone who sees that as an acceptable behavior for a friend or a boy/girlfriend. In my opinion Lucy is the true villain the way she is pictured. The tripple decker couch, which is failing on rescuing Lucy, is like the cherry on his humilation. If we ignore everything i wrote until now, there is still one thing: Rex is right. If you follow the films own new narrative where the minifigures can walk around (even if it is not that elegant) like in Toy Story, they forget about Emmet for years and dont help him. Rex has every right on earth to be only caring about himself. They don´t even have to look for him. They could timetravel to see where he landed or warn him at least.  These people are not his friends. On the other hand: would Emmet like we know him from the past really stay there till his mind is broken instead of going back by himself beeing a little angry and dissapointed but not hating everyone? Of course new writers and directors can set their own tone. But they did to every single main character from the first movie what Disney did to Luke Skywalker.

Every female character is a Mary Sue. Every male character is stupid and/or hyperaggressive in a way he wasn´t before... The only ones learning are the male characters. And the only thing they are learning is that the females are right and nice even if they act and talk terrible because of a "communication problem". It´s a message i would my kids not want to hear no matter which sex they are. 

I love one thing about the Movie: the raptors. Every sceene with them is good and the jokes are working no matter if you recognise for example the Alien reference. If they made that a short movie out of this with a few additional sceenes it would have been awesome. Rex is cool in the middle of the movie. I do not see him as "toxic masculinity" like some comments i read, but as the kind of overcompensating superstrong/cool/clever character a older version of Finn would invent. He had great potential and i would have loved at least one sceene with him and Batman discussing who is the cooler one. That´s one of the reasons i hate the last 30% of the movie so much...

This is... a bad take.

I'll start with your assertion that the only ones learning are the main male characters, which is super-wrong, because Lucy is just about as much of a protagonist in this one as Emmet and learns alongside him that sensitivity and optimism aren't something that you have to "grow out of". There's a clear difference between her perspective at the beginning of the movie that Emmet's positive attitude is holding him back and her later realization that in fact her own cynical outlook might be unnecessary and blinding her to a better future.

I also disagree with your labeling of every female character as a "Mary Sue", not just because of the sexist connotations of that term (what a surprise, that it gets pulled out for a movie with so much more of a female perspective than the first one), but also because of the aforementioned character growth for Lucy. Even Sweet Mayhem, who admittedly got less character development than I'd hoped for, realized that hiding her true nature instead of being honest about her goals and feelings could have ended in disaster.

And Rex being right? Even realizing the true nature of the universe he's a part of doesn't make his friends or his relationship to them any less real. It's just like how in the real world, understanding that our emotions, thoughts, and choices can be reduced to chemical processes doesn't invalidate the constructed values of morality, empathy, and kindness that hold our society together. And that goes hand in hand with his very blatant toxic masculinity—like the frustrating insistence on "facts not feelings" you see from many critics of feminism, he uses his position of privilege (in his case, his self-important idea of being "enlightened") to deny the reality of the needs and emotions of others.

EDIT: Corrected "Main" to "Male" in the second paragraph

Edited by Lyichir

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2 hours ago, Lyichir said:

This is... a bad take.

I'll start with your assertion that the only ones learning are the main characters, which is super-wrong, because Lucy is just about as much of a protagonist in this one as Emmet and learns alongside him that sensitivity and optimism aren't something that you have to "grow out of". There's a clear difference between her perspective at the beginning of the movie that Emmet's positive attitude is holding him back and her later realization that in fact her own cynical outlook might be unnecessary and blinding her to a better future.

I also disagree with your labeling of every female character as a "Mary Sue", not just because of the sexist connotations of that term (what a surprise, that it gets pulled out for a movie with so much more of a female perspective than the first one), but also because of the aforementioned character growth for Lucy. Even Sweet Mayhem, who admittedly got less character development than I'd hoped for, realized that hiding her true nature instead of being honest about her goals and feelings could have ended in disaster.

And Rex being right? Even realizing the true nature of the universe he's a part of doesn't make his friends or his relationship to them any less real. It's just like how in the real world, understanding that our emotions, thoughts, and choices can be reduced to chemical processes doesn't invalidate the constructed values of morality, empathy, and kindness that hold our society together. And that goes hand in hand with his very blatant toxic masculinity—like the frustrating insistence on "facts not feelings" you see from many critics of feminism, he uses his position of privilege (in his case, his self-important idea of being "enlightened") to deny the reality of the needs and emotions of others.

I don´t know the phrase "bad take".

Ok... Did you even read my comment? Because it is "superfar" away from what i wrote... Where did i say the only ones learning is/are the main character(s)? Where did i say Lucy wasn´t a main character? In my opinion she was in the first one, too. 

You know, that she learned exactly that in the first movie already and fell in love with him for beeing an optimistic and happy little guy who cares about others...? That is the reason it hurts so much listening to her completey out of character first dialouge with Mayhem. It is like Luke throwing his lightsaber away and saying he came here to die, while he left a map to find him - if the lightsaber had feelings .

What means Mary Sue in your opinion? As far as i know Mary Sue is a term for characters who can do anything without need of training and beeing a character without depth. It is used on both sexes and called "Mary Sue" because the prototype of such a charakter was called that way. I can´t see anything sexist about it and i really try to understand you. Could you explain that to me? If this is a accusation towards me you should think twice. You are probalby much more sexist than i am. I am in fact not. Mulan, Eowyn and Lucien for example are three of my favourite characters of all time. My problem are poorly written characters, which are mostly female because some weak writers think their job is done as soon as a female character is "strong" and spend the rest of the day patting their own shoulder. Marge Simpson who trained after getting robbed has in this one 20-Minutes-Episode more depth than Rey or Phasma from 2 Star Wars movies. Give me more Ripleys and i am happy.

Try to separate Lucy in this movie from the one in the first one. There is no development in the second. If we ignore this terrible stuff she says about Emmet and say it is just because of the awfull translation, this is her Story: She wants Emmet to do what is necessery to survive (It is also out of character that Emmet seems to be never worried in the beginning of tlm2. He felt fear in dangerous situations the first movie and would have changed with years of Alien attacks). Then the danger is gone at the end of the movie. There is no need to be tough anymore in lack of any enemy. That´s the reason why she doesn´t want him to destroy the wedding. That´s no character development. If the racist old man in Gran Torino learns to let his prejudice go, this is something he has learned. If he gets new white neighbours, he will act different but without any development. The Queen is evil. She talks and acts evil. Than she says it is a "Kommunikationsproblem", "communication problem" and everything is fine, because people see how great she is... Brainwashing and kidnapping included. Mayhem beats up Batman, Ironbeard, Lucy and Emmet (You know... the one who build the big Mech in the first one and became quite skilled, what he isn´t anymore), insults Emmet and gets beaten up later by Lucy alone, who is now strong enough without training...

A good idea would have been if the younger kid (no matter which sex it has) would learn to be more carefull and don´t come into the room saying "We are going to destroy you!" and smahing everything while the older one tries to include him of her. That would be basic socialisation and a nice theme.

I didn´t say realizing that they are toys makes his relationships less real and i dont get where your speech of feminism comes from... :/ I said in his timeline everybody else acted terrible. Nobody helped him when he needed them and it is even worse thinking about how unbelievable easy it would have been for them to help. This isn´t friendship. That´s the reason why he is right about not caring about THE others anymore - not others in general, but really every other single toy in that room, that let him down. I don´t care about him being a Rex or a Regina Dangervest. I am just shocked by this poor writing.

If it is all about your feelings and feminism, let´s change the characters sexes for a second. A male king kidnapps and manipulates Batgirl to marriage. The kidnapper humilates together with Luke, one of the kidnapped people, Lukes girlfriend. Regina is left alone by all her friends when she is in need of their help and recognizes, she can not rely on them at all... which is her own fault by the movies narrative. Getting angry allready? To me both films would be equally bad...

Edited by Gorilla94

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5 hours ago, Gorilla94 said:

I am shoked by the way they changed for example Benny, the joyfull little guy, who was only sad everytime he was not allowed to build a spaceship, to a psycho with that insane angry look screeming at people when they talk to him while he flies his spaceship. It was so out of character.

So when Emmet doesn't change, it's out of character.  But Benny changing is out of character as well?  Also Benny was still his happy joyful self once they got to the Systar system, freaking out like that is absolutely something he would have done in the first movie too.  Fits his character perfectly.

5 hours ago, Gorilla94 said:

Unikitty on the other hand isn´t aggressive anymore. If you take all of what she is saying,

Myabe not after they get to the Systar system, but she was absolutely super aggressive in Apocalypseburg.  Which is the whole point.  Unikitty is not an aggressive character normally, so when she returns to normal she isn't aggressive at all.

5 hours ago, Gorilla94 said:

Wildstyle is clearly looking down on Emmet. In the end she doesn´t change her opinion about him but thinks it is good, that he is pathetic. Emmet was never the smartest. The way they mocked him with the double decker couch in the first movie was really heavy but funny and not against him as a person. When Sweet Mayhem talks about him beeing completely useless (not his idea) it goes much too far and Lucy agrees instead of defending him like any Person with a sense of decency would. Mayhem calls him "Nullnummer", which is a really hard version of "looser" and Wildstyle doesn´t know what to say because she thinks the same... The way she talks about his different qualitys seems ironic. I am disgusted by anyone who sees that as an acceptable behavior for a friend or a boy/girlfriend. In my opinion Lucy is the true villain the way she is pictured. The tripple decker couch, which is failing on rescuing Lucy, is like the cherry on his humilation.

Wildstyle absolutely does look down on Emmet at the beginning, but she completely changes her opinion of him by the end of the movie.  She doesn't think that it's good he's "pathetic" (which, btw he is not, and if you think he is you've clearly missed a major point of the movie), but she realizes that his optimism and positive attitude in the face of even societal collapse actually make him a very strong character, and are things she should appreciate instead of looking down on.

I think you just got a bad translation.  In the english version, Sweet Mayhem points out that Lucy did all the fighting and Emmet took all the credit.  Which is obviously technically correct and can't be refuted directly, but Lucy absolutely does defend him regardless.  Sure, she did most of the fighting, but she points out that Emmet was absolutely crucial to their survival.  Like she says, you don't have to be a warrior to be a hero.  And Lucy being a warrior doesn't detract from Emmet's heroism, which is the angle Lucy took when defending him.  Asserting that he was a warrior and Sweet Mayhem was completely wrong not only would have been lying, but would have completely detracted from the lessons learned in the first movie.

5 hours ago, Gorilla94 said:

If we ignore everything i wrote until now, there is still one thing: Rex is right. If you follow the films own new narrative where the minifigures can walk around (even if it is not that elegant) like in Toy Story, they forget about Emmet for years and dont help him. Rex has every right on earth to be only caring about himself. They don´t even have to look for him. They could timetravel to see where he landed or warn him at least.  These people are not his friends. On the other hand: would Emmet like we know him from the past really stay there till his mind is broken instead of going back by himself beeing a little angry and dissapointed but not hating everyone? Of course new writers and directors can set their own tone. But they did to every single main character from the first movie what Disney did to Luke Skywalker.

No, Rex is not right.

In Rex's universe, he flies off to save his friends just like is shown in the movie, but ends up crashing in the asteroid field and flying under the dryer.  All of his friends had just been kidnapped, and not only had no way of knowing he was even coming after them at all, but could not have possibly known where he went.  And everyone back at Apocalypseburg probably just assumed he suffered the same fate as everyone else who went to the Systar system.  Remember, Emmet is the only character who even knows that a world exists outside of their LEGO universe.  I'm sure they did look for him, but it's literally impossible for them to find him.  And no, "they could have just time travelled" is not a good alternative.

Also, it would take years before Rex would be able to move enough to get himself out from under the dryer and back to his friends.  And by that point, he had convinced himself they didn't care and had no reason to go back.

5 hours ago, Gorilla94 said:

Every female character is a Mary Sue. Every male character is stupid and/or hyperaggressive in a way he wasn´t before... The only ones learning are the male characters. And the only thing they are learning is that the females are right and nice even if they act and talk terrible because of a "communication problem". It´s a message i would my kids not want to hear no matter which sex they are. 

"Mary Sue" can apply to characters of all sex, but in order to do that you kind of have to stay away from the phrase "every female character is a Mary Sue."  And you especially have to stay away from the assertion that all of the male characters are not.  Every character in this movie had flaws and learned lessons.  I can't see a single one that you could seriously argue was a "Mary Sue."

You really took some interesting lessons away from this movie.  First of all, there were not seperate lessons for the male and female characters.  The daughter (and by extension, the residents of the Systar System, many of which are male) learned that she has to communicate her intentions better.  The son (and by extension, the residents of Apocalypseburg, many of which are female) learns that growing up doesn't mean you have to get all hardcore and edgy.  This lesson is portrayed through Lucy, and her learning to appreciate Emmet for who he is.

And both characters learn how to appreciate their differences and play together.  And all of these are absolutely great messages for kids to hear.

35 minutes ago, Gorilla94 said:

I can´t see anything sexist about it and i really try to understand you. Could you exlain that to me? If this is a accusation towards me you should think twice. You are probalby much more sexist than i am. I am in fact not. Mulan, Eowyn and Lucien for example are three of my favourite characters of all time. My problem are poorly written characters, which are mostly female because some weak writers think their job is done as soon as a female character is "strong" and spend the rest of the day patting their own shoulder. Marge Simpson who trained after getting robbed has in this one 20-Minutes-Episode more depth than Rey or Phasma from 2 Star Wars movies. Give me more Ripleys and i am happy.

One, nobody was accusing you of anything.  Frankly your comments do read as a bit sexist, but pointing that out isn't the same as saying "you are sexist."  It's important to be able to recognize biases in our wording without taking offense people pointing them out and acting like it's an attack on our character.

Two, I think this paragraph right here does bring to light why you might have so many issues with TLM2.  One of the messages in TLM2 is that "femininity," or rather the concepts usually grouped as "feminine" which are present in the Systar System are not bad things.  Sexism is much more complicated than male vs female, and I think can be more accurately summarized as masculine vs feminine.  All of the female characters you just listed (at least the ones I'm familiar with) are very masculine characters regardless of their sex.  In contrast, many of the characters in TLM2 are more on the feminine side.

A character doesn't have to be masculine to have depth.  Again, that was one of the messages of TLM2.  The term "Mary Sue" is very often attributed to feminine characters even though it's rarely actually the case.  I think a major reason for this is that people have trouble understanding that feminine =/= bad.  Hence the accusations of every feminine character in recent memory being "poorly written"

Though off-topic and I don't want to turn this to a Star Wars discussion at all, but since you brought it up Rey is a great example of this.  While she's a naturally gifted character, she has a lot of flaws and goes through a lot of growth over the course of the two movies we've seen.  The exact same thing can be said for Anakin and Luke, and yet nobody called them Mary Sues.  Rey's character has a lot of depth, honestly probably more depth than either Anakin or Luke at these points in their stories, but said depth is disregarded as not being legitimate because her character is more feminine.  I think audiences have more trouble identifying with feminine characters because we're so used to masculine ones being the hero, but that's a whole bigger issue that needs a much more in-depth discussion than is possible here.  We've already kind of gotten off the rails into psychology and social issues as it is.

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