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The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017)

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I just saw it today. I liked it.

I think it was about as good as The LEGO Batman Movie (And both are a major step down from The LEGO Movie itself), but this one had more heart than LEGO Batman did.

There were some really great bits in there. If anyone else is a fan of the Wilhelm Scream, keep an ear open...

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I saw it Friday. It was a good time. Although Ninjago is my favorite theme by far, I thought this was worse than TLBM. Some thoughts that I haven't seen mentioned yet: 

Some of the jokes were absolutely hilarious. The scene with Garmadon describing how he got his four arms really set me off laughing. I also loved the sequence where Lloyd's element was revealed to be "green". Funny stuff. 

I agree that most of the characters were too flat. Garmadon was really good (and he even cried fire!) but the rest felt undeveloped. While I can see the appeal of Jackie Chan, I just can't get behind him as Wu. I think Wu made too many silly jokes and just overall wasn't the wise old sensei that he is in the show.

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It's taken me a while to really process my feelings about the movie. It's not great, especially not as great as the previous two Lego movies, but I wouldn't consider it bad either—at least, not in the conventional way adaptations often turn out bad.

It didn't try to force a more complex story into a traditional movie-shaped hole. It didn't have bad acting. In fact, if anything it was MORE ambitious than the general conflict from the show it was adapting, with Lloyd and Garmadon's relationship being more complex and emotionally satisfying than in the show where it felt like both parties were being "railroaded" by destiny, so to speak. The characterization of the main characters was incredibly strong, even if Lloyd and Garmadon were the only ones who really got a chance to shine.

But the lack of an action-packed climax was bizarre. The lack of development of the other ninja was a weakness, not because it needed to give them equal focus so much as because their development of their elemental powers was such a crucial part of Lloyd's arc, yet felt like it came out of left field. Lloyd's elemental power was never used in anything but a metaphorical sense (and while the metaphor was strong, it didn't make up for the lack of action). And it felt like the movie would be better with more involvement from Misako, since her relationship with Lloyd could arguably be considered as important as Garmadon's yet only really showed up at the beginning and end of the movie.

There were also two specific moments where I really expected something different to happen, where the actual resolution was less narratively impressive. The first was when Lloyd lost his arm—I thought it would have been more interesting and effective if Garmadon had given him one of his own, since for all intents and purposes he has more than he needs, it would be a near-match for Lloyd's black-clad arm, and it could have been called back to when Garmadon is trying to win Lloyd over to his side, in a Star Wars-esque "becoming your father" sense. The second was the resolution with Meowthra—I was half expecting Lloyd to go in after Garmadon, for his elemental powers to activate (either as a tangle of vines or a tangle of energy around both of them as they hugged it out), and for Meowthra to cough them up as a "hairball" (which would have been funny as well as giving Lloyd's elemental power a chance to manifest physically).

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I thought it was great. Maybe not as good as the Lego Movie, but far superior to TLBM (of which I was not a fan). All around a good, fun time.

 

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I had the pleasure of seeing the movie tonight with my three nephews and other members of the family. Everyone enjoyed it quite a bit and the kids thought it was a lot of fun. I'm sure they'll be asking me to take them to see it again! (Which I will, gladly!)

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17 minutes ago, Robert8 said:

Let me continue this discussion by immediately informing everyone that the box office has hit the lowest it has been in 16-years. Simply, fewer people are going out to see movies. It's not this one movie that's doing less than anticipated.

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I ended up seeing it on Friday with my fiance and man was it disappointing overall. There were some good bits but the editing was all over the place, it was so clear they didn't get the time they needed to polish everything which is unfortunate because there was potential, they had some great scenes that just needed some adjusting. Most of the jokes fell flat for me, not because all of them weren't funny but because they didn't get proper attention or time to resonate before switching gears which meant many jokes got undercut by the need to move the dialog along. Speaking of which, I wasn't very impressed with the writing. Overall I was left wishing LEGO/WB give the team on the movie more time to work on it because it clearly wasn't close to being done. Hopefully they will learn from this not to set such a hard line on the release date if they aren't able to make it even if it means that the toys come out at a different time than the movie. As a result, the fantastic sets and game now suffer as a result of a poor quality movie despite the game being fantastic and the sets being some of the best we have ever had for the theme. I'll give some of my more specific critiques in spoiler tags.

Spoiler

I honestly didn't have a problem with the live action beginning to the film, in fact I quite liked that they borrowed the idea that's been used so many times in previous films, however the acting was pretty bad and some of the moments didn't quite work. I could easily forgive it if the "news broadcast" that immediately followed it wasn't so jarringly out of place. It was showing clips of scenes that hadn't happened yet and did a lousy job of setting up the events of the world. It really felt like it was thrown in last minute when they realized they didn't have a proper introduction to the world of Ninjago. It just felt tacked on and cheap in a way that might work in a Saturday morning cartoon but not as the opening act in a movie. There were so many things from the trailers that never showed up in the film or were heavily altered. While it's fairly common for some things in movies to be different from the trailers, this was quite a bit different. One thing that really, really bothered me was when Lloyd jumped off of the building after revealing his face and using a flag to float down to the city below, we next get a whole sequence of Garmadon's forces taking over the city and moving his headquarters and everyone settling in. Then after that's all said and done and it feels like it's a whole different day, it cuts to Lloyd landing on the ground and sneaking through the destruction as if it was merely a moment ago in the midst of the chaos in stark contrast to the scenes of Garmadon's party. That floored me, it's like they meant to put that scene before Garmadon's celebration but put it in the wrong spot. There's NO WAY that was intentional. Overall, there were so many scenes like this throughout the film that gave me mental whiplash. And there's the horrific clipshow every time someone mentions the ultimate weapon... I don't know who's idea that was but they needed to be fired for it. It was truly THAT awful. The clipshow we got later in the film referencing made up martial arts movies was also incredibly jarring and out of place on top of being really poorly done. In fact, I am so certain several of them were done by random crew members, it was so bad. Now had they actually shown clips of famous martial arts films and fighters like the Batman movie did when talking about his change of style over the years, it would've been awesome. For crying out loud, Jackie Chan was in the movie, they could've used some of his movies to train themselves, it would've been hilariously tongue in cheek that the ninjas learned martial arts from watching Jackie Chan movies since he voiced Senseii Wu. I sincerely hope they release an extended or directors cut of the movie for dvd and blu ray because otherwise I don't see myself ever wanting to buy it, let alone watch it again. 

 

Edited by ToaDraco

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19 hours ago, Lyichir said:

It's taken me a while to really process my feelings about the movie. It's not great, especially not as great as the previous two Lego movies, but I wouldn't consider it bad either—at least, not in the conventional way adaptations often turn out bad.

 

  Hide contents

It didn't try to force a more complex story into a traditional movie-shaped hole. It didn't have bad acting. In fact, if anything it was MORE ambitious than the general conflict from the show it was adapting, with Lloyd and Garmadon's relationship being more complex and emotionally satisfying than in the show where it felt like both parties were being "railroaded" by destiny, so to speak. The characterization of the main characters was incredibly strong, even if Lloyd and Garmadon were the only ones who really got a chance to shine.

But the lack of an action-packed climax was bizarre. The lack of development of the other ninja was a weakness, not because it needed to give them equal focus so much as because their development of their elemental powers was such a crucial part of Lloyd's arc, yet felt like it came out of left field. Lloyd's elemental power was never used in anything but a metaphorical sense (and while the metaphor was strong, it didn't make up for the lack of action). And it felt like the movie would be better with more involvement from Misako, since her relationship with Lloyd could arguably be considered as important as Garmadon's yet only really showed up at the beginning and end of the movie.

There were also two specific moments where I really expected something different to happen, where the actual resolution was less narratively impressive. The first was when Lloyd lost his arm—I thought it would have been more interesting and effective if Garmadon had given him one of his own, since for all intents and purposes he has more than he needs, it would be a near-match for Lloyd's black-clad arm, and it could have been called back to when Garmadon is trying to win Lloyd over to his side, in a Star Wars-esque "becoming your father" sense. The second was the resolution with Meowthra—I was half expecting Lloyd to go in after Garmadon, for his elemental powers to activate (either as a tangle of vines or a tangle of energy around both of them as they hugged it out), and for Meowthra to cough them up as a "hairball" (which would have been funny as well as giving Lloyd's elemental power a chance to manifest physically).

 

Saw the movie today. The other two movies were better. Although, the use of integrating real life water etc was interesting.

Spoiler

Totally agree about the arms! There had been so much discussion earlier about how Garmadon got his two extra arms, and then it was rather disappointing when the arm swap didn't happen. Maybe they decided it was too scary for kids watching Garmadon take his own arm off, although Lloyd's already lost his arm. After seeing the wave 2 images and a spinner for Lloyd, I was hoping we'd see him do some cool elemental stuff, maybe even Spinjitzu! *gasp*  But, it didn't happen and that was disappointing. .

 

 

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Just some thoughts on the movie.

Spoiler

I enjoyed the movie, but it could have been much better and had so much potential to be on par with the first LEGO Movie.  The father/son dynamic between Lloyd and Garmadon was great, and their relationship was fleshed out well.  It was quite disappointing to see the other ninja basically have no purpose in the movie besides having to be there because they're in the series (they literally have nothing to do!).  Also, no use of spinjitzu at all was lame.  I thought the cat was alright, but I think it would have been great to have a live-action snake instead and tie it into Garmadon's backstory as he mentions being bitten by a snake, and have the ninja defeat "The Great Devourer" at the climax of the film, rather than having a cat that was thrown into the movie as no more than a gag.  Overall, the movie was fine, but it strayed a bit far from the core of Ninjago and had so many missed opportunities.

 

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Speaking of the Great Devourer:

What if in a sequel, the ninja fight the Great Devourer.. except it's a live action snake. It will never happen, but still. Could've been interesting. 

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It's not doing as well financially compared to the other two movies. I think this tells tales of how far Lego's kiddie-centric brands can go. Will this mean more franchise movies? Lego's IP outside of "generic" Lego (talking about Ninjago, Nexo Knights, etc) really does lack that common adult appeal I find. Where the generic Lego movie is generic enough and JUST Lego so it had more reach IMO. And Batman is Batman... But I would think any future Lego Kiddie IPs would preform comparatively.

 

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18 hours ago, ToaDraco said:

Overall I was left wishing LEGO/WB give the team on the movie more time to work on it because it clearly wasn't close to being done. Hopefully they will learn from this not to set such a hard line on the release date if they aren't able to make it even if it means that the toys come out at a different time than the movie. As a result, the fantastic sets and game now suffer as a result of a poor quality movie despite the game being fantastic and the sets being some of the best we have ever had for the theme.

It would be interesting to know the production process for the movie, and more specifically what they spent this extra year doing (as the movie was supposed to come out last fall, but was set back a year hence Day of the Departed). Even with the extra time, it's clear there were a lot of rough edges to be smoothed out.

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19 hours ago, Robert8 said:

Over the weekend, the film had made only $10.1 million outside of the US; but still, given the cultural inspirations behind the Ninjago theme and its tie-in movie, I wonder if China can eventually help this movie pull through like it has with some other particular films in recent years.

Here is a good article from Screen Rant chronicling this trend.

15 Hollywood Movies That Were Saved by China at the Box Office

1 hour ago, BrickG said:

It's not doing as well financially compared to the other two movies. I think this tells tales of how far Lego's kiddie-centric brands can go. Will this mean more franchise movies? Lego's IP outside of "generic" Lego (talking about Ninjago, Nexo Knights, etc) really does lack that common adult appeal I find. Where the generic Lego movie is generic enough and JUST Lego so it had more reach IMO. And Batman is Batman... But I would think any future Lego Kiddie IPs would preform comparatively.

Good grief, I sure hope not. :ugh:

I mean, I liked The Lego Batman Movie, but it was just a Lego movie in name only; and if we were indeed to see more IP based cinematic spinoff movies, I would unfortunately expect WB to take the same, brick-limited story direction with them.

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Ok. so I was planning to rewatch it before posting my thought but I don't feel like rewathing it anytime soon, so here they are

Overall, it was ok. But you can tell it was edited at last minute. And by that I mean, badly edited. And by that I mean butchered

Spoiler

1. The Braces Girl appears at the bus station without her braces. A Few seconds later, she had them at the school

2. The newscaster were different, right? The woman in the trailer had the Superman hairpiece

3. The scene with the newlyweds on the trailer was deleted ("I promise I'll never forget you")

4. Like what was the whole point of Lady Iron Dragon? She was completely useless. Nya didn't even react after learning her hero was her friend's mom

5. The Temple of the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon set has a completely different ultimate ultimate weapon. 

6. The scene of Lloyd asking Koko about how she met Garmadon didn't happen

7. The Koko/Garmadon flashback was altered. And it wasn't even a flashback. So why was it called the minifigure "Flashback Garmadon" in the CMF?

9. Was the Meowthra menace even solved? At the end the cat was just there with them

10. For an action movie there was no climax whatsover

11. The scene when Lloyd unveils himself as the Green Ninja was completely changed from the trailers.

12. Cole and Jay could have been not there the whole time and no one would have noticed. They did nothing. Like... nothing at all. 

13. Some of the minifigures in the sets don't match what we saw in the movie. Like the bride (deleted scene mentioned in #3) appears with regular clothes. That means Also, Jay parents don't appear in the film

Here are the things I liked

Spoiler

1. Using giant mechs has nothing to do with being a ninja. I'm glad Master Wu pointed it out at some point. 

2. I like how no one knew the 6 guys were the ninjas depite being pretty obvious. This happens with every superhero. It's like there is a new Robin with Batman every time Bruce Wayne adopts a new kid and yet no one gets a clue

3. Garmadon. I liked him a lot

4. They didn't use Finn again for this, which is a good thing. The LEGO Movie was about the father/son relationship. Having Finn here would have been repetitive since the plot is also about the father/son relationship. It would been like they learned nothing about what happened in The LEGO Movie and Finn still has dad issues. 

5. Loved Zane. He was hilarious

I was expecting this movie to be better than The LEGO Batman Movie but not as much as The LEGO Movie, but I was wrong. Ninjago is easily the weakest so far. 

Edited by Robert8

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If the Lego Ninjago Movie isn't doing well in the box office, that's what happens when they alienate the Ninjago fanbase and turn everything upside down and bring in Hollywood hot shot voices. The TV show on Cartoon Network is more accessible than a movie, so acting like the movie will increase viewship of the TV show seems puzzling.

I tried watching the YouTube videos of Comic Con panels of the voice actors and couldn't handle watching them acting like they were raising the bar for Ninjago.

I can't wait for the next season of Ninjago on TV.

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2 hours ago, BubbaFit45531 said:

If the Lego Ninjago Movie isn't doing well in the box office, that's what happens when they alienate the Ninjago fanbase and turn everything upside down and bring in Hollywood hot shot voices. The TV show on Cartoon Network is more accessible than a movie, so acting like the movie will increase viewship of the TV show seems puzzling.

I tried watching the YouTube videos of Comic Con panels of the voice actors and couldn't handle watching them acting like they were raising the bar for Ninjago.

I can't wait for the next season of Ninjago on TV.

Ninjago is niche as hell, even if everything was identical to the TV show and it was so deeply entrenched into the lore and fully canon to the show, the Ninjago fanbase going to see it would not have been able to save the movie (95% of which did anyway). It would have made the movie even more alienating to the average movie-goer/potential fan. What would have made it successful is if it was:

  • Advertised better, enticing more people older than 11 into going to watch it.
  • Written better, leading to better word of mouth spreading, and it not having a 51 on Rotten Tomatoes.

I think you're projecting a bit about the actors.

But the movie increasing viewership is looking increasingly unlikely. Not like CN bothered to have a Ninjago marathon to celebrate the movie's release, or they're doing much to remind people the show exists. The scores the movie got just make it look worse, and the show's not exactly boasting awards either.

Edited by GarmaFan

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Yes, TLBM was better, but I don't think it was terrible.

3 hours ago, Robert8 said:

I was expecting this movie to be better as The LEGO Batman Movie but as much as The LEGO Movie, but I was wrong. Ninjago is easily the weakest so far. 

Yes, but I think that LEGO won't do its mistakes again, so next LEGO movies should be all better.

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"I think you're projecting a bit about the actors."

One of them literally said something like they assembled the best cast ever and they were going on and on about how great they were at ad libbing as if they believed they were so funny. They were really proud of themselves.

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3 hours ago, BubbaFit45531 said:

"I think you're projecting a bit about the actors."

One of them literally said something like they assembled the best cast ever and they were going on and on about how great they were at ad libbing as if they believed they were so funny. They were really proud of themselves.

Well.. they were working on a movie and having fun. That's just what actors do. 

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In my opinion, the problem of the movie was that they put two movies in same year. They were busy with making The LEGO Batman Movie and didn't have enough time for doing the details for The LEGO Ninjago Movie.

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I saw it late on Saturday. My impression: well, it was a movie. I had some Lego stuff I want to try and build. lots of the clips I've seen weren't in the movie. I've never seen any of the Ninjago series so I don't have that frame of reference. It need more time and effort put into it. felt rushed.

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On 9/27/2017 at 7:24 AM, BubbaFit45531 said:

"I think you're projecting a bit about the actors."

One of them literally said something like they assembled the best cast ever and they were going on and on about how great they were at ad libbing as if they believed they were so funny. They were really proud of themselves.

It is easy to judge the actors because they are in front of the camera (or in this case, they're in front of the mic). All the interviews are also part of marketing. As actors, they want to sell the movie also. Do you think they will ridicul their own movie and say anything less to discredit the cast? No.

Just like what @GarmaFan said, they also like to have fun. Besides, you can also take into account that they are also "acting" in front of those interviews. They look fun, therefore, the movie they are in should be fun. Sadly this kind of stunt marketing does not always translate to the box office success.

On 9/26/2017 at 3:11 PM, GarmaFan said:

Ninjago is niche as hell

I think apart from being a small niche, it is also a big gamble for TLG to invest in this movie. My problem with the partnership with WB and TLG is that they hard-set the release date of this movie to go along with the planned release of the LEGO sets. Like others have mentioned, releasing 2 LEGO movies on the same year may not be the best decision both WB and TLG had ever made. It's the law of diminishing returns.

It's sad that Ninjago has to suffer this fate. I'm reading a lot of comments that WB/TLG should be making more calculated decision moving forward - which leads me to think that TLNM could be remembered as the black sheep in the franchise.:sadnew:

 

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I would not have minded waiting another year, or several months as long as they had enough time to fix things. Smarter writing, better editing, more cohesion, all could have made it better. It's a shame, so many things could be improved in a sequel, but I suppose it'd be financially a bad idea. We'll never see these new takes on the characters again. Well, maybe as cameos or side characters in the next movies, but not in a substantial way. 

 

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Speaking of writing. I happened up a Junior novel of the movie while waiting in line at a store. I decided to I decided to buy it and found there are a lot of things different from the movie.

It was an interesting read but there were some thing in there that wouldn't have work as a movie.

Rather a mix of the books story and the movies story is what I think would have made a great Ninjago Movie.

 

 

Edited by Takanuinuva

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