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Film Analysis

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Film Analysis – The Lego Movie

Characters: The Lego movie has a robust cast featuring no less than nine principle characters (eleven if you count the two human characters). Of those nine, you have Emmett as your protagonist, Lord Business as your antagonist, Vetruvius as the mentor, Good Cop/Bad Cop as the dragon/antagonist’s right-hand man, Wyldstyle as the sidekick/love interest, Metal Beard and Batman as the skeptics, and Benny and Unikitty as the emotional characters. Of the eight character roles listed by editor/writer Tim Stout, The Lego Movie represents all but one – the logical character. Stout’s roles are hardly the definitive categories for characters in regards to their role in the plot, but in them you can find elements shared by many other character archetypes. All in all, the cast is adequately designed as far as good storytelling is concerned.

In the movie itself, the characters play off of each other wonderfully. Emmett goes from hero to zero but retains his humility and good-naturedness throughout, Wyldstyle warms to Emmett but remains competent, Lord Business eventually undergoes a heel-face turn that aligns perfectly with the movie’s meta-narrative about a father learning to accept his son’s and his own creative drive. The rest of the supporting cast is delightfully humorous and wholly distinct throughout, from Benny’s obsession with spaceships and Batman’s arrogance and otherwise abrasive personality to Unikitty’s anger management issues and Vetruvius’ “alternative lifestyles” and blindness.

Themes: The central theme of the movie is ultimately a bit tired, the cliched “be your self” bit, but it’s delivered in an interesting way. From the get-go, Emmett is presented as an empty shell of a person, consuming media and interacting with the world around him as the instruction booklets he receives tell him to. Over the course of the movie, he discovers a creative spark and goes on to share with other people suffering from a fate similar to his. They go on to create their own inventions and contraptions. It’s a family flick, so it’s understandable the writers and directors would go with something safe.

Plot: The plot follows the Hero’s Journey almost step by step. You begin with Emmett enjoying a completely ordinary, nondescript life as laid out in his instruction booklets (step one), before discovering the piece of resistance after work one day (step two). From there, he’s capture by Lord Business’ men then freed by Wyldstyle. Abhorred by all the rules he’s breaking, he resists, but has to trudge forward anyway since Lord Business would surely melt him if he could (step three). He meets with Vetruvius, a master builder who tries to unlock the secrets of his mind and proclaims him “The Special,” or the Chosen One (step four).

He travels to Cloud Cuckooland, a world free from the meticulous tyranny of Lord Business (step five). There, he meets with the other assembled master builders and attempts to thwart Business’ plan to end the world using “The Kragle” (Krazy Glue) before bungling his speech entirely and leading Business’ goons straight to the master builders (step six). After falling to the bottom of the sea, he and what few allies he has left devise a plot to infiltrate Lord Business’ supertower, relying on Emmett’s entirely mundane and methodical approach to making things to get them through (step seven). They infiltrate the tower successfully, but Emmett is flung from the tower window and falls into the void (step eight). He’s picked up by the Man Upstairs, becoming a master builder (step nine). He attempts to return to his hometown to vanquish Lord Business once and for all (step ten). He talks down Lord Business and seals the Kragle, which will supposedly cause a huge explosion (step eleven). Afterwards, he and Lord Business go about de-Kragling all of the frozen people (step twelve). It’s incredibly formulaic, but the novelty of the setting and the overall humor of the movie distracts from that aspect. More importantly, it works.

Conflicts: The primary conflict is between Emmett and Lord Business. Lord Business wants to freeze the world because he’s the persona of an anal-retentive father, and Emmett is just an ordinary guy who gets caught up in something greater and understandably doesn’t want the world to get frozen. There’s tension between Emmett, Wyldstyle and Batman as part of a love triangle, but little beyond that. It’s resolve peaceably enough. Not much to say about it, really.

Three Act Structure: The movie has three clear acts, with the second one being the longest. Act one runs from the movie’s start until Emmett picks up the piece of the resistance. Act two sees him fall off of the tower after nearly defeating Lord Business. Act three has him return as a master builder. Act 2 has two low points, but Emmett does not gain any particular skills after the first one, which is more of a subversive take on the structure than anything else.

Climax/Resolution: The Climax involves Emmett entering Lord Business’ supercube and placing the piece of resistance on the Kragle. Lord Business undergoes a heel-face turn after Emmett tells him he, too, can be special in his own way, and the father and son that are orchestrating the whole thing through a battle over LEGO reconcile in the process. The Resolution sees the father clean everything up with the son’s help, and Lord Business do the same with Emmett.