Editorial: The Lego Movie 2: Growing Up, Maturing and Getting older.

If there is one trend in entertainment that I cannot stand in any capacity, it is the need for shows, movies and video games to be made as dark and edgy as possible. For some reason, people think that, show being dark and gritty means being more realistic and should be watched more. I don't get it, I realize that life can be dark and depressing, and I do enjoy that media can reflect that with metaphor and symbolism. But when you take something that, at its core was light-hearted and colourful, and then make it so it starts with someone getting murdered, I personally, am going to think you're just doing it for the sake of popularity. Cough... Riverdale... cough.

When did it begin? The whole idea of "Misery equals adulthood"? Did it start with the rise of the teenage demographic? Did it start with the rise of social media usage? did it start when we all started to realize that life sucks? I don't know, all I know is, it's just as wrong and harmful as ignoring all the misery.

But what does this movie, a movie that has Batman growing attached to a shape shifting queen, and has the line "It's not a cookie, it's a chainsaw", say about that idea?

At the start of the movie, we see what the once bustling city of Bricksburg has become, a Mad Max style apocalypse. Complete with everything being made out of scrap, and everyone being grittier. As we know, this is the world as set-up by one of the real world children, the older brother character. In this world, everyone tells Emmet that he is soft and needs to grow-up. This is a world that would most definitely be afraid of what the Systar System is, a fun, energetic, never ending dance party.

This is the world created by the younger sister character. The difference between the two is immediate, as one creates an apocalypse and the other creates a dance party.

I have noticed in life, that everyone wants to grow up quickly. Once you reach adulthood you put away your toys and pick up a briefcase, or a protest sign, or something. Being an adult means you have to be serious now. I've seen this happen before my own eyes as my older brother, who is only two years older than me, just had to start watching Family Guy and Robot Chicken, even though he wasn't even in high school. He had to start playing Rated M video games and watch all of the action heavy anime. Now, I am in my early twenties, and I am still watching SpongeBob and Fraggle Rock, have amassed a large collection of Disney VHS tapes and will not shut the ever loving Hell up about The Muppets.

Isn't that all part of being an adult though? to surround yourself with crude, violent and edgy material? Why is it children in middle school encourage themselves to watch vile and crude shows? Why do they feel the need to grow up in this manner?

Emmet is not a character who can do a task as huge as rescue his friends from an alien system by himself. He needed Rex Dangervest, he needed Lucy, he needed people there. Nobody was there, and that is how Rex came to be. Rex is a symbol of the idea of independence being a staple of adulthood, the idea that if you are getting help, you aren't a true independent adult. Rex, doesn't need anyone.

I find this aspect of adulthood to be hazardous. The idea that having to get help from your parents or some random strangers as being shameful. The idea that full independence is what separates the children from the adults. After all, if a full grown adult still lives with their parents, does that not make them like children?

There is an idea that maturity is all hard work and misery, and that is a part of it. It is harmful, I dare say even toxic, to ignore pain and misery in adult life. However, I find it equally destructive to have adult life be seen as all edgy and miserable. The thing that truly separates adults from children is that, at the end of the day, adults should understand the nuance of life. Children have simple minds that are still evolving, they don't see the world as nuanced and multi-layered. They see heads and they see tails, but the coins never flip for them.

We see this in the movie as well, the older brother sees maturity as gritty and un-childlike. This isn't a silly city where a business tower would be guarded by laser-sharks anymore, this is a world where you must fight to survive. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the younger sister's world is a poppy, happy dance party, where even saying the word "brood" can get you in trouble. In one world, happiness is seen as a sign of weakness, and in the other, misery is seen as a problem.

Of course, come the end of the movie, Emmet learns that growing up doesn't have to mean becoming Rex. Growing up doesn't have to mean disillusionment and misery. It means understanding when the dance parties have to come to an end and when to address the misery at hand. The idea that adulthood simply means to put away your love for things like rainbows and SpongeBob is obsolete, or it should be. I see on Twitter people who were bullied in school because they weren't watching Family Guy when they weren't even seventeen, people shamed for having a passion that wasn't seen as "Adult" or "Grown Up".

Now, I am not claiming to be digging deep into this movie. The main purpose of this post is to incite conversation about this topic. The ideas of what it means to grow up, what it means to put away childish things. Does growing up have to be the apocalypse setting, or can growing up coexist with a more pleasant and upbeat setting?

To end this post, I leave you with a quote from famous author C.S. Lewis.

-“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

-C.S. Lewis

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019) - A humorous, if oddly meta, sequel

Well, I am back, finally. Because of the ever present duty of having to go to art college, I've sadly fallen behind on writing these reviews. I missed all of January, but better late than never. So, let's kick off 2020 with a review for a movie that came out before I started doing First Impressions blogs. The sequel I don't know if anybody wanted but I know we're all glad we got, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part... ugh.

Can I do the whole PieGuyRulz thing with the image of a tangent line when I'm about to go on an unnecessary, but still really important to me, tangent?

Before I get into this review proper, I just want to say that I really, really hate the title. "The Second Part". I mean, movies have had these kind of joke subtitles for a while, but that was like "The Naked Gun 33⅓" or "Leonard Part 6". Of course, movies also do sometimes seriously do similar things with their titles like "Pokemon: The First Movie" or "Doug's First Movie". Of course, I hate those titles too, but that isn't my problem. If you just see the title, and watch a trailer, what is your impression gonna be? Mine was "We're not taking this movie seriously enough to think of a proper subtitle." Of course, this subtitle is kind of a joke, but we'll get there.

Well, tangent over.

After the events of the first movie, the world of the Legos is now an apocalypse, where everyone is gritty and hardened, save for Emmet, whom remains his chipper self. However, Lucy feels that he needs to change with the world, he needs to grow up. This becomes clearer as a being from a space called the "Systar System" has kidnapped his friends and now he must go and save them. Along the way, he gets help from Rex Dangervest, and his friends see the one who rules over the Systar System. Will Emmet save his friends, or is all not as it seems?

Yes, the plot is solid. It flows very well and you can see how the progression works from point A to point E. However, I do have some problems with it and that is over the twist reveal.

Now, I'm going to do something I don't normally do, and I have a whole lot of respect and admiration for Animated Antic. In fact, if you aren't following him on Twitter, you are really missing out, he makes my knowledge and love for animation look like small beans. However, in his review of this movie, he mentioned that he did not like the twist, and said that it had little to no build-up for the reveal. Personally, I disagree, I do think there was some build-up, such as Rex knowing Emmet's name without him introducing himself, and even more meta, him listing off a bunch of Chris Pratt roles in his introduction. My biggest problem with the reveal is that... well, you know what a red herring is?

A red herring is a device used in writing to throw readers off of the main scent of the real bad guy. Handled well, they can be really interesting ways to keep the audience second guessing. I don't think this movie used the trope badly, but it was less, tossing some herring to the side of the path and more, standing out in the open and shouting "Hey, look at that whale, it's a whale! You'll never see something like that ever again, pay attention to the whale!"

The Rex reveal I can get behind, but the whole Systar reveal does kind of lose me. It's all obvious and blatant and then at the end it's all "Nope, Maggie shot Mr. Burns", and even that has more clues to it being the solution.

But hey, I have enjoyed other movies with flawed plots. So, how does this movie fare in other places?

To get the quick one out of the way, character-wise is pretty decent. A lot of the side characters make brief appearances and mostly revolve around one gag. I do love how they play on Batman's narcissism and insecurity, Rex is on his own a really funny character and Queen Whatevra Wa'nabi does have some clever and funny moments. What I was really impressed with was how good the chemistry between Emmet and Lucy was in this movie. The scene that really got me to praise this was a small moment when they were running from the Sis-star commander and accidentally drive through and total the house Emmet built. You can see on Lucy's face that, while she did not agree with it, she might not have even understood it, she knew that it meant something to Emmet. Small touches like that really make movies all the better on rewatch.

The movie also has some song numbers which are, fine. I didn't hate any of the songs, but I don't think I'll really come back to them. They're harmless overall.

The animation is really good too, the contrast in palette from the apocalypse setting to space and Rex's ship to the Systar setting makes each location stand out, and I love the incorporation of the different Lego brands, like Duplo and Lego Friends. I also have to give praise for the camera work, a lot of the shots really do add to the tensity and unease of the situation. While I don't think it is one of the best looking movies I've seen, at the same time, that is a pretty high bar for me. It still does look fantastic and does have a bit of it's own identity apart from the first movie. This separate identity carries over into the writing of this movie too.

Ugh... now we get to the complex part. The humour of this movie. This isn't to say that the movie is unfunny, there were a lot of times I had a solid laugh at a joke this movie made. My issue is not so much the jokes the movie makes in itself, it's the jokes this movie makes of itself. This movie, to me, comes off as a very meta joke of itself. For one, it is literally subtitled as "The Second Part", but then you get gags like, seeing the space ships on strings, Rex listing off a bunch of Chris Pratt roles, and the live action segments with the parents are also pretty meta. I'm gonna be honest, a lot of this was hit and miss for me, mostly a miss. I don't know, I just never really found it charming, maybe it has something to do with taking me out of the experience, or maybe it just happened to frequently to really stay charming.

Honestly, the meta humour was a big reason I feared coming back to this movie. I worried that most of what this movie would bank on was the meta humour. Thankfully, it wasn't as frequent as I remembered (Though, it was still pretty frequent) and the rest of the humour was still pretty solid, with a few duds here and there, but you can't win 'em all!

Overall, I do think this is a solid movie. It has some funny jokes and silly lines, the characters are pretty strong and the animation and visuals look great. I do think this movie also has a lot of talking points, not just with things like the reveals and the meta angle, but also with the themes. I didn't even touch upon the whole theme of maturing and what it really means to grow up, but I really do think it is an aspect of the movie worth talking about. So, overall I do think this is a solid sequel, I think I might have been too harsh on it in my year end post. I think it should be higher on my list, definitely above Frozen II. With all of that being said, I can definitely put this movie in the recommendation category. Should it be a High Recommendation? Well, I do think the reveals and the Meta side do knock this movie down from being a "High", but it is in the upper end of the Recommendation rating. So, put it with the first two Toy Story movies.