The Lego Batman Movie

When 2014’s The Lego Movie came out, it was a charming, visually-inventive story about the importance of being creative and doing your own thing despite authority figures and corporations telling you to conform (which was ironic because it was a movie about Lego, the corporation that sells boxes of specifically designed bricks that are only meant to recreate the Millennium Falcon or the Titanic or the Chrysler Building. But that’s neither here nor there.) It was fun, bright, and clever – and one of the standout characters was the childishly macho Batman voiced by Will Arnett. Arnett’s Batman, while still a good guy, was essentially a man-child obsessed with his own coolness. His screamy heavy metal song about himself – with lyrics like “Total darkness!” and “No parents!” even played over the closing credits.

 

It was successful enough to spin Batman off into his own plastic brick iteration called, creatively enough, The Lego Batman Movie. While I absolutely don’t understand the phenomenon of  taking already established movies like the Harry Potter films and simply remaking them with blocky, little plastic people – that is, I don’t understand them beyond the naked, greedy cash grab for younger audiences that they are – The Lego Batman Movie isn’t one of those. Rather than recreating any of the half dozen other big screen adaptations or any specific storyline from the comics, this version liberally takes and lovingly spoofs material from all of them. 

 The film gets a lot of mileage out of the tortured loner routine, as Batman, still in his cowl while relaxing at home in stately Wayne Manor, eats lobster thermidor alone, plays  his electric guitar alone, and watches Jerry Maguire on DVD in Bruce Wayne’s giant home theater – alone. He’s just defeated practically every villain in his considerable rogue’s gallery, and then he returns to a giant echoey mansion on an island. Alone.

Commissioner Jim Gordon retires and his daughter, Barbara, takes over the police force. Rather than just flipping on the Bat Signal every time there’s a problem, Barbara wants police and citizens to work with Batman so that, as a team, they can make Gotham safer. Naturally, Batman hates “everything you just said just now.”

Of course, the film centers on getting Batman to grow up a little and see that teamwork and friends are better than doing everything yourself. It brings a much needed sense of lightheartedness and positivity to what has become a relentlessly grim and bleak character over the last thirty years. One of the pleasant surprises of the film is that is even acknowledges the Adam West tv version of the 60s, something that has been the embarrassing, unspoken secret of Batfans for years.

The greatest joy of the film is how visually inventive it is. Over the last hundred years, there have been movies made with puppets, Muppets, marionettes, animation, CGI, kids as adults, adults as kids, silent film, 3-D, 4-D, and in Chiller-Vision. But the advent of this combination of actual Legos with computer and hand-drawn animation is unique, and on a strictly visual level, it’s pure pleasure to watch.

The film is highly self-aware and makes meta-filmic jokes about itself throughout. That’s entertaining both for kids who just think it’s a silly romp and for adults who get the winking inside references peppered throughout. However, in the big picture, one can see this becoming the Lego brand – self-awareness and pop culture inside jokes ad astra ad nausem. There was a trailer for the Ninjago Lego movie beforehand and like the Lego Movie and Lego Batman, it’s another silly, jokey plastic brick epic about daddy issues for both those who have daddies and those who are daddies. So we’ll see if the success of Lego Batman proves to be a good thing or a bad thing going forward.

Its place in the larger Lego canon aside, The Lego Batman Movie is bright, funny, and really lovely to look at. Don’t be a lone wolf. Take your team and go see it.