Finally, a movie based around my favourite childhood toy

Rating: 8/10 (6 April 2014)

What surprises me about this movie (other than the Hollywood Dichotomy, which I will mention below) is not so much that they made a movie based around the very popular Lego  product, but rather that they took an incredibly long time to actually make it. It is not as if they did not have the capabilities of doing such a movie a while back – in fact I remember watching a stop-motion Lego Star Wars film back in the early nineties, which was passed around on video cassette (unlike these days where I am sure you can get access to many Lego films on Youtube.
As for the film, it is a typical film about a bunch of heroes going out and defeating a bad guy. Also, being a film aimed primarily at children (and also designed as a not so subtle advertisement of the Lego  product), it also has the hero of the story as an ordinary person who goes out and does extraordinary things, which is our culture's way of saying that it does not matter who you are, or what your station in life is like, you do have the capability of doing extraordinary things, all you have to do is believe in yourself.
However, there is another interesting thing that I call the Hollywood Dichotomy. I noticed it first in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and I have noticed it replicated again here, and that is that this film seems to go against what is expected of a loyal and patriotic citizen of the United States of America. First of all we have the antagonist, Lord Business/President Business – clearly he represents the upper 1%, the executive director of the multi-national corporation, and he is portrayed not only as the bad guy, but as the guy whose power we are to resist. This seems to fly in the face of the idea that the CEO is a leader, a person to aspire to and respect, which is something that is essential in the capitalist society. However, I guess the reason that he is portrayed as the antagonist is not so much because he is bad, but rather because he is standing in the way of your success, and you are not going to become successful until he is out of the way.
The other aspect in this film is the idea of following the instructions. What the film is suggesting is that following the instructions is a bad thing and that we are to reject that an embrace our freedom. This, in a sense is what is happening in the United States today, with the creation of a quasi-police state (and we see it here in Australia as well) where those of us who do not follow the rules are considered to be miscreants and trouble makers. In a sense we are to accept the decisions of our superiors, whether we agree with them or not, and to exercise our right to protest and to seek change is discouraged because what that does is that upsets the status quo.