The Lego Movie Is A Rich, Meta Masterpiece

The Lego Movie is without a doubt a ten out of ten. Pretty much everything about this movie is perfect and I will give a detailed reason why. Let's start with the...

Animation: The Lego Movie has one of the most unique looks out of any animated movie ever. The movie is inspired by stop motion animated films that use legos. In order to look like stop motion, the frame rate is slowed down and nothing squashes or bends. It nails the look of lego stop motion so well to the point where it fooled many into thinking it was actually stop motion. The textures of the legos look real, which is insane considering that this movie came out a decade ago. The Lego Movie feels far more advanced than anything else that came out during it's time. The scenery and set pieces are also very impresive. Everything is animated as if it was built by legos, so every building, mountain, spaceship, etc. is intricately designed and made up of thousands of lego bricks. Pause this movie at any point and you'll see how intricate and detailed everything is. This becomes very impresive in scenes where they animate water, as even that is animated with lego bricks. When things aren't made out of legos, they are household objects given a hilarious amount of importance, such as the Polish Remover Of Nail, or the Kragle (a bottle of glue). The action scenes are animated beautifully, they are smooth and easy to follow. The characters are also animated well. Despite being legos, the characters are very expressive and this is what helps make them so memorable. This leads into...

Characters: The Lego Movie has a memorable cast of characters with diverse personalities. What makes the characters so impressive is that not only they are parodies of tropes, but they manage to be three dimensional. Emmett is a parody of "chosen one" characters (Luke Skywalker, Frodo, Neo, etc.) Characters that are called to be the savior of the world despite being normal people who are mostly talentless. However, where Emmett differs from these characters is the fact that for most of the movie he is unable to prove himself to be a savior. Neo manages to learn and grow throughout the movie and has everyone's respect from the beginning (same for Luke and Frodo). With Emmett, he is incompitent for most of the movie. Eventually he does become a savior, but he is generally the same person throughout the movie. He was also not supposed to be the savior, him being chosen as one was a mistake. Another difference is that most of these characters are complex and have tragic backstories. Emmett doesn't. He's normal and happy. He's a subversion of tropes that makes for a more relatable protagonist. He's also funny and sympathetic, you want to see him succeed in the end. Lucy is a parody of female love interest characters. At many moments she directly parodies Trinity from the Matrix. What makes her stand out from this trope is that she has complexity. Trinity in the Matrix mostly serves as a motivation for Neo to join the rebellion against the machines. While Lucy serves this purpose in The Lego Movie (the only reason why Emmett joins the rebellion is by following her), she is later on revealed to have her own motivations, wanting to be the savior but being beaten to the job by Emmett. It's also revealed that her overly cool name (Wyldstyle) is just a cover up for a much simpler and humble name. Instead of just being a normal love interest super cool girlboss character, she's revealed to have more goals besides being the hero's motivation. Vitruvius is a parody of wise old mentor characters such as Obi-Wan, Gandalf, etc. These characters serve as guides for the main characters, until they dramatically die in the second act of the movie (Obi-Wan gets stabbed, Gandalf falls to his death, etc.) However, Vitruvius is very goofy and at times incompitent. His blindness is played as a joke throughout the movie. His supposed "prophecy" is just something he made up to motivate people. Him coming back as a ghost (like Obi-Wan) is played as a joke. However, this doesn't make the character worthless. His death has a big emotional impact, and he is very wise despite his goofiness. More can be said for characters such as Lord Buisness, Bad Cop, Batman, etc. Part of what makes these characters work so well is the...

Writing: This movie has some of the best writing in any movie. This movie tells hundereds of jokes and every one of them are funny. It's honestly one of the funniest movies ever made. This movie's dialogue is endlessly quotable, you could spend hours quoting this. Everytime you watch this movie, there is always a new joke to find. Part of why this movie is able to tell so many hilarious jokes is because they are meta. Something as simple as pigs running or a character falling can be funny because the writers are meta about what is happening. This extends into the story, because as mentioned before, this movie is a parody of movie tropes and specifically ones from "chosen one" movies. However, they don't just make fun of the tropes and call it a day. Instead they subvert the tropes and continue the story in an unexpected way, which makes the story very engaging. The story is filled with parodies of tropes, but the genius of this movie is that is uses it's meta writing to form strong emotional moments. Emmett throughout the movie is trying to fit into the trope of being the "chosen one," and seeing him realize there is no chosen one is very moving. The scene where Emmett talks to Lord Buisness and convinces him to stop is very moving. His sacrifice is a fakeout death, but it is still very moving. On top of having a meta plot and solid emotional moments, this movie manages to have a sophisticated message on the importance of individualism. It shows us a totalitarianist society where everyone is encouraged to blend in and submit to authority, with people who don't being hunted down and captured. The villain want to go a step further, planning to freeze everyone exactly how he wants them to be. This is a satire on how our American society is anti-individualist, instead molding people to be dumb and submissive. This movie also satirizes how mixed corporations are with the government, having the villain be named "President Business," and having him be in charge of not only of a big corperation but the entire world. This movie's writing is so good that it manages to have strong emotional moments, social and political satire, trope parodies, and a seemingly endless amount of hilarious jokes. Another fantastic part of this movie is the...

Music/Score: This movie has an amazing score that boosts every scene. This movie's composer, Mark Mothersbaugh, is known for his scores that mix traditional instruments and electronic music, and this works very well for this movie. At the beginning of the movie, when we are in the distopian Bricksburg, the music is traditional. As Emmett becomes more involved with the outside world, the music starts to mix in electronic music that sounds less traditional. When Emmet learns over the movie, electronic music and traditional music are mixed, showing his new understanding. While being genius story wise, the music is great on it's own. I get the score stuck in my head constantly. Some of the music that plays during the emotional scenes are very powerful, they contribute more to the scene than people realize. The score is an aspect of this movie that people don't praise often, which baffles me. The song Everything Is Awesome gets talked about more, even getting an Oscar nomination. What's ironic about this is that the song satirizes mindless feel good pop songs that play on the radio, and how corperations use these songs to blind people and distract them from the attrocities of the world (the song being called "Everything Is Awesome" becomes more funny when you consider this). So it's hilarious that while The Lego Movie wasn't nominated for any Oscars, the song that parodies modern songs was the most praised aspect of the movie. It's very ironic and it proves this movie to be right about our modern world.

I could go on, but I think this is enough for now. The Lego Movie is a gift from God. It manages to be a meta complex masterpiece, yet fun and hilarious. Every aspect of this movie soars. The problems with this movie are minimal and don't matter to me at all, so you can't really call them "problems." I see a lot of people give this movie an eight or a nine out of ten, but I think that people are only not giving this movie a perfect score because it's goofy. A movie doesn't have to be serious to be a ten out of ten. The Lego Movie proves that a movie can be goofy but also be a masterpiece. In my opinion, it's the fifth best animated movie ever made, the best animated movie of the 2010's, and one of the best movies of the 21st century so far.