The LEGO Movie
What happens when we set out to understand LEGO not just as a physical object but as an idea, an icon of modernity, an image—maybe even a moving image? To what extent can the LEGO brick fit into the multimedia landscape of popular culture, especially film culture, today? Launching from these questions, Dana Polan traces LEGO from thing to film and asserts that The LEGO Movie is an exemplar of key directions in mainstream cinema, combining the visceral impact of effects and spectacle with ironic self-awareness and savvy critique of mass culture as it reaches for new heights of creativity.
Incorporating insights from conversations with producer Dan Lin and writer-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Polan examines the production and reception of The LEGO Movie and closely analyzes the film within popular culture at large and in relation to LEGO as a toy and commodity. He identifies the film’s particular stylistic and narrative qualities, its grasp of and response to the culture industry, and what makes it a distinctive work of animation within the seeming omnipresence of animation in Hollywood, and reveals why the blockbuster film, in all its silliness and seriousness, stands apart as a divergent cultural work.
Dana Polan is a master-builder of film criticism…[Polan] riffs on…The LEGO Movie with the speed, wit, dexterity, and precision of Wyldstyle, building new arguments by dissembling and reassembling one part of the film after another. It's a dazzling performance, as fast-paced and all-over-the-place as his subject—zigging-zagging this way and that—and comes together in one analytical set-piece after another.
[The LEGO Movie] nails much of what makes Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s blockbuster so smart.
Dana Polan is one of the most respected scholars in media studies and his book, The LEGO Movie, displays his rare ability to weave together a shrewd and refreshing array of insights. He systematically proves that this smart, savvy movie is well aware of its place within both consumer culture and the entertainment industry.
The World of Animation and the Animation of the World
The LEGO Movie as Savvy Cinema
Through the Rabbit Hole, into the LEGO-Verse
Falling into Narrative
The Extraordinary Ordinariness of LEGO
The Secret Life of Toys
Production History, Part 1: Project Development as LEGO Goes to the Movies
Production History, Part 2: The Animation Process
Production History, Part 3: The Screenwriter-Directors
Reception and After-Life
Coda
Acknowledgments
Notes
LEGO Bibliography
Index
